Quotes about heart
page 58

“Faith is a loyal Wife.
Charity is a Mother.
An ardent mother, noble-hearted.
Or an older sister who is like a mother.
Hope is a little girl, nothing at all.”

Charles Péguy (1873–1914) French poet, essayist, and editor

The Portal of the Mystery of Hope (1912)

Faith, Hope, Girl, Sister

“You want to know if the heart of a man or a woman can contain enough love for more than one person? … I think it's perfectly possible as long as one of those people doesn’t turn into … a Zahir.”

Paulo Coelho book The Zahir

Source: The Zahir (2005), p. 128.

Love, People, Thinking, Personality

“The editor introduces Muhammad Ghuri in the Taj-ul-Maasir of Hasan Nizami as follows: 'After dwelling on the advantage and necessity of holy wars, without which the fold of Muhammad's flock could never be filled, he says that such a hero as these obligations of religion require has been found, 'during the reign of the lord of the world Mu'izzu-d dunya wau-d din, the Sultan of Sultans, Abu-l Muzaffar Muhammad bin Sam bin Husain' the destroyer of infidels and plural-worshippers etc.,' and that Almighty Allah had selected him from amongst the kings and emperors of the time, 'for he had employed himself in extirpating the enemies of religion and the state, and had deluged the land of Hind with the blood of their hearts, so that to the very day of resurrection travellers would have to pass over pools of gore in boats, - had taken every fort and stronghold which he attacked, and ground its foundations and pillars to powder under the feet of fierce and gigantic elephants, - had sent the whole world of idolatry to the fire of hell, by the well-watered blade of his Hindi sword, - had founded mosques and colleges in the places of images and idols'.'The narrative proceeds: 'Having equipped and set in order the army of Islam, and unfurled the standards of victory and the flags of power, trusting in the aid of the Almighty, he proceeded towards Hindustan…”

Muhammad of Ghor (1160–1206) Ghurid Sultan

Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 209-212. Quoted in Sita Ram Goel : The Calcutta Quran Petition, ch. 6.

War, World, Religion, Travel

“Eternity has no gray hairs! The flowers fade, the heart withers, man grows old and dies, the world lies down in the sepulchre of ages, but time writes no wrinkles on the brow of Eternity.”

Reginald Heber (1783–1826) English clergyman

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 213.

Age, World, Flowers, Time

“But oh my heart that will not give itself
Break, you bastard, ripped by your loneliness!”

Chairil Anwar (1922–1949) Indonesian poet

"Sia-Sia" ["In Vain"] (February 1943), p. 11
The Complete Poetry and Prose of Chairil Anwar (trans. Burton Raffel)

Loneliness

“Tis now since I sat down before
That foolish fort, a heart,
(Time strangely spent) a year, and more,
And still I did my part:”

John Suckling (1609–1642) English poet

Tis Now, Since I Sat Down Before.
Other poems

Time, Parting

“Just when you think there's nothing to write about, Nixon says, "I am not a crook." Jimmy Carter says, "I have lusted after women in my heart." President Reagan says, "I have just taken a urinalysis test, and I am not on dope."”

Art Buchwald (1925–2007) journalist, humorist, United States Marine

Time magazine (29 September 1986).

Women, Thinking

“The thin-lipped armorer,
Hephaestos, hobbled away,
Thetis of the shining breasts
Cried out in dismay
At what the god had wrought
To please her son, the strong
Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles
Who would not live long.”

W. H. Auden book The Shield of Achilles

The Shield of Achilles (1952)

God, Strong

“Come, then, with what voice Thou wilt come, Thou power- clad Messenger of my Redeemer! Come with thunder on Thy tongue, or with a sweet "harp of ten strings;" come to us simple as a little child, or wise as a scribe instructed of God; but, O! let us only feel that fire in Thy message which lies not in sentences nor in tones, but in a heart itself inflamed from above, and pouring fire into our hearts.”

William Arthur (minister) (1819–1901) Wesleyan Methodist minister and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 323.

God, Feeling

“He was very pure in mind and heart. He was a lover: a lover not only of his race but a lover of all mankind. His heart was so broad, so great, so magnanimous, and this gave him a most sincere feeling of absolute oneness with everyone. This is what made him so divinely great.”

Sri Chinmoy (1931–2007) Indian writer and guru

On Martin Luther King, Jr.
America The Beautiful (2010)

Feeling, Lovers, Sincerity

“I am going to help everyone I can to understand the Buddha’s teachings, I am going to help everyone I can to recite the Great Compassion Mantra and the Heart Sutra, I am going to let everyone know how great the Buddha’s teachings are. I am going to make world peace a reality.”

Jun Hong Lu (1959) Australian Buddhist leader

Master Jun Hong Lu - Ambassador of Peace Education https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrZUen8PMVI&feature=youtu.be&list=PLU6NSq1Oq8pxTDav8m7__9IVbfqlTPB4C&t=175, YouTube, 2016 Guan Yin Citta Dharma Door

World, Peace, Understanding, Reality

“I even thought her heart taught me something, in spite of its inexperience, or perhaps precisely because of it, for in matters of love one unlearns with practice, and the novice is the learned one.”

Machado de Assis (1839–1908) Brazilian writer

Creio até que o coração dela ensinou-me alguma coisa, embora noviço, ou por isso mesmo. Nesta matéria desaprende-se com o uso e o ignorante é que é douto.
"Primas de Sapucaia!" (1883), first collected in Histórias sem data (1884); Jack Schmitt and Lorie Ishimatsu (trans.) The Devil's Church, and Other Stories (London: Grafton, 1987) p. 19.

