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Contemporaries appreciate the person rather than their merit, posterity will regard the merit rather than the person. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Contemporaries live from second hand to mouth. -- Karl Kraus
Contemporaries of Alexander Hamilton noticed "his conspicuous sense of self-possession, his unique combination of serenity and energy. -- Joseph J. Ellis
With historicals, the research is half the fun. Contemporaries are especially easy. People are right out there in front of you; you meet them every day. You can concentrate wholly on the story and characters. -- Heather Graham Pozzessere
Contemporaries relate that hearing Martin Luther pray was "an experience in theology". They said the reformer began praying with such humility that he could be pitied, only to proceed with such boldness before God that the human hearer would fear for him. -- A.W. Tozer
Why was I born with such contemporaries? -- Oscar Wilde
In believing too much in rationality, our contemporaries have lost something. -- Krzysztof Kieslowski
The Ireland I now inhabit is one that these Irish contemporaries have helped to imagine. -- Seamus Heaney
Never let oneself be guided by the opinion of one's contemporaries. Continue steadfastly on one's way. -- Gustav Mahler
I'm not a serious photographer like many of my contemporaries. That is to say, I am serious about not being serious. -- Elliott Erwitt
A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries. -- Thomas Mann
I've seen many of my contemporaries become superstars, and the way fame and fortune starts to really affect the way they treat other people, and I think it's ugly. -- Siobhan Fahey
The pyramid once passed there was still a short way to go before we confronted the Sphinx, in the middle of what our contemporaries have left him of his desert. -- Pierre Loti
We live in a twilight sort of world where, unfortunately, the perception of the seriousness of abortion - has grown progressively obscured in the minds of many of our contemporaries. -- Sean Brady
I never had ambitions to see how rich I could get. I got a lot of contemporaries that that's their ambition, and I don't know very many of them that are happy. -- Carroll Shelby
It is extraordinary the extent to which Darwin's insights not only changed his contemporaries' view of the world but also continue to be a source of great intellectual stimulation for scientists and nonscientists alike. -- James D. Watson
But truth is most likely to be exhibited by the general sense of contemporaries, when the feelings of the heart can be expressed without suffering itself to be disguised by the prejudices of man. -- Mercy Otis Warren
The Zombies were really unique - they had elements of jazz and classical music in their songs and songwriting. They had a very, very different sound compared to a lot of their contemporaries at the time. -- Paul Weller
I completed the first three years of primary school in one year and was admitted to the local school the age of six directly into the fourth year, some two years younger than all my contemporaries. -- Sydney Brenner
A particularly fine head on a man usually means that he is stupid; particularly deep philosophers are usually shallow thinkers; in literature, talents not much above the average are usually regarded by their contemporaries as geniuses. -- Robert Musil
I'd love to do a modern-day musical that's full of original music. To get your contemporaries to sing and dance without looking foolish and for it to be transformational and magical and all those things a musical is supposed to be. -- Danny Boyle
I saw how many people were poor and how many kids my age went to school hungry in the morning, which I don't think most of my contemporaries in racially segregated schools in the South thought very much about at the time. -- Charles Kuralt
I'm old enough to have friends and contemporaries who have long since retired, and that's their prerogative - enough is enough; it doesn't mean a thing to me. But I haven't got any money, so, you know, I just keep on working. -- Mike Leigh
I don't have stylistic loyalty. That's why people perceive me changing all the time. But there is a real continuity in my subject matter. As an artist of artifice, I do believe I have more integrity than any one of my contemporaries. -- David Bowie
My teacher, my great cello teacher Leonard Rose, was such a great cellist, and nurturing man, very patient. But I grew up not only admiring him, but obviously Casals, Rostrotovich, Jacqueline du Pre, and many others, including many of my peers and contemporaries. -- Yo-Yo Ma
How does an artist know when the line that he just painted is good or not good? That's the catch. De Kooning was the greatest of my contemporaries in art, and he knew when he'd done a good line. When he didn't, he threw it away. I wish I'd thrown away some of mine. -- Philip Johnson
Here's how I work: It's 2013, and most marketers are operating like it's 2009. I'm always trying to market like it's 2015, but not like it's 2020. A lot of my contemporaries who understand where the world is going, go too far out, and aren't practical. I have always prided myself on being visionary, with a heavy practicality. -- Gary Vaynerchuk
I feel I have been protected all my life. I am still here, for God's sake, and a lot of my contemporaries have gone. I'm very fortunate. No matter the difficulties - and we all have difficulties - I am definitely one of the fortunate ones. If I have any really good characteristics, one is that I am resilient. -- Lulu
I am very ambitious and have set goals for myself. I really don't keep a tab on what my contemporaries are doing. I want to push myself as an actress and don't want to get into the rat race. With every film, I want to grow as a person and an actress. The character I play needs to change me in real life. -- Sonam Kapoor
