Multitudes Quotes

The surface personality is only the beginning of what we are. So as we meditate, we still that surface personality, we can see beyond it, and we see that we encompass multitudes. ~ Frederick Lenz

No man is much regarded by the rest of the world. He that considers how little he dwells upon the condition of others, will learn how little the attention of others is attracted by himself. While we see multitudes passing before us, of whom perhaps not one appears to deserve our notice or excites our sympathy, we should remember, that we likewise are lost in the same throng, that the eye which happens to glance upon us is turned in a moment on him that follows us, and that the utmost which we can reasonably hope or fear is to fill a vacant hour with prattle, and be forgotten. ~ Samuel Johnson

Religious truth is captive in a small number of little manuscripts which guard the common treasures, instead of expanding them. Let us break the seal which binds these holy things; let us give wings to truth that it may fly with the Word, no longer prepared at vast expense, but multitudes everlastingly by a machine which never wearies to every soul which enters life. ~ Johannes Gutenberg

When a person has no need to borrow they find multitudes willing to lend. ~ Oliver Goldsmith

As multitudes of babies are dismembered and destroyed daily, this is clearly an issue where the gospel requires us to counter culture. ~ David Platt

Make-up covers a multitude of sins. ~ Stephen King

It has ever been my lot, though formally myself a teacher, to be taught surely by none. There are times when I have thought to read lessons in the sky, or in books, or from the behavior of my fellows, but in the end my perceptions have frequently been inadequate or betrayed. Nevertheless, I venture to say that of what man may be I have caught a fugitive glimpse, not among multitudes of men, but along an endless wave-beaten coast at dawn. As always, there is this apparent break, this rift in nature, before the insight comes. The terrible question has to translate itself into an even more terrifying freedom. ~ Loren Eiseley

Let us waive that agitated national topic, as to whether such multitudes of foreign poor should be landed on our American shores;let us waive it, with the one only thought, that if they can get here, they have God's right to come. ~ Herman Melville

The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

The multitude of false churches accredits the true religion. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Paris with its multitude of art directions calls continuously to the deepest penetration and recognition of your inner essence. Only in this way it is possible to create work that refers the time span. ~ Bram Van Velde

Consider the species known as man. We lie, we cheat, we want what others have and take it; we make war upon each other and the earth; we harvest lives in multitudes. We have mortgaged the planet and spent the cash on trifles. We may have loved, but never well enough. We never truly knew ourselves. We forgot the world; now it has forgotten us. How ~ Justin Cronin

A multitude is strong while it holds together, but so soon as each of those who compose it begins ro think of his own private danger, it becomes weak and contemptible. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

Fortunate, most fortunate occurrence! - fortunate for the millions of his manacled brethren, yet panting for deliverance from their awful thralldom! - fortunate for the cause of negro emancipation, and of universal liberty! - fortunate for the land of his birth, which he has already done so much to save and bless! - fortunate for a large circle of friends and acquaintances, whose sympathy and affection he has strongly secured by the many sufferings he has endured, by his virtuous traits of character, by his ever-abiding remembrance of those who are in bonds, as being bound with them! - fortunate for the multitudes, in various parts of our republic, whose minds he has enlightened on the subject of slavery, and who have been melted to tears by his pathos, or roused to virtuous indignation by his stirring eloquence against the enslavers of men! - fortunate for himself, as it at once brought him into the field of public usefulness, "gave the world assurance of a MAN," quickened the slumbering energies of his soul, and consecrated him to the great work of breaking the rod of the oppressor, and letting the oppressed go free! ~ William Lloyd Garrison

All these stupendous objects are daily around us; but because they are constantly exposed to our view, they never affect our minds, so natural is it for us to admire new, rather than grand objects. Therefore the vast multitude of stars which diversify the beauty of this immense body does not call the people together; but when any change happens therein, the eyes of all are fixed upon the heavens. ~ Saint Basil