Love, Learning

“Are we ready to believe in the power of our own voices? Are we ready to cast aside our fear and cynicism? Are we ready to work our hearts out to make our dream a reality? Are we ready to overcome? If we are truly ready, then now is the time. This one’s on us. We cannot afford to wait. We cannot afford to doubt. We cannot afford to make excuses. We have this moment of opportunity. And we need to seize it.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

2000s, A Challenge to Overcome (November 2007)

Fear, Dreams, Reality, Time

“One wonders that there can be found a man courageous enough to occupy the post. It is a matter of meditation. Having given it a few minutes I come to the conclusion in the serenity of my heart and the peace of my conscience that he must be either an extreme megalomaniac or an utterly unconscious being.”

Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Polish-British writer

"The Censor of Plays" (1907)

Peace, Courage

“I would never want to film hard-core pornography, because it always looks like open-heart surgery to me.”

John Waters (1946) American filmmaker, actor, comedian and writer

Books, Shock Value: A Tasteful Book About Bad Taste (1981)

“Poets have imagined no utterance of fiends or hobgoblins so fearfully appropriate as a laugh. And even the obtuse lime-burner felt his nerves shaken, as this strange man looked inward at his own heart, and burst into laughter that rolled away into the night, and was indistinctly reverberated among the hills.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

p, 125
"Ethan Brand" (1850)

Imagination, Laughter, Night

“The prayer of a person is (in reality) a light in his heart, so whoever desires, can illuminate his heart”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

by means of prayers
Kanzul `Ummal, Volume7, Tradition 18973
Shi'ite Hadith

Reality, Light, Personality

“Have I told you lately that I love you?
Have I told you there's no one above you?
Fill my heart with gladness,
Take away my sadness,
Ease my troubles, that's what you do.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Have I Told You Lately
Song lyrics, Avalon Sunset (1989)

Love, Sadness, Cute, Romantic

“The human heart is a great green tree, and many strange birds come and sing in its branches; a few build nests, but most are from far lands north and south, and never come again.”

Frank Crane (1861–1928) American Presbyterian minister

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

Bird, Tree, Singing

“But still the great public opinion of the free States was unmoved. It cried angrily, 'You're only making matters worse. It's very hard, but what can we do? It's none of our business. It's none of our business'. But when 1850 came, and theory was found to be fact, when the man who was angrily crying, 'It's none of my business, what have I to do with slavery?' suddenly felt the quivering, panting fugitive clinging to his knees — a wretched, forlorn, outcast, hunted man, guilty of no crime but color, and begging the succor that no honest man would refuse to a cur cowering on his threshold — then, as he stood aghast and heard Slavery thundering at his door, 'I am the law. Give me my prey! Give me my prey!”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

he felt God knocking at his heart, 'Whoso doeth it unto the least of these my little ones, doeth it unto me'.
1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

God, Law, Color, Business

“I see a face of love,
Fair as sweet music when my heart was strong:
Yea — art thou come again to me, great Song?"
The face bent over him like silver night
In long-remembered summers; that calm light
Of days which shine in firmaments of thought,
That past unchangeable, from change still wrought.”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

The Legend of Jubal (1869)

Love, Art, Music, Light

“Its heart was buried in Wounded Knee,
But it will come to rise again.”

Bobby Sands (1954–1981) Irish volunteer of the Provisional Irish Republican Army

The Rhythm of Time

“For ever so our thoughtful hearts repeat
On fields of triumph dirges of defeat;
And still we turn on gala-days to tread
Among the rustling memories of the dead.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

III, st. 3.
The Fall of the Leaves (1874)

Memory, Dead

“But when you get to the other side of the Sierra Nevada, you don't see the green of the Sacramento Valley, you see the desolation of the Pit River Valley. You see rocks and stunted growth, and mountain deserts. It's just, it's just a pain, it's a shock, it's a hit in the head, it hurts your heart to see what still lies ahead. And you haven't gone a short cut. What you've done is you've gone north, and you're at what's called Goose Lake. So instead of going west, you've gone north-northwest. Now you've got to go south.”

J. S. Holliday (1924–2006) American historian

About the route to California
The West (1996)

Pain, Mountain, Hurt

“Already an old man, he [Samuel Johnson] ventured on his Highland tour; and his heart, bound with triple brass, did not recoil before twenty-seven individual cups of tea.”

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer

314.
Aes Triplex (1878)

Tea

“What is this creature, Music, save the Art,
The Rhythm that the planets journey by?
The living Sun-Ray entering the heart,
Touching the Life with that which cannot die?”

John Masefield (1878–1967) English poet and writer

" Where does the uttered Music go? http://www.williamwalton.net/works/choral/where_does_the_uttered_music_go.html" (1946)

Life, Art, Music, Sun

“The human heart is a tangled wood wherein no man knows his way.”

Frank Crane (1861–1928) American Presbyterian minister

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

Way

“If one of two lovers is loyal, and the other jealous and false, how may their friendship last, for Love is slain! But sweetly and discreetly love passes from person to person, from heart to heart, or it is nothing worth. For what the lover would, that would the beloved; what she would ask of him that should he go before to grant. Without accord such as this, love is but a bond and a constraint. For above all things Love means sweetness, and truth, and measure.”

Marie de France medieval poet

Se l'uns des amans est loiax,
E li autre est jalox è faus,
Si est amors entr'ex fausée,
Ne puet avoir lunge durée.
Amors n'a soing de compagnun,
Boin amors n'est se de Dex nun,
De cors en cors, de cuer en cuer,
Autrement n'est prex à nul fuer.
Tulles qui parla d'amistié,
Dist assés bien en son ditié,
Que vent amis, ce veut l'amie
Dunt est boine la compaignie,
S'ele le veut è il l'otreit.
Dunt la druerie est à dreit,
Puisque li uns l'autre desdit,
N'i a d'amors fors c'un despit;
Assés puet-um amors trover,
Mais sens estuet al' bien garder,
Douçour è francise è mesure.
"Graelent", line 85; pp. 149-50.
Misattributed

Love, Friendship, Truth, Lovers

“Organizations such as the American Heart Association have strongly urged that the consumption of milk and other dairy products be reduced by Americans of all ages-and for good reason. Diseases of the heart and major blood vessels will kill about one million Americans this year.”