Anyone would be embarrassed of what they did at 15 or 16. I listen back to that first record, and I'm like, 'Compared to what my contemporaries were doing, it was crappy.' You listen to an early Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera song, and they are great pop songs. I just don't feel like on that first record I got anywhere near anything great. -- Mandy Moore
I already felt disengaged with my contemporaries. -- Kyle MacLachlan
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Truth is what your contemporaries let you get away with. -- Richard M. Rorty
Truth is what your contemporaries let you get away with. -- Richard M. Rorty
Learn from the masters, learn from your contemporaries. Always try to update yourself. -- James Stewart
It is difficult to judge one's contemporaries; perhaps it is impossible to understand them. -- Odilon Redon
the great novels have marched with the years. They are the contemporaries of time. -- Ellen Glasgow
An extraordinarily precocious mind, a political free thinker, who towered above his political contemporaries in Germany. -- Franz Mehring
Most of my contemporaries at school entered the World of Business, the logical destiny of bores. -- Barry Humphries
For women, history does not exist. Murasaki, Sappho, and Madame Lafayette might be their own contemporaries. -- Cesare Pavese
If you would be accounted great by your contemporaries, be not too much greater than they. -- Ambrose Bierce
I can walk into a room with all my contemporaries and I will be very comfortable. -- Deepika Padukone
Every artist loves applause. The praise of his contemporaries is the most valuable part of his recompense. -- Jean-Baptiste Rousseau
There are some actors who are my contemporaries who I think of as purebreds and I'm not. -- Sally Field
By this measure (on the gap between Fischer & his contemporaries), I consider him the greatest world champion -- Garry Kasparov
Indeed, I have, alas! outlived almost every one of my contemporaries. One pays dear for living long. -- Hannah More
An appellate court which reverses the judgment of a popular author's contemporaries, the appellant being his obscure competitor. -- Ambrose Bierce
I have outlived most of my more athletic contemporaries who jogged, golfed and squashed themselves into coronary occlusion. -- Barry Humphries
A responsible woman guides, controls (albeit subtly), directs with superior knowledge that is higher than that of her contemporaries! -- Jaachynma N.E. Agu
The old lose one of the greatest privileges of man, for they are no longer judged by their contemporaries. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
One of my contemporaries, a colorless chap who worked much harder at his law studies, is now Prime Minister. -- Alex Cox
Good health is a duty to yourself, to your contemporaries, to your inheritors, to the progress of the world. -- Gwendolyn Brooks
History belongs above all to the man...who needs models, teachers, comforters and cannot find them among his contemporaries. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
You are writing for your contemporaries - not for Posterity. If you are lucky, your contemporaries will become Posterity. -- Joyce Carol Oates
We see a new generation of Russian authors who are not divided from their Western contemporaries either culturally or philosophically. -- Robert Gottlieb
Picasso could use everyone's paintings and transform them into his own. He was using ideas from all of his contemporaries. -- Frank Gehry
When you're the best, and you know you're the best, and your contemporaries know you're the best, that's a terrific edge. -- Ray Floyd
Having outlived so many of my contemporaries, I ought not to forget that I may be thought to have outlived myself. -- James Madison
There is no self-knowledge except historical self-knowledge. No one knows what he is if he doesn't know what his contemporaries are. -- Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
How many of your contemporaries - when asked the question 'Are you glad you had kids'? - invariably respond 'Yes, but..'? -- Alex Morritt
What forests of laurel we bring, and the tears of mankind, to those who stood firm against the opinion of their contemporaries! -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
However deep our devotion may be to parents or to children, it is our contemporaries alone with whom understanding is instinctive and entire. -- Vera Brittain
I lived in Judea eighteen hundred years ago, but I never knew that there was such a one as Christ among my contemporaries. -- Henry David Thoreau
As an astronomer in the true sense of the term, Sir John Herschel stood before all his contemporaries. Nay, he stood almost alone. -- Richard A. Proctor
There are few enough people with sufficient independence to see the weaknesses and follies of their contemporaries and remain themselves untouched by them. -- Albert Einstein
I look at my contemporaries, and we're all at different stages and levels, and all choosing different routes, different ways to do things. -- Jamie Bell
The true test of any scholar's work is not what his contemporaries say, but what happens to his work in the next 25 or 50 years. -- Milton Friedman
The writer is the Faust of modern society, the only surviving individualist in a mass age. To his orthodox contemporaries he seems a semi-madman. -- Boris Pasternak
the desire to enforce our own moral and spiritual criteria upon posterity is quite as strong as the desire to enforce them upon contemporaries. -- Suzanne La Follette
Every religious pioneer, including Jesus Christ, was persecuted by his contemporaries. But once people understand me, their turn can be dramatic like Saint Paul's. -- Sun Myung Moon
I'm a joker who has understood his epoch and has extracted all he possibly could from the stupidity, greed and vanity of his contemporaries. -- Pablo Picasso
It remains an irrefragable law of history that contemporaries are denied a recognition of the early beginnings of the great movements which determine their times. -- Stefan Zweig