He who can preserve gentleness amid pains, and peace amid worry multitude of affairs, is almost perfect. ~ Saint Francis De Sales

Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus' son Achilleus and its devastation, which put pains thousandfold upon the Achaians, hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades strong souls of heroes, but gave their bodies to be the delicate feasting 5 of dogs, of all birds, and the will of Zeus was accomplished ~ Homer

Political identities aren't about tax cuts. They are about tribes... This is the result of the incredible rise in political polarization in recent decades. It used to be that both the Republican and Democratic parties included both liberals and conservatives. Since parties contained ideological multitudes, it was hard for them to be the basis of strong, personal identities. A liberal Democrat in New Jersey didn't have a lot in common with a conservative Democrat in Alabama. But now that's changed. The parties are sharply sorted by ideology. What were once fractious coalitions have become unified tribes. ~ Ezra Klein

And therefore to-day is thrilling
With a past day's late fulfilling;
And the multitudes are enlisted
In the faith that their fathers resisted,
And, scorning the dream of to-morrow,
Are bringing to pass, as they may,
In the world, for its joy or its sorrow,
The dream that was scorned yesterday. ~ Arthur O'Shaughnessy

Life without utopia is suffocating, for the multitude at least: threatened otherwise with petrifaction, the world must have a new madness. ~ Emile M. Cioran

If tournament popularity was the most important consideration, then I think we would create a Smash Bros game that included a multitude of fast moves with complicated controls. However, I believe this is actually the greatest shortcoming of fighting games at present, and that is the reason why I don't do it. ~ Masahiro Sakurai

As Walt Whitman correctly surmised, we are large and we harbour multitudes within us. And those multitudes are locked in chronic battle. There is an ongoing conversation among the different factions in your brain, each competing to control the single output channel of your behaviour. ~ Damian Thompson

It is said that scattered through Despair's domain are a multitude of tiny windows, hanging in the void. Each window looks out onto a different scene, being, in our world, a mirror. Sometimes you will look into a mirror and feel the eyes of Despair upon you, feel her hook catch and snag on your heart. Despair says little, and is patient. ~ Neil Gaiman

Words will not be able to ever express how sorry I am for this, and I have profound regret and sorrow for the multitude of mistakes and harm I have caused. ~ Jack Abramoff

For the modern physicist, reality is the whole thing, past and future joined in a single history. The sensation of now is just that, a sensation, and different for everyone. Instead of one master clock, we have clocks in multitudes. ~ James Gleick

As long as the centuries continue to unfold, the number of books will grow continually, and one can predict that a time will come when it will be almost as difficult to learn anything from books as from the direct study of the whole universe. It will be almost as convenient to search for some bit of truth concealed in nature as it will be to find it hidden away in an immense multitude of bound volumes. ~ Denis Diderot

Any unity which doesn't have its origin in the multitudes is tyranny. ~ Blaise Pascal

The idea of polytheism is grounded in the view that reality (divine or otherwise) is multiple and diverse ... Polytheism has allowed a multitude of distinct groups to exist more or less in harmony, despite great divergence in beliefs and practices ... ~ Margot Adler

A well regulated commerce is not, like law, physic, or divinity, to be overstocked with hands; but, on the contrary, flourishes by multitudes, and gives employment to all its professors. ~ Joseph Addison

Is it not amazing, Puggly dear, that whenever we begin to congratulate ourselves on the breadth of our knowledge of the world, we discover that there are multitudes of people, in every corner of the earth, who have seen vastly more than we can ever hope to? ~ Amitav Ghosh

Suffering is tossed by handfuls over the multitudes, with most of it falling on some people and little or none of it on others. ~ Jose Luis Peixoto

How much more respectable is the life of the solitary pioneer or settler in these, or any woods - having real difficulties, not of his own creation, drawing his subsistence directly from nature - than that of the helpless multitudes in the towns who depend on gratifying the extremely artificial wants of society and are thrown out of employment by hard times! ~ Henry David Thoreau

