Acquired

Famous quotes containing the word acquired:

    A man who has humility will have acquired in the last reaches of his beliefs the saving doubt of his own certainty.
    Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)

    When I contemplate the accumulation of guilt and remorse which, like a garbage-can, I carry through life, and which is fed not only by the lightest action but by the most harmless pleasure, I feel Man to be of all living things the most biologically incompetent and ill-organized. Why has he acquired a seventy years’ life-span only to poison it incurably by the mere being of himself? Why has he thrown Conscience, like a dead rat, to putrefy in the well?
    Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)

    Indeed, the best books have a use, like sticks and stones, which is above or beside their design, not anticipated in the preface, not concluded in the appendix. Even Virgil’s poetry serves a very different use to me today from what it did to his contemporaries. It has often an acquired and accidental value merely, proving that man is still man in the world.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)