Reverence

Famous quotes containing the word reverence:

    “But though Heaven made him poor, with reverence speaking,
    He never was a poet of God’s making;
    The midwife laid her hand on his thick skull,
    With this prophetic blessing—Be thou dull;”
    —John Dryden (1631–1700)

    “The reverence for the deeds of our ancestors is a treacherous sentiment. Their merit was not to reverence the old, but to honor the present moment; and we falsely make them excuses of the very habit which they hated and defied.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “The praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the living.”
    —Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)