If all the thought which had been expended on the construction of engines of agony and death - the modes of aggression and defence, the raising of armies, and the acquirement of those arts of tyranny and falsehood without which mixed multitudes could neither be led nor governed - had been employed to promote the true welfare and extend the real empire of man, how different would have been the present situation of human society! ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Every experiment, by multitudes or by individuals, that has a sensual and selfish aim, will fail. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

This is what I am not: I am not one thing. I contain multitudes. ~ Salman Rushdie

Under the dominion of an idea, which possesses the minds of multitudes, as civil freedom, or the religious sentiment, the power ofpersons are no longer subjects of calculation. A nation of men unanimously bent on freedom, or conquest, can easily confound the arithmetic of statists, and achieve extravagant actions, out of all proportion to their means; as, the Greeks, the Saracens, the Swiss, the Americans, and the French have done. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Hurry, oh peaceful Death, and carry me from these multitudes who left me in the dark corner of oblivion because I do not bleed the weak as they do. Come, oh gentle Death, and enfold me under your white wings, for my fellowmen are not in want of me. Embrace ~ Kahlil Gibran

We still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry and grasping at the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised to furnish new pretenses for revenue and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without a tribute. ~ Thomas Paine

When I behold a rich landscape, it is less to my purpose to recite correctly the order and superposition of the strata, than to know why all thought of multitude is lost in a tranquil sense of unity. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Patriotism covers a multitude of sins. ~ Carolyn Wells

Personally, I would rather climb in the high mountains. I have always abhorred the tremendous heat, the dirt-filled cracks, the ant-covered foul-smelling trees and bushes which cover the cliffs, the filth and noise of Camp 4 (the climbers' campground), and worst of all, the multitudes of tourists which abound during the weekends and summer months. ~ Yvon Chouinard

Charity creates a multitude of sins. ~ Oscar Wilde

Walt Whitman was right about at least one thing. You will contradict yourself. You are large. You contain multitudes. ~ Matt Haig

Sunglasses always hide a multitude of sins. Sunglasses and a great pair of heels can turn most outfits around. ~ Victoria Beckham

The spirit of liberty is not merely, as multitudes imagine, a jealousy of our own particular rights, but a respect for the rights of others, and an unwillingness that any man, whether high or low, should be wronged and trampled under foot. ~ William Ellery Channing

The ways of living have been rendered vastly easier by a multitude of inventions, by the increasing wealth of the country, by better and more intelligent service; and yet life is by no means easier, but indeed hard. The demands on time, whether real or imagined, have increased in a greater ratio than the supply of facilities for answering them, and as the earth provokingly continues to revolve on its axis just as rapidly as of old, the days are never long enough for all the duties which they bring. ~ Anna Brackett

In the great cities we see so little of the world, we drift into our minority. In the little towns and villages there are no minorities ; people are not numerous enough. You must see the world there, perforce. Every man is himself a class; every hour carries its new challenge. When you pass the inn at the end of the village you leave your favourite whimsy behind you; for you will meet no one who can share it. We listen to eloquent speaking, read books and write them, settle all the affairs of the universe. The dumb village multitudes pass on unchanging; the feel of the spade in the hand is no different for all our talk: good seasons and bad follow each other as of old. The dumb multitudes are no more concerned with us than is the old horse peering through the rusty gate of the village pound. The ancient map-makers wrote across unexplored regions, 'Here are lions.' Across the villages of fishermen and turners of the earth, so different are these from us, we can write but one line that is certain, 'Here are ghosts. ~ W.B. Yeats

Multitudes of men and women at this moment think that they are saved from their sins when they are not. ~ David Platt

One principal reason why men are so often useless is that they neglect their own profession or calling, and divide and shift their attention among a multitude of objects and pursuits. ~ Nathanael Emmons

