For when disputes are wearied out,
'Tis interest still resolves the doubt. [ Butler ]
Inclination and interest determine the will. [ Talleyrand ]
We talk on principle, but we act on interest. [ Landor ]
He was a man
Versed in the world as pilot in his compass;
The needle pointed ever to that interest
Which was his loadstar; and he spread his sails
With vantage to the gale of others' passions. [ Ben Jonson ]
O cursed lust of gold! when for thy sake
The fool throws up his interest in both worlds. [ Blair ]
Rich in lands, rich in money placed at interest [ Horace ]
Assail'd by scandal and the tongue of strife,
His only answer was a blameless life;
And he that forged, and he that threw the dart,
Had each a brother's interest in his heart. [ Cowper ]
Interest makes all seem reason that leads to it. [ Dryden ]
Interest blinds some people and enlightens others. [ La Roche ]
Few men will be better than their interest bids them. [ Proverb ]
As the interest of man, so his God; as his God, so he. [ Lavater ]
Nations, like individuals, interest us in their growth. [ Landor ]
We condemn vice and extol virtue only through interest. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
The virtues and vices are all put in motion by interest. [ Rochefoucauld ]
There are two levers for moving men - interest and fear. [ Napoleon ]
Those are praised most, that are praised without any interest. [ Proverb ]
He that will sell his fame will also sell the public interest. [ Solon ]
The instinct of interest is the universal instinct of mankind. [ Charles Macklin ]
Nothing is properly one's duty but what is also one's interest. [ Bishop Wilkins ]
Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. [ Rousseau ]
Ideas are a capital that bears interest only in the hands of talent. [ Rivarol ]
Interest, ambition, fortune, time, temper, love, all kill friendship. [ Joseph Roux ]
Self-interest, be it enlightened, works indirectly for the public good. [ Prescott ]
Education is a capital to the poor man, and an interest to the rich man. [ Horace Mann ]
Pretty women are like sovereigns: one flatters them only through interest.
Virtue is so praiseworthy that wicked people practice it from self-interest. [ Vauvenargues ]
Pawnshop; originally store of money to lend without interest to poor people. [ French ]
Fortune often rewards with interest those that have patience to wait for her. [ Proverb ]
The loss of a beloved connection awakens an interest in heaven before unfelt. [ Bovee ]
The time never comes when a reconstruction does not imperil some great interest. [ Heber Newton ]
What use of oaths, of promise, or of test, where men regard no God but interest? [ Waller ]
A wise neuter joins with neither, but uses both, as his honest interest leads him. [ William Penn ]
It is for the interest of the state that every one make a good use of his property.
A person who talks with equal vivacity on every subject excites no interest in any. [ Hazlitt ]
The brain women never interest us like the heart women; white roses please less than red. [ Holmes ]
Interest speaks all languages, and acts all parts, even that of disinterestedness itself. [ Rochefoucauld ]
Education is the only interest worthy the deep, controlling anxiety of the thoughtful man. [ Wendell Phillips ]
Some friendships are made by nature, some by contract, some by interest, and some by souls. [ Jeremy Taylor ]
That which is not for the interest of the whole swarm is not for the interest of a single bee. [ Marcus Aurelius ]
Books, while they teach us to respect the interest of others, often make us unmindful of our own. [ Goldsmith ]
We love handsome women from inclination, homely women from interest, and virtuous women from reason. [ Amelot ]
There is not a love, however violent it may be, to which ambition and interest do not add something. [ La Bruyere ]
Avoid him who from mere curiosity asks three questions running about a thing that cannot interest him. [ Lavater ]
Interest speaks all sorts of tongues, and plays all sorts of parts, even the part of the disinterested. [ La Roche ]
The excesses of our youth are drafts upon our old age, payable with interest, about thirty years after date. [ Colton ]
To what gods is sacrificed that rarest and sweetest thing upon earth, friendship? To vanity and to interest. [ Malesherbes ]
One should never make one's debut with a scandal, one should reserve that to give interest to one's old age. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]
The state of that man's mind who feels too intense an interest as to future events, must be most deplorable. [ Seneca ]
When we do good to our fellow sufferers, we invest in a savings-bank from which the heart receives the interest. [ E. Souvestre ]
Friendship is cemented by interest, vanity, or the want of amusement; it seldom implies esteem, or even mutual regard. [ Hazlitt ]
Enthusiasm gives life to what is invisible, and interest to what has no immediate action on our comfort in this world. [ Mme. de Staël ]
The only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]
Hence (from the ambition of Caesar) arise devouring usury, grasping interest, shaken credit, and war of advantage to many. [ Lucan ]
A man, if he be active and energetic, can hardly fail also, be he never so selfish, of benefiting the general public interest. [ Benjamin F. Butler ]
An enlightened self-interest, which, when well understood, they tell us will identify with an interest more enlarged and public. [ Burke ]
If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest. [ Benjamin Franklin ]
Great minds do indeed react on the society which has made them what they are; but they only pay with interest what they have received. [ Macaulay ]
The sense of beauty is intuitive, and beauty itself is all that inspires pleasure without, and aloof from, and even contrarily to interest. [ Coleridge ]
O cursed lust of gold; when for thy sake The fool throws up his interest in both worlds, First starved in this, then damn'd in that to come. [ Blair ]
What the heart or the imagination dictates always flows readily; but where there is no subject to warm or interest these, constraint appears. [ Blair ]
If a man has a right to be proud of anything, it is of a good action done as it ought to be, without any base interest lurking at the bottom of it. [ Sterne ]