Frank Oski (1932–1996) American pediatrician

Source: Don't Drink Your Milk! (1983), p. 27

Age, Disease

“A father's heart is nature's finest work.”

Antoine François Prévost (1697–1763) French novelist

Un cœur de père est le chef-d'œuvre de la nature.
Part 2, p. 205; translation p. 117.
L'Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut (1731)

Nature

“It is the anti-colonial ideology of his African father that Barack Obama took to heart.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Source: Books, The Roots of Obama's Rage (2010), Ch. 2: The Black Man's Burden

“At heart, I have always been a carpenter, who, instead of making a table or a door, was led to carve images in wood.”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

as quoted in 'Wooden Sculptures' http://www.zadkine.paris.fr/en/collections/collections-sculptures/wooden-sculptures, Musée Zadkine Musée Zadkine: it was through wood that Zadkine came to sculpture, after being initiated in the techniques of carving by a maternal uncle. undated quotes

“Richard the Lion Hearted, who became king of England in 1189, had inherited Aquitaine (western France) from his mother Eleanor and Normandy and Anjou—and England—from his father Henry. As Duke of Normandy and Anjou, Richard was a vassal of the king of France, but he controlled more land in France than did the French king. Although Richard had been an ally of Philip Augustus in the Third Crusade, in 1192 he went to war with the king over his French lands. Richard built Chateau Gaillard (he called it the “cocky castle”) on a cliff above the Seine north of Paris to defend his claims to Normandy. (…) Richard chose an excellent site, in the territory of the archbishop of Rouen, who objected strenuously until Richard paid him a handsome sum for the land. (…) Richard also raised money by selling rights of citizenship to residents of the town.”

Marilyn Stokstad (1929–2016) art historian

Source: Medieval castles (2005), Ch. 2 : The Castle as Fortress : The Castle and Siege Warfare

Money, War

“Great literature, past or present, is the expression of great knowledge of the human heart; great art is the expression of a solution of the conflict between the demands of the world without and that within…”

Edith Hamilton (1867–1963) American teacher and writer

Source: The Greek Way (1930), Ch. 1

World, Art, Literature, Knowledge

“How very desolate that breast must be,
Whose only joyance is in memory!
And what must woman suffer, thus betrayed?—
Her heart's most warm and precious feelings made
But things wherewith to wound: that heart—so weak,
So soft—laid open to the vulture's beak!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Rosalie.
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Feeling, Suffering, Memory

“From the dawn of the day to the dusk he toiled,
Shaping fanciful playthings, with tireless hands, —
Useless trumpery toys; and, with vaulting heart,
Gave them unto all peoples, who mocked at him,
Trampled on them, and soiled them, and went their way.”

James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) American author

"Auctorial Induction"
The Certain Hour (1916)

People, Way

“It is a vocation, parenting, that is not just all about yourself, because it is all about that future you will never see. It is all about that happiness you will never enjoy. It is all about that person who will grow to a maturity, offering to the world a gift, one element of which may reflect a little contribution from yourself. But long before that gift is finally delivered, you will likely have shuffled off this mortal coil, and not be there to enjoy it. [Parenting] represents the possibility, which in the end is at the heart of the perpetuation of all our human community: the possibility that we will not live for ourselves alone, but will feel a deep and true connection, with a future we will never see, with a progeny we will never meet, but who, in our hearts' imaginations, we contemplate, with a sense of responsibility and obligation. Change the understanding of marriage, and you have changed the understanding of our character in such a way as to break our bond with that future, and to undermine that sense of responsibility.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

National Federation of Republican Assemblies, NYC, August 31, 2004. http://renewamerica.us/archives/speeches/04_08_31nfra.htm. 2009

Marriage, Happiness, World, Way

“Hearts of people are like wild beasts. They attach themselves to those who love and train them.”

Ali book Nahj al-Balagha

Nahj al-Balagha

Love, People, Training

“Yet I also appreciate that we cannot win this battle to save species and environments without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and nature as well—for we will not fight to save what we do not love (but only appreciate in some abstract sense). So let them all continue—the films, the books, the television programs, the zoos, the little half acre of ecological preserve in any community, the primary school lessons, the museum demonstrations, even […] the 6:00 A. M. bird walks. Let them continue and expand because we must have visceral contact in order to love. We really must make room for nature in our hearts.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Eight Little Piggies

"Unenchanted Evening", p. 40
Eight Little Piggies (1993)

Love, Books, School, Communication

“It has often been asserted that the polytheistic Hindu failed to establish a spiritual kinship with the monotheistic Muslim who held much that is Indian in scorn and still seeks his spiritual inspiration abroad. How can we say that India ignored the teachings of Islam when we find saints like Nanak and Chaitanya, Namdev and Tukaram, preaching the brotherhood of man and the futility of caste in matters spiritual? Although attempts on Hindu culture and institutions fill the pages of Indian history, how can we assert that Muslims ignored the appeal of Hindu culture when we find Muhammad Jayasi weaving a beautiful romance to illustrate the teachings of Hindu philosophy, when we read the simple devotional hymns of Kabir and Sheikh Farid, who refused to recognise the barriers of caste and creed on the high road to God’s kingdom? “Utter not one disagreeable word,” said Farid, “since the true lord is in all men. Distress no one’s heart for every heart is a precious jewel.” In the same strain did Kabir proclaim, “There is the same God for the Hindu as for the Muslim.””