Many of my contemporaries in the developed world see subsistence farming as soulful and organic, but it is a poverty trap and an environmental disaster. -- Stewart Brand
I have always been amazed at my contemporaries' lack of finesse, I whose soul writhed from morning to night, in the mere quest of itself. -- Samuel Beckett
I look at some of my contemporaries trying to emulate what they were 30 years ago and just because of the age factor alone, they look silly. -- John Mellencamp
Speaking generally, no man appears great to his contemporaries, for the same reason that no man is great to his servants--both know too much of him. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Graduation day is tough for adults. They go to the ceremony as parents. They come home as contemporaries. After twenty-two years of child-raising, they are unemployed -- Erma Bombeck
Of all the men who were said to be my contemporaries, it seemed to me that John Brown was the only one who had not died. -- Henry David Thoreau
Reason unites us, not only with our contemporaries, but with men who lived two thousand years before us, and with those who will live after us. -- Leo Tolstoy
It is extremely difficult for our contemporaries to conceive of the conditions of free banking because they take government interference with banking for granted and as necessary. -- Ludwig von Mises
To mention only contemporaries, Delacroix, Corot, Millet, Rousseau, Courbet are masters. And finally [I like] all those [painters] who loved and had a strong feeling for nature. -- Alfred Sisley
Among the American contemporaries I read with most enjoyment are several North Carolinians. I think the best poetry being written these days is being written by Southerners. -- Robert Morgan
Fermat never cared to publish his investigations, but was always perfectly ready, as we see from his letters, to acquaint his friends and contemporaries with his results. -- Thomas Little Heath
In comedy, looking back is more important than looking around at your contemporaries because they are too much influenced by the same time period as you are. -- David Steinberg
A creator is not in advance of his generation but he is the first of his contemporaries to be conscious of what is happening to his generation. -- Gertrude Stein
I'll be honest, there's a part of me that does think I'm held to a different standard than my contemporaries and peers, and it's a little frustrating. -- Kathy Griffin
Byron owed the vast influence which he exercised over his contemporaries at least as much to his gloomy egotism as to the real power of his poetry. -- Thomas B. Macaulay
I don't look at the work of my contemporaries very much; I tend to look at pictures by dead artists. It's much easier to get near their paintings. -- Howard Hodgkin
Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Do not bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. -- William Faulkner
It is only when all our Christian ancestors are allowed to become our contemporaries that the real splendor of the Christian faith and the Christian life begins to dawn upon us. -- Bill Vaughan
Nothing is more common than to find men, whose works are now totally neglected, mentioned with praises by their contemporaries as the oracles of their age, and the legislators of science. -- Samuel Johnson
In science, moreover, the work of the individual is so bound up with that of his scientific predecessors and contemporaries that it appears almost as an impersonal product of his generation. -- Albert Einstein
As neither of these two great research scientists was able to find the solution to the mystery, it is small wonder that none of their contemporaries were able to do so either. -- Robert Barany
A film like Genevieve to my contemporaries is not a film made years ago, but last week or last year. They see me as I was then, not as I am now. -- Kenneth More
If you never look just wrong to your contemporaries you will never look just right to posterity every writer has to try to be, to some extent, sometimes, a law unto himself. -- Randall Jarrell
No British Prime Minister of the last seventy years has been more harshly stereotyped than Stanley Baldwin. No one has been so much ignored, after the initial judgements of contemporaries had been made. -- Stanley Baldwin
Among contemporaries, I hugely admire Alice Munro, our Chekhov, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, and John Updike, American masters all. I also believe that the voice of Gordon Lish is astoundingly original and sorrowful. -- Cynthia Ozick
Individual human beings are so subtly developed through the centuries that it is strictly impermissible to compare any two men who are not contemporaries-that is to say are taken from two quite different times. -- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
No maxim can be more pernicious than that which would teach us to consult the temper of the times, and to tell only so much as we imagine our contemporaries will be able to bear. -- William Godwin
May all our contemporaries stand beside their brothers and sisters in humanity. Each one of you is called by Christ and must be a missionary of the Good News in word and in active charity. -- Pope Benedict XVI
I always urged my contemporaries to look for interest and inspiration to the development and study of drawing, but they would not listen. They thought the road to salvation lay by the way of colour. -- Edgar Degas
It is difficult for young people to live things down. We will tolerate vice, grand larceny and the quieter forms of murder in our contemporaries... but our children's friends must show a blank service record. -- F. Scott Fitzgerald
The worthless and offensive members of society, whose existence is a social pest, invariably think themselves the most ill-used people alive, and never get over their astonishment at the ingratitude and selfishness of their contemporaries. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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