Quotes about heart
page 45

William Tappan Thompson photo

“Such a flag would be a suitable emblem of our young confederacy, and sustained by the brave hearts and strong arms of the south, it would soon take rank among the proudest ensigns of the nations, and be hailed by the civilized world as THE WHITE MAN'S FLAG.”

William Tappan Thompson (1812–1882) American humorist

Savannah Morning News (28 April 1863); As quoted in Our Flag: Origin and Progress of the Flag of the United States of America https://books.google.com/books?id=vuRCAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA417 (1872), by George Henry Preble, Albany: Joel Munsell, pp. 417–418

Ayumi Hamasaki photo

“Though my heart is filled with feelings I want to convey
You see, I can't express them in words
If I had not met you
I wouldn't even have such an embarrassing pain”

Ayumi Hamasaki (1978) Japanese recording artist, lyricist, model, and actress

No Way To Say
Lyrics, Memorial Address

Radhanath Swami photo
Stephenie Meyer photo
James Russell Lowell photo

“They come transfigured back,
Secure from change in their high-hearted ways,
Beautiful evermore, and with the rays
Of morn on their white Shields of Expectation!”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

St. 8.
Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/1169/ (July 21, 1865)

Wallace Stevens photo

“Place honey on the altars and die,
You lovers that are bitter at heart.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

The Man With the Blue Guitar (1937)

Grant Morrison photo

“Most human lives are forgotten after four generations. We build our splendid houses on the edge of the abyss then distract and dazzle ourselves with entertainers and sex while we slowly at first, then more rapidly, spin around the ever-thirsty plughole in the middle. My treasured possessions -- all the silly little mementoes and toys and special books I’ve carried with me for decades -- will wind up on flea market tables or rot on garbage heaps. Someone else will inhabit the rooms that were mine. Everything that was important to me will mean nothing to the countless generations that follow our own. In the grand sprawl of it all, I have no significance at all. I don’t believe a giant gaseous pensioner will reward or censure me when my body stops working and I don’t believe individual consciousness survives for long after brain death so I lack the consolations of religion. I wanted Annihilator to peek into that implacable moment where everything we are comes to an end so I had to follow the Black Brick Road all the way down and seriously consider the abject pointlessness of all human endeavours. I found these contemplations thrilling and I was drawn to research pure nihilism, which led me to Ray Brassier’s Nihil Unbound and back to Ligotti. I have a fundamentally optimistic and positive view of human existence and the future and I think it’s important to face intelligent, well-argued challenges to that view on a regular basis. While I agree with Ligotti that the universe is, on the face of it, a blind emergent process, driven by chance over billions of years of trial and error to ultimately produce creatures capable of little more than flamboyant expressions of the agonizing awareness of their own imminent deaths, I don’t share his slightly huffy disappointment at this state of affairs. If the universe is intrinsically meaningless, if the mindless re-arrangement of atomic debris into temporarily arising then dissipating forms has no point, I can only ask, why do I see meaning everywhere, why can I find a point in everything? Why do other human beings like me seem to see meaning in everything too? If the sun is only an apocalyptic series of hydrogen fusion reactions, why does it look like an angel and inspire poetry? Why does the flesh and fur-covered bone and jelly of my cat’s face melt my heart? Is all that surging, roaring incandescent meaning inside me, or is it out there? “Meaning” to me is equivalent to “Magic.” The more significance we bring to things, even to the smallest and least important things, the more special, the more “magical” they seem to become. For all that materialistic science and existential philosophy tells us we live in a chaotic, meaningless universe, the evidence of my senses and the accounts of other human beings seem to indicate that, in fact, the whole universe and everything in it explodes second-to-second with beauty, horror, grandeur and significance when and wherever it comes into contact with consciousness. Therefore, it’s completely down to us to revel in our ability to make meaning, or not. Ligotti, like many extreme Buddhist philosophers, starts from the position that life is an agonizing, heartbreaking grave-bound veil of tears. This seems to be a somewhat hyperbolic view of human life; as far as I can see most of us round here muddle through ignoring death until it comes in close and life’s mostly all right with just enough significant episodes of sheer joy and connection and just enough sh-tty episodes of pain or fear. The notion that the whole span of our lives is no more than some dreadful rehearsal for hell may resonate with the deeply sensitive among us but by and large life is pretty okay generally for most of us. And for some, especially in the developed countries, “okay” equals luxurious. To focus on the moments of pain and fear we all experience and then to pretend they represent the totality of our conscious experience seems to me a little effete and indulgent. Most people don’t get to be born at all, ever. To see in that radiant impossibility only pointlessness, to see our experience as malignantly useless, as Ligotti does, seems to me a bit camp.”

