Quotes About Vigorous

“The web of hypocrisy of today hangs on the frontiers of two domains, between which our time swings back and forth, attaching its fine threads of deception and self-deception. No longer vigorous enough to serve morality without doubt or weakening, not yet reckless enough to live wholly to egoism, it trembles now toward the one and now toward the other in the spider-web of hypocrisy, and, crippled by the curse of halfness, catches only miserable, stupid flies.”

— Max Stirner

“Sin does not only still abide in us, but is still acting, still laboring to bring forth the deeds of the flesh. When sin lets us alone we may let sin alone; but as sin is never less quiet than when it seems to be the most quiet, and its waters are for the most part deep when they are still, so ought our contrivances against it be vigorous at all times and in all conditions, even where there is least suspicion.”

— John Owen

“All Religions have this in common, that they are an outrage to common sense for they are pieced together out of a variety of elements, some of which seem so unworthy, sordid and at odds with man's reason, that any strong and vigorous intelligence laughs at them ... The human intellect is only capable of tackling mediocre subjects: it disdains petty subjects, and is startled by large ones. There is no reason to be surprised if it finds any religion hard to accept at first, for all are deficient in the mediocre and the commonplace, nor that it should require skill to induce belief. For the strong intellect laughs at religion, while the weak and superstitious mind marvels at it but is easily scandalized by it.”

— Pierre Charron

“Trust is not a passive state of mind. It is a vigorous act of the soul by which we choose to lay hold on the promises of God and cling to them despite the adversity that at times seeks to overwhelms us.”

— Jerry Bridges

“Charity erodes the cultural prerequisites for a vigorous democracy.”

— Janet Poppendieck

“Vigorous writing is concise.”

— William Strunk, Jr.

“Plain words on plain paper. Remember what Orwell says, that good prose is like a windowpane. Cut every page you write by at least a third. Stop constructing those piffling little similes of yours. Work out what you want to say. Then say it in the most direct and vigorous way you can. Eat meat. Drink blood. Give up your social life and don't think you can have friends. Rise in the quiet hours of the night and prick your fingertips and use the blood for ink; that will cure you of persiflage! But do I take my own advice? Not a bit. Persiflage is my nom de guerre. (Don't use foreign expressions. It's elitist.)”

— Hilary Mantel

“I believe every single person on this planet is a dreamer but you have to make a vigorous effort to make it in life.”

— Euginia Herlihy

“The reason the founders chafed at the idea of an American standing army and vested the power of war making in the cumbersome legislature was not to disadvantage us against future enemies, but to disincline us toward war as a general matter ... With citizen-soldiers, with the certainty of a vigorous political debate over the use of a military subject to politicians' control, the idea was for us to feel it- uncomfortably- every second we were at war. But after a generation or two of shedding the deliberate political encumbrances to war that they left us ... war making has become almost an autonomous function of the American state. It never stops.”

— Rachel Maddow

“Widespread intellectual and moral docility may be convenient for leaders in the short term, but it is suicidal for nations in the long term. One of the criteria for national leadership should therefore be a talent for understanding, encouraging, and making constructive use of vigorous criticism.”

— Carl Sagan

“I'm the last one in the dark, until- suddenly- it happens. St. Clair removes something from his pocket. And then he gets down on one knee.
Anna's entire body lights with shock and joy and love. She nods a vigorous yes. St. Clair places the ring on her finger. He stands, she throws her arms around him, and they kiss. He spins her in a circle. They kiss again. Deep, hungry, long. And then he turns to us and waves- with the biggest smile I've ever seen- clearly aware that we've been standing here the whole time.”

— Stephanie Perkins

“A vigorous culture capable of making corrective,stabilizing changes depends heavily on its educated people, and especially upon their critical capacities and depth of understanding.”

— Jane Jacobs

“Any committee is only as good as the most knowledgeable, determined and vigorous person on it. There must be somebody who provides the flame.”

— Lady Bird Johnson

“Religion is life inspired by Heavenly Love; and life is something fresh and cheerful and vigorous.”

