Quotes about lie and betrayal (page 11)

“There are evils, as someone has pointed out, that have the ability to survive identification and go on for ever — money, for instance, or war.”

Saul Bellow book The Dean's December

The Dean’s December (1982) [Penguin Classics, 1998, ISBN 0-140-18913-0], ch. 13, p. 140
General sources

“I mean you have been disappointed in love, but don't you know how many things there are to be disappointed in besides love? You are lucky to be still disappointed in love. Later it may be even more terrible.”

Saul Bellow book The Adventures of Augie March

Source: The Adventures of Augie March

“It's usually the selfish people who are loved the most. They do what you deny yourself, and you love them for it. You give them your heart.”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

“Out of the struggle at the center has come an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for.”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

Nobel Prize lecture http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1976/bellow-lecture.html (12 December 1976)
General sources
Context: Writers are greatly respected. The intelligent public is wonderfully patient with them, continues to read them, and endures disappointment after disappointment, waiting to hear from art what it does not hear from theology, philosophy, social theory, and what it cannot hear from pure science. Out of the struggle at the center has come an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for.

“If the excrement of an elephant should be smeared on skin in which lice appear and left until it dries upon the skin, the lice will not remain on it but will depart immediately. If the fat of an elephant is smeared with it, it is said to cure the pain of one who suffers a headache; it is even said that if an ounce of elephant bone is drunk with ten ounces of wild mountain mint from something which a leper first touched, it does the most for a headache.”

Albertus Magnus (1206–1280) Dominican friar

Twenty-Six Books on Animals [De animalibus libri XXVI]; cited in: Plinio Prioreschi (1996) A History of Medicine: Medieval Medicine. p. 94.

“In this winter night, long and ample for bitter memories, many a widow who lost her husband in the war and is now left alone will press her palms to her ageing face; and in the nocturnal darkness the burning tears, as bitter as wormwood, will scorch her fingers.”

Mikhail Sholokhov (1905–1984) Soviet writer

From A Word on Our Country.
One Man's Destiny (1967)

“The grass grows over the graves, time overgrows the pain. The wind blew away the traces of those who had departed; time blows away the bloody pain and the memory of those who did not live to see their dear ones again—and will not live, for brief is human life, and not for long is any of us granted to tread the grass.”

Mikhail Sholokhov book And Quiet Flows the Don

And Quiet Flows the Don (1934)

“I'll give you an example — in Russia most of the hospitals don't have any pain medicine, they don't have any money. So if you're with kids with cancer, they can have metastases to the bone; which some say is the worst pain a human can experience. So a mother can be in a room with a child who hasn't stopped screaming in five months. …85% of the time I walk in there as a clown they'll stop screaming.”

Patch Adams (1945) Physician, activist, diplomat, author

As quoted in "Entrevista com o médico americano P. Adams" in Roda Viva - Entrevista (13 November 2007)

“The world would be in better shape if people would take the same pains in the practice of the simplest moral laws as they exert in intellectualizing over the most subtle moral questions.”

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) Austrian writer

Es stände besser um die Welt, wenn die Mühe, die man sich gibt, die subtilsten Moralgesetze auszuklügeln, zur Ausübung der einfachsten angewendet würde.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 30.

“One should be selfish enough to be selfless up to a certain point.”

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) Austrian writer

Bis zu einem gewissen Grade selbstlos sollte man schon aus Selbstsucht sein.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 64.

“By generalization of methods developed by Kamefuchi, O'Raifeartaigh, and Salam, conditions for renormalizability of general gauge theories of massive vector mesons are derived. … It is shown that all theories based on simple Lie groups (with the one exception of the neutral vector meson theory in interaction with a conserved current) are unrenormalizable.”

Abdus Salam (1926–1996) theoretical physicist, and Nobel Prize in Physics recipient

[Renormalizability of Gauge Theories, Phys. Rev., 127, 331, 1 July 1962, https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRev.127.331]

“What is a charitable heart? It is a heart which is burning with love for the whole creation, for men, for the birds, for the beasts … for all creatures. He who has such a heart cannot see or call to mind a creature without his eyes being filled with tears by reason of the immense compassion which seizes his heart; a heart which is softened and can no longer bear to see or learn from others of any suffering, even the smallest pain being inflicted upon a creature. That is why such a man never ceases to pray for the animals … [He is] … moved by the infinite pity which reigns in the hearts of those who are becoming united with God.”

Isaac of Nineveh (640–700) Eastern Orthodox saint

Mystic Treatises, cited in Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (1976), [//books.google.it/books?id=dxqvWwPSCSwC&pg=PA111 p. 111]; also cited and discussed in A. M. Allchin, The World is a Wedding (1978), p. 85. Quoted in Andrew Linzey, Animal Theology (1994), [//books.google.it/books?id=ESTjQYS_8hMC&pg=PA56 p. 56].

“My published work is just a record of my learning. I'm sharing it with people so they won't make the same mistakes that I did. It's been a painful and slow process. My work is like a journey, a journey of discovery.”

Thomas J. Sargent (1943) American economist

Thomas J. Sargent, in Conversations with Economists (1983) by Arjo Klamer

“I have found more peace in the knowledge of truth than anger in the feeling of oppression, and the most precious fruit that I could want to collect in this memoir would be to inspire my readers with that peace of mind arising from the clear perception of evil and its causes.”

Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) French politician, mutualist philosopher, economist, and socialist

Preface
What is Property? (1840)

“Communism is oppression and slavery. Man is very willing to obey the law of duty, serve his country, and oblige his friends; but he wishes to labor when he pleases, where he pleases, and as much as he pleases. He wishes to dispose of his own time, to be governed only by necessity, to choose his friendships, his recreation, and his discipline; to act from judgment, not by command; to sacrifice himself through selfishness, not through servile obligation. Communism is essentially opposed to the free exercise of our faculties, to our noblest desires, to our deepest feelings.”

Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) French politician, mutualist philosopher, economist, and socialist

Source: What is Property? (1840), Ch. V: "Psychological Explanation of the Idea of Justice and Injustice, and the Determination of the Principle of Government and of Right," Part 2: Characteristics of Communism and of Property
Context: Communism is inequality, but not as property is. Property is the exploitation of the weak by the strong. Communism is the exploitation of the strong by the weak. In property, inequality of conditions is the result of force, under whatever name it be disguised: physical and mental force; force of events, chance, fortune; force of accumulated property, &c. In communism, inequality springs from placing mediocrity on a level with excellence. This damaging equation is repellent to the conscience, and causes merit to complain; for, although it may be the duty of the strong to aid the weak, they prefer to do it out of generosity, — they never will endure a comparison. Give them equal opportunities of labor, and equal wages, but never allow their jealousy to be awakened by mutual suspicion of unfaithfulness in the performance of the common task.
Communism is oppression and slavery. Man is very willing to obey the law of duty, serve his country, and oblige his friends; but he wishes to labor when he pleases, where he pleases, and as much as he pleases. He wishes to dispose of his own time, to be governed only by necessity, to choose his friendships, his recreation, and his discipline; to act from judgment, not by command; to sacrifice himself through selfishness, not through servile obligation. Communism is essentially opposed to the free exercise of our faculties, to our noblest desires, to our deepest feelings. Any plan which could be devised for reconciling it with the demands of the individual reason and will would end only in changing the thing while preserving the name. Now, if we are honest truth-seekers, we shall avoid disputes about words.
Thus, communism violates the sovereignty of the conscience, and equality: the first, by restricting spontaneity of mind and heart, and freedom of thought and action; the second, by placing labor and laziness, skill and stupidity, and even vice and virtue on an equality in point of comfort. For the rest, if property is impossible on account of the desire to accumulate, communism would soon become so through the desire to shirk.

“God, the devil, good, evil, it's all in our heads, not in Heaven or Hell, which we also invented. We do not realize that, having invented God, we immediately became His slaves.”

José Saramago (1922–2010) Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature

Interview with "El País", 2009.

“That it’s possible not to see a lie even when it’s in front of us.”

José Saramago book All the Names

Source: All the Names (1997), p. 210

“Fumbling in total darkness, they reached out to each other, naked, he penetrated her with desire and she received him eagerly, and they exchanged eagerness and desire until their bodies were locked in embrace, their movements in harmony, her voice rising from the depth of her being, his totally submerged, the cry that is born, prolonged, truncated, that muffled sob, that unexpected tear, and the machine trembles and shudders, probably no longer even on the ground but, having rent the screen of brambles and undergrowth, is now hovering at dead of night amid the clouds, Blimunda, Baltasar, his body weighing on hers, and both weighing on the earth, for at last they are here, having gone and returned.”

José Saramago book Baltasar and Blimunda

Em profunda escuridão se procuraram, nus, sôfrego entrou nela, ela o recebeu ansiosa, depois a sofreguidão dela, a ânsia dele, enfim os corpos encontrados, os movimentos, a voz que vem do ser profundo, aquele que não tem voz, o grito nascido, prolongado, interrompido, o soluço seco, a lágrima inesperada, e a máquina a tremer, a vibrar, porventura não está já na terra, rasgou a cortina de silvas e enleios, pairou no alto da noite, entre as nuvens, pesa o corpo dele sobre o dela, e ambos pesam sobre a terra, afinal estão aqui, foram e voltaram.
Source: Baltasar and Blimunda (1982), pp. 255–256

“The man changed position, turned his back on the wardrobe blocking the door and let his right arm slide down toward the side on which the dog is lying. A minute later, he was awake. He was thirsty. He turned on his bedside light, got up, shuffled his feet into the slippers which were, as always, providing a pillow for the dog's head, and went into the kitchen. Death followed him. The man filled a glass with water and drank it. At this point, the dog appeared, slaked his thirst in the water-dish next to the back door and then looked up at his master. I suppose you want to go out, said the cellist. He opened the door and waited until the animal came back. A little water remained in his glass. Death looked at it and made an effort to imagine what it must be like to feel thirsty, but failed. She would have been equally incapable of imagining it when she'd had to make people die of thirst in the desert, but at the time she hadn't even tried. The dog returned, wagging his tail. Let's go back to sleep, said the man. They went into the bedroom again, the dog turned around twice, then curled up into a ball. The man drew the sheet up to his neck, coughed twice and soon afterward was asleep again. Sitting in her corner, death was watching. Much later, the dog got up from the carpet and jumped onto the sofa. For the first time in her life, death knew what it felt like to have a dog on her lap.”

José Saramago book Death with Interruptions

Source: Death with Interruptions (2005), p. 172

“Blind. The apprentice thought, "we are blind", and he sat down and wrote Blindness to remind those who might read it that we pervert reason when we humiliate life, that human dignity is insulted every day by the powerful of our world, that the universal lie has replaced the plural truths, that man stopped respecting himself when he lost the respect due to his fellow-creatures.”

José Saramago (1922–2010) Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature

Nobel Lecture (1998)