Syama Prasad Mookerjee (1901–1953) Indian politician

A rejuvenated India found an Akbar to put an end to political chaos and social disharmony and a Shah Jahan to dream a dream in marble the like of which is not to be met in the world.
Speech delivered at Patna University Convocation on 27th November 1937.

Men, God, World, Beauty

“His heart and mind must be pure. He must put aside fornication—”
Sagitta chuckled. “Dear Father, sex is the ultimate creative power. Your faith’s rejection of that principle will be its downfall.”

Melinda M. Snodgrass (1951) American writer

Source: Queen's Gambit Declined (1989), Chapter 7 (p. 86)

Faith, Sex

“Arcadia? The realm of the infinite? It's a poet's corner… It's not a cult or a religion – it's an awareness of your surroundings; you're not going to force yourself on anyone and, equally, no one's going to force themselves on you. And it's about community and pleasure. It came from a whisper through the trees. It came from a crack in the pavement. It can also come when you open a bag of crisps, or when you kick a football against a goalpost. Even if I was winding you up, it would still be true, because Arcadia and the Arcadian Dream is so deep, is so true to our hearts… It can be as powerful as your imagination can allow it to be. But, it can also be as dark and twisted as your soul… Arcadia encompasses the infinite, and that's why it comforts me.”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

2002
Arcadia

Pleasure, Religion, Dreams, Soul

“The heart of manipulation is to empathize without being touched.”

Vernor Vinge A Fire Upon the Deep (1st edition)

Source: A Fire Upon the Deep (1992), Chapter 37 (p. 519).

“…The one thing you've got to remember is to see the big picture. When things get tough, remind yourself why you fell in love with her in the first place. She's a special woman, and you were lucky to find her, just as she was lucky to find you. She's got a heart of gold, and you can't fake something like that.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Jeremy's father, Chapter 11, p. 147
2000s, At First Sight (2005)

Love

“Night threw her shadow on the world. Sailors out at sea looked up at the circling Bear and the stars of Orion. Travellers and watchmen longed for sleep, and oblivion came at last to mothers mourning for their children's death. In the town, dogs ceased to bark and men to call to one another; silence reigned over the deepening dark. But gentle sleep did not visit Medea. In her yearning for Jason, fretful cares kept her awake. She feared the great strength of the bulls; she saw him face them in the field of Ares; she saw him meet an ignominious end. Her heart fluttered within her, restless…”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book III. Jason and Medea, Lines 744–755

Death, Men, Children, World

“After I had given up to go, the thoughts of the journey were often attended with unusual sadness, at which times my heart was frequently turned to the Lord with inward breathings for his heavenly support, that I might not fail to follow him wheresoever he might lead me.”

John Woolman (1720–1772) American Quaker preacher

Source: The Journal of John Woolman (1774), p. 107

Sadness, Support, Time

“I will follow my instincts, be myself for good or ill, and see what will be the upshot. As long as I live, I'll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I'll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche. I'll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

attributed to a Muir "autobiographical notebook" in Linnie Marsh Wolfe, Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir (1945), page 144
1870s

World, Bird, Learning, Singing

“The idea that the citizen owes loyalty to a country, a territory, a jurisdiction and all those who reside within it — the root assumption of democratic politics, and one that depends upon the nation as its moral foundation - that idea has no place in the minds and hearts of many who now call themselves citizens of European states.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

England and the Need for Nations (2006)

Idea, Dependency, Loyalty, Country

“I began to lose heart. The appalling desert of darkness and barren fire, the huge emptiness so sparsely pricked with scintillations, the colossal futility of the whole universe, hideously oppressed me.”

Olaf Stapledon book Star Maker

Source: Star Maker (1937), Chapter II: Interstellar Travel (p. 20)

Universe

“There is a Karmic Rule of Kink (KROK), and it goes something like this: "Dump the honest foot fetishist and you will marry the dishonest necrophiliac." Break up with a guy over his relatively tame fetish — and a foot fetish is about as tame as they get — and KROK will make sure your next boyfriend is some lying corpsefucker who tells you only what you want to hear. ("Honestly, honey, I only like live girls!") Only after you've married the corpsefucker and had a few kids — once extricating yourself from the marriage becomes a hugely complicated ordeal — will he ask you to lie in a tub of ice until you're good and cold. And when you're lying in that tub of ice — and odds are you will, because you won't want to put your poor kids through a divorce — you'll remember that sweet, harmless foot fetishist whose heart you broke back in college, the man you could have married.”

Dan Savage (1964) American sex advice columnist and gay rights campaigner

Mary's Uterus http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLove?oid=118733, Savage Love column, The Stranger, 14 December 2006

Marriage, Lie, Guy, Girl

“It may be from some moral obliquity in myself, or from some strange disease; but for me, and I should think too for every human being in whose breast a human heart is beating, to know that one single creature is in that dreadful place would make a hell of heaven itself. And they have hearts in heaven, for they love there.”

James Anthony Froude book The Nemesis of Faith

Letter II
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)

Love, Disease, Hell, Thinking

“The state of mind which enables a man to do work of this kind is akin to that of the religious worshiper or the lover; the daily effort comes from no deliberate intention or program, but straight from the heart.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1910s, Principles of Research (1918)

Lovers, Effort

“Sin is man’s destruction. Only the rust of sin can consume the soul-or eternally destroy it. For here indeed is the remarkable thing from which already that simple wise man of olden time derived a proof of the immortality of the soul, that the sickness of the soul (sin) is not like bodily sickness which kills the body. Sin is not a passage-way which a man has to pass through once, for from it one shall flee; sin is not (like suffering) the instant, but an eternal fall from the eternal, hence it is not ‘once’, and it cannot possibly be that its ‘once’ is no time. No, just as between the rich man in hell and Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom there was a yawning gulf fixed, so is there also a yawning distinction between suffering and sin. Let us not confuse it, lest talk about suffering might become less frank-hearted, because it had also sin in mind, and this less frank-hearted talk might be boldly impudent inasmuch as it is talking this way about sin. This precisely is the Christian position, that there is this infinite distinction between evil and evil, as they are confusedly named; this precisely is the Christian characteristic, to talk of temporal sufferings ever more and more frank-heartedly, more triumphantly, more joyfully, because Christianity regarded, sin, and sin only, is destructive.”