The impulse to perform a worthy action often springs from our best nature, but is afterwards tainted by the spur of selfishness or sinister interest. [ Emile Souvestre ]
A human heart can never grow old, if it takes a lively interest in the pairing of birds, the reproduction of flowers, and the changing tints of autumn leaves. [ Mrs. L. M. Child ]
Greatness is a spiritual condition worthy to excite love, interest, and admiration; and the outward proof of greatness is that we excite love, interest, and admiration. [ Matthew Arnold ]
The drafts which true genius draws upon posterity, although they may not always be honored so soon as they are due, are sure to be paid with compound interest in the end. [ Colton ]
The fortitude of a Christian consists in patience, not in enterprises which the poets call heroic, and which are commonly the effects of interest, pride and worldly honor. [ Dryden ]
Nothing so uncertain as general reputation. A man injures me from humor, passion, or interest; hates me because he has injured me; and speaks ill of me because he hates me. [ Henry Home ]
Sympathy is the first great lesson which man should learn.... Unless he learns to feel for things in which he has no personal interest, he can achieve nothing generous or noble. [ Talfourd ]
I would have every zealous man examine his heart thoroughly, and I believe he will often find that what he calls a zeal for his religion is either pride, interest, or ill-repute. [ Addison ]
When self-interest inclines a man to print, he should consider that the purchaser expects a pennyworth for his penny, and has reason to asperse his honesty if he finds himself deceived. [ Shenstone ]
A belief in the Bible, the fruit of deep meditation, has served me as the guide of my moral and literary life. I have found it a capital safely invested, and richly productive of interest. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Greatness of mind is not shown by admitting small things, but by making small things great under its influence. He who can take no interest in what is small will take false interest in what is great. [ John Ruskin ]
Let us beware of losing our enthusiasms. Let us ever glory in something, and strive to retain our admiration for all that would ennoble, and our interest in all that would enrich and beautify our life. [ Phillips Brooks ]
There are three kinds of praise, - that which we yield, that which we lend, and that which we pay. We yield it to the powerful from fear, we lend it to the weak from interest, and we pay it to the deserving from gratitude. [ Colton ]
The great difficulty is first to win a reputation; the next to keep it while you live; and the next to preserve it after you die, when affection and interest are over, and nothing but sterling excellence can preserve your name. [ B. R. Haydon ]
The want of interest renders a person negligent; servants are commonly negligent in what concerns their master's interest. Negligence is therefore the fault of persons of all descriptions, but particularly those in low condition. [ G. Crabb ]
To make much of little, to find reasons of interest in common things, to develop a sensibility to mild enjoyments, to inspire the imagination, to throw a charm upon homely and familiar things, will constitute a man master of his own happiness. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]
To cultivate a garden is to walk with God, to go hand in hand with nature in some of her most beautiful processes, to learn something of her choicest secrets, and to have a more intelligent interest awakened in the beautiful order of her works elsewhere. [ Bovee ]
Of all studies, the most delightful and the most useful is biography. The seeds of great events lie near the surface; historians delve too deep for them. No history was ever true. Lives I have read which, if they were not, had the appearance, the interest, and the utility of truth. [ Landor ]
How idle a boast, after all, is the immortality of a name! Time is ever silently turning over his pages; we are too much engrossed by the story of the present to think of the character and anecdotes that gave interest to the past; and each age is a volume thrown aside and forgotten. [ Washington Irving ]
Learn to be good readers, which is perhaps a more difficult thing than you imagine. Learn to be discriminative In your reading; to read faithfully and with your best attention, all kinds of things which you have a real interest in, - a real, not an imaginary - and which you find to be really fit for what you are engaged in. [ Carlyle ]
Personal attachment is no fit ground for public conduct, and those who declare they will take care of the rights of the sovereign because they have received favours at his hand, betray a little mind and warrant the conclusion that if they did not receive those favours they would be less mindful of their duties, and act with less zeal for his interest. [ C. Fox ]
As monarchs have a right to call in the specie of a state, and raise its value, by their own impression; so are there certain prerogative geniuses, who are above plagiaries, who cannot be said to steal, but, from their improvement of a thought, rather to borrow it, and repay the commonwealth of letters with interest again; and may more properly be said to adopt, than to kidnap a sentiment, by leaving it heir to their own fame. [ Sterne ]
Poetry reveals to us the loveliness of nature, brings back the freshness of youthful feeling, revives the relish of simple pleasures, keeps unquenched the enthusiasm which warmed the springtime of our being, refines youthful love, strengthens our interest in human nature, by vivid delineations of its tenderest and softest feelings, and, through the brightness of its prophetic visions, helps faith to lay hold on the future life. [ Channing ]
Gratitude is a link between justice and love. It discharges by means of affections those debts which the affections only can discharge, and which are so much the more sacred for this reason. Gratitude never springs up in the soil of selfishness, for self-interest in its eagerness to appropriate is unable to understand the impulses of generosity or to measure the true value of the gift. And, when we do understand it, we must love much to be willing to accept, we refuse when we love but little. Gratitude is the justice of the heart. [ Degerando ]