Enemies Quotes

Most popular enemies quotes

Do not fear when your enemies criticize you. Beware when they applaud you.

criticism

Love your enemies for they tell you your faults. - Benjamin Franklin quote.
Love your enemies for they tell you your faults.

shortcomings

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them? - Abraham Lincoln quote.
Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?

wisdom food for thought

Incidentally, it helps to have enemies. While love is a beautiful emotion, far more empires have been built, books written, wrongs righted, fights won, and ambitions realized out of vengeful desire to prove some critic wrong, or existential dread of some perceived enemy, than all the love in the world. Love is grand, but hate and fear last longer.
In order to love your enemies, you must begin by analyzing [ your ] self. - Martin Luther King Jr. quote.
In order to love your enemies, you must begin by analyzing [ your ] self.
Discover the element of good in your enemy. And as you seek to hate him, find the center of goodness and place your attention there and you will take a new attitude. - Martin Luther King Jr. quote.
Discover the element of good in your enemy. And as you seek to hate him, find the center of goodness and place your attention there and you will take a new attitude.

positive

Great men gain doubly when they make foes their friends. - Edward Bulwer-Lytton quote.
Great men gain doubly when they make foes their friends.
A friend is a man who has the same enemies you have. - Abraham Lincoln quote.
A friend is a man who has the same enemies you have.

friendship

It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart; the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you. - Mark Twain quote.
It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart; the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you.

friendship

Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to discover your mistakes. - Antisthenes quote.
Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to discover your mistakes.
Antisthenes Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

know yourself

Love your Enemies, for they tell you your Faults.
Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names. - John F. Kennedy quote.
Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.

forgiveness

You can't hold a man down without staying down with him. - Booker T. Washington quote.
You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.
Whenever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer him with love. - Mahatma Gandhi quote.
Whenever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer him with love.

love

You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea. - Victor Hugo quote.
You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea.
If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow quote.
If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.

suffering sorrow

Forget your opponents; always play against par. - Sam Snead quote.
Forget your opponents; always play against par.
All our foes are mortal. - Paul Valéry quote.
All our foes are mortal.
The space in a needle's eye is sufficient for two friends, but the whole world is scarcely big enough to hold two enemies. - Solomon Ibn Gabirol quote.
The space in a needle's eye is sufficient for two friends, but the whole world is scarcely big enough to hold two enemies.
The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opposition than from his fervent supporters. - Walter Lippmann quote.
The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opposition than from his fervent supporters.
Man's chief enemy and danger is his own unruly nature and the dark forces pent up within him.
The shaft of the arrow had been feathered with one of the eagle's own plumes. We often give our enemies the means of our own destruction. - Aesop quote.
The shaft of the arrow had been feathered with one of the eagle's own plumes. We often give our enemies the means of our own destruction.
He that is not with me is against me.
— Matthew 12:30

biblical

When my enemies stop hissing, I shall know I'm slipping.
Never contend with a man who has nothing to lose. - Baltasar Gracian quote.
Never contend with a man who has nothing to lose.
Even a paranoid can have enemies. - Henry Kissinger quote.
Even a paranoid can have enemies.
I bring out the worst in my enemies and that's how I get them to defeat themselves.
A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. - Oscar Wilde quote.
A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
As the sutra says, a parasite in the lion's bowels will devour the lion. A man of great fortune cannot be ruined by his enemies but only by those close to him.
One may smile, and smile, and be a villain. - William Shakespeare quote.
One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.
A man with a career can have no time to waste upon his wife and friends; he has to devote it wholly to his enemies. - Thomas Hobbes quote.
A man with a career can have no time to waste upon his wife and friends; he has to devote it wholly to his enemies.
We have met the enemy and he is us.
Who can refute a sneer? - William Paley quote.
Who can refute a sneer?
I never hated a man enough to give him his diamonds back. - Zsa Zsa Gabor quote.
I never hated a man enough to give him his diamonds back.
Do de other feller, befo' he do you.
I like to have a real enemy to fight. It gives me something I can get my teeth into.
Enemies to me are the sauce piquante to my dish of life. - Elsa Maxwell quote.
Enemies to me are the sauce piquante to my dish of life.
An enemy slaughters, a friend distributes.
— African proverb

friendship proverbs African proverbs

A powerful friend becomes a powerful enemy.
— African proverb

African proverbs proverbs

An intelligent enemy is better than an ignorant friend.
— African proverb

friendship proverbs African proverbs

When the cat dies, the mice rejoice.
— African proverb

African proverbs proverbs

A friend cannot be known in prosperity: and an enemy cannot be hidden in adversity.
— Ecclesiasticus 12:8

friendship biblical

I see
and I hear
and I speak no evil;
I carry
no malice
within my breast;
yet quite without
wishing
a man to the Devil
one may be
permitted
to hope for the best.
He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill.  Our antagonist is our helper. - Edmund Burke quote.
He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill.  Our antagonist is our helper.

opposition skill

In all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane. - Mark Twain quote.
In all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.

