Left Hand Point

Famous quotes containing the words left hand, left, hand and/or point:

    Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.
    —Bible: New Testament Matthew 6:2-3.

    The Sermon on the Mount.

    Wild as it was, it was hard for me to get rid of the associations of the settlements. Any steady and monotonous sound, to which I did not distinctly attend, passed for a sound of human industry.... Our minds anywhere, when left to themselves, are always thus busily drawing conclusions from false premises.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
    And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings ...
    And while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
    The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,
    Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
    John Gillespie Magee (c. 1922–1941)

    Ideals possess the strange quality that if they were completely realized they would turn into nonsense. One could easily follow a commandment such as “Thou shalt not kill” to the point of dying of starvation; and I might establish the formula that for the proper functioning of the mesh of our ideals, as in the case of a strainer, the holes are just as important as the mesh.
    Robert Musil (1880–1942)