Quotes about heart
page 11

Malcolm X photo

“Never have I witnessed such sincere hospitality and the overwhelming spirit of true brotherhood as is practiced by people of all colors and races here in this ancient Holy Land, the House of Abraham, Muhammad, and all the other Prophets of the Holy Scriptures. For the past week, I have been utterly speechless and spellbound by the graciousness I see displayed all around me by people of all colors....
You may be shocked by these words coming from me. But on this pilgrimage, what I have seen, and experienced, has forced me to rearrange much of my thought-patterns previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions. This was not too difficult for me. Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.

During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass, and slept in the same bed (or on the same rug) -- while praying to the same God -- with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in the actions and in the deeds of the "white" Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan, and Ghana.

We were truly all the same (brothers) -- because their belief in one God had removed the "white" from their minds, the 'white' from their behavior, and the 'white' from their attitude.

I could see from this, that perhaps if white Americans could accept the Oneness of God, then perhaps, too, they could accept in reality the Oneness of Man -- and cease to measure, and hinder, and harm others in terms of their "differences" in color.

With racism plaguing America like an incurable cancer, the so-called "Christian" white American heart should be more receptive to a proven solution to such a destructive problem. Perhaps it could be in time to save America from imminent disaster -- the same destruction brought upon Germany by racism that eventually destroyed the Germans themselves.

They asked me what about the Hajj had impressed me the most.... I said, "The brotherhood! The people of all races, color, from all over the world coming to gether as one! It has proved to me the power of the One God.... All ate as one, and slept as one. Everything about the pilgrimage atmosphere accented the Oneness of Man under One God.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Text of a letter written following his Hajj (1964)

Baldassarre Castiglione photo

“Who does not know that without women we can feel no content or satisfaction throughout this life of ours, which but for them would be rude and devoid of all sweetness and more savage than that of wild beasts? Who does not know that women alone banish from our hearts all vile and base thoughts, vexations, miseries, and those turbid melancholies that so often are their fellows?”

Baldassarre Castiglione (1478–1529) Italian Renaissance author (1478-1529)

Chi non sa che senza le donne sentir non si po contento o satisfazione alcuna in tutta questa nostra vita, la quale senza esse saria rustica e priva d'ogni dolcezza e piú aspera che quella dell'alpestre fiere? Chi non sa che le donne sole levano de' nostri cori tutti li vili e bassi pensieri, gli affanni, le miserie e quelle turbide tristezze che cosí spesso loro sono compagne?
Bk. 3, ch. 51; p. 216.
Souced, Il Libro del Cortegiano (1528)

Leonardo Da Vinci photo
Barack Obama photo

“We long for unity, but are unwilling to pay the price. But of course, true unity cannot be so easily won. It starts with a change in attitudes - a broadening of our minds, and a broadening of our hearts.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Remarks of Senator Barack Obama: The Great Need of the Hour (January 20, 2008 in Atlanta, Georgia) http://www.reobama.com/SpeechesJan2008.htm
2008

Charles Spurgeon photo
Abdus Salam photo

“The Holy Quran enjoins us to reflect on the verities of Allah’s created laws of nature; however, that our generation has been privileged to glimpse a part of His design is a bounty and a grace for which I render thanks with a humble heart.”

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

Address to UNESCO (1979), as published in Ideals and Realities: Selected Essays of Abdus Salam http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=084erO4KJCUC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false (1989), p. 251.

John Scalzi photo
Han Yong-un photo
Sojourner Truth photo

““I am pleading for my people, a poor downtrodden race
Who dwell in freedom’s boasted land with no abiding place
I am pleading that my people may have their rights restored,
For they have long been toiling, and yet had no reward
They are forced the crops to culture, but not for them they yield,
Although both late and early, they labor in the field.
While I bear upon my body, the scores of many a gash,
I’m pleading for my people who groan beneath the lash.
I’m pleading for the mothers who gaze in wild despair
Upon the hated auction block, and see their children there.
I feel for those in bondage—well may I feel for them.
I know how fiendish hearts can be that sell their fellow men.
Yet those oppressors steeped in guilt—I still would have them live;
For I have learned of Jesus, to suffer and forgive!
I want no carnal weapons, no machinery of death.
For I love to not hear the sound of war’s tempestuous breath.
I do not ask you to engage in death and bloody strife.
I do not dare insult my God by asking for their life.
But while your kindest sympathies to foreign lands do roam,
I ask you to remember your own oppressed at home.
I plead with you to sympathize with signs and groans and scars,
And note how base the tyranny beneath the stripes and stars.”

