An eminent reputation is as dangerous as a bad one. [ Tacitus ]
Censure's the tax a man pays the public for being eminent. [ Proverb ]
Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent. [ Jonathan Swift ]
Persecution to persons in a high rank stands them in the stead of eminent virtue. [ Cardinal de Retz ]
Mental courage, infinitely rarer than valour, presupposes the most eminent qualities. [ Diderot ]
We like to know the weaknesses of eminent persons; it consoles us for our inferiority. [ Mme. de Lambert ]
Every virtue carries with it its own reward, but none in so distinguished and pre-eminent a degree as benevolence.
If eminent men whose history has been written could return to life, how they would laugh at what has been said of them. [ De Finod ]
It is the very nature of grace to make a man strive to be most eminent in that particular grace which is most opposed to his bosom sin. [ Thomas Brooks ]
In destroying the predisposition to anger, science of all kinds is useful; but the mathematics possess the property in the most eminent degree. [ Dr. Rush ]
To buy books only because they were published by an eminent printer, is much as if a man should buy clothes that did not fit him, only because made by some famous tailor. [ Pope ]
The truth of it is, there is nothing in history which is so improving to the reader as those accounts which we meet with of the death of eminent persons and of their behavior in that dreadful season. [ Addison ]
Those who have arrived at any very eminent degree of excellence in the practice of an art or profession have commonly been actuated by a species of enthusiasm in their pursuit of it. They have kept one object in view amidst all the vicissitudes of time and fortune. [ John Knox ]
The morbid states of health, the irritableness of disposition arising from unstrung nerves, the impatience, the crossness, the fault-finding of men, who, full of morbid influences, are unhappy themselves, and throw the cloud of their troubles like a dark shadow upon others, teach us what eminent duty there is in health. [ Beecher ]
Founders and senators of states and cities, lawgivers, extirpers of tyrants, fathers of the people, and other eminent persons in civil government, were honored but with titles of worthies or demigods; whereas such as were inventors and authors of new arts, endowments, and commodities towards man's life, were ever consecrated among the gods themselves. [ Bacon ]
It is a folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution. There is no defense against reproach but obscurity; it is a kind of concomitant to greatness, as satires and invectives were an essential part of a Roman triumph. [ Addison ]
Whosoever shall look heedfully upon those who are eminent for their riches will not think their condition such as that he should hazard his quiet, and much less his virtue, to obtain it, for all that great wealth generally gives above a moderate fortune is more room for the freaks of caprice, and more privilege for ignorance and vice, a quicker succession of flatteries, and a larger circle of voluptuousness. [ Johnson ]