quotations about necessity
We give to necessity the praise of virtue.
QUINTILIAN
Institutio Oratoria
Necessity may be the mother of lucrative invention; but is the death of poetical.
WILLIAM SHENSTONE
Essays on Men and Manners
Necessity is a sore penance; and extremity is as hard to bear as death.
CANTACUZENUS
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"
Necessity's sharp pinch!
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
King Lear
When we are incapable of recognizing the laws of necessity, we believe ourselves to be free.
LUDWIG BÖME
attributed, Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists
Nothing is more necessary than the unnecessary.
ROBERTO BENIGNI
Life Is Beautiful
Necessity is a strong rider with sharp spurs, who maketh the sorry jade do that which the strongest horse sometimes will not do.
CALANUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
Stern is the on-look of necessity. Not without a shudder may the hand of man grasp the mysterious urn of destiny.
FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
The Death of Wallenstein
The necessities that exist are in general created by the superfluities that are enjoyed.
J. G. ZIMMERMAN
Aphorisms and Reflections on Men, Morals and Things
Omission to do what is necessary
Seals a commission to a blank of danger.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Troilus and Cressida
Necessity is a good school.
AL-ANABARI
attributed, Day's Collacon
I hold that mortal foolish who strives against the stress of necessity.
EURIPIDES
Hercules Furens
Necessity can turn any weapon to advantage.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
Moral Sayings
Necessity inspires the fatal thought.
VITTORIO ALFIERI
Agamemnon
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 sharpens industry.
A. L. LAVOISIER
attributed, Day's Collacon
Freedom is only necessity understood.
WILLIAM JAMES
"The Dilemma of Determinism"
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