Sojourner Truth (1797–1883) African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist

Olive Gilbert & Sojourner Truth (1878), Narrative of Sojourner Truth, a Bondswoman of Olden Time, page 303.

Abul A'la Maududi photo
Malcolm X photo
Jean Jacques Rousseau photo

“The thirst after happiness is never extinguished in the heart of man.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher

Source: Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1765-1770; published 1782), Books VIII-XII, IX

Pope Francis photo
Slavoj Žižek photo
Friedrich Schiller photo

“The dictates of the heart are the voice of fate.”

Act III, sc. viii
Wallenstein (1798), Part I - Die Piccolomini (The Piccolomini)

Pink (singer) photo

“Just give me a reason,
Just a little bit's enough.
Just a second we're not broken just bent
And we can learn to love again.
It's in the stars;
It's been written in the scars on our hearts.
We're not broken just bent,
And we can learn to love again.”

Pink (singer) (1979) American singer-songwriter

Just Give Me a Reason, featuring Nate Ruess, written by Pink, Jeff Bhasker, and Nate Ruess
Song lyrics, The Truth About Love (2012)

Abraham Lincoln photo

“I believe, if we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class. There seems ever to have been a proneness in the brilliant and warm-blooded to fall into this vice.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Address to the Springfield Washingtonian Temperance Society (22 February 1842), quoted at greater length in John Carroll Power (1889) Abraham Lincoln: His Life, Public Services, Death and Funeral Cortege
1840s

Catherine of Genoa photo
Rumi photo

“When in Love,
body, mind, heart and soul don't even exist.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

Hush Don't Say Anything to God (1999)

Theodore Roosevelt photo

“I believe with all my heart in athletics, in sport, and have always done as much thereof as my limited capacity and my numerous duties would permit; but I believe in bodily vigor chiefly because I believe in the spirit that lies back of it. If a boy can not go into athletics because he is not physically able to, that does not count in the least against him. He may be just as much of a man in after life as if he could, because it is not physical address but the moral quality behind it which really counts. But if he has the physical ability and keeps out because he is afraid, because he is lazy, because he is a mollycoddle, then I haven't any use for him. If he has not the right spirit, the spirit which makes him scorn self-indulgence, timidity and mere ease, that is if he has not the spirit which normally stands at the base of physical hardihood, physical prowess, then that boy does not amount to much, and he is not ordinarily going to amount to much in after life. Of course, there are people with special abilities so great as to outweigh even defects like timidity and laziness, but the man who makes the Republic what it is, if he has not courage, the capacity to show prowess, the desire for hardihood; if he has not the scorn of mere ease, the scorn of pain, the scorn of discomfort (all of them qualities that go to make a man's worth on an eleven or a nine or an eight); if he has not something of that sort in him then the lack is so great that it must be amply atoned for, more than amply atoned for, in other ways, or his usefulness to the community will be small. So I believe heartily in physical prowess, in the sports that go to make physical prowess. I believe in them not only because of the amusement and pleasure they bring, but because I think they are useful. Yet I think you had a great deal better never go into them than to go into them with the idea that they are the chief end even of school or college; still more of life.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, Address at the Prize Day Exercises at Groton School (1904)

Fukuzawa Yukichi photo
Shahrukh Khan photo
Angela of Foligno photo
Saul Bellow photo
Black Elk photo
Mike Tyson photo

“I have the same malice in my heart as far as the fight game is concerned, but outside the ring, I won't say anything a dignified man won't say.”

Mike Tyson (1966) American boxer

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1077/is_n11_v50/ai_17362107
On himself

Robert Schumann photo

“To send light into the depths of the human heart -- this is the artist's calling!”

