For forms of government let fools contest;
Whate'er is best administered is best. [ Pope ]

But slaves that once conceive the glowing thought
Of freedom, in that hope itself possess
All that the contest calls for; spirit, strength,
The scorn of danger, and united hearts,
The surest presage of the good they seek. [ Cowper ]

A virtuous name is the only prize
Which queens and peasants' wives contest together. [ Friedrich Schiller ]

Women are right to crave beauty at any price, since beauty is the only merit that men do not contest with them. [ A. Dupuy ]

Sydney Smith playfully says that commonsense was invented by Socrates, that philosopher having been one of its most conspicuous exemplars in conducting the contest of practical sagacity against stupid prejudice and illusory beliefs. [ Whipple ]

Emulation is a handsome passion; it is enterprising, but just withal. It keeps a man within the terms of honor, and makes the contest for glory just and generous. He strives to excel, but it is by raising himself, not by depressing others. [ Jeremy Collier ]

Society is but the contest of a thousand little opposite interests - an eternal contest between all the vanities that clash with each other, wounded, humiliated the one by the other, and which expiate tomorrow in the disgust of a defeat the triumph of today. To live in solitude, to avoid being crushed in the surging throng, is what the world calls being a nonentity - to have no existence. Poor, miserable humanity! [ Chamfort ]