Belonging nowhere, no one can tell who he really is. Who one really is depends on what world he belongs to. The secret multitudes who belong to no world, no way of life, no particular time and place, are the truly displaced persons: displaced from their true selves. They are not the disinherited: they are those who have disinherited their own selves. ~ Nelson Algren

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their substance. ~ Thomas Jefferson

You," she said. She grabbed my wrist and pressed two fingers onto me as if taking my pulse and I stopped breathing. "I know you. I remember you from my youth. You contain multitudes. There is a crush of experience coursing by you. And you want to take every experience on the pulse. ~ Stephanie Danler

To anyone reading this who has ever felt disheartened and confused, hurt or lost...you are not alone. You are surrounded by countless multitudes of people everywhere who are just like you. Just like us. But you don't have to stay confused or lost or in pain. We might forget this sometimes - or may not know it at all. But there is nothing in your life, no matter how difficult or painful, that cannot be turned into something very beautiful. So please, have lots of hope. ~ Chad Eastham

Those who have past much of their lives in this great city, look upon its opulence and its multitudes, its extent and variety, with cold indifference; but an inhabitant of the remoter parts of the kingdom is immediately distinguished by a kind of dissipated curiosity, a busy endeavour to divide his attention amongst a thousand objects, and a wild confusion of astonishment and alarm. ~ Samuel Johnson

There is abundant evidence that the Bible, though written by men, is not the product of the human mind. By countless multitudes it has always been revered as a communication to us from the Creator of the Universe. ~ John Ambrose Fleming

In Shakespeare the birds sing, the bushes are clothed with green, hearts love, souls suffer, the cloud wanders, it is hot, it is cold, night falls, time passes, forests and multitudes speak, the vast eternal dream hovers over all. Sap and blood, all forms of the multiple reality, actions and ideas, man and humanity, the living and the life, solitudes, cities, religions, diamonds and pearls, dung-hills and charnelhouses, the ebb and flow of beings, the steps of comers and goers, all, all are on Shakespeare and in Shakespeare. ~ Victor Hugo

My philosophy is that I'm an artist. I perform an art not with a paint brush or a camera. I perform with bodily movement. Instead of exhibiting my art in a museum or a book or on canvas, I exhibit my art in front of the multitudes. ~ Steve Prefontaine

A book is a garden; A book is an orchard; A book is a storehouse; A book is a party. It is company by the way; it is a counselor; it is a multitude of counselors. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

If photography is allowed to stand in for art in some of its functions it will soon supplant or corrupt it completely thanks to the natural support it will find in the stupidity of the multitude. It must return to its real task, which is to be the servant of the sciences and the arts, but the very humble servant, like printing and shorthand which have neither created nor supplanted literature. ~ Charles Baudelaire

The smile that covered a "multitude of pains" was no hypocritical mask. She was trying to hide her sufferings - even from God! - so as not to make others, especially the poor, suffer because of them. When she promised to do "a little extra praying & smiling" for one of her friends, she was alluding to an acutely painful and costly sacrifice: to pray when prayer was so difficult and to smile when her interior pain was agonizing. ~ Brian Kolodiejchuk

He that goeth about to persuade a multitude that they are not so well governed as they ought to be shall never want attentive and favorable hearers. ~ Richard Hooker

A wise man's kingdom is his own breast: or, if he ever looks farther, it will only be to the judgment of a select few, who are free from prejudices, and capable of examining his work. Nothing indeed can be a stronger presumption of falsehood than the approbation of the multitude; and Phocion, you know, always suspected himself of some blunder when he was attended with the applauses of the populace. ~ David Hume

