An engaged woman is always more agreeable than a disengaged. She is satisfied with herself. Her cares are over, and she feels that she may exert all her powers of pleasing without suspicion. All is safe with a lady engaged; no harm can be done.
Jane Austen

Dictatorships start wars because they need external enemies to exert internal control over their own people.
Richard Perle

Do we exert our own liberties without injury to others - we exert them justly; do we exert them at the expense of others - unjustly. And, in thus doing, we step from the sure platform of liberty upon the uncertain threshold of tyranny.
Frances Wright

Every human being has a work to carry on within, duties to perform abroad, influence to exert, which are peculiarly his, and which no conscience but his own can teach.
William Ellery Channing

For both reasons, owing to the thermal motion and to the working together of various wavelengths, factors arise which, in a similar manner to the structural factor, exert some influence upon the brightness of the interference points but not upon their location.
Max von Laue

Human beings can always be relied upon to exert, with vigor, their God-given right to be stupid.
Dean Koontz

I told the students that we can exert pressure without resorting to violence, and that we can move towards democracy without violence; that way, God will allow it.
Abdurrahman Wahid

If they exert it not for good, they will for evil; if they advance not knowledge, they will perpetuate ignorance.
Frances Wright

My health may be better preserved if I exert myself less, but in the end doesn't each person give his life for his calling?
Clara Schumann

Negation is the mind's first freedom, yet a negative habit is fruitful only so long as we exert ourselves to overcome it, adapt it to our needs; once acquired it can imprison us.
Emile M. Cioran

Only let the North exert as much moral influence over the South, as the South has exerted demoralizing influence over the North, and slavery would die amid the flame of Christian remonstrance, and faithful rebuke, and holy indignation.
Angelina Grimke

People who can't be witty exert themselves to be devout and affectionate.
George Eliot

Situational variables can exert powerful influences over human behavior, more so that we recognize or acknowledge.
Philip Zimbardo

That the state of knowledge in any country will exert a directive influence on the general system of instruction adopted in it, is a principle too obvious to require investigation.
Charles Babbage

The leader can never close the gap between himself and the group. If he does, he is no longer what he must be. He must walk a tightrope between the consent he must win and the control he must exert.
Vince Lombardi

The National League was born the following year, as an attempt to exert the control of capital over labor.
John Thorn

The need to exert power, when thwarted in the open fields of life, is the more likely to assert itself in trifles.
Charles Horton Cooley

The power I exert on the court depends on the power of my arguments, not on my gender.
Sandra Day O'Connor

The supply-side effect of a restrictive monetary policy is likely to be perverse, in that high interest rates enter into costs and thus exert inflationary pressure.
William Vickrey

The U.S. along with China, Japan, South Korea and Russia has an important role to play in containing North Korea's nuclear ambitions and exerting all the influence we can possibly exert.
Zach Wamp