Primary

Famous quotes containing the word primary:

    The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.
    James Baldwin (1924–1987)

    Wilful sterility is, from the standpoint of the nation, from the standpoint of the human race, the one sin for which the penalty is national death, race death; a sin for which there is no atonement.... No man, no woman, can shirk the primary duties of life, whether for love of ease and pleasure, or for any other cause, and retain his or her self-respect.
    Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919)

    If the accumulated wealth of the past generations is thus tainted,—no matter how much of it is offered to us,—we must begin to consider if it were not the nobler part to renounce it, and to put ourselves in primary relations with the soil and nature, and abstaining from whatever is dishonest and unclean, to take each of us bravely his part, with his own hands, in the manual labor of the world.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)