All my moral and intellectual being is penetrated by an invincible conviction that whatever falls under the dominion of our senses must be in nature and, however exceptional, cannot differ in its essence from all the other effects of the visible and tangible world of which we are a self-conscious part. The world of the living contains enough marvels and mysteries as it is - marvels and mysteries acting upon our emotions and intelligence in ways so inexplicable that it would almost justify the conception of life as an enchanted state. No, I am too firm in my consciousness of the marvelous to be ever fascinated by the mere supernatural which (take it any way you like) is but a manufactured article, the fabrication of minds insensitive to the intimate delicacies of our relation to the dead and to the living, in their countless multitudes; a desecration of our tenderest memories; an outrage on our dignity. ~ Joseph Conrad

Jesus saw the multitudes were hungry
and He said, Oh Lord,
send down a short-order cook. ~ Anne Sexton

The harsh reality is that America moves on four wheels, powered by conventional internal-combustion engines. At this point, while the elite media (excluding Newsweek) trumpet the benefits of hybrids and Ford and Toyota plan to lead the nation into a low-powered, high-mileage hybrid Utopia, the multitudes remain loyal to the gas-guzzling family bus in the driveway. ~ Brock Yates

To be old is to be part of a huge and ordinary multitude ... the reason why old age was venerated in the past was because it was extraordinary. ~ Ronald Blythe

It is better to be divided by truth than united in error. ~ Bruce Bickel

What a wonderful and amazing Scheme have we here of the magnificent Vastness of the Universe! So many Suns, so many Earths, and every one of them stock'd with so many Herbs, Trees and Animals, and adorn'd with so many Seas and Mountains! And how must our wonder and admiration be encreased when we consider the prodigious distance and multitude of the Stars? ~ Christiaan Huygens

It is my fondest desire to bust a host of caps into multitudes of fleshy personages. ~ Bill Willingham

The idea that hunting is one against one is ludicrous. It's one animal versus the hunter, the manufacturer of the rifle, the bullet maker, the designer and manufacturer of the telescopic sight, the auto manufacturer who made the car the hunter got to the edge of the wild in, the maker of his waterproof shoes, the various manufacturers of his mittens, glasses, overcoat
and that's only the beginning of the list. The "sportsman" who shoots an animal should then make a speech, like the actor who wins an Oscar does, thanking the multitudes behind the scenes who made this "victory" possible. ~ Dick Cavett

By such innovations are languages enriched, when the words are adopted by the multitude, and naturalized by custom. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

Glowing taper in hand, she could almost imagine she was a star. Isolated. Insignificant amid the multitudes. Yet every bit as afire with heat and heart.

Strange, how contemplating the vastness made her feel a little less alone. From far enough away, on some other world, perhaps she would appear to be part of a constellation. ~ Tessa Dare

One who has never known the turbulence of life, in whom the petals of the mysterious flower within have never opened; such a one may seem happy, may seem a saint, his single track mind may impress the multitude with its power - but he is ill equipped for life's true adventure into the infinite. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Dar'st thou amid the varied multitude To live alone, an isolated thing? ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

To see life. To see the world. To watch the faces of the poor, and the gestures of the proud. To see strange things. Machines, armies, multitudes, and shadows in the jungle. To see, and to take pleasure in seeing. To see and be instructed. To see and be amazed. (Describing the powers of photography; written for the launch of LIFE Magazine, 1936.) ~ Henry R. Luce

This many-headed monster, Multitude. ~ Samuel Daniel

The more we touch the intimate love of God which creates, sustains, and guides us, the more we recognize the multitude of fruits that come forth from that love. ~ Henri Nouwen

For centuries before Google, MIT, and IDEO, modern hotbeds of innovation, we struggled to explain any kind of creation, from the universe itself to the multitudes of ideas around us. While we can make atomic bombs, and dry-clean silk ties, we still don't have satisfying answers for simple questions like: Where do songs come from? Are there an infinite variety of possible kinds of cheese? How did Shakespeare and Stephen King invent so much, while we're satisfied watching sitcom reruns? Our popular answers have been unconvincing, enabling misleading, fantasy-laden myths to grow strong. ~ Scott Berkun

If I had followed the multitude, I should not have studied philosophy. ~ Chrysippus

Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few. ~ Ovid

Come, let us make love deathless, thou and I,
Seeing that our footing on the Earth is brief-
Seeing that her multitudes sweep out to die
Mocking at all that passes their belief. ~ Herbert Trench

These incidents of answered prayer are not more wonderful or more worthy of record than multitudes the world over could testify to, but they are written and sent out simply and only because I had to write them or disobey God. ~ Rosalind Goforth

To see that God does answer, in great things as well as small, the prayers of those who put their trust in Him will strengthen the faith of multitudes. ~ Philip Yancey

Dammit, Vik. How can you not know what's wrong with this thing? Can't you commune with it or something? (Devyn)
My name is not 'Dammit, Vik' and I find it ironic that you think I can commune with all metal beings when you can barely communicate your point of view to your own parents. And they birthed you. I did not give birth to this ship. Last time I checked, I was male and that would be impossible on a multitude of levels. (Vik) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

I felt freed to please myself, to find my way as I would, in a world that was much vaster than I had realized before, in which I was but one star-gleam, one wavelet, among multitudes. My happiness mattered not a whit more than the next person's - or the next fish's, or the next grass-blade's! - and not a whit less. ~ Margo Lanagan

Similarly, there are multitudes who lose their lives pondering what they ought to believe, while something lies at their door waiting to be done, and rendering it impossible for him who makes it wait, ever to know what to believe. ~ George MacDonald

That's what separated us from the multitudes of Them. We lived harder. Knew better. But we laughed anyway. Laughed because there was nothing else to do but give up. ~ Michelle Hodkin

I am moved by the multitudes of your intelligence and sometimes, returning, I become the sea - in love with your speed, your heaviness and breath. ~ Frank O'Hara

People may be persuaded that the machine is doing good. In fact, good is only capable of being done on a small scale. Evil is more versatile. You can hate those you have never seen, all the vast multitudes of them, but you can only love those you know - and that with difficulty. ~ John Christopher

A multitude of words is probably the most formidable means of blurring and obscuring thought. There is no thought, however momentous, that cannot be expressed lucidly in 200 words. ~ Eric Hoffer

The common prejudice against philosophy is the result of the incapacity of the multitude to deal with the highest problems. ~ John Lancaster Spalding

My art and my self-expression in any form has always been an attempt towards sincerity, honesty, and empathy for others. For a multitude of reasons both professional and personal I no longer feel that this is possible within [Crystal Castles]. Although this is the end of the band, I hope my fans will embrace me as a solo artist in the same way they have embraced Crystal Castles. ~ Alice Glass

I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They can only force me who obey a higher law than I ... I do not hear of men being forced to live this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were that to live? ~ Henry David Thoreau

Silence, when correctly timed, can speak multitudes of words to a person, without any extra effort on your part. ~ Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

For it is a fire that kindling its first embers in the narrow nook of a private bosom, caught from a wandering spark out of another private heart, glows and enlarges until it warms and beams upon multitudes of men and women, upon the universal heart of all, and so lights up the whole world and all nature with its generous flames. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The liberty of the press is a blessing when we are inclined to write against others, and a calamity when we find ourselves overborne by the multitude of our assailants. ~ Samuel Johnson

Those voices you hear are like the voice of a multitude, which lifts its sound on high; for jubilant praises, offered in simple harmony and charity, lead the faithful to that consonance in which is no discord, and make those who still live on earth sign with heart and voice for the heavenly reward. ~ Hildegard Of Bingen

Though He did what he could to help the multitudes, He had to devote Himself primarily to a few men, rather than the masses, so that the masses could at last be saved. This was the genius of his strategy. ~ Robert Emerson Coleman

There is one element that is worth its weight in gold and that is LOYALTY. It will cover a multitude of weaknesses. ~ Philip Danforth Armour

There are many, many art worlds. Art contains multitudes. ~ Jerry Saltz