Robert Schumann (1810–1856) German composer, aesthete and influential music critic

Quotes in: John Sullivan Dwight (1856) Dwight's Journal of Music, Vol. 7-8, p. 12
Original: Licht senden in die Tiefen des menschlichen Herzens -- des Künstlers Beruf!; Quoted in E.W. Fritzsch (1884) Musikalisches Wochenblatt, Volume 15

Thomas Paine photo
David Manners photo
José Saramago photo
Angelus Silesius photo
Kate Bush photo
Ramana Maharshi photo
George Linley photo

“Tho' lost to sight, to memory dear
Thou ever wilt remain;
One only hope my heart can cheer,—
The hope to meet again.

Oh, fondly on the past I dwell,
And oft recall those hours
When, wandering down the shady dell,
We gathered the wild-flowers.

Yes, life then seemed one pure delight,
Tho' now each spot looks drear;
Yet tho' thy smile be lost to sight,
To memory thou art dear.

Oft in the tranquil hour of night,
When stars illume the sky,
I gaze upon each orb of light,
And wish that thou wert by.

I think upon that happy time,
That time so fondly loved,
When last we heard the sweet bells chime,
As thro' the fields we roved.”

George Linley (1798–1865) British writer

Song, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). This song was written and composed by Linley for Mr. Augustus Braham, and sung by him. It is not known when it was written,—probably about 1830. Another song, entitled "Though lost to Sight, to Memory dear," was published in London in 1880, purporting to have been written by Ruthven Jenkyns in 1703 and published in the "Magazine for Mariners". That magazine, however, never existed, and the composer of the music acknowledged, in a private letter, that he copied the words from an American newspaper. The reputed author, Ruthven Jenkyns, was living, under another name, in California in 1882.

Bellamy Young photo

“That little, small voice in your mind and in your heart that makes you curious about being vegan is something you should listen to, because that’s the sound of your conscience making you be compassionate.”

Bellamy Young (1970) American artist

"Longtime Vegan Bellamy Young: Variety Is Infinite", video interview with PETA (10 February 2016) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLjdSQqq52o.

Sid Vicious photo

“I'm not vicious really. I consider myself kind-hearted. I love my mum.”

Sid Vicious (1957–1979) English bassist and vocalist

Daily Mirror, June 11, 1977, as reported in Fred Vermorel, Judy Vermorel, Sex Pistols: The Inside Story (1987), p. 169.

Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Aurelius Augustinus photo

“Let each look to his own heart: let him not keep hatred against his brother for any hard word; on account of earthly contention let him not become earth.”

Aurelius Augustinus (354–430) early Christian theologian and philosopher

First Homily, Paragraph 11, as translated by H. Browne, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 7 (1888)
Ten Homilies on the First Epistle of John (414)

Lewis Carroll photo

“The human heart is an egg; and out of it are hatched this world and heaven and hell.”

Frank Crane (1861–1928) American Presbyterian minister

Four Minute Essays Vol. 5 (1919), The Human Heart

Benjamin Disraeli photo
Antonio Gramsci photo
Catherine of Genoa photo
Thomas Paine photo
Abraham Lincoln photo
Ozzy Osbourne photo
W.B. Yeats photo
Antonin Scalia photo
Barack Obama photo
Abraham Lincoln photo
Solón photo

“Watch well each separate citizen,
Lest having in his heart of hearts
A secret spear, one still may come
Saluting you with cheerful face,
And utter with a double tongue
The feigned good wishes of his wary mind.”

Solón (-638–-558 BC) Athenian legislator

Diogenes Laërtius (trans. C. D. Yonge) The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (1853), "Solon", sect. 13, p. 29.

John Green photo

“I would always love Alaska Young, my crooked neighbor, with all my crooked heart.”

Miles "Pudge" Halter, p. 218
Looking for Alaska (2005)

Mariah Carey photo
George Washington photo

“I now make it my earnest prayer, that God would have you, and the State over which you preside, in his holy protection; that he would incline the hearts of the citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to Government; to entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another, for their fellow citizens of the United States at large; and, particularly, for their brethren who have served in the Geld; and finally, that he would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility, and pacifick temper of the mind, which were the characteristicks of the divine Author of our blessed religion; without an humble imitation of whose example, in these things, we can never hope to be a happy Nation.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Circular Letter to the Governours of the several States (18 June 1783). Misreported as "I make it my constant prayer that God would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility, and pacific temper of mind, which were the characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed religion; without a humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy nation", in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 315
1780s

W.B. Yeats photo
Karl Dönitz photo

“Certainly inside my heart I know degrees of difference. But I can't blame any of these men who share a common fate with me. The big folly of this trial is that it lacks the two men who are to blame for anything which is criminal, namely Hitler and Himmler.”

