Sterner Quotes

Though sages may pour out their wisdom's treasure, there is no sterner moralist then Pleasure. ~ George Gordon Byron

Good God enlighten us! Which of these two belongs to the sterner sex - the man who sits in Whitehall all his life on a comfortable salary, or the woman who has to keep her teeth bared lest she has her meatless bone of 17s. 4d. a week snatched away from her and who has to produce the next generation on her off-days? ~ Rebecca West

Ideology is the sterner face of myth and we're a myth-making people. ~ Diana Trilling

then flats of marigolds and petunias. Made of sterner stuff, I figured, their sort might survive my regime of horticultural neglect. ~ Kathy Reichs

Truth has her sterner responsibilities sooner or later in store for those who have known anything about her. ~ Henry Parry Liddon

Sadly but, perhaps, not altogether unexpectedly this society has had very limited success in achieving what is supposed to be the justification for its existence
the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest possible number of people. In so far as its citizens are saved from the major anxieties and responsibilities which normally surround the business of being a man, they transfer what appears to be an unvarying human capacity for worry to the most trivial things, making mountains out of molehills on a vast scale; and they have 'nervous breakdowns' over problems which men and women living under sterner conditions would hardly find time to notice. ~ Charles Le Gai Eaton

Everything in life worth achieving requires practice. In fact, life itself is nothing more than one long practice session, an endless effort of refining our motions. When the proper mechanics of practice are understood, the task of learning something new becomes a stress-free experience of joy and calmness, a process which settles all areas in your life and promotes proper perspective on all of life's difficulties. ~ Thomas M. Sterner

So few people are really aware of their thoughts. Their minds run all over the place without their permission, and they go along for the ride unknowingly and without making a choice. ~ Thomas M. Sterner

Miss Wigglesworth gave him an assessing look out of her remarkable blue eyes.
"You're a libertine? How very unique."
She gave a small fake yawn. She was, in that heartbeat, so perfect and so pure and so very dangerous indeed that all he could do was frighten her away.
"Have you been listening at keyholes, Lazuli? I assure you, they have always been willing, even when I ask that they pretend otherwise."
She blushed deep pink at that – an appealing thing, the blood high under her cheeks, warm and subtle and alive. He wanted to delve into her, with teeth and body until she was ravaged and supine and wrecked and bleeding and his. She did not, as he had expected, break away from him mid-step. The blush was there, to be sure, but she was made of sterner stuff. Any true innocent would be repulsed by the intent in his tone. A woman without experience would fear the implication of his preferences – the certain acknowledgment that there was wolf, nothing but wolf, underneath all his icy indifference. Faith was intrigued. She tilted her head and looked hard at him, her lovely eyes flinty.
"So, you're just a beast who enjoys the chase, nothing else?"
"Exactly so."
She threw it all at him. Like a piece of warm fresh meat, cut and dripping temptation, enough to make him salivate, to bait her trap.
"You can't catch me."
The waltz ended. ~ Gail Carriger

Dieting was cruel; it was an abuse of human rights. Yes, that's what it was, and she should not allow herself to be manipulated in this way. She stopped herself. Thinking like that was nothing more than coming up with excuses for breaking the diet. Mma Ramotswe was made of sterner stuff than that, and so she persisted. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

It was his optimism that Freud bequeathed to America and it was the optimism of our youthfulness, our freedom from the sterner, sadder tradition of Europe which enabled us to seize his gift. ~ Karl A. Menninger

The problem with patience and discipline is that it requires both of them to develop each of them. ~ Thomas M. Sterner

We can learn so much from nature by simply observing how it works through a flower. The flower knows it is part of nature' we have forgotten that. ~ Thomas Sterner

You are going to find that buying the car is much less satisfying than working for it. ~ Thomas M. Sterner

Do not let us speak of darker days, let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days: these are great days-the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race. ~ Winston Churchill

The duke nodded, his beautiful face full of catlike satisfaction. "But since then I have conquered a sterner fortress." His eyes mocked me. "And now I enter it freely. ~ Teresa Denys

I gave, at first, attention close;
Then interest warm ensued;
From interest, as improvement rose,
Succeeded gratitude.

'Obedience was no effort soon,
And labour was no pain;
If tired, a word, a glance alone
Would give me strength again.

'From others of the studious band
Ere long he singled me,
But only by more close demand
And sterner urgency.

'The task he from another took,
From me he did reject;
He would no slight omission brook
And suffer no defect.

'If my companions went astray,
He scarce their wanderings blamed.
If I but faltered in the way
His anger fiercely flamed. ~ Charlotte Bronte

Rushing had become so much of a habit that I was amazed at the amount of concentration it took to work slowly on purpose. ~ Thomas M. Sterner

Did she have to be so downright fetching in her refusal?
Taking Annie back, he struck a sterner pose in order to keep all comers at bay. ~ Laura Frantz

One study states that repeating a particular motion sixty times a day over twenty-one days will form a new habit that will become ingrained in your mind. ~ Thomas M. Sterner

Our cause is a common one. It is war between poverty and wealth ... This moneyed power is fast eating up the substance of the people. We have made war upon it, and we mean to win it. If we can, we will win through the ballot box; if not, then we shall resort to sterner means. ~ William H. Sylvis

Habits are learned. Choose them wisely. ~ Thomas M. Sterner

There is no greater valor nor no sterner fight. He who would be what he ought to be must stop being what he is. ~ Meister Eckhart

When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept: Ambition should be made of sterner stuff: Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man. ~ William Shakespeare

The amount of money and of legal energy being given to prosecute hundreds of thousands of Americans who are caught with a few ounces of marijuana in their jeans simply makes no sense - the kindest way to put it. A sterner way to put it is that it is an outrage, an imposition on basic civil liberties and on the reasonable expenditure of social energy. ~ William F. Buckley, Jr.

What a fool you must be, said my head to my heart, or my sterner to my softer self. ~ Anne Bronte

The sterner self of the Populace likes bawling, hustling, and smashing; the lighter self, beer. ~ Matthew Arnold

Rogan gave him a flat stare. Lesser men would've fled for their life, but Augustine was clearly made of sterner stuff. ~ Ilona Andrews

The first step toward patience is to become aware of when your internal dialogue is running wild and dragging you with it. ~ Thomas M. Sterner

Benny McClenahan arrived always with four girls. They were never quite the same ones in physical person but they were so identical one with another that it inevitably seemed they had been there before. I have forgotten their names - Jaqueline, I think, or else Consuela or Gloria or Judy or June, and their last names were either the melodious names of flowers and months or the sterner ones of the great American capitalists whose cousins, if pressed, they would confess themselves to be. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

Progress is a natural result of staying focused on the process of doing anything. ~ Thomas M. Sterner

Sweet Love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee,
While the world's tide is bearing me along;
Sterner desires and darker hopes beset me,
Hopes which obscure, but cannot do thee wrong. ~ Emily Bronte

How rarely boyhood loves to paint in glowing tints his future bright, a picture where no line is faint
whose very clouds are touch'd with light. And girlhood hails a world unknown and reads it in her own glad dreams, as lilies see themselves alone reflected in their azure streams. But rosy clouds that morning brings, ere noon may deepen into thunder
and life's dark stream has sterner things than silver lilies growing under. ~ Cecil Frances Alexander

The cellar was straight off the set of a horror film. The floor was packed dirt and littered with the droppings of mice and rats. The worn stone walls were damp with a slick layer of mold. Even the air was heavy and filled with a dark sense of menace. It combined to create an atmosphere that would send most people fleeing in terror. But Edra was made of sterner stuff. ~ Alexandra Ivy

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff. ~ William Shakespeare

We think too many thoughts at once, most of them the same thoughts we had yesterday and the day before. We are impatient with life, and anxious. ~ Thomas M. Sterner

Her manners had been imposed upon her by her mother's gentle admonitions and the sterner discipline of her mammy; her eyes were her own. ~ Margaret Mitchell

I should not, if I were you, wish to be, because 'sterner stuff' is usually forged by hardship. ~ Julie Anne Long

When, instead, your goal is to focus on the process and stay in the present, then there are no mistakes and no judging. You are just learning and doing. You are executing the activity, observing the outcome, and adjusting yourself and your practice energy to produce the desired result. There are no bad emotions, because you are not judging anything. ~ Thomas M. Sterner

Socialist writers are made of sterner stuff than those who only let their characters steeplechase through trouble in order to comeout first in the happy ending of moral uplift. ~ Christina Stead

Also, perhaps children are sterner than grown-up people in their refusal to suffer, in their refusal, even, to feel at all. ~ Elizabeth Bowen

Habits and practice are very interrelated. What we practice will become a habit. ~ Thomas M. Sterner

Could words and symbols wield such power? Could mere scribblings on parchment unmake a person's moral fiber? Weren't we made of sterner stuff? ~ Karen Marie Moning

While these thoughts crossed his mind, Margaret clung to the doorpost to steady herself: but a film came over her eyes - he was only just in time to catch her. 'Mother - mother!' cried he; 'Come down - they are gone, and Miss Hale is hurt!' He bore her into the dining-room, and laid her on the sofa there; laid her down softly, and looking on her pure white face, the sense of what she was to him came upon him so keenly that he spoke it out in his pain:
'Oh, my Margaret - my Margaret! no one can tell what you are to me! Dead - cold as you lie there, you are the only woman I ever loved! Oh, Margaret - Margaret!' Inarticulately as he spoke, kneeling by her, and rather moaning than saying the words, he started up, ashamed of himself, as his mother came in. She saw nothing, but her son a little paler, a little sterner than usual. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

You would be miserable if you had to go through life with a human doormat with 'Welcome' written on him. You want some one made of sterner stuff. You want, as it were, a sparring-partner, some one with whom you can quarrel happily with the certain knowledge that he will not curl up in a ball for you to kick, but will be there with the return wallop. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

The second step in creating patience is understanding and accepting that there is no such thing as reaching a point of perfection in anything. ~ Thomas M. Sterner

[Book's subtitle:] Designed as a beacon of light to guide women to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but which may be read by members of the sterner sect, without injury to themselves or the book. ~ Marietta Holley

I thought all was lost. But I should have known better. My sweet, brave, bluestocking. You are made of sterner stuff than that. And I should have trusted you to save yourself. ~ Manda Collins

Do not think that heroes cannot be broken! We are only more difficult to break, Hermione." The old wizard's eyes had grown sterner than she had ever seen. "When you have been exhausted for many hours, when pain and death is not a passing fear but a certainty, then it is harder to be a hero. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

Never worry. Be ever cheerful. Always laugh and smile. You can use the following powerful autosuggestion: "Mr. Worry, goodbye to you. I am a different person now. I am made of sterner stuff." Worry will now be afraid to show his face to you. You can then remove the worries of many of your friends. ~ Sivananda

Unlike music or poetry or painting, food rouses no response in passionate and emotional youth. Only when the surge of the blood is quieted does gastronomy come into its own with philosophy and theology and the sterner delights of the mind. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

Leaders are for calling people to their better angels, for helping guide them to a kind of sterner, more mature sense of what we need to do. To me, Reagan's brand of leadership was what I call 'a liturgy of absolution.' He absolved Americans almost in a priestly role to contend with sin. Who wouldn't want that? ~ Rick Perlstein