PROMISES QUOTES II
quotations about promises
In a world where vows are worthless. Where making a pledge means nothing. Where promises are made to be broken, it would be nice to see words come back into power.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Lullaby
People with good intentions make promises. People with good character keep them.
ANONYMOUS
As soon as one promises not to do something, it becomes the one thing above all others that one most wishes to do.
GEORGETTE HEYER
Venetia
The promises we make to ourselves are the things that assure us we have the capacity to keep our promises to others.
MARY ANNE RADMACHER
Live With Intention
The problem with promises is that once you've made one, it's bound to be broken. It's like an unspoken cosmic rule.
BREE DESPAIN
The Dark Divine
All men have a feeling, that they would rather you told them a civil lie than give them a point blank refusal.... If you make a promise, the thing is still uncertain, depends on a future day, and concerns but few people; but if you refuse you alienate people to a certainty and at once, and many people too.
CICERO
"On Standing for the Consulship", The Treatises of M. T. Cicero
We promise according to our hopes, and perform according to our fears.
FRANCOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Maxims
Promises are the ready money that was first coined and made current by the law of nature, to support that society and commerce that was necessary for the comfort and security of mankind.
EDWARD, EARL OF CLARENDON
A Collection of Serveral Tracts of the Right Honourable Edward, Earl of Clarendon
I know it is a bad thing to break a promise, but I think now that it is a worse thing to let a promise break you.
JENNIFER DONNELLY
A Northern Light
You never bade me hope, 'tis true;
I asked you not to swear:
But I looked in those eyes of blue,
And read a promise there.
GERALD GRIFFIN
You Never Bade Me Hope
A promise is binding in the sense in which the promiser supposed the promisee to receive it.
WILLIAM PALEY
attributed, Day's Collacon
Some people don't understand the promises they're making when they make them.... But you keep the promise anyway. That's what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway.
JOHN GREEN
The Fault in Our Stars
Promises are like fortune's shadows.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
I had rather do and not promise, than promise and not do.
JOHN SELDEN
Table-talk
Nothing weighs lighter than a promise.
GERMAN PROVERB
An acre of performance is worth the whole world of promise.
JAMES HOWELL
Epistolae Ho-Elianae: The Familiar Letters of James Howell, Historiographer
In the first place, you shouldn't believe in promises. The world is full of them: the promises of riches, of eternal salvation, of infinite love. Some people think they can promise anything, others accept whatever seems to guarantee better days ahead, as, I suspect is your case. Those who make promises they don't keep end up powerless and frustrated, and exactly the fate awaits those who believe promises.
PAULO COELHO
The Devil and Miss Prym
A promise against law or duty is void in its own nature; if it be just, I promised it; if unjust, I only said it.
AGESILAUS II
attributed, Day's Collacon
Put the hand of fulfillment upon the bell of promise.
IBN HASSAN AKBAH
attributed, Day's Collacon
There is no virtue in a promise unless it be kept.
DANISH PROVERB