Grant Morrison (1960) writer

2014
http://www.blastr.com/2014-9-12/grant-morrisons-big-talk-getting-deep-writer-annihilator-multiversity
On life

Jack Kevorkian photo
Cormac McCarthy photo
Jordin Sparks photo
Jean Paul Sartre photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Petula Clark photo
Akbar photo

“Islam, like the other two religions of the Judaic family, is exclusive-minded and intolerant by comparison with the religions and philosophies of Indian origin. Yet the influence of India on Akbar went so deep that he was characteristically Indian in (his) large-hearted catholicity.”

Akbar (1542–1605) 3rd Mughal Emperor

A. J. Toynbee, One World and India, p. 19. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 2

Báb photo
Bogumil Goltz photo

“What humiliation, what disgrace for us all, that it should be necessary for one man to exhort other men not to be inhuman and irrational towards their fellow-creatures! Do they recognise, then, no mind, no soul in them — have they not feeling, pleasure in existence, do they not suffer pain? Do their voices of joy and sorrow indeed fail to speak to the human heart and conscience — so that they can murder the jubilant lark, in the first joy of his spring-time, who ought to warm their hearts with sympathy, from delight in bloodshed or for their ‘sport,’ or with a horrible insensibility and recklessness only to practise their aim in shooting! Is there no soul manifest in the eyes of the living or dying animal — no expression of suffering in the eye of a deer or stag hunted to death — nothing which accuses them of murder before the avenging Eternal Justice? …. Are the souls of all other animals but man mortal, or are they essential in their organisation? Does the world-idea (Welt-Idee) pertain to them also — the soul of nature — a particle of the Divine Spirit? I know not; but I feel, and every reasonable man feels like me, it is in miserable, intolerable contradiction with our human nature, with our conscience, with our reason, with all our talk of humanity, destiny, nobility; it is in frightful (himmelschreinder) contradiction with our poetry and philosophy, with our nature and with our (pretended) love of nature, with our religion, with our teachings about benevolent design — that we bring into existence merely to kill, to maintain our own life by the destruction of other life. …. It is a frightful wrong that other species are tortured, worried, flayed, and devoured by us, in spite of the fact that we are not obliged to this by necessity; while in sinning against the defenceless and helpless, just claimants as they are upon our reasonable conscience and upon our compassion, we succeed only in brutalising ourselves. This, besides, is quite certain, that man has no real pity and compassion for his own species, so long as he is pitiless towards other races of beings.”

Bogumil Goltz (1801–1870) German humorist and satirist

Das Menschendasein in seinen weltewigen Zügen und Zeichen (1850); as quoted in The Ethics of Diet: A Catena of Authorities Deprecatory of the Practice of Flesh-eating https://archive.org/stream/ethicsofdietcate00will/ethicsofdietcate00will#page/n3/mode/2up by Howard Williams (London: F. Pitman, 1883), pp. 287-286.

Rumi photo

“I want a heart which is split, part by part, because of the pain of separation from God, so that I might explain my longing and complaint to it.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

As quoted in "Mevlana Jalal al-Din Rumi" http://en.mfethullahgulen.com/content/view/1820/49/ by Fethullah Gülen in The Fountain #24 (July-September 2004)
Variant translation: I want a heart which is split, chamber by chamber, by the pain of separation from God, so that I might explain my longings and desires to it.

