To feel much for others and little for ourselves; to restrain our selfishness and exercise our benevolent affections, constitute the perfection of human nature.
Adam Smith
You should not have taken advantage of my sensibility to steal into my affections without my consent.
Alexander Hamilton
Of Manners gentle, of Affections mild; In Wit a man; Simplicity, a child.
Alexander Pope
Animals are reliable, many full of love, true in their affections, predictable in their actions, grateful and loyal. Difficult standards for people to live up to.
Alfred A. Montapert
Many things are unknown to the wisest, and the best men can never wholly divest themselves of passions and affections... nothing can or ought to be permanent but that which is perfect.
Algernon Sidney
That is the great mistake about the affections. It is not the rise and fall of empires, the birth and death of kings, or the marching of armies that move them most. When they answer from their depths, it is to the domestic joys and tragedies of life.
Amelia Barr
Men are more accountable for their motives, than for anything else; and primarily, morality consists in the motives, that is in the affections.
Archibald Alexander
I've always been a person that's totally comfortable with my sexuality and showing my affections with my guy friends. At the end of the day, your guy friends are very important; they're the guys that are always going to be there. It's just you being a friend to me and I'm being a friend to you.
Brody Jenner
For film and television, it's interesting how fans feel that their particular ways of manifesting their affections are the correct ones. It's not just about being a fan, it's about how you perform your fandom. That's always been interesting to me.
Carrie Brownstein
A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, - a mere heart of stone.
Charles Darwin
All the dark, malevolent Passions of the Soul are roused and exerted; its mild and amiable affections are suppressed; and with them, virtuous Principles are laid prostrate.
Charles Inglis
You know full well as I do the value of sisters' affections: There is nothing like it in this world.
Charlotte Bronte
Curiosity is natural to the soul of man and interesting objects have a powerful influence on our affections.
Daniel Boone
Eloquence, at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection, but addresses itself entirely to the desires and affections, captivating the willing hearers, and subduing their understanding.
David Hume
In the poetic tradition, the heart's affections are indeed holy, and if organizations are asking for people's hearts and minds, they are asking in a way for their holy and hidden affections at the same time.
David Whyte
My affections are easily swayed and I can be very unfaithful.
Dusty Springfield
If you have other gods before the Lord, your heart will be turned away from serving the only true and living God, who requires the whole heart, the undivided affections. All the heart, all the soul, all the mind, and all the strength, does God require. He will accept of nothing short of this.
Ellen G. White
Different taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.
George Eliot
A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.
There is no sinfulness in the will and affections without some error in the understanding. All lusts which a natural man lives in, are lusts of ignorance.
George Gillespie
Being Latin parents makes us extremely expressive with our affections.
I sometimes wish I had been educated a Catholic, in order to unite the poetry of religion with its higher principles. Are they necessarily inseparable? Is man really so much of a philosopher, that he can conceive of truth in its abstract purity, and divest life and the affections of all the aids of the imagination?
Grief is only the memory of widowed affections.
In life, there are no perfect affections.
Our affections as well as our bodies are in perpetual flux.
The place of my birth, and residence for nearly sixteen years, in the early part of my life, became endeared to my feelings and affections; and more especially so after I had quitted it for an unknown place, and to associate with strangers.
In winter, the stars seem to have rekindled their fires, the moon achieves a fuller triumph, and the heavens wear a look of a more exalted simplicity. Summer is more wooing and seductive, more versatile and human, appeals to the affections and the sentiments, and fosters inquiry and the art impulse.
Let grace and goodness be the principal loadstone of thy affections. For love which hath ends, will have an end; whereas that which is founded on true virtue, will always continue.
I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections, and the truth of imagination.
I have sacrificed not only my favorite scheme of life, but the softer affections of the heart, and my prospects of domestic happiness, and I am ready to sacrifice my life also, with cheerfulness, if that forfeiture could restore peace and good will among mankind.
When people think about 'thinking,' they often think 'academia;' they think 'threat.' They think 'coldness.' I want to reverse all those images and say, 'No, the brain God gave you is intended to throw fuel on the fire of your affections for God. It's really good at it if you let it.'
Virginians were no more angels or philanthropists than people to the north or to the south of them. They were moved by their affections, their interest, and their resentments, just as humanity is moved today.
Of all the tyrants the world affords, our own affections are the fiercest lords.
Happiness or satisfaction consists only in the enjoyment of those objects which are by nature suited to our several particular appetites, passions, and affections.
Every man hath a general desire of his own happiness; and likewise a variety of particular affections, passions, and appetites to particular external objects.
The principle we call self-love never seeks anything external for the sake of the thing, but only as a means of happiness or good: particular affections rest in the external things themselves.
Every one of our passions and affections hath its natural stint and bound, which may easily be exceeded; whereas our enjoyments can possibly be but in a determinate measure and degree.
In Greek mythology, Cassandra was given the gift of prophecy, except - due to her rejection of Apollo's affections - nobody would ever believe her warnings.
Whilst in Prussia poets only speak of the love of country as one of the dearest of all human affections, here there is no man who does not feel, and describe with rapture, how much he loves his country.
George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were gay, just for starters. They didn't have a name for it, but their primary affections and intellectual attractions were all for other men.
The affections are like lightning: you cannot tell where they will strike till they have fallen.
A slight touch of friendly malice and amusement towards those we love keeps our affections for them from turning flat.
However great his outward conformity, the immigrant is not Americanized unless his interests and affections have become deeply rooted here. And we properly demand of the immigrant even more than this. He must be brought into complete harmony with our ideals and aspirations and cooperate with us for their attainment.
There are the aesthetic pressures for a woman to be pretty and sexy, but not sexual or have desires beyond winning a guy's affections.
It is sad to see a woman sacrificing the ties of the affections even to do good.
The man of character is the persistent man, the man who is faithful to his own word, his own convictions, his own affections.
Any commands which Congress may have for me shall be cheerfully executed by one of their earliest soldiers, whose happiness it is to think that, at a less smiling moment, he had the honor to be adopted by America, and whose blood, exertions, and affections will in her good times, as they have been in her worst, be entirely at her service.
The Soul debases her self, when she sets her affections on any thing but her creator.
Home is the dearest spot on earth, and it should be the centre, but not the boundary, of the affections.
Another principle is, the deepest affections of our hearts gather around some human form in which are incarnated the living thoughts and ideas of the passing age.
