Famous quotes containing the words violent, direct and/or action:
“There was the murdered corpse, in covert laid,
And violent death in thousand shapes displayed;
The city to the soldiers rage resigned;
Successless wars, and poverty behind;
Ships burnt in fight, or forced on rocky shores,
And the rash hunter strangled by the boars;
The newborn babe by nurses overlaid;
And the cook caught within the raging fire he made.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?1400)
“Besides, our action on each other, good as well as evil, is so incidental and at random, that we can seldom hear the acknowledgments of any person who would thank us for a benefit, without some shame and humiliation. We can rarely strike a direct stroke, but must be content with an oblique one; we seldom have the satisfaction of yielding a direct benefit, which is directly received.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“The greatest pleasure I know, is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.”
—Charles Lamb (17751834)