Sören Kierkegaard book Christian Discourses

Søren Kierkegaard, Christian Discourses, The Joy of it – That We Suffer Only Once But Triumph Eternally. P. 108 Lowrie Translation 1961 Oxford University Press
1840s, Christian Discourses (1848)

Way, Soul, Hell, Suffering

“I like to be candid in my admissions — it is so very disarming; you forestall the objection which you admit — at least your adversary has scarcely the heart to push to its utmost the advantage which you so meekly confess.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

““Now, boy, now…” he said bewilderedly, “what is all this talk of glory? Have you caught the sickness, too? Curse me for a blind beggar, I should have seen. This fever has cankered even your simple heart, hasn’t it, Simon? I’m sorry. It takes a strong will or practiced eye to see through the glitter to the rotten core.””

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Chapter 10, “King Hemlock” (p. 139).

Boy, Strong

“Though the day of my Destiny's over,
And the star of my Fate hath declined,
Thy soft heart refused to discover
The faults which so many could find.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Stanzas to Augusta http://readytogoebooks.com/LB-Augusta2.html, st. 1 (1816).

Fate, Star

“… how comes it that- without the advantages of a twentieth generationship of noble blood flowing uncontaminated in your veins- without the customary three years dissipation at college- and the (nothing-to-be-done without) four years perambulation on the Continent- without all these needful appendages- with little more than plain sense, sheer good-nature, and a right honest heart- thou canst,
"Like low-born Allen, with an aukward shame,
"Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame."”

Ignatius Sancho (1729–1780) British composer, writer and grocer

(from vol 1, letter 38: 1 Sep 1776, to Mr M___ ) [the quotation is from Alexander Pope's poem "1738" (now usually known as "Epilogue to the Satires, dialogue 1"), referring to postal reformer and philanthropist Ralph Allen]

Nature, Sense

“We can wash people in the water all we want, but we can never wash their parents out of their hearts.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, Earthborn (1995)

People, Parent, Water

“The French Riviera is the one spot in Europe that comes closest to the image of an earthly paradise. At its heart is the Franco-Italian city of Nice, now France’s No. 2 tourist attraction after Paris… To a committed Islamist, Nice was the very symbol of a sinful “deviation from the Right Path.””

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"A cry from France: After Nice, can we finally face the truth about this war?" http://nypost.com/2016/07/15/a-cry-from-france-after-nice-can-we-finally-face-the-truth-about-this-war/ New York Post (July 15, 2016) New York Post

“The longer men sin, the more easily they can; for every act of transgression weakens conscience, stupefies intellect, hardens hearts, adds force to bad habits, and takes force from good example. And, surely, there is nothing in such associations; as wicked affinities will insure to the sinner in the future state, to incline him to repentance.”

Edward Thomson (1810–1870) American bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 312.

Men, Future

“We think of it as a sort of traffic accident of the heart. It is an emotion that scares us more than cruelty, more than violence, more than hatred. We allow ourselves to be foiled by the vagueness of the word. After all, love requires the utmost vulnerability. We equip someone with freshly sharpened knives; strip naked; then invite him to stand close. What could be scarier?”

Diane Ackerman (1948) Author, poet, naturalist

A Natural History of Love (1994)

Love, Thinking

“Can you live without answers? All of you, ask that of yourself. Can you live without answers? Because if you cannot, then most assuredly you will invent your own answers and they will comfort you. And all those who do not share your view will by their very existence strike fear and hatred into your heart. What god blesses this?”

Steven Erikson book Toll the Hounds

Toll the Hounds (2008)

God, Fear

“On John Edwards, U. S. Senator from North Carolina: "The stump speech of pretty-boy Senator John Edwards, which I've heard often enough to be able to mouth along with him, has room for everything, including vivid, wrenching portraits of despair: 'Tonight somewhere in America a ten-year-old little girl will go to bed hungry, hoping and praying that tomorrow will not be as cold as today because she doesn't have the coat to keep her warm.'”

Mark Steyn (1959) Canadian writer

You'd have to have a heart of stone not to be doubled up in laughter at that line. " It's the war, stupid http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0304/steyn030104.asp", 1 March 2004

Hope, Girl, Boy, Laughter

“Fanatic secularism is as dangerous to the world as fanatic religion. Love is the heart of all religions; the theme of all classical works of art and literature; the song of all devotees. Scientists know only what love does, not what love is. Love is to human hearts what the sun is to flowers.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

Love, World, Religion, Art

“God's commandments are not grievous. God put them in the garden, said "You can eat of any tree except that one tree, The Knowledge of Good and Evil." It's real simple, Adam. Enjoy the garden, have lots of kids, and don't learn about evil. […] Parents, don't teach your kids about all the evil things. Don't have drug education classes where you show them, "Hey, this is marijuana. This is how you smoke it. Now don't you do that." Duh. Don't put them in sex ed classes in seventh grade, it's a plumbing class at that time. Don't do that, okay? Let them be ignorant. Let them learn it from mom and dad, not from some heathen, okay? It's real simple Adam. Enjoy the world and have lots of kids and don't learn about evil. Don't learn all that stuff. The Lord said, "Hey, have you eaten off that tree I told you not to eat from?" God is not asking for information. He's asking for a confession. And the man said, "The woman (he passed the buck) whom thou gavest to be with me. Now God, this is really your fault, you know. If you hadn't given her to me I wouldn't have this problem." He said to the woman, "Have you done this?" She said, "Well, the snake that you made…." We still do the same thing, nothing changes, okay? Fear God, keep his commandments. Just like the taking of life is very important in any culture. Murder is serious. Giving life is important. That's why God put certain rules down for reproduction, okay? Follow his rules. "Thou shalt not commit adultery. Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge." Don't even look and lust or you've committed adultery already in your heart. By the way, ladies, that's why it's important how you dress, okay? My daddy always said, "If you're not in business, don't advertise."”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Women should dress in modest apparel. That's what the Bible says, alright.
Creation seminars (2003-2005), The dangers of evolution

