quotations about necessity
Nothing is more necessary than the unnecessary.
ROBERTO BENIGNI
Life Is Beautiful
Necessity's sharp pinch!
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
King Lear
Necessity does the work of courage.
GEORGE ELIOT
Romola
Necessity is a sore penance; and extremity is as hard to bear as death.
CANTACUZENUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
I hold that mortal foolish who strives against the stress of necessity.
EURIPIDES
Hercules Furens
Even the gods are unable to contend against necessity.
SIMONIDES
attributed, Day's Collacon
We give to necessity the praise of virtue.
QUINTILIAN
Institutio Oratoria
A people never fairly begins to prosper till necessity is treading on its heels.
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS
Egeria: Or Voices of Thought and Counsel for the Woods and the Wayside
Necessity can turn any weapon to advantage.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
Moral Sayings
Freedom is only necessity understood.
WILLIAM JAMES
"The Dilemma of Determinism"
Necessity makes an honest man a knave.
DANIEL DEFOE
Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe
If necessity is the mother of invention, it is no less the mother of crime; eternal justice is one thing, eternal love of bread and butter and other good things another; where it is a necessity of our nature to have, it is a weakness of our being to get.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
attributed, Day's Collacon
My steps have pressed the flowers,
That to the Muses' bowers
The eternal dews of Helicon have given:
And trod the mountain height,
Where Science, young and bright,
Scans with poetic gaze the midnight-heaven.
Yet have I found no power to vie
With thine, severe necessity!
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK
"Necessity"
Omission to do what is necessary
Seals a commission to a blank of danger.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Troilus and Cressida
Necessity may be the mother of lucrative invention; but is the death of poetical.
WILLIAM SHENSTONE
Essays on Men and Manners
Necessity is a good school.
AL-ANABARI
attributed, Day's Collacon
Necessity teaches wisdom, while prosperity makes fools.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Civilization after civilization, it is the same. The world falls to tyranny with a whisper. The frightened are ever keen to bow to a perceived necessity, in the belief that necessity forces conformity, and conformity a certain stability. In a world shaped into conformity, dissidents stand out, are easily branded and dealt with. There is no multitude of perspectives, no dialogue. The victim assumes the face of the tyrant, self-righteous and intransigent, and wars breed like vermin and people die.
STEVEN ERIKSON
Midnight Tides
Necessity, like electricity,
Is in ourselves and all things, and no more
Without us than within us; and we live,
We of this mortal mixture, in the same law
As the pure colorless intelligence
Which dwells in Heaven, and the dead Hadean shades.
PHILIP JAMES BAILEY
Festus
Necessity sharpens industry.
A. L. LAVOISIER
attributed, Day's Collacon