Karl Dönitz (1891–1980) President of Germany; admiral in command of German submarine forces during World War II

To Leon Goldensohn, July 14, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004.

Meera Bai photo

“That dark dweller in Btaj
Is my only refuge.
O, my companion,
Worldly comfort is an illusion,
As soon as you get it, it goes
I have chosen the Indestructible for my refuge
Whom the snake of death
Will not devour.
My Beloved dwells in my heart,
I have actually seen that Abode of Joy.
Mir’s Lord is Hari, the Indestructible
My Lord, I have taken refuge with Thee
Thy slave.”

Meera Bai Hindu mystic poet

Mīrābāī, in Indian Religions: A Historical Reader of Spiritual Expression and Experience http://books.google.co.in/books?id=HTepAfJv_6YC&pg=PA351, p. 351
Variant: O my companion, worldly comfort is illusion,
As soon you get it, it goes.
I have chosen the indestructible for my refuge,
Him whom the snake of death will not devour.
My beloved dwells in my heart all day,
I have actually seen that abode of joy.
Meera's lord is Hari, the indestructible.
My lord, I have taken refuge with you, your maidservant.

Jean Jacques Rousseau photo
Nathaniel Hawthorne photo
Robert Browning photo
Thomas Hood photo
Johan Cruyff photo
Ferdinand Hodler photo

“The artist's mission is to give shape to what is eternal in nature, to reveal its inherent beauty; he sublimates the shapes of the human body. He shows an enlarged and simplified nature, liberated from all the details, which do not tell us anything. He shows us a work according to the size of his own experience, of his heart and his spirit.”

Ferdinand Hodler (1853–1918) Swiss artist

Quote from a speech of Ferdinand Hodler: 'The artist's mission' (held in Freibourg in 1897), first published in 1923 in Zurich; as cited by Paul Westheim in Confessions of Artists - Letters, Memoirs and Observations of Contemporary Artists, Propyläen Publishing House, Berlin, 1925

Thomas Paine photo
Salman Khan photo
Martin Luther photo
Bahá'u'lláh photo
Jack Welch photo

“At the heart of this culture is an understanding that an organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive business advantage.”

Jack Welch (1935) American executive: General Electric CEO

Cited in: Robert Slater (1998), Jack Welch & The G.E. Way: Management Insights and Leadership. p. 12

John of the Cross photo

“Live as though only God and yourself were in this world, so that your heart may not be detained by anything human.”

John of the Cross (1542–1591) Spanish mystic and Roman Catholic saint

The Sayings of Light and Love

Jim Caviezel photo
Barack Obama photo

“You're the ones who are going to have to seize freedom, because a true revolution of the spirit begins in each of our hearts.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2012, Yangon University Speech (November 2012)

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien photo

“The heart of Man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) British philologist and author, creator of classic fantasy works

Mythopoeia (1931)

Henri Barbusse photo
Martin Luther photo

“My whole heart and soul are stirred and incensed against the Turks and Mohammed, when I see this intolerable raging of the Devil. Therefore I shall pray and cry to God, nor rest until I know that my cry is heard in heaven.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Statement while being confined to residence at Coburg, as quoted in History of the Christian Church, (1910) http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc7.ii.ix.vii.html by Philip Schaff, Vol. VII : Modern Christianity : The German Reformation, § 123. Luther at the Coburg; though it mentions Muhammad, this remark might actually be directed at those responsible for his confinement, as he makes allusions to dwelling in the "empire of birds" and his location as a "Sinai" and regularly uses other uncomplimentary comparisons of those involved in suppressing his ideas to figures unpopular to himself and his contemporaries.

