Famous quotes containing the word profess:
“The New Year is the season in which custom seems more particularly to authorize civil and harmless lies, under the name of compliments. People reciprocally profess wishes which they seldom form and concern which they seldom feel.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“We are in fact convinced that if we are ever to have pure knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body and contemplate things by themselves with the soul by itself. It seems, to judge from the argument, that the wisdom which we desire and upon which we profess to have set our hearts will be attainable only when we are dead and not in our lifetime.”
—Socrates (469–399 B.C.)
“Those who profess contempt for men, and put them on a level with beasts, yet wish to be admired and believed by men, and contradict themselves by their own feelings—their nature, which is stronger than all, convincing them of the greatness of man more forcibly than reason convinces them of his baseness.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)