George William Russell photo
Ram Dass photo
Annie Besant photo
James Thomson (B.V.) photo
Enoch Powell photo
Aurelia Henry Reinhardt photo
Frederick Douglass photo

“I was not more than thirteen years old, when in my loneliness and destitution I longed for some one to whom I could go, as to a father and protector. The preaching of a white Methodist minister, named Hanson, was the means of causing me to feel that in God I had such a friend. He thought that all men, great and small, bond and free, were sinners in the sight of God: that they were by nature rebels against His government; and that they must repent of their sins, and be reconciled to God through Christ. I cannot say that I had a very distinct notion of what was required of me, but one thing I did know well: I was wretched and had no means of making myself otherwise. I consulted a good old colored man named Charles Lawson, and in tones of holy affection he told me to pray, and to 'cast all my care upon God'. This I sought to do; and though for weeks I was a poor, broken-hearted mourner, traveling through doubts and fears, I finally found my burden lightened, and my heart relieved. I loved all mankind, slaveholders not excepted, though I abhorred slavery more than ever. I saw the world in a new light, and my great concern was to have everybody converted. My desire to learn increased, and especially, did I want a thorough acquaintance with the contents of the Bible”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Source: 1880s, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881), pp. 110–111.

Sri Aurobindo photo

“The indwelling deity who presides over the destiny of the race has raised in man's mind and heart the idea, the hope of a new order which will replace the old unsatisfactory order, and substitute for it conditions of the world's life which will in the end have a reasonable chance of establishing permanent peace and well-being…. It is for the men of our day and, at the most, of tomorrow to give the answer. For, too long a postponement or too continued a failure will open the way to a series of increasing catastrophes which might create a too prolonged and disastrous confusion and chaos and render a solution too difficult or impossible; it might even end in something like an irremediable crash not only of the present world-civilisation but of all civilisation…. The terror of destruction and even of large-scale extermination created by these ominous discoveries may bring about a will in the governments and peoples to ban and prevent the military use of these inventions, but, so long as the nature of mankind has not changed, this prevention must remain uncertain and precarious and an unscrupulous ambition may even get by it a chance of secrecy and surprise and the utilisation of a decisive moment which might conceivably give it victory and it might risk the tremendous chance.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

April, 1950 (From a Postcript Chapter to The Ideal of Human Unity.)
India's Rebirth

Ingrid Newkirk photo
Muhammad Iqbál photo

“"Heart – “It is absolutely certain that God does exist.””

Muhammad Iqbál (1877–1938) Urdu poet and leader of the Pakistan Movement

stray reflections http://www.allamaiqbal.com/

Robert Burns photo
Haruki Murakami photo
Tessa Virtue photo
Albert Camus photo
Gardiner Spring photo
Ray Comfort photo

“No one in his right mind wants to die. That cry is God-given. The Bible tells us that God has put eternity in our hearts.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

God doesn't believe in atheists (2002)

John Woolman photo
Alexander Maclaren photo
Richard Cobden photo
Colin Wilson photo
Jean de La Bruyère photo

“To the memory of Sir Thomas Denison, Knt., this monument was erected by his afflicted widow. He was an affectionate husband, a generous relation, a sincere friend, a good citizen, an honest man. Skilled in all the learning of the common law, he raised himself to great eminence in his profession; and showed by his practice, that a thorough knowledge of the legal art and form is not litigious, or an instrument of chicane, but the plainest, easiest, and shortest way to the end of strife. For the sake of the public he was pressed, and at the last prevailed upon, to accept the office of a judge in the Court of King's Bench. He discharged the important trust of that high office with unsuspected integrity, and uncommon ability. The clearness of his understanding, and the natural probity of his heart, led him immediately to truth, equity, and justice; the precision and extent of his legal knowledge enabled him always to find the right way of doing what was right. A zealous friend to the constitution of his country, he steadily adhered to the fundamental principle upon which it is built, and by which alone it can be maintained, a religious application of the inflexible rule of law to all questions concerning the power of the crown, and privileges of the subject. He resigned his office February 14, 1765, because from the decay of his health and the loss of his sight, he found himself unable any longer to execute it. He died September 8, 1765, without issue, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. He wished to be buried in his native country, and in this church. He lies here near the Lord Chief Justice Gascoigne, who by a resolute and judicious exertion of authority, supported law and government in a manner which has perpetuated his name, and made him an example famous to posterity.”

