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Maxims are the condensed good sense of nations. -- James Mackintosh
The maxims of men reveal their characters. -- Luc de Clapiers
It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims. -- Aristotle
In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations. -- George Eliot
I believe there's no proverb but what is true; they are all so many sentences and maxims drawn from experience, the universal mother of sciences. -- Miguel de Cervantes
No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better. -- William James
Maxims are sharp-edged half-truths. -- Mason Cooley
Maxim 31: Only cheaters prosper.-The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries -- Howard Tayler
Maxims are often quoted by those who stand in more need of their application. -- James Ellis
Maxims are like lawyers who must need to see but one side of the case. -- Gelett Burgess
Maxim 3: An ordnance technician at a dead run outranks everybody. -The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries -- Howard Tayler
Maxim 10: Sometimes the only way out is through... through the hull.-The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries -- Howard Tayler
Maxim 27: Don't be afraid to be the first to resort to violence.-The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries -- Howard Tayler
Maxim 37: There is no "overkill". There is only "open fire" and "time to reload".-The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries -- Howard Tayler
Maxim 6: If violence wasn't your last resort, you failed to resort to enough of it. -The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries -- Howard Tayler
Maxim 20: If you're not willing to shell your own position, you're not willing to win. -The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries -- Howard Tayler
Maxim 30: A little trust goes a long way. The less you use, the further you'll go.-The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries -- Howard Tayler
Maxims are to the intellect what laws are to actions; they do not enlighten, but they guide and direct, and, although themselves blind, are protective. -- Joseph Joubert
Maxim 12: A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head.-The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries -- Howard Tayler
Maxims and aphorisms, let us remember that wisdom is the true salt of literature, and the books that are most nourishing are richly stored with it, and that is the main object to seek in reading books. -- John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn
Maxims in times of danger are useless, experience is incommunicable. The knotted strands of life, desire, assumptions, and moral codes cannot be unsnarled; they can only be cut, which is what happens when an air raid occurs, with a silencing fortissimo like the finale of a Beethoven symphony. -- Jacques Barzun
In the maxim of the past you cannot go anywhere. -- Maxim Gorky
It is... a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave. -- David Hume
Maxim for life: You get treated in life the way you teach people to treat you. -- Wayne Dyer
Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost. -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
There's an old maxim that says, 'Things that work persist,' which is why there's still Cobol floating around. -- Vinton Cerf
It is a golden maxim to cultivate the garden for the nose, and the eyes will take care of themselves. -- Robert Louis Stevenson
It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. -- Arthur Conan Doyle
I collect axioms, paradoxes, maxims, teaching stories, proverbs, and aphorisms of all sorts, because I love to see complex ideas distilled into a few words. -- Gretchen Rubin
I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old Revolutionary maxim. Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God. -- Susan B. Anthony
Let us be true: this is the highest maxim of art and of life, the secret of eloquence and of virtue, and of all moral authority. -- Henri Frederic Amiel
Precepts or maxims are of great weight; and a few useful ones on hand do more to produce a happy life than the volumes we can't find. -- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
My mother had all these maxims - like, classy girls never chew gum, never read comic books, never get their ears pierced, never get their hair dyed. -- Jennifer Tilly
There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty. -- John Adams
In the gay (Catholic) community, it would seem, the maxim is: love the sin and love the sinner, but hate anyone who calls it a sin or him a sinner. -- Richard John Neuhaus
In all our associations; in all our agreements let us never lose sight of this fundamental maxim - that all power was originally lodged in, and consequently is derived from, the people. -- George Mason
Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate. -- Bertrand Russell
Let me remind you of the old maxim: people under suspicion are better moving than at rest, since at rest they may be sitting in the balance without knowing it, being weighed together with their sins. -- Franz Kafka
Hear the words of prudence, give heed unto her counsels, and store them in thine heart; her maxims are universal, and all the virtues lean upon her; she is the guide and the mistress of human life. -- Akhenaton
There is no maxim, in my opinion, which is more liable to be misapplied, and which, therefore, more needs elucidation, than the current one, that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong. -- James Madison
These maxims and the art of interpreting them may be said to constitute the premisses of science but I prefer to call them our scientific beliefs. These premisses or beliefs are embodied in a tradition, the tradition of science. -- Michael Polanyi
Yes, yes, children must early be made to practise piety, godliness, and propriety; a person of good breeding is one into whom 'good maxims' have been instilled and impressed, poured in through a funnel, thrashed in and preached in. -- Max Stirner
It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind. -- Jonathan Swift
Would that the simple maxim, that honesty is the best policy, might be laid to heart; that a sense of the true aim of life might elevate the tone of politics and trade till public and private honor become identical. -- Margaret Fuller
