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Quotes of the Day for 12 April 2012 – Compromise
Henry Clay was born in Hanover County, Virginia on this day in 1777. On at least three occasions he engineered compromises in the Congress, including the Missouri Compromise, that kept the Union together for a few more years. He was called the Great Compromiser and the Great Pacificator. He delayed the War Between the States; he didn't avoid it, but that should have been expected from a series of compromises. Oddly, Compromise is not a word that appears in any of the quotes I've collected from him.
The quotes:
Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do, experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do.
- Bruce Crampton
Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof; it is a temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship.
- James Russell Lowell, 1819 - 1891
Most people hew the battlements of life from compromise, erecting their impregnable keeps from judicious submissions, fabricating their philosophical drawbridges from emotional retractions and scalding marauders in the boiling oil of sour grapes.
- Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, 1900 - 1948
Virtue knows that it is impossible to get on without compromise, and tunes herself, as it were, a trifle sharp to allow for an inevitable fall in playing.
- Samuel Butler, 1835 - 1902
Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser - in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peacemaker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.
- Abraham Lincoln, 1809 - 1865
A compromise is the art of dividing a cake in such a way that everyone believes that he has got the biggest piece.
- Paul Gauguin, 1848 - 1904
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