Thomas Denison (1699–1765) British judge (1699–1765)

Memorial inscription, reported in Edward Foss, The Judges of England, With Sketches of Their Lives (1864), Volume 8, p. 266-268.
About

John Ruskin photo

“Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

The Two Paths, Lecture II: The Unity of Art, section 54 (1859).

Joseph Campbell photo
Tim Cook photo
Mark Helprin photo
T. B. Joshua photo

“We should let love be uppermost in our hearts because all our doings without love are nothing.”

T. B. Joshua (1963) Nigerian Christian leader

In a special 'Seasons Greetings' message - "Choose The Path Of A Champion" http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/religion/Choose-The-Path-Of-A-Champion-T-B-Joshua-s-Seasons-Greetings-200153 Ghana Web (December 25 2010)

William Wordsworth photo
Christopher Marlowe photo

“My swelling heart for very anger breaks.”

Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) English dramatist, poet and translator

King Edward, Act II, scene ii, line 197
Edward II (c. 1592)

Eudora Welty photo
Robert Sheckley photo
Fali Sam Nariman photo
Ihara Saikaku photo
Dan Rather photo

“In one case as in the other, the question which gives away the sacrificial mentality underlying group belonging is the same: are you for us, or are you one of them? It is the question which reveals the impossibility of a cracking of heart, and thus the impossibility of Eucharist.”

James Alison (1959) Christian theologian, priest

Source: Faith Beyond Resentment: Fragments Catholic and Gay (2001), " Theology amidst the stones and dust http://girardianlectionary.net/res/alison_elijah.htm", p. 35.

George Raymond Richard Martin photo

“Much as I admire Tolkien, and I do admire Tolkien — he’s been a huge influence on me, and his Lord of the Rings is the mountain that leans over every other fantasy written since and shaped all of modern fantasy — there are things about it, the whole concept of the Dark Lord, and good guys battling bad guys, Good versus Evil, while brilliantly handled in Tolkien, in the hands of many Tolkien successors, it has become kind of a cartoon. We don’t need any more Dark Lords, we don’t need any more, ‘Here are the good guys, they’re in white, there are the bad guys, they’re in black. And also, they’re really ugly, the bad guys. It is certainly a genuine, legitimate topic as the core of fantasy, but I think the battle between Good and Evil is waged within the individual human hearts. We all have good in us and we all have evil in us, and we may do a wonderful good act on Tuesday and a horrible, selfish, bad act on Wednesday, and to me, that’s the great human drama of fiction. I believe in gray characters, as I’ve said before. We all have good and evil in us and there are very few pure paragons and there are very few orcs. A villain is a hero of the other side, as someone said once, and I think there’s a great deal of truth to that, and that’s the interesting thing. In the case of war, that kind of situation, so I think some of that is definitely what I’m aiming at.”

George Raymond Richard Martin (1948) American writer, screenwriter and television producer

AssignmentX interview (June 2011) http://www.assignmentx.com/2011/interview-game-of-thrones-creator-george-r-r-martin-on-the-future-of-the-franchise-part-2/

Hesiod photo
Joseph Addison photo
Muhammad al-Mahdi photo
William Cowper photo

“An honest man, close-buttoned to the chin,
Broadcloth without, and a warm heart within.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

"Epistle to Joseph Hill", line 62 (1785).

