Safest

Famous quotes containing the word safest:

    For most men, and most circumstances, pleasure—tangible material prosperity in this world—is the safest test of virtue. Progress has ever been through the pleasures rather than through the extreme sharp virtues, and the most virtuous have leaned to excess rather than to asceticism.
    Samuel Butler (1835–1902)

    Can love be controlled by advice?
    Will Cupid our mothers obey?
    Though my heart were as frozen as ice,
    At his flame ‘twould have melted away.
    When he kissed me so closely he pressed,
    ‘Twas so sweet that I must have complied:
    So I thought it both safest and best
    To marry, for fear you should chide.
    John Gay (1685–1732)

    My esoteric doctrine, is that if you entertain any doubt, it is safest to take the unpopular side in the first instance. Transit from the unpopular, is easy ... but from the popular to the unpopular is so steep and rugged that it is impossible to maintain it.
    William Lamb Melbourne, 2nd Viscount (1779–1848)