Signet

Famous quotes containing the word signet:

    Commerce has set the mark of selfishness,
    The signet of its all-enslaving power,
    Upon a shining ore, and called it gold:
    Before whose image bow the vulgar great,
    The vainly rich, the miserable proud,
    The mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings,
    And with blind feelings reverence the power
    That grinds them to the dust of misery.
    Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)

    Motion or change, and identity or rest, are the first and second secrets of nature: Motion and Rest. The whole code of her laws may be written on the thumbnail, or the signet of a ring.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    It is a mischievous notion that we are come late into nature; that the world was finished a long time ago. As the world was plastic and fluid in the hands of God, so it is ever to so much of his attributes as we bring to it. To ignorance and sin, it is flint. They adapt to themselves to it as they may; but in proportion as a man has anything in him divine, the firmament flows before him and takes his signet and form.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)