Ben Hecht photo
Patrick Buchanan photo
John Buchan photo
Oliver Wendell Holmes photo
Arthur Helps photo
Anne Louise Germaine de Staël photo

“In matters of the heart, nothing is true except the improbable.”

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël (1766–1817) Swiss author

Letter to Juliette Récamier (October 5, 1810), quoted in J. Christopher Herold, Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame de Staël (New York: Grove Press, 1958), p. 401

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Henry Van Dyke photo
Théodore Guérin photo
Georg Brandes photo

“The reason why we obtain no more in prayer, is because we expect no more. God usually answers us according to our own hearts.”

Richard Alleine (1611–1681) English clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 462.

Margaret Fuller photo
Nikki SooHoo photo
Tammy Smith photo
Marcus Aurelius photo

“My mistake has too often been that of too much haste. But it is not the people’s way to hurry, nor is it God’s way either. Hurry means worry, and worry effectually drives the peace of God from the heart.”

James O. Fraser (1886–1938) missionary to China, inventor of Tibeto-Burman Nosu alphabet

Souce: Geraldine Taylor. Behind the Ranges: The Life-changing Story of J.O. Fraser. Singapore: OMF International (IHQ) Ltd., 1998, 189.

Thomas Francis Meagher photo
Amy Lowell photo

“Life is a stream
On which we strew
Petal by petal the flower of our heart.”

Amy Lowell (1874–1925) US writer

"Petals," from Dome of Many-Coloured Glass (1912).

Terence photo
Dan Fogelberg photo

“Along the road your steps may stumble
Your thoughts may start to stray
But through it all a heart held humble
Levels and lights your way.”

Dan Fogelberg (1951–2007) singer-songwriter, musician

Along the Road.
Song lyrics, Phoenix (1979)

John Constable photo
Mitch Albom photo
Owen Lovejoy photo

“I believe that the love of freedom and the hatred of oppression under-girds and vitalizes the whole republican movement. The principles of our fathers in regard to human liberty and equality still live in the hearts of their descendants, and will find appropriate expression and suitable exponents.”

Owen Lovejoy (1811–1864) American politician

As quoted in His Brother's Blood: Speeches and Writings, 1838–64 https://books.google.com/books?id=qMEv8DNXVbIC&pg=PA158 (2004), edited by William Frederick Moore and Jane Ann Moore, p. 158
1850s, Speech at the Joliet Convention in Illinois (June 1858)

Wolfram von Eschenbach photo

“Day thrust its brightness through the window-pane.
They, locked together, strove to keep Day out
And could not, whence they grew aware of dread.
She, his beloved, casting her arms about
Her loved one, caught him close to her again.
Her eyes drenched both their cheeks. She said:
"One body and two hearts are we."”

Wolfram von Eschenbach (1170–1220) German knight and poet

Der tac mit kraft al durh diu venster dranc.
vil slôze sie besluzzen.
daz half niht: des wart in sorge kunt.
diu vriundîn den vriunt vast an sich twanc.
ir ougen diu beguzzen
ir beider wangel. sus sprach zim ir munt:
"zwei herze und einen lîp hân wir."
"Den Morgenblic bî Wahtærs Sange Erkôs", line 11; translation in Margaret F. Richey Essays on Mediæval German Poetry (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1969) p. 99.

Moshe Chaim Luzzatto photo
John Fletcher photo

“Twas when young Eustace wore his heart in's breeches.”

Act V.
The Elder Brother (c. 1625; published 1637)

John Danforth photo
Marsha Blackburn photo
Jack Judge photo
Stanley Baldwin photo
Neamat Imam photo

“Our hearts have to cry to end our tears.”

The Black Coat (2013)

Bram Stoker photo
Dave Matthews photo
George Eliot photo
Stephen Foster photo

“The day goes by like a shadow o’er the heart,
With sorrow where all was delight;
The time has come when the darkies have to part:
Then my old Kentucky home, good night!”

Stephen Foster (1826–1864) American songwriter

My Old Kentucky Home. Reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).