Famous quotes containing the words strong, probable and/or prime:
“The best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other.”
—Walter Bagehot (18261877)
“I have very lately read the Prince of Abyssinia [Samuel Johnsons Rasselas]MI am almost equally charmed and shocked at itthe style, the sentiments are inimitablebut the subject is dreadfuland, handled as it is by Dr. Johnson, might make any young, perhaps old, person trembleO heavens! how dreadful, how terrible it is to be told by a man of his genius and knowledge, in so affectingly probable a manner, that true, real happiness is ever unattainable in this world!”
—Frances Burney (17521840)
“If Montaigne is a man in the prime of life sitting in his study on a warm morning and putting down the sum of his experience in his rich, sinewy prose, then Pascal is that same man lying awake in the small hours of the night when death seems very close and every thought is heightened by the apprehension that it may be his last.”
—Cyril Connolly (19031974)