Trina Paulus Hope for the Flowers
Variant: How does one become a butterfly? They have to want to learn to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.
Source: Hope for the Flowers
On Peter Porter, 'Talking for Posterity' (Times Literary Supplement, May 14, 2010)
Essays and reviews
Context: [H]e could never have played the hero, because for him it was creativity itself that had the heroic status, beyond politics, beyond patriotism, beyond even personal happiness. It’s the reason why his work is like that. His poetry, so wonderful when it is really flying, isn’t trying to tell you how much he knows. It’s giving thanks for how much there is to be known.
Trina Paulus Hope for the Flowers
Variant: How does one become a butterfly? They have to want to learn to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.
Source: Hope for the Flowers
“They say religion is about love, but you wonder how much of it really is about fear.”
Deb Caletti (1963) American writer
Source: The Nature of Jade
Sherry Argov (1977) American writer
Variant: Relationship Principle 10
You can tell how much someone respects you by how much he respects your opinion. If he doesn't respect your opinion, he won't respect you.
Source: Why Men Marry Bitches: A Woman's Guide to Winning Her Man's Heart
John Angell James (1785–1859) British abolitionist
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 554.
Al Hurricane (1936–2017) American singer-songwriter
Last lines to all the artists present during the documentary concert, "A Tribute to Al Hurricane - The Godfather".
“How much could I tell them? How much dared I tell them?”
Louis L'Amour book The Walking Drum
Source: The Walking Drum (1984), Ch. 31
Context: How much could I tell them? How much dared I tell them? What was the point at which acceptance would begin to yield to doubt? For the mind must be prepared for knowledge as one prepares a field for planting, and a discovery made too soon is no better than a discovery not made at all. Had I been a Christian, I would undoubtedly have been considered a heretic, for what the world has always needed is more heretics and less authority. There can be no order or progress without discipline, but authority can be quite different. Authority, in this world in which I moved, implied belief in and acceptance of a dogma, and dogma is invariably wrong, as knowledge is always in a state of transition. The radical ideas of today are often the conservative policies of tomorrow, and dogma is left protesting by the wayside. Each generation has a group that wishes to impose a static pattern on events, a static pattern that would hold society forever immobile in a position favorable to the group in question. <!--
Much of the conflict in the minds and arguments of those about me was due to a basic conflict between religious doctrines based primarily upon faith, and Greek philosophy, which was an attempt to interpret experience by reason. Or so it seemed to me, a man with much to learn.
Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player
Farewell Address (1947)
Context: Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen. You know how bad my voice sounds. Well, it feels just as bad. You know this baseball game of ours comes up from the youth. That means the boys. And after you've been a boy, and grow up to know how to play ball, then you come to the boys you see representing themselves today in our national pastime.
Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist
Tell Her About It.
Song lyrics, An Innocent Man (1983)