Quotations on Intention

Quotations on Intention (24/44)

 

The smallest good deed is better than the grandest good intention.

DUGUET

 

Good intentions are solaces in misfortune.

Latin proverb

 

Advice is judged by results, not intentions.

Cicero, Ad Atticum

 

"Male as Hero story is a false model for women. Imitating this model can keep women from becoming who they truly are.. There is another perspective, another hero's journey.. the hero is a she. Unlike her male counterpart, she has no intentions of conquering anything external. Instead, her journey is within. She travels into the spiraling depths of her own unknowns, constantly discovering and changing in the process. Her intention is to become self-defined. The female hero reaches full individual potential, taking enormous personal risks... nurturing the emergence of a new, more integrated self.. living a creative lifestyle.. the unfolding of the self-defined, creative woman who lives within each of us."       

C. Diane Ealy, PhD, "The Woman's Book of Creativity

 

 

A truth that's told with bad intent

Beats all the lies you can invent.

William Blake, Auguries of INnocence

 

He who would do good to another must do it in minute particulars.

General good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer,

Blake, Jerusalem

 

It is difficult to say who do you the most mischief: enemies with the worst intentions or friends with the best. E.R. Bulwer-Lytton

 

All worthwhile men have good thoughts, good ideas and good intentions, but precious few of them ever translate those into action.

JOHN HANCOCK FIELD

 

 

 

The body sins not; 'tis the will

That makes the action good or ill.

Herrick

 

Ultimately, human intentionality is the most powerful evolutionary force on this planet.

George Leonard

 

The road is long from the intention to the completion.

Moliere, Le Tartuffe

 

Love is as love does. Love is an act of will-- namely, both an intention and an action.

M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

 

It is not only in finished undertakings that we ought to honor useful labour. A spirit goes out of the man who means execution, which outlives the most untimely ending. All who have meant good work with their whole hearts, have done good work, although they may die before they have the time to sign it. Every heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world and bettered the tradition of mankind. And even if death catch people, like an open pitfall, and in midcareer, laying out vast projects, and planning monstrous foundations, flushed with hope, and their mouths full of boastfull language, they should be at once tripped up and silenced: is there not something brave and spirited in such a termination? and does not life go down with a better grace, foaming in full body over a precipice, than miserably straggling to an end in sandy deltas?

....For surely, at whatever age it overtake the man, this is to die young. Death has not been suffered to take so much as an illusion from his heart. In the hot-fit of life, a-tiptoe on the highest point of being, he passes at a bound on to the other side. The noise of the mallet and chisel is scarcely quenched, the trumpets are hardly done blowing, when, trailing with him clouds of glory, this happy-starred, full-blooded spirit shoots into the spiritual land.

R.L. Stevenson, AES Triplex 1878

 

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

Samuel Johnson?   Note. This attribution is incorrect. Thanks to www.samueljohnson.com for the correction. It appears that the phrase is more of a proverb than a quotation.

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It is always with the best intentions that the worst work is done.

Oscar Wilde

 

There is wickedness in the intention of wickedness, even though it be not perpetrated in the act.

--Cicero

 

To live in the world of creation -- to get into it and stay in it -- to frequent it and haunt it....to think intently and fruitfully, to woo combinations and inspirations into being by a depth and continuity of attention and meditation -- this is the only thing.

Henry James

 

The spirit in which a thing is given determines that in which the debt is acknowledged; it's the intention, not the face-value of the gift, that's weighed.

SENECA

 

 

When a man does not know what harbor he is heading for, no wind is the right wind.

Seneca

 

 

"We must distinguish between speaking with intent to Deceive and keeping silence with intent to be inscrutable."

Voltaire, Essay

 

No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions -- he had money, too.

Margaret Thatcher

 

 

Want to be a composer? If you can think design, you can execute design—it's only a bunch of air molecules, who's gonna check up on you? Just follow these simple instructions:

1. Declare your intention to create a "composition." 2. Start a piece at some time. 3. Cause something to happen over a period of time (it doesn't matter what happens in your "time hole"— we have critics to tell us whether it's any good or not, so we won't worry about that part). 4. End the piece at some time (or keep it going, telling the audience it is a "work in progress"). 5. Get a part-time job so you can continue to do stuff like this.

FRANK ZAPPA

 

Right intention is to the actions of a man what the soul is to the body, or the root to the tree.

Jeremy Taylor

 

In the works of man as in those of nature, it is the intention which is chiefly worth studying.

Goethe

 

We can judge of the intent of the parties only by their words.

Sir John Powell, English Jurist, 1704

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