Quotes: Paternity. Patience. Patriotism. Peace. Peace Corps. Pedant. People. Perception. Perfection. Personal Relationship.

A collection of quotes on various topics. The sentence in bold face is a plain statement of the quote that follows.

Paternity
Fathers never consciously beget their offspring.
Paternity 416 Joyce: Fatherhood, in the sense of conscious begetting, is unknown to man. Bloom, Western Canon.

Patience
The great sin is impatience, embracing all other sins.
Patience 448 Impatience, Kafka insisted, was the only major sin, embracing all others. Bloom, Western Canon.

Pain has taught me patience.
Patience pain time 87 Oedipus: Patience is what I’ve learnt from pain; from pain and time and my own royalty. Sophocles. Oedipus at Colonus.

Patriotism
Patriotism is hating every other country but one’s own.
Patriotism 244 Voltaire: Patriotism commonly means that one hates every country but one’s own. . Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Voltaire.

Military states hate every other country; industrial society loves one’s own country.
Patriotism 381 Spencer: …patriotism [in an industrial society] becomes the love of one’s country rather than [in military states], a hatred of every other. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Herbert Spencer.

Peace
Peace does not end all quarrels and conflicts.
Peace 823 Nor was it correct to suppose that peace would end all quarrels and conflict. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days

Peace does not mean that people have to love each other; it just means that they are tolerant of each other.
Peace 823 JFK: [Peace] does not require that each man love his neighbor—it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days

Peace can only occur when people learn to tolerate other people’s differences.
Peace 237 Voltaire: No such perpetual peace as the Abbé de St. Pierre had pleaded for could ever be realized unless men learned to tolerate one another’s philosophic, political and religious differences. . Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Voltaire.

The only peace is in a cemetery.
Peace 283 Kant on the words "eternal peace" [in the world]: These words were once put by a Dutch inn-keeper on his sign-board as a satirical inscription, over the representation of a church-yard cemetery. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Kant.

Like health we only appreciate peace when it is absent.
Peace and Health 63 In one respect Peace is like health; we do not sufficiently know its value but by its absence. Charles Inglis, The True Interest of America Impartially Stated, 1776. Hofstadter, ed. Great Issues in American History. Vol. 1. Independence.

Peace Corps
The only goal of the Peace Corps was to help people help themselves; the only recognition came from their own sense of achievement.
Peace Corps 559 Their [the Peace Corp’s] only job…was to help people help themselves …with little recognition or reward beyond their own sense of achievement and growth. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days

Experience in the Peace Corps gave the volunteers a new understanding of the world and of themselves.
Peace Corps 560 …the extent to which the experience gave the volunteers a new understanding of the world and themselves. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days

Pedant
A pedant is one who can talk only about books.
Pedant 322 A man who has been brought up among books, and is able to talk of nothing else, is a very indifferent companion, and what we call a pedant. Addison, 6/30/1711. The Spectator.

People
Lincoln brooded over the mystery of personality and man’s behavior.
People 129 Lincoln’s broodings over the mysteries of personality, man’s behavior, the baffling currents of body and mind.... Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years

Perception
No one can understand the perceptions of others.
Perception 11 …no man can ever know whether his sensation of red or of Middle C is the same as another man’s…. Barnett, The Universe and Dr. Einstein.

Perfection
Don’t do anything in excess is better than advice to achieve perfection.
Perfection 86 Nurse: ‘Nothing in excess’ is better far than counsels of perfection.

Personal Relationship
Because he had poured out his soul to me, he hated me.
Personal relationship 195 And when he had poured out his heart, he felt ashamed at having shown me his inmost soul like that…began to hate me at once. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.

Care for others as you would for children.
Personal relationships 196 …my elder told me once to care for most people exactly as one would for children. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.