Quotes on Right, Wrong and Injustice, Scorn and Flattery

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Quotes on Right, Wrong and Injustice, Scorn and Flattery

In this section, you'll find quotations and proverbs about the following topics: right, truth, wrong, injustice, justice, error, scorn, flattery, bandits, fraud, malefactors, robbers, lies, evil, wickedness, treason, truthisms, truisms, cliches, and even "clishes". Check out our main page for more high quality quotes on other subjects and categories.

Comparisons are odious. Proverb

Audacter calumniare, semper aliquid haeret. [Fling dirt enough, and some will stick.] F. Bacon, 1st Baron Verulam, De Dignitate Et Augmentis Scientiarum -The Advancement of Learning (after a sentence from Plutarch)

The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner. The Bible, Psalms, 118, 22

A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country. The Bible, St Matthew, 13, 57

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. The Bible, Ephesians, 6, 12

Bandit, n. A person who takes by force from A what A has taken by guile from B. Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce, The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary, s. v. Bandit

Fault, n. One of my offenses, as distinguished from one of yours, the latter being crimes. Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce, The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary, s. v. Fault

Fraud, n. The life of commerce, the soul of religion, the bait of courtship and the basis of political power. Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce, The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary, s. v. Fraud

Genuine, adj. Real, veritable, as, A genuine counterfeit, Genuine hypocrisy, etc. Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce, The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary, s. v. Genuine

Impeccable, adj. Not liable to detection. Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce, The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary, s. v. Impeccable

Injustice, n. A burden which of all those that we load upon others and carry ourselves is lightest in the hands and heaviest upon the back. Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce, The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary, s. v. Injustice

Malefactor, n. The chief factor in the progress of the human race. Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce, The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary, s. v. Malefactor

Right, n. A cipher which is of no value unless the numeral Might is placed in front of it. Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce, The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary, s. v. Right

Robber, n. A candid man of affairs.
It is related of Voltaire that one night he and some traveling companions lodged at a wayside inn. The surroundings were suggestive, and after supper they agreed to tell robber stories in turn. When Voltaire's turn came, he said: "Once there was a Farmer-General of the Revenues." Saying nothing more, he was encouraged to continue. "That," he said, "is the whole story."
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce, The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary, s. v. Robber

Self-Evident, adj. Evident to one's self and to nobody else. Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce, The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary, s. v. Self-Evident

And, after all, what is a lie? 'Tis but
The truth in masquerade.
G. G. Byron, 6th Baron, Don Juan, Canto 11, 37

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. C. C. Colton, Lacon, 1, No. 217

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness. J. Conrad, Under Western Eyes, Part 2

Il n'y a pas de héros pour son valet de chambre. [No man is a hero to his valet.] A. B. de Cornuel, Lettres de Mlle. Aissé, 13. Aug. 1728

Nor is the Peoples Judgment always true:
The Most may err as grosly as the Few.
J. Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, Part 1, 781

You would compliment a coxcomb doing a good act, but you would not praise an angel. The silence that accepts merit as the most natural thing in the world, is the highest applause. Ralph Waldo Emerson, An Address Delivered Before the Senior Class in Divinity College, Cambridge. Sunday Evening, July 15, 1838

The idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone,
All centuries but this, and every country but his own.

Sir W. S. Gilbert, The Mikado, Act 1

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
T. Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard, 53

Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.

Sir J. Harington, Epigrams, Of Treason

Seven cities warred for Homer, being dead,
Who, living, had no roof to shroud his head.
T. Heywood, Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels

Oh! God! that bread should be so dear,
And flesh and blood so cheap.
T. Hood, The Song of the Shirt

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just. T. Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia

This mournful truth is ev'rywhere confessed
Slow rises worth, by poverty depressed.

S. Johnson, London

We throw off, with the most presumptuous and unmeaning hauteur, all deference whatever to foreign opinion - we forget, in the puerile inflation of vanity, that the world is the true theatre of the biblical histrio - we get up a hue and cry about the necessity of encouraging native writers of merit - we blindly fancy that we can accomplish this by indiscriminate puffing of good, bad, and indifferent, without taking the trouble to consider that what we choose to denominate encouragement is thus, by its general application, rendered precisely the reverse. E. A. Poe, The Drake-Halleck Review

Fondly we think we honour merit then,
When we but praise ourselves in other men.
A. Pope, An Essay on Criticism, 454

The hungry judges soon the sentence sign,
And wretches hang that jury-men may dine.
A. Pope, The Rape of the Lock, Canto 3, 21

Men's evil manners live in brass: their virtues
We write in water.
W. Shakespeare, Henry the Eighth, 4, 2, 45

Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.

W. Shakespeare, Macbeth, 2, 2, 60

To do a great right do a little wrong.
W. Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, 4, 1, 211

Comparisons are odorous. W. Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 3, 5, 16

He that is robb'd, not wanting what is stol'n,
Let him not know't, and he's not robb'd at all.

W. Shakespeare, Othello, 3, 3, 346

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York.
W. Shakespeare, Richard the Third, 1, 1, 1

People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise. W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage, Ch. 50

Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone? J. Thurber, (Title of cartoon)

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Quotes on Right, Wrong and Injustice, Scorn and Flattery

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