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just photo
Pope Francis photo
Sören Kierkegaard photo
Jean Jacques Rousseau photo

“I want you to read the true system of the heart, drafted by a decent man and published under another name. I do not want you to be biased against good and useful books merely because a man unworthy of reading them has the audacity to call himself the Author.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher

First Dialogue; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
Dialogues: Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques (published 1782)

Langston Hughes photo

“Way Down South in Dixie
(Break the heart of me)
They hung my black young lover
To a cross roads tree.”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

"Song for a Dark Girl" (l. 1-4), from Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927)

Sylvia Earle photo
Barack Obama photo

“And at some point, I know that one of my daughters will ask, perhaps my youngest, will ask, "Daddy, why is this monument here? What did this man do?" How might I answer them? Unlike the others commemorated in this place, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was not a president of the United States — at no time in his life did he hold public office. He was not a hero of foreign wars. He never had much money, and while he lived he was reviled at least as much as he was celebrated. By his own accounts, he was a man frequently racked with doubt, a man not without flaws, a man who, like Moses before him, more than once questioned why he had been chosen for so arduous a task — the task of leading a people to freedom, the task of healing the festering wounds of a nation's original sin. And yet lead a nation he did. Through words he gave voice to the voiceless. Through deeds he gave courage to the faint of heart. By dint of vision, and determination, and most of all faith in the redeeming power of love, he endured the humiliation of arrest, the loneliness of a prison cell, the constant threats to his life, until he finally inspired a nation to transform itself, and begin to live up to the meaning of its creed.
Like Moses before him, he would never live to see the Promised Land. But from the mountain top, he pointed the way for us — a land no longer torn asunder with racial hatred and ethnic strife, a land that measured itself by how it treats the least of these, a land in which strength is defined not simply by the capacity to wage war but by the determination to forge peace — a land in which all of God's children might come together in a spirit of brotherhood.
We have not yet arrived at this longed for place. For all the progress we have made, there are times when the land of our dreams recedes from us — when we are lost, wandering spirits, content with our suspicions and our angers, our long-held grudges and petty disputes, our frantic diversions and tribal allegiances. And yet, by erecting this monument, we are reminded that this different, better place beckons us, and that we will find it not across distant hills or within some hidden valley, but rather we will find it somewhere in our hearts.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Groundbreaking Ceremony (13 November 2006)
2006

Sri Aurobindo photo
Victoria Woodhull photo
Mike Oldfield photo
Marquis de Sade photo
E. L. James photo
Ronald Reagan photo

“America's future rests in a thousand dreams inside your hearts. It rests in the message of hope in songs of a man so many young Americans admire -- New Jersey's own, Bruce Springsteen.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Speech in Hammonton, N.J. http://www.myhammonton.com/reaganhammonton.php (19 September 1984)
1980s, First term of office (1981–1985)

Joseph Goebbels photo

“A child laughs when it feels joy and cries when it feels pain. Both things, laughing and crying, it does with its whole heart. We have all become so tall and so clever. We know so much and we have read so much. But one thing we have forgot: to laugh and cry like the children do.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Das Kind lacht, wenn es Freude hat, und weint, wenn es Schmerz empfindet. Bei beidem, bei Lachen und Weinen ist sein ganzes Herz dabei. Wir sind alle so groß und klug geworden. Wir wissen so viel und haben so viel gelesen. Aber eines haben wir vergessen: zu lachen und zu weinen wie die Kinder.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

Frank Zappa photo
John Chrysostom photo
Augustus photo

“My dear Tiberius, you must not give way to youthful emotion or take it to heart if anyone speaks ill of me; let us be satisfied if we can make people stop short at unkind words.”
Aetati tuae, mi Tiberi, noli in hac re indulgere et nimium indignari quemquam esse, qui de me male loquatur; satis est enim, si hoc habemus ne quis nobis male facere possit.

Augustus (-63–14 BC) founder of Julio-Claudian dynasty and first emperor of the Roman Empire

Suetonius, Divus Augustus, paragraph 51. Translation: Robert Graves, 1957.

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues photo
George Washington photo
John Cassian photo
Thomas à Kempis photo

“If thou knewest the whole Bible by heart, and the sayings of all the philosophers, what would it profit thee without the love of God and without grace?”

Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471) German canon regular

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 365.

Mark Twain photo

“Warm summer sun, shine kindly here;
Warm southern wind, blow softly here;
Green sod above, lie light, lie light —
Good-night, dear heart, good-night, good-night.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Epitaph for his daughter, Olivia Susan Clemens (1896), this is actually a slight adaptation of the poem "Annette" by Robert Richardson; more details are available at "The Poem on Susy Clemens' Headstone" http://www.twainquotes.com/headstone.html
Misattributed

George Fox photo
Charles Manson photo