The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and, however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true to fact. The people are turbulent and changing, they seldom judge or determine right. -- Alexander Hamilton
Few maxims are true in every respect. -- Luc de Clapiers
Good maxims are the germs of all excellence. -- Joseph Joubert
I like maxims that don't encourage behavior modification. -Calvin -- Bill Watterson
With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter's heart. -- Alfred Lord Tennyson
No choice maxims - we Stoics don't practice that kind of window dressing. -- Seneca the Younger
All the maxims have been written. It only remains to put them into practice. -- Blaise Pascal
It is one of the maxims of the civil law, that definitions are hazardous. -- Samuel Johnson
Discipline our youth in early life in sound maxims of moral, political, and religious duties. -- Noah Webster
The conduct of men depends upon the temperament, not upon a bunch of musty maxims. -- Benjamin Disraeli
There are plenty of maxims in the world; all that remains is to apply them. -- Blaise Pascal
All the good maxims which are in the world fail when applied to one's self. -- Blaise Pascal
The maxims tell you to aim at perfection, which is well; but it's unattainable, all the same. -- Bayard Taylor
Moral maxims are surprisingly useful on occasions when we can invent little else to justify our actions. -- Alexander Pushkin
Nothing is as dangerous for the state as those who would govern kingdoms with maxims found in books. -- Cardinal Richelieu
The secret of play-writing can be given in two maxims: stick to the point, and, whenever you can, cut. -- W. Somerset Maugham
It is from our enemies that we often gain excellent maxims, and are frequently surprised into reason by their mistakes. -- Thomas Paine
A man of maxims only is like a Cyclops with one eye, and that in the back of his head. -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
In the unbending of the arm to do the deed there is experience worth all the maxims in the world. -- Henry David Thoreau
The maxims for success laid out by the powerful are never much good as guides for those who aren't powerful. -- Elizabeth Janeway
What are the maxims of Democracy? A strict observance of justice and public faith, and a steady adherence to virtue. -- John Marshall
The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance, and never to keep his word. -- Jonathan Swift
My Son, these maxims make a rule An lump them ay thegither: The Rigid Righteous is a fool, The Rigid Wise anither. -- Robert Burns
Poverty is very good in poems but very bad in the house; very good in maxims and sermons but very bad in practical life. -- Henry Ward Beecher
Children have almost an intuitive discernment between the maxims you bring forward for their use, and those by which you direct your own conduct. -- Anna Letitia Barbauld
Irresponsibility, cowardice, personal vanity, whining and chaos are becoming the maxims of political action. There is a stink in Berlin - a huge one! -- Edmund Stoiber
One of the maxims of the new field of conservation biological control is that to control insect herbivores, you must maintain populations of insect herbivores. -- Douglas Tallamy
Anecdotes and maxims are rich treasures to the man of the world, for he knows how to introduce the former at fit place in conversation. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It is only in the lonely emergencies of life that our creed is tested: then routine maxims fail, and we fall back on our gods. -- William James
Search out the wisdom of nature, there is depth in all her doings; she seemeth prodigal of power, yet her rules are the maxims of frugality. -- Martin Farquhar Tupper
Marianne Dashwood was born to an extraordinary fate. She was born to discover the falsehood of her own opinions, and to counteract, by her conduct, her most favourite maxims. -- Jane Austen
Ethical maxims are bandied about as a sort of current coin of discourse, and, being never melted down for use, those that are of base metal are never detected. -- Richard Whately
Precepts or maxims are of great weight; and a few useful ones at hand do more toward a happy life than whole volumes that we know not where to find. -- Seneca the Younger
Another of Cicero's maxims was that if you must do something unpopular, you might as well do it wholeheartedly, for in politics there is no credit to be won by timidity. -- Robert Harris
One of my central maxims is how a major part of what a conductor tries to do is get a large group of people to agree on where "now" actually is. -- Michael Tilson Thomas
The counting-room maxims liberally expounded are laws of the Universe. The merchant's economy is a coarse symbol of the soul's economy. It is, to spend for power, and not for pleasure. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
There are no guarantees in life. The simple twists of fate and the breaks of the game are the two maxims that define so much of the success and failure in life. -- Bill Walton
A maxim is the exact and noble expression of an important and indisputable truth. Good maxims are the germs of all excellence; when firmly fixed on the memory, they nourish the will. -- Joseph Joubert
With the growth of knowledge our ideas must from time to time be organized afresh. The change takes place usually in accordance with new maxims as they arise, but it always remains provisional. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
They assembled together and dedicated these as the first-fruits of their love to Apollo in his Delphic temple, inscribing there those maxims which are on every tongue- 'know thyselP and 'Nothing overmuch.' -- Plato
False and doubtful positions, relied upon as unquestionable maxims, keep those who build on them in the dark from truth. Such are usually the prejudices imbibed from education, party, reverence, fashion, interest, et cetera. -- John Locke
The political truths declared in that solemn manner acquire by degrees the character of fundamental maxims of free Government, and as they become incorporated with national sentiment, counteract the impulses of interest and passion. -- James Madison

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