quotations about necessity
When God will educate a man, he compels him to learn bitter lessons; He sends him to school to the necessities rather than to the graces, that by knowing all suffering he may know also the eternal consolations.
CELIA BURLEIGH
attributed, Holy Thoughts on Holy Things
Necessity is a sore penance; and extremity is as hard to bear as death.
CANTACUZENUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
A people never fairly begins to prosper till necessity is treading on its heels.
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS
Egeria: Or Voices of Thought and Counsel for the Woods and the Wayside
The necessities that exist are in general created by the superfluities that are enjoyed.
J. G. ZIMMERMAN
Aphorisms and Reflections on Men, Morals and Things
Necessity is a strong rider with sharp spurs, who maketh the sorry jade do that which the strongest horse sometimes will not do.
CALANUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Freedom is only necessity understood.
WILLIAM JAMES
"The Dilemma of Determinism"
We give to necessity the praise of virtue.
QUINTILIAN
Institutio Oratoria
Soul of the world, divine Necessity,
Servant of God, and master of all things.
PHILIP JAMES BAILEY
Festus
Necessity makes an honest man a knave.
DANIEL DEFOE
Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe
If necessity is the mother of invention, it is no less the mother of crime; eternal justice is one thing, eternal love of bread and butter and other good things another; where it is a necessity of our nature to have, it is a weakness of our being to get.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
attributed, Day's Collacon
The rule of necessity is a rule of law which states that necessity knows no law.... So the rule of necessity overrides all other laws. It in fact allows one to do that which would normally be against the law.
ROBERT PATRICK
"Technically, we are still in a state of emergency", Victoria Advocate, July 28, 2017
Necessity can turn any weapon to advantage.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
Moral Sayings
I hold that mortal foolish who strives against the stress of necessity.
EURIPIDES
Hercules Furens
Nothing is more necessary than the unnecessary.
ROBERTO BENIGNI
Life Is Beautiful
Omission to do what is necessary
Seals a commission to a blank of danger.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Troilus and Cressida
My steps have pressed the flowers,
That to the Muses' bowers
The eternal dews of Helicon have given:
And trod the mountain height,
Where Science, young and bright,
Scans with poetic gaze the midnight-heaven.
Yet have I found no power to vie
With thine, severe necessity!
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK
"Necessity"
Necessity is a good school.
AL-ANABARI
attributed, Day's Collacon
Necessity may be the mother of lucrative invention; but is the death of poetical.
WILLIAM SHENSTONE
Essays on Men and Manners
Necessity, like electricity,
Is in ourselves and all things, and no more
Without us than within us; and we live,
We of this mortal mixture, in the same law
As the pure colorless intelligence
Which dwells in Heaven, and the dead Hadean shades.
PHILIP JAMES BAILEY
Festus
Necessity is an evil; but there is no necessity for continuing to live subject to necessity.
EPICURUS
attributed, Letters, Principle Doctrines and Vatican Sayings