Quotes about life
page 24

“It's been months since I last wrote. I've lived in a state of mental slumber, leading the life of someone else. I've felt, very often, a vicarious happiness. I haven't existed. I've been someone else. I've lived without thinking.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Happiness, Thinking

“Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Help

“It's a shame that we have to live, but it's a tragedy that we get to live only one life.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“As a general rule the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Books, Coningsby (1844), Endymion (1880), Ch. 36.

Success

“Always expecting this and expecting that. May I recommend serenity to you? A life that is burdened with expectations is a heavy life. Its fruit is sorrow and disappointment. Learn to be one with the joy of the moment.”

Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), Ch. 4

Disappointment, Learning, Joy

“Life is just a short period of time in which you are alive.”

Philip Roth book American Pastoral

Source: American Pastoral

Time

“Life must not be a novel that is given to us, but one that is made by us.”

Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer

Source: Novalis: Philosophical Writings

“when the thrill of his body fades or changes, and the difficulties of pledging yourself to only one person surface, kindness will be the balm that soothes the wounds of life.”

P. C. Cast (1960) American writer

Source: Goddess of the Sea

Change, Personality

“Don't be obsessed with tactics but with purpose. Tactics have a half life.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

“What is this thing called life? I believe
That the earth and the stars too, and the whole glittering universe, and rocks on the mountains have life,
Only we do not call it so--I speak of the life
That oxidizes fats and proteins and carbo-
Hydrates to live on, and from that chemical energy
Makes pleasure and pain, wonder, love, adoration, hatred and terror: how do these things grow
From a chemical reaction?
I think they were here already, I think the rocks
And the earth and the other planets, and the stars and the galaxies
have their various consciousness, all things are conscious;
But the nerves of an animal, the nerves and brain
Bring it to focus; the nerves and brain are like a burning-glass
To concentrate the heat and make it catch fire:
It seems to us martyrs hotter than the blazing hearth
From which it came. So we scream and laugh, clamorous animals
Born howling to die groaning: the old stones in the dooryard
Prefer silence; but those and all things have their own awareness,
As the cells of a man have; they feel and feed and influence each other, each unto all,
Like the cells of a man's body making one being,
They make one being, one consciousness, one life, one God.”

Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962) American poet

Source: The Selected Poetry

Love, God, Pain, Pleasure

“The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt.”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian

Source: The Hungering Dark

“A lady who sets her heart upon a lad in uniform must prepare to change lovers pretty quickly, or her life will be but a sad one.”

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) novelist

Source: The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq. written by himself

Sadness, Lovers, Change, Heart

“Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of all the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life.”

Giorgos Seferis (1900–1971) Greek poet and diplomat

Source: "Greek poet's odyssey", 17 Jan 1964, LIFE Magazine, ‎Vol. 56, No. 3, Page 75.

Reading

“There is no worse bitterness than to reach the end of your life and realized you have not lived.”

M. Scott Peck (1936–2005) American psychiatrist

“Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

Cute

“My whole being was seeking for something still unknown which might confer meaning upon the banality of life.”

C.G. Jung book Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Source: Memories, Dreams, Reflections

“Sure, when you're in the midst of your own suffering, it's easy to convince yourself that you're no good—but we are all tested in this life… The measure of a man is not how much he suffers in the test, but how he comes out at the end.”

Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist

Source: UnWholly

Suffering

“All of Creation’s a farce.
Man was born as a joke.
In his head his reason is buffeted
Like wind-blown smoke.
Life is a game.
Everyone ridicules everyone else.
But he who has the last laugh
Laughs longest.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Game

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Twilight of the Idols

Ohne Musik wäre das Leben ein Irrtum.
Maxims and Arrows, 33
Source: Twilight of the Idols (1888)

Music, Inspirational, Cute

“Absurdity is what I like most in life.”

David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor

“Life's wildest moment---she kneels on the sidewalk. Everything else she does is lies, lies.”

Henry Miller book Sexus

Source: Sexus

“All through life, be sure and put your feet in the right place, and then stand firm.”

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

As recalled by Rebecca R. Pomroy in Echoes from hospital and White House (1884), by Anna L. Boyden, p. 61 http://books.google.com/books?id=7LZiAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA61&dq=feet Posthumous attributions Variant: Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.

“If I think more about death than some other people, it is probably because I love life more than they do.”

Angelina Jolie (1975) American actress, film director, and screenwriter

Love, Death, People, Thinking

“She thanked God that life was not always winter, that spring always came at last to chase away the cold and heaviness, and to release one to warmth and movement again.”

