Famous quotes containing the word profess:
“We are in fact convinced that if we are ever to have pure knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body and contemplate things by themselves with the soul by itself. It seems, to judge from the argument, that the wisdom which we desire and upon which we profess to have set our hearts will be attainable only when we are dead and not in our lifetime.”
—Socrates (469–399 B.C.)
“However wicked men may be, they dare not profess themselves enemies to virtue; and when they wish to persecute it, they either call it false, or impute crimes to it.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“The New Year is the season in which custom seems more particularly to authorize civil and harmless lies, under the name of compliments. People reciprocally profess wishes which they seldom form and concern which they seldom feel.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)