This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune,--often the surfeit of our own behavior,--we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as if we were villains by necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star.
It is wisdom to recognize necessity when all other courses have been weighed, though as folly it may appear to those who cling to false hope.
Necessity, the mother of invention.
Freedom and constraint are two aspects of the same necessity, the necessity of being the man you are and not another. You are free to be that man, but not another.
The United States is not a nation to which peace is a necessity.
If necessity is the mother of invention, discontent is the father of progress.
When inward life dries up, when feeling decreases and apathy increases, when one cannot affect or even genuinely touch another person, violence flares up as a daimonic necessity for contact, a mad drive forcing touch in the most direct way possible.
If however the law is so promulgated that it of necessity makes you an agent of injustices against another, then I say to you. . . break the law.
To a great extent the achievements of invention, of mechanical and of artistic creation, must of necessity, and rightly, be individual rather than governmental. It is the self-reliant pioneer in every enterprise who beats the path along which American civilization has marched. Such individual effort is the glory of America.
New organs of perception come into being as a result of necessity. Therefore, O man, increase your necessity, so that you may increase your perception.
Hope, even more than necessity, is the mother of invention.
Monogamy is a possibility - and a necessity. Kids have got to have something they can rely on. You have got to have something you rely on.
The constant struggle in mature life, I think, is to accept the necessity of tragedy and conflict, and not to try to escape to some falsely simple solution which does not include these more somber complexities.
I didn't have to see this big clock on the wall and worry. Most of the record I made was experimental. If you have a lot of time to do that you don't have to worry about the money, plus, I had no money. It was more out of necessity than choice.
An extravagance is something that your spirit thinks is a necessity.
The greatest part of mankind. . . are given up to labor, and enslaved to the necessity of their mean condition; whose lives are worn out only in the provisions for living.
Necessity takes impartially the highest and the lowest.
Thank you, darling, for learning to play chess. It is an absolute necessity for any well organized family. (in a letter to his wife)
Is it possible to tell the truth in a society of lies? Or must you always, of necessity, become a liar?
Necessity hath no law. Feigned necessities, imaginary necessities, are the greatest cozenage men can put upon the Providence of God, and make pretences to break known rules by.