Janette Oke (1935) Canadian writer

Source: Love's Long Journey

God, Spring, Winter

“The man who pursues happiness wisely will aim at the possession of a number of subsidiary interests in addition to those central ones upon which his life is built.”

Bertrand Russell book The Conquest of Happiness

Source: The Conquest of Happiness

Happiness

“Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

People, Way, Hell

“One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“Life isn't nearly as sacred as the appreciation of passion.”

Kurt Cobain book Journals

Source: Journals

Passion

“I never felt settled or calm. You can't really commit to life when you feel that.”

Angelina Jolie (1975) American actress, film director, and screenwriter

Feeling

“Any intelligent person knows that life is a beautiful thing and that the purpose of life is to be happy," said my father as he watched the three beauties. "But it seems only idiots are ever happy. How can we explain this?”

Orhan Pamuk book The Museum of Innocence

Source: The Museum of Innocence

Happiness, Beauty, Intelligence, Personality

“Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin,' thought Alice 'but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing i ever saw in my life!”

Lewis Carroll book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Source: Alice in Wonderland

Cats

“You’ve got to get to the stage in life where going for it is more important than winning or losing.”

Arthur Ashe (1943–1993) American tennis player

“You touched my flawed life so gently with love
burning upward in dark steady flame
burning me, burning me into healing.”

Christy Brown (1932–1981) Irish artist

Source: Of Snails and Skylarks

Love

“You are more to me than any of them has any idea; you are the atmosphere of beauty through which I see life; you are the incarnation of all lovely things… I think of you day and night. ~ Letter to Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Love, Beauty, Idea, Thinking

“You are the master of your destiny. You can influence, direct and control your own environment. You can make your life what you want it to be.”

Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author

Source: Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller - Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century

“Whoever is in control of the hell in your life, is your devil.”

John Henrik Clarke (1915–1998) American historian and writer

Hell

“I wondered, for the first time in my life, if life was worth all the work it took to live. What exactly made it worth it?”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)
Context: I felt that night, on the stage, incredibly close to everything in the universe, but also extremely alone. I wondered, for the first time in my life, if life was worth all the work it took to live. What exactly made it worth it? What's so horrible about being dead forever, and not feeling anything, and not even dreaming? What's so great about feeling and dreaming? (p. 145)

Time

“The education and empowerment of women throughout the world cannot fail to result in a more caring, tolerant, just and peaceful life for all.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

Opening Keynote Address at NGO Forum on Women, Beijing China (1995)
Context: For millennia women have dedicated themselves almost exclusively to the task of nurturing, protecting and caring for the young and the old, striving for the conditions of peace that favour life as a whole. To this can be added the fact that, to the best of my knowledge, no war was ever started by women. But it is women and children who have always suffered most in situations of conflict. Now that we are gaining control of the primary historical role imposed on us of sustaining life in the context of the home and family, it is time to apply in the arena of the world the wisdom and experience thus gained in activities of peace over so many thousands of years. The education and empowerment of women throughout the world cannot fail to result in a more caring, tolerant, just and peaceful life for all.

Women, World, Education, Peace

“The virtuous man contents himself with dreaming that which the wicked man does in actual life.”

Sigmund Freud book The Interpretation of Dreams

1910s Source: Quoting Plato, as translated by Abraham Arden Brill, "The Interpretation of Dreams" https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Freud_-_The_interpretation_of_dreams.djvu/511 (1913 edition), p.493

Dreams

“Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But life finds a way.”

Michael Crichton book Jurassic Park

Source: Jurassic Park

Way

“The Czech movies, the quality movies, are trying to show the life in the country as it is, in an entertaining way, while in America, the majority of movies are wonderful fairy tales.”

Miloš Forman (1932–2018) czech-American director, screenwriter, and professor

Way, Country

“All the pale horses of the apocalypse have stormed through my life, revolution, starvation, devaluation of currency and terror, epidemics, emigration; I have seen the great ideologies of the masses grow and spread out before my eyes. Fascism in Italy, National Socialism in Germany, Bolshevism in Russia, and, above all, that archpestilence, nationalism, which poisoned our flourishing European culture.”

Stefan Zweig (1881–1942) Austrian writer

The World of Yesterday [Die Welt von Gestern] (1942), p. 10, as translated by Marion Sonnenfeld

Horse

“Without excuse and self-consideration of health or limb or life, true soldiers fight, live to fight, love the thickest of the fight, and die in the midst of it.”

William Booth (1829–1912) British Methodist preacher

As quoted in Revolution (2005) by Stephen Court & Aaron White .

Love, Health, Fight

“Reality prior to my language exists as an unthinkable thought.... life precedes love, bodily matter precedes the body, and one day in its turn language shall have preceded possession of silence.”

Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) Brazilian writer

The Passion According to G.H. (1964), p. 169

Love, Reality, Silence

“Dedicate one’s life to truth.”
Vitam impendere vero.

Juvenal book Satires

IV, line 91.
Satires, Satire IV

Truth

“(…) if you can change yourself you will find that no other change is needed. To change the picture you merely change the film, you do not attack the cinema screen! (…) Clarify your mind, purify your heart, sanctify your life – this is the quickest way to a change of your world.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Change
Source: I am That, P.129.

World, Way, Change, Heart

“People come to Los Angeles and sell their soul every day. It’s sad. Here, the mentality is that everyone has a price. But I say no – no money can buy my soul. I’ve had so many offers that I didn’t think were proper and I’d say sorry, I don’t need it. I didn’t want to work my butt off and not be happy. I’ll always choose happiness and life over all the money in the world. Across my entire career, I had respect in the industry, because I was the one who never sold out.”

Fabio Lanzoni (1961) Italian model, actor and author

Fabio: confessions of the original male supermodel https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2015/jul/15/fabio-confessions-original-male-supermodel (July 15, 2015)

Money, Happiness, People, World

“Neither family, nor privilege, nor wealth, nor anything but Love can light that beacon which a man must steer by when he sets out to live the better life.”

Plato (-427–-347 BC) Classical Greek philosopher

178c, M. Joyce, trans, Collected Dialogues of Plato (1961), p. 533
The Symposium

Love, Family, Light, Wealth

“The ancients adorned their sarcophagi with the emblems of life and procreation, and even with obscene symbols; in the religions of antiquity the sacred and the obscene often lay very close together. These men knew how to pay homage to death. For death is worthy of homage as the cradle of life, as the womb of palingenesis.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 5

Death, Men, Religion

“Poetry is a sort of truancy, a dream within the dream of life, a wild flower planted among our wheat.”

Michael Oakeshott (1901–1990) British philosopher

Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (1962)

Dreams, Flowers

“Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

The Infernal Marriage, part 3 (1834).
Books

“The number of those who do selfless public service and those who serve without expecting any return, should increase. Their sterling qualities should show the way to the people at large. Their life would be a model to show how man should conduct himself in public life.”

Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (1879–1973) Tamil politician and social reformer

Quote in Life History Of E.V.Ramasamy, Priyar Center http://www.periyarcentre.in/abtperiyar.html Reform

People, Way

“Neither human wisdom nor divine inspiration can confer upon man any greater blessing than this [live a life of happiness and harmony here on earth].”

Plato book Phaedrus

256b
Phaedrus

Wisdom, Happiness

“Obladi oblada life goes on bra
Lala how the life goes on”

Paul McCartney (1942) English singer-songwriter and composer

Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da (1968)
Lyrics, The Beatles

“High ethics and religious principles form the basis for success and happiness in every area of life.”

John Marks Templeton (1912–2008) stock investor, businessman and philanthropist

The Quotable Sir John

Happiness, Success

“To be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars- to be satisfied with your possessions but not content with yourself until you have made the best of them- to despise nothing in the world except falsehood and meanness, and to fear nothing except cowardice- to be governed by you admirations rather than by your disgusts- to covet nothing that is your neighbors except his kindness of heart and gentleness of manners- to think seldom of your enemies, often of your friends, and every day of Christ; to spend as much time as you can in God's out-of doors- these are the little guideposts on the footpaths to peace.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

Footpaths to Peace.

Love, God, World, Fear

“Consider thyself to be dead, and to have completed thy life up to the present time; and live according to nature the remainder which is allowed thee.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

VII, 56
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VII

Nature, Time, Dead

“The rhythm is then the life, in the sense in which it can be said to be included within nature.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

1910s, The Principles of Natural Knowledge (1919)

Nature, Sense

“They know how to remain silent; and though they are possessed of the most acute sensitiveness, they are, among the people I have met, those who express it least. A friend here can give his life with the greatest simplicity to save yours, though he never told you before that he loved you in such a profound and unselfish way.”

The Mother (1878–1973) spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo

Her views on the ancient art of Samurai, quoted in "Japan (1916-20)", also in The Modern Review, Volume 23 by Ramananda Chatterjee (1918) http://books.google.co.in/books?id=fa4mAQAAIAAJ, p. 69

Love, People, Way

“The woman is increasingly aware that love alone can give her full stature, just as the man begins to discern that spirit alone can endow his life with its highest meaning. Fundamentally, therefore, both seek a psychic relation to the other, because love needs the spirit, and the spirit love, for their fulfillment.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Source: Contributions to Analytical Psychology (1928), p. 185

Love

“