Order

Order is the state of being arranged; the opposite of chaos.

Sourced

• Order is the law of all intelligible existence.
  • John Stuart Blackie, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 440.

• Let all things be done decently and in order.
  • I Corinthians, XIV. 40.

• For the world was built in order
  And the atoms march in tune;
  Rhyme the pipe, and Time the warder,
  The sun obeys them, and the moon.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Monadnock, Stanza 12; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 574.

• Can any man have a higher notion of the rule of right and the eternal fitness of things?
  • Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones (1749), Book IV, Chapter IV. Samuel Clarke—Being and Attributes of God. John Leland—Review of Morgan's Moral Philosopher. I. 154. (Ed. 1807). Also his Inquiry into Lord Bolingbroke's Writings. Letter XXII. I. 451.

• Order. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
  • Benjamin Franklin, quoted from his autobiography.

• Set thine house in order.
  • Isaiah, XXXVIII. 1.

• To make the plough go before the horse.
  • James I of England, letter to the Lord Keeper (July, 1617).

• Space and light and order. Those are the things that men need just as much as they need bread or a place to sleep.
  • Le Corbusier, quoted in his obituary, The New York Times, 1965.

• Confusion heard his voice, and wild uproar
  Stood ruled, stood vast infinitude confined;
  Till at his second bidding darkness fled,
  Light shone, and order from disorder sprung.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book III, line 710.

• Not chaos-like together crush'd and bruis'd,
  But, as the world, harmoniously confused:
  Where order in variety we see,
  And where tho' all things differ, all agree.
  • Alexander Pope, Windsor Forest (1713), line 13.

• Order is Heaven's first law; and this confess,
  Some are and must be greater than the rest.
  • Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733-34), Epistle IV, line 49.

• Folie est mettre la charrue devant les bœufs.
  • It is folly to put the plough in front of the oxen.
  • François Rabelais, Gargantua (1534), Chapter XI.

• Not a mouse
  Shall disturb this hallow'd house:
  I am sent with broom before,
  To sweep the dust behind the door.
  • William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream (c. 1595-96), Act V, scene 1, line 394.

• The heavens themselves, the planets and this centre
  Observe degree, priority and place,
  Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
  Office and custom, in all line of order.
  • William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida (c. 1602), Act I, scene 3, line 85.

• Order is the sanity of the mind, the health of the body, the peace of the city, the security of the State.
  • Robert Southey, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 440.

• As order is heavenly, where quiet is had,
  So error is hell, or a mischief as bad.
  • Thomas Tusser, Points of Huswifery (1561), Huswifery Admonitions, XII, p. 251.

See also

• System