opinions

Enemies' promises were made to be broken. - Aesop quote.
Enemies' promises were made to be broken.
What is an imaginary friend?  Are there also imaginary enemies? - Lynda Barry quote.
What is an imaginary friend?  Are there also imaginary enemies?
I do not regret one professional enemy I have made.  Any actor who doesn't dare to make an enemy should get out of the business. - Bette Davis quote.
I do not regret one professional enemy I have made.  Any actor who doesn't dare to make an enemy should get out of the business.
Everyone needs a warm personal enemy or two to keep him free of rust in the movable parts of the mind. - Gene Fowler quote.
Everyone needs a warm personal enemy or two to keep him free of rust in the movable parts of the mind.
Gene Fowler Skyline: A Reporter’s Reminiscence of the 1920s
Praises from an enemy imply real merit. - Thomas Fuller quote.
Praises from an enemy imply real merit.

praise merit proverbs

If we are bound to forgive an enemy, we are not bound to trust him. - Thomas Fuller quote.
If we are bound to forgive an enemy, we are not bound to trust him.

proverbs

To see your enemy and know him is a part of the complete education of man. - Marcus Garvey quote.
To see your enemy and know him is a part of the complete education of man.
The most dangerous enemy in the world is the one you do not recognize.
I owe much to my friends; but, all things considered, it strikes me that I owe even more to my enemies.  The real person springs to life under a sting even better than under a caress. - André Gide quote.
I owe much to my friends; but, all things considered, it strikes me that I owe even more to my enemies.  The real person springs to life under a sting even better than under a caress.
André Gide Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality
Never completely encircle your enemy.  Leave him some escape, for he will fight even more desperately if trapped. - Alex Haley quote.
Never completely encircle your enemy.  Leave him some escape, for he will fight even more desperately if trapped.
The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on. - Joseph Heller quote.
The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on.

war

Enemies are so stimulating. - Katherine Hepburn quote.
Enemies are so stimulating.
Never let yourself hate any person.  It is the most devastating weapon of one's enemies.

hate

It's hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head.

men and women

One must know one's enemy as he is, not as one, for whatever motives, wishes him to be.
Men strive for peace, but it is their enemies that give them strength, and I think if man no longer had enemies, he would have to invent them, for his strength only grows from struggle. - Louis L'Amour quote.
Men strive for peace, but it is their enemies that give them strength, and I think if man no longer had enemies, he would have to invent them, for his strength only grows from struggle.
It is said we learn truth from our enemies.
The face of the enemy frightens me only when I see how much it resembles mine. - Stanisław Jerzy Lec quote.
The face of the enemy frightens me only when I see how much it resembles mine.
I don't have a warm personal enemy left.  They've all died off.  I miss them terribly because they helped define me. - Clare Booth Luce quote.
I don't have a warm personal enemy left.  They've all died off.  I miss them terribly because they helped define me.
I make enemies deliberately.  They are the sauce piquante to my dish of life. - Elsa Maxwell quote.
I make enemies deliberately.  They are the sauce piquante to my dish of life.
Lifelong enemies are, I think, as hard to make and as important to one's well-being as lifelong friends.
People wish their enemies dead—but I do not; I say give them the gout, give them the stone! - Lady Mary Montagu quote.
People wish their enemies dead—but I do not; I say give them the gout, give them the stone!
Our enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing us from superficiality. - Joyce Carol Oates quote.
Our enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing us from superficiality.
If your enemy turns to flee, give him a silver bridge.

proverbs

There is no little enemy.
— French proverb

European proverbs proverbs French proverbs

Be thine enemy an ant, see in him an elephant.
— Turkish proverb

proverbs Turkish proverbs

Who despises an insignificant enemy resembles him who is careless about fire.
I'm lonesome.  They are all dying.  I have hardly a warm personal enemy left. - James Abbott McNeill Whistler quote.
I'm lonesome.  They are all dying.  I have hardly a warm personal enemy left.
One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy. - E. B. White quote.
One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.
A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies. - Oscar Wilde quote.
A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
Now, now my good man, this is no time for making enemies. - Voltaire quote.
Now, now my good man, this is no time for making enemies.
Kids only pick fights with kids of their age and size. We only make enemies that we're capable of taking on. Goes to show how fictional and chosen our "enemies" are. - Naval Ravikant quote.
Kids only pick fights with kids of their age and size. We only make enemies that we're capable of taking on. Goes to show how fictional and chosen our "enemies" are.
Never declare anyone your opponent – lots of times the people we think are our enemies, are not, and it's just a one way street. Just assume you don't have enemies. - Naval Ravikant quote.
Never declare anyone your opponent – lots of times the people we think are our enemies, are not, and it's just a one way street. Just assume you don't have enemies.
Always forgive your enemies—nothing annoys them so much. - Oscar Wilde quote.
Always forgive your enemies—nothing annoys them so much.

forgiveness

It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend. - William Blake quote.
It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.

forgiveness friendship

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

relationships

Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate.
Make sure your enemies keep complaining about you — ideally bringing a different thing every time they voice a complaint.
Resist trying to impress your enemies.
To avoid slackening and receding as you age, you must keep making new intelligent enemies, assuming you are lucky enough to find them.
Old enemies and new friends can't harm you; new enemies and old friends can.

friendship

To insult your foes, don't try to win arguments.

insults arguments