Circles quotes
1.2K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside circles — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels that he is finding his place in it while really it is finding its place in him. His increasing reputation, his widening circle of acquaintances, his sense of importance, the growing pressure of absorbing and agreeable work build up in him a sense of being really at home on earth which is just what we want."
"Are you in earnest resolved never to barter your liberty for the lordly servitude of a court, but to live free, fearless, and independent? There seems to be one way to continue in that virtuous resolution; and perhaps but one. Never enter the place from whence so few have been able to return; never come within the circle of ambition; nor ever bring yourself into comparison with those masters of the earth who have already engrossed the attention of half mankind before you."
"You must elect your work; you shall take what your brains can, and drop all the rest. Only so can that amount of vital force accumulate which can make the step from knowing to doing. No matter how much faculty of idle seeing a man has, the step from knowing to doing is rarely taken. It is a step out of a chalk circle of imbecility into fruitfulness."
"If you’re going through a dark time... don’t ever give up. You can always make your way back to the other end of that circle and find your happiness again."
"At 55 I said the probability is I won't have another relationship. I just didn't want to start another family. Between my own bizarre criteria and taste and the fact that I'm not available for many things I thought it was unlikely. Once you know the science about it, I don't think anybody should consider being committed to a real eternal relationship until you're through something called the infatuation circle."
"Oh how will crime engender crime! throw guilt Upon the soul, and like a stone cast on The troubled waters of a lake, 'Twill form in circles round succeeding round; Each wider than the first."
"A nation, like a person, has a mind - a mind that must be kept informed and alert, that must know itself, that understands the hopes and needs of its neighbors - all the other nations that live within the narrowing circle of the world"
"Year by year, more and more of the world gets disenchanted. Even the icy privacy of the arctic and antarctic circles is invaded. We have played Jack Horner with our earth, till there is never a plum left in it."
"Stupidity is much the same all the world over. A stupid person's notions and feelings may confidently be inferred from those which prevail in the circle by which the person is surrounded. Not so with those whose opinions and feelings are an emanation from their own nature and faculties."
"There is an imaginary circle drawn around every human being, over which no government should be able to step."
"Why should I copy this owl, this sea urchin? Why should I try to imitate nature? I might just as well try to trace a perfect circle."
"We are not living in a world where all roads are radii if a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork you must make a decision."
"For in grief nothing 'stays put.' One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?"
"Real social progress is always a widening of the circle of concern and protection. It's respect and empathy overtaking blindness and indifference. It's understanding that by the true measure, we are all neighbors and countrymen, call to each one of us to know what is right and kind and just and to go and do likewise."
"I'm limited as a human being, and when you look at certain situations, it's very bleak. Or at least it appears that way, but then I seek spiritual counseling. My inner circle of people are like-minded, so we strengthen each other."
"Many of the Kiwis appearing in powerful business circles around the world come from accounting backgrounds. Yet often people have preset ideas of how an accountant walks, talks, smells - although not in the business community. For me it is a career that offers a lot of variety and challenges and I love it."
"The octave formed a circle and gave our noble earth its form."
"When Dante described the circles of Hell, he clearly forgot the one where a hungry pixie sits on one's shoulder for eternity."
"Grief and disappointment give rise to anger, anger to envy, envy to malice, and malice to grief again, till the whole circle be completed."
"Creative capitalism takes this interest in the fortunes of others and ties it to our interest in our own fortunes in ways that help advance both. This hybrid engine of self-interest and concern for others can serve a much wider circle of people than can be reached by self-interest or caring alone."