Life, Women, God, World

“Touching the secrets of the heart and the successions of time, doth make a just and sound difference between the manner of the exposition of the Scriptures and all other books. For it is an excellent observation which hath been made upon the answers of our Saviour Christ to many of the questions which were propounded to Him, how that they are impertinent to the state of the question demanded: the reason whereof is, because not being like man, which knows man’s thoughts by his words, but knowing man’s thoughts immediately, He never answered their words, but their thoughts. Much in the like manner it is with the Scriptures, which being written to the thoughts of men, and to the succession of all ages, with a foresight of all heresies, contradictions, differing estates of the Church, yea, and particularly of the elect, are not to be interpreted only according to the latitude of the proper sense of the place, and respectively towards that present occasion whereupon the words were uttered, or in precise congruity or contexture with the words before or after, or in contemplation of the principal scope of the place; but have in themselves, not only totally or collectively, but distributively in clauses and words, infinite springs and streams of doctrine to water the Church in every part. And therefore as the literal sense is, as it were, the main stream or river, so the moral sense chiefly, and sometimes the allegorical or typical, are they whereof the Church hath most use; not that I wish men to be bold in allegories, or indulgent or light in allusions: but that I do much condemn that interpretation of the Scripture which is only after the manner as men use to interpret a profane book.”

Francis Bacon book The Advancement of Learning

XXV. (17)
The Advancement of Learning (1605)

Men, Secret, Books, Age

“It will grieve me so to the heart, that I shall cry my eyes out.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Variant: It will grieve me so to the heart, that I shall cry my eyes out.
Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part I, Book III, Ch. 11.

Cry

“That heart had been an apple once, they reckoned. Green.
They had a scheme to plant an apple there again
beginning with a pip, but he rejected it.”

Simon Armitage (1963) Poet, playwright, novelist

'Man with a Golf Ball Heart', from The Dead Sea Poems.

“The politics of the unpolitical—these are the politics of those who desire to be pure in heart: the politics of men without personal ambition; of those who have not desires wealth or an unequal share of worldly possessions; of those who have always striven, whatever their race or condition, for human values and not for national or sectional interests. For our Western world, Christ is the supreme example of this unselfish devotion to the good of humanity, and the Sermon on the Mount is the source of all the politics of the unpolitical.”

Herbert Read (1893–1968) English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art

“The Politics of the Unpolitical,” To Hell with Culture (1963), p. 38
Other Quotes

Men, World, Christ, Personality

“Wilt thou debase the heart which God refined?
No; let thy heaven-taught soul to heaven aspire,
To fancy, freedom, harmony, resigned;
Ambition's groveling crew forever left behind.”

James Beattie (1735–1803) Scottish poet, moralist and philosopher

Book i. Stanza 7.
The Minstrel; or, The Progress of Genius (1771)

God, Soul, Freedom

“I kiss'd her lips: oh, God, the chill!
My heart is frozen with it still:—
It was as suddenly on me
Open'd my depths of misery.
I flung me on the ground, and raved,
And of the wind that past me craved
One breath of poison, till my blood
From lip and brow gush'd in one flood.
I watch'd the warm stream of my veins
Mix with the death wounds clotted stains;
Oh! how I pray'd that I might pour
My heart's tide, and her life restore!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Canto III
The Troubadour (1825)

Life, Death, God, Past

“A Christian is a believer in Jesus. He believes that if he only throws his own lost and sinful soul on the Redeemer, there is in His sacrifice sufficient merit to cancel all his guilt, and in His heart sufficient love to undertake the keeping of his soul for all eternity. He believes that Jesus is a Saviour. He believes that His heart is set on His people's holiness, and that it is only by making them new creatures, pure-minded, kind-hearted, unselfish, devout, that He can fit them for a home and a life like His own, that He can fit them for the occupations and enjoyments of heaven. And believing all this he prays and labors after holiness.”

James Hamilton (1814–1867) Scottish minister and a prolific author of religious tracts

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 103.

Love, Life, People, Home

“But the thing a man does practically believe (and this is often enough without asserting it even to himself, much less to others); the thing a man does practically lay to heart, and know for certain, concerning his vital relations to this mysterious Universe, and his duty and destiny there, that is in all cases the primary thing for him, and creatively determines all the rest. That is his religion; or, it may be, his mere scepticism and no-religion: the manner it is in which he feels himself to be spiritually related to the Unseen World or No-World; and I say, if you tell me what that is, you tell me to a very great extent what the man is, what the kind of things he will do is.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Divinity

World, Religion, Feeling, Universe

“After three days we reached land, and for twenty-eight days journeyed through uninhabited country, and the food ran out and hunger overtook them; and one day the steersman began saying: "Why is it, Christian? You say your God is great and all-powerful; then why can you not pray for us? For we may perish of hunger; it is unlikely indeed that we shall ever see another human being." In fact, I said to them, confidently: "Be converted by faith with all your heart to my Lord God, because nothing is impossible for him, so that today he will send food for you on your road, until you be sated, because everywhere he abounds." And with God's help this came to pass; and behold, a herd of swine appeared on the road before our eyes, and they slew many of them, and remained there for two nights, and the were full of their meat and well restored, for many of them had fainted and would otherwise have been left half dead by the wayside. And after this they gave the utmost thanks to God, and I was esteemed in their eyes, and from that day they had food abundantly.”

