A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges.
Benjamin Franklin

A toothache, or a violent passion, is not necessarily diminished by our knowledge of its causes, its character, its importance or insignificance.
T. S. Eliot

Accordingly, when the supply of gold runs short, the security behind the notes is diminished, the loaning of notes is restricted or suspended, and the panic follows.
John Buchanan Robinson

And I find - I'm 63, and my capacity to be by myself and just spend time by myself hasn't diminished any. That's the necessary part of being a writer, you better like being alone.
John Irving

As to happiness in this life it is hardly compatible with that diminished respect which ever attends the relinquishing of labour.
Anthony Trollope

But I don't think the popularity of flying has diminished a bit.
Gerard Arpey

Conflicting commercial regulations of the different States shackled and diminished both foreign and domestic trade; hence the power to regulate commerce was conferred.
Robert Toombs

Diversity has been written into the DNA of American life; any institution that lacks a rainbow array has come to seem diminished, if not diseased.
Joe Klein

For as long as the power of America's diversity is diminished by acts of discrimination and violence against people just because they are black, Hispanic, Asian, Jewish, Muslim or gay, we still must overcome.
Ron Kind

Hip Hop has become real constrained. The creative juices and creative flows have been diminished.
Grandmaster Flash

His knowledge of books had in some degree diminished his knowledge of the world.
William Shenstone

I am actually in poor health due to chronic fatigue and immune dysfunction syndrome, and my ability to work is greatly diminished right now, so I have to get better before I can start another big project.
Laura Hillenbrand

I can't tell you how many people have asked me to show them Stray Cat Strut and that little diminished run on the C. I guess my brain is wired backwards. I don't know what possessed me to do that, but I did.
Brian Setzer

I have been vain since birth. I expected other people to like what I did, although my vanity has definitely diminished over the years.
Wallace Shawn

If the demand for home commodities should be diminished, because of the fall of rent on the part of the landlords, it will be increased in a far greater degree by the increased opulence of the commercial classes.
David Ricardo

If the poet has pursued a moral objective, he has diminished his poetic force.
Charles Baudelaire

In bodies moved, the motion is received, increased, diminished, or lost, according to the relations of the quantity of matter and velocity; each diversity is uniformity, each change is constancy.
Charles de Secondat

In their work, then, as in their play, men and women are more and more coming to share with each other as comrades, and really the fun of life seems in no wise diminished as a consequence.
Richard Le Gallienne

Major social movements eventually fade into the landscape not because they have diminished but because they have become a permanent part of our perceptions and experience.
Freda Adler

Mr. Speaker, in the years since we enacted our attack against Iraq, the threat from Iran has only grown more difficult, and our capacity to meet that threat actually has diminished. It is one of the reasons many of us opposed that action against Iraq.
Earl Blumenauer