— Lucy Larcom

“Though more strenuous exercise would burn more calories, it would also lead to a significant increase in appetite. This is the implication of the phrase "working up an appetite." "Vigorous muscle exercise usually results in immediate demand for a large meal,”

— Gary Taubes

“Contemporary curators orbit in the place of distribution and consumption, and less and less in the space of artists. I think it has become a lazy profession in regard to its relationship to the artists and the vigorous state of art making.”

— Michelle Grabner

“I believe that the freedom of speech should be protected, but so should a family's right to privacy as they grieve their loss. There is a time and a place for vigorous debate on the War on Terror, but during a family's last goodbye is not it.”

— Dave Reichert

“That is a horrid temptation to put before a man who is forbidden to make vigorous movements," he said.
"Is it really?" she said. "No wonder Miles did not approve. He looked daggers at me."
"Maybe his face froze that way," Rupert said. "He was looking daggers at me a few hours ago. Do you think he suspects?"
"I think he knows ," she said.
"I'm glad I don't have a sister," he said. "I should have to get over my aversion to killing people."
-Rupert and Daphne”

— Loretta Chase

“I reached for the prescription. In a vigorous scrawl, he inked: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes. Take ten pages, twice a day, till end of course.”

— Diane Setterfield

“There is room in our ranks for the old and decrepit, as well as the young and vigorous.”

— Gerrit Smith

“As the landscape turned increasingly chaotic and murderous, the streams of refugees swelled. Another headlong, fearful escape of the kind that in collective dreams, in legends, would be misremembered and reimagined into pilgrimage or crusade ... the dark terror behind transmuted to a bright hope ahead, the bright hope becoming a popular, perhaps someday a national, delusion. Embedded invisibly in it would remain the ancient darkness, too awful to face, thriving, emerging in disguise, vigorous, evil, destructive, inextricable.”

— Thomas Pynchon

“In Toledo, people grow out. Out to the suburbs. Out to the parts of America where the economy is more vigorous. And all too often, out to 48-inch waistbands.”

— P. J. O'Rourke

“It is one of the perils of our so-called civilized age that we do not yet acknowledge enough, or cherish enough, this connection between soul and landscape - between our own best possibilities, and the view from our own windows. We need the world as much as it needs us, and we need it in privacy, intimacy, and surety. We need the field from which the lark rises - bird that is more than itself, that is the voice of the universe: vigorous, godly job. Without the physical world such hope it: hacked off. Is: dried up. Without wilderness no fish could leap and flash, no deer could bound soft as eternal waters over the field; no bird could open its wings and become buoyant, adventurous, valorous beyond even the plan of nature. Nor could we.”

— Mary Oliver

“There has been, and there will continue to be, vigorous discussions about race in America. I worry that little will come of these discussions because we aren't addressing what must be done to change the current racial climate.”

— Roxane Gay

“My father had several strokes and heart attacks. I was with him when he died, and it was a horrible death. He had been a very articulate man, and to lose that, never to be able to speak properly and to be unable to move - he had always been a very vigorous man, so to be in a wheelchair and mumbling - was terrible.”

— Ruth Rendell

“We serve a promise-keeping God, a God of miracles. My vigorous attempts to save myself, like Herod's, will never succeed. But what is impossible for man, is always possible with God. When it seems as though all is lost and God asks, "Can these bones live?" let my answer be, "Sovereign Lord, you know.”

— Lynn Austin

“Instead of responding to these attacks with a vigorous intellectual counterpunch, many believers grew suspicious of intellectual issues altogether. To be sure, Christians must rely on the Holy Spirit in their intellectual pursuits, but this does not mean they should expend no mental sweat of their own in defending the faith”

— J.P. Moreland

“Vigorous exercise will often fortify a feeble constitution.”

— Lydia Sigourney

“The ordinary American voter does not object to mediocrity. He likes his candidate to be sensible, vigorous, and, above all, what he calls 'magnetic,' and does not value, because he sees no need for, originality or profundity, a fine culture or a wide knowledge.”

— James Bryce

“The effect of Judaism's vigorous promotion of monotheism, and the dignity that this doctrine conferred on all humankind, as created in God's image, coupled with the discipline, warnth and security offered by the Jewish way of life, cannot be overestimated as a powerful catalyst for the undermining and eventual destruction of Graeco-Roman paganism.”

— Jeff Cohen

“Listening is not merely not talking ... it means taking a vigorous human interest in what is being told to us.”

— Andrew Miller

“How can the physique be braced if no fresh breath from the outer world is suffered to permeate the languid, enervating air of thedrawing-room? How can the grasp of the mind be vigorous, without action? Daughters of inherited wealth, or accumulated labor! the wide door of philanthropy is open peculiarly to you! Your life-work lies beyond your threshold: your wealth has placed you above the sorrowful struggle for daily bread which takes up the whole time of so many of your brothers and sisters. You are the almoners of God. A double accountability is yours.”

— Harriot Kezia Hunt

“The evidence that at least one extraterrestrial civilization has visited Earth is extensive both in scope and detail. In its totality it comprises a body of evidence which at the very least supports the general assessment that extraterrestrial life has been detected, and that a vigorous program of research and serious diplomatic initiatives is warranted.”

— Steven M. Greer

“Mozart's mental grip never loosens; he never abandons himself to any one sense; even at his most ecstatic moments his mind is vigorous, alert, and on the wing. He dives unerringly on to his finest ideas like a bird of prey, and once an idea is seized he soars off again with an undiminished power.”

— Walter J. Turner

“Laughter is the great antidote for self-pity, maybe a specific for the malady, yet probably it does tend to dry one's feelings out a little, as if by exposing them to a vigorous wind ...”

— Mary McCarthy

“Useful undertakings which require sustained attention and vigorous precision in order to succeed often end up by being abandoned, for, in America, as elsewhere, the people move forward by sudden impulses and short-lived efforts.”

— Alexis De Tocqueville

“Many times people can access that being stage more fully and more easily if at first you are actually doing something. If you run, or dance, or do something kind of vigorous, and let the energy release, then sometimes it's easier to sit or lie down and then feel at ease and rest and be quiet and move inside.”

— Shakti Gawain

“For the sake of democracy, vigorous, civilized debate must replace the law of silence that political correctness has imposed.”

— Anthony Daniels

“To do is hard, but to teach is still harder. Do not teach only to teach. Teach to improve the pupil. To be a teacher requires tremendous, vigorous discipline on oneself. We are teachers because somebody demands it from us. But the teacher should first rub his own self, and teach afterwards”

— B.K.S. Iyengar

“The twin conceptions of sin and vindictive punishment seem to be at the root of much that is most vigorous, both in religion and politics.”

— Bertrand Russell

“I do not believe there ever was any life more attractive to a vigorous young fellow than life on a cattle ranch in those days. It was a fine, healthy life, too; it taught a man self-reliance, hardihood, and the value of instant decision ... I enjoyed the life to the full.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

“He who sins easily, sins less. The very power
Renders less vigorous the roots of evil.”

— Ovid

“You gave me health that I might serve you; and so often I failed to use my good health in your service. Now you send me sickness in order to correct me Grant that, having ignored the things of spirit when my body was vigorous, I may now enjoy spiritual sweetness while my body groans with pain.”

— Blaise Pascal

“I do not believe that ever any building was truly great, unless it had mighty masses, vigorous and deep, of shadow mingled with its surface.”

— John Ruskin

“Everywhere, except in theology, there has been a vigorous growth of skepticism about skepticism itself.”

— C.S. Lewis

“There are believers who by God's grace, have climbed the mountains of full assurance and near communion, their place is with the eagle in his eyrie, high aloft; they are like the strong mountaineer, who has trodden the virgin snow, who has breathed the fresh, free air of the Alpine regions, and therefore his sinews are braced, and his limbs are vigorous; these are they who do great exploits, being mighty men, men of renown.”

— Charles Spurgeon

“The vigorous man industriously striving for the improvement of his condition acts neither more nor less than the lethargic man who sluggishly takes things as they come. For to do nothing and to be idle are also action, they too determine the course of events.”

— Ludwig Von Mises

“To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning.”

— Henry David Thoreau

“The word which gives the key to the national vice is waste. And people who are wasteful are not wise, neither can they remain young and vigorous. In order to transmute energy to higher and more subtle levels one must first conserve it.”

— Henry Miller

“Feudalism, serfdom, slavery, all tyrannical institutions, are merely the most vigorous kind to rule, springing out of, and necessarily to, a bad state of man. The progress from these is the same in all cases - less government.”

— Herbert Spencer