Saint Patrick (385–461) 5th-century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland

The Confession (c. 452?)

Hunger, God, Faith, Food

“We see human heroism broken into units and say, this unit did little – might as well not have been. But in this way we might break up a great army into units; in this way we might break the sunlight into fragments, and think that this and the other might be cheaply parted with. Let us rather raise a monument to the soldiers whose brave hearts only kept the ranks unbroken and met death – a monument to the faithful who were not famous, and who are precious as the continuity of the sunbeams is precious, though some of them fall unseen and on barrenness.”

George Eliot book Felix Holt, the Radical

Source: Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), Chapter 16 (at page 158)

Death, Faith, Way, Thinking

“Too many hearts have been broken
Failing to trust what they feel.
But trust isn't something that's spoken
And love's never wrong when it's real.”

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

Believe in Me.
Song lyrics, Windows and Walls (1984)

Love, Feeling

“If you find many people who are hard and indifferent to you in a world that you consider to be unhospitable and cruel—as often, indeed, happens to a tender-hearted, stirring young creature—you will also find there are noble hearts who will look kindly on you, and their help will be precious to you beyond price.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1860s, On The Choice Of Books (1866)

People, World, Help, Indifference

“Malebranche would have it that not a soul is left; we humbly think that there still are hearts.”

Edmond Rostand Chantecler

Malebranche dirait qu’il n’y a plus une âme:
Nous pensons humblement qu’il reste encor des cœurs.
Prelude
Chantecler (1910)

Soul, Thinking

“Death!
Plop.
The barges down in the river flop.
Flop, plop,
Above, beneath.
From the slimy branches the grey drips drop…
To the oozy waters, that lounge and flop…
And my head shrieks--"Stop"
And my heart shrieks--"Die"…”

Theo Marzials (1850–1920) Anglo-French poet and eccentric

A Tragedy, reported by several critics to be the worst poem published in the English language. http://www.reedleycollege.edu/academic/Departments/CompLitComm/sbowie/Tragedy.htm.

Death, Water

“I vow'd that I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine: have I not kept the vow?
With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now
I call the phantoms of a thousand hours
Each from his voiceless grave: they have in vision'd bowers
Of studious zeal or love's delight
Outwatch'd with me the envious night:
They know that never joy illum'd my brow
Unlink'd with hope that thou wouldst free
This world from its dark slavery,
That thou, O awful LOVELINESS,
Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

St. 6
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty (1816)

Love, World, Hope, Joy

“I say I like your coat
Her thank-you tugs my heart afloat
I nearly didn't hear for
Seagulls screaming kiss her, kiss her”

Andy Partridge (1953) British musician

"Seagulls screaming kiss her, kiss her".
The Big Express (1984)

Kiss

“In the mean time I paid the strictest attention to my profession, and was so completely successful, that there was no patient of any consequence in Gottingen that I was not called in to; but as I was not allowed to make up prescriptions, not having taken my degree, and in order to avoid a heavy penalty, I was accompanied in my professional visits by Doctor Tolle, a man who knew the lectures of Schroder by heart, but did not understand them. I dictated to him what to prescribe, he took the fee, and was content. I had nothing but the honour, and plenty of good dinners. At last I took my degree as Doctor of Medicine, and resigned my patients to the care of Dr. Strohmeyer, which was the means of introducing him into practice. I left Gottingen full of honour, with tears in my eyes, at leaving behind me so many dear friends. Puffed up with pride, I arrived in Celle, but was received with coldness and pity. This was too much for mc; I could not brook the insult; but said to myself, "How can I expect to be otherwise received, when I consider my former conduct, and look back on the heedless manner in which I passed my boyish years?"”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

My consolation was, that "I should be soon as happy here as I was in Gottingen" in the choice of my friends.
My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Penalty, Understanding, Tear, Time

“Therefore THE IDEA OF 'ARTISTIC WORK' MUST BE ABOLISHED AS A COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY CONCEPT OF WHAT IS CREATIVE and work must be accepted as one of the functions of the living human organism in the same way as the beating of the heart or the activity of the nerve centers, so that it will be afforded the same protection.”

El Lissitsky (1890–1941) Soviet artist, designer, photographer, teacher, typographer and architect

1915 - 1925, Suprematism' in World Reconstruction (1920)

Way, Idea

“Don't open your diamonds in a vegetable market. Tie them in bundle and keep them in your heart, and go your own way.”

Kabir (1440–1518) Indian mystic poet

Sakhi, 170; translation by Yashwant K. Malaiya based on that of Puran Sahib.
Bijak

Way

“Come across as very calm, mental state is Zen like. Always had a lot of heart, never been the tin type”

Lupe Fiasco (1982) rapper

"Go To Sleep"
Albums, Food & Liquor II: The Great American Rap Album (2012)

“Mathematics is too arduous and uninviting a field to appeal to those to whom it does not give great rewards. These rewards are of exactly the same character as those of the artist. To see a difficult uncompromising material take living shape and meaning is to be Pygmalion, whether the material is stone or hard, stonelike logic. To see meaning and understanding come where there has been no meaning and no understanding is to share the work of a demiurge. No amount of technical correctness and no amount of labour can replace this creative moment, whether in the life of a mathematician or of a painter or musician. Bound up with it is a judgement of values, quite parallel to the judgement of values that belongs to the painter or the musician. Neither the artist nor the mathematician may be able to tell you what constitutes the difference between a significant piece of work and an inflated trifle; but if he is not able to recognise this in his own heart, he is no artist and no mathematician.”

Norbert Wiener (1894–1964) American mathematician

Ex-Prodigy: My Childhood and Youth (1964)

Life, Mathematics, Understanding

“Why does a man refuse to believe? Because he has confidence in himself; because he has not a sense of his own sins; because he has not love in his heart to his Lord and Saviour. Unbelief men are responsible for. Unbelief is criminal because it is a moral act — an act of the whole nature. Belief or unbelief is a test of a man's whole spiritual condition, just because it is the whole being, affections, will, conscience, and all, as well as the understanding, which are concerned in it.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 608.

Love, Men, Confidence, Understanding

“[Guido] Oh, my Ianthe, I live but in you,
And I will win thee, through each obstacle
By tyranny of fortune raised, my own,
My best heart's treasure! (he snatches her hand)
[Manfred] Wild fool! she is your sister!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(12th April 1823) Dramatic Scene. Ianthe — Guido — Manfred.
(19th April 1823) Fragments see The Improvisatrice (1824) The Oak
The London Literary Gazette, 1823

Fools, Sister

“None but God can satisfy the longings of an immortal soul; that as the heart was made for Him, so He only can fill it.”

Richard Chenevix Trench (1807–1886) Irish bishop

Notes on the Parables, Prodigal Son; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 321.

God, Soul

“If the Bank really has development at heart, it will change the conditionalities away from privatization, deregulation and lower corporate taxation and put the emphasis on reducing military expenditures, ensuring that progressive tax legislation is enacted and enforced, that tax havens are outlawed, and that a financial transactions tax is adopted and the revenues used to build “A World Free of Poverty” through international solidarity.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Report of the Independent Expert on the adverse impact of World Bank policies on human rights and the realisation of a democratic and equitable international order
2017, Report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council

World, Change

“Here was an action that touched on raw and sensitive nerves in a community that had already undergone the trauma of two military takeovers. There was an undoubted threat to public order, welfare and freedom. I suspect the psychological pressure associated with that crisis caused the first mental blackout I had ever suffered. It contributed to a deterioration in my health that later required the insertion of a heart pacemaker.”

Kamisese Mara (1920–2004) President of Fiji

(Concerning public demonstrations and roadblocks led by Methodist ministers, calling for a ban on Sunday sport and commerce).

Health, Communication, Freedom, Suffering

“It is the mind which creates the world around us, and even though we stand side by side in the same meadow, my eyes will never see what is beheld by yours, my heart will never stir to the emotions with which yours is touched.”

George Gissing (1857–1903) English novelist

As quoted in 'The Book Of Us : A Guide To Scrapbooking About Relationships (2005) Angie Pedersen, p. 46

World

“Fame has earned me great applause, thanks to our generous people. of course, this fortune brought my financial situation. and the increasing love of the people who did not decline for years. Everything is mutual. I liked it very much, too many listeners, my followers … I paid my price with my heart, unfortunately. my heart is tired and said that this event comes from the stress of the scene that lasts for 25 years; doctors. And I said goodbye to the stage for 4 years. I gave my heart. I bought a lot but I gave it my heart, sir.”

Zeki Müren (1931–1996) Turkish musician

What did your honor stole from you? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq_jdymMh1U

Love, People

“We may deny the existence of ethnonationalism, detest it, condemn it. But this creator and destroyer of empires and nations is a force infinitely more powerful than globalism, for it engages the heart. Men will die for it. Religion, race, culture and tribe are the four horsemen of the coming apocalypse.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

2010s, Suicide of a Superpower (2011)

Men, Religion

“Twas on a sunny summer day
I trod a mighty city’s street,
And when I started on my way
My heart was full of fancies sweet;
But soon, as nothing could be seen,
But countenances sharp and keen,
Nought heard or seen around but told
Of something bought or something sold,
And none that seemed to think or care
That any save himself was there.”

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861) English poet

An Incident http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/C/CloughArthurHugh/verse/poemsproseremains/incident.html, st. 1 (1836).

Way, Thinking, Summer

“Hey, hey, what I'm sayin' is -
Do it to me one more time.
Oh, give you one more chance,
This heart of mine.
Do it to me one more time, baby.
Can't get enough of your love!”

Lionel Richie (1949) American singer-songwriter, musician, record producer and actor

Do It to Me.
Song lyrics, Back to Front (1992)

Love, Chance, Time, Baby

“I’m a big believer that if America, if this country hasn’t broken your heart, then you don’t love her enough. Because there’s things that are savagely wrong in this country.”

Cory Booker (1969) 35th Class 2 senator for New Jersey in U.S. Congress

[Rutz, David, Booker: Things Are ‘Savagely Wrong’ in America, https://freebeacon.com/politics/booker-things-savagely-wrong-america/, 21 August 2018, The Washington Free Beacon, August 3, 2018]
2018

Love, Country

“Voluptuous habits speedily bind all the powers of the soul in loathsome vassalage, and exclude every thought except such as relate to the beastly pleasures of which it is the slave. Distracted by cravings as inexorable as they are base, and in their vileness perpetually reproduced, — tantalized by the impure fountains of a diseased imagination, and oppressed with its own effeminacy, — the mind loses its vigor and its productiveness. Every faculty rapidly deteriorates and decays; memory becomes extinguished, inanity destroys resolution, and the heart is as cold and callous as a cinder extinct. It ceases to love, to sympathize, and diffuse the delicious tears that sanctify friendship's shrine. The whole countenance assumes an expression of obdurateness and repugnance. The features, marked with premature decay, proclaim that the source of gentle sentiments, pure emotions, and innocent joys, is exhausted, like a limpid fountain invaded by the scoria and flame of a volcano. All the elements of life seem to have retreated into their abused organs only to perish there. Even the organs themselves are withered, and worse than dead; their infirmities, maladies, sufferings, rush in a multitude upon the degraded victim, and overwhelm him in awful retribution.”

Elias Lyman Magoon (1810–1886) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 354.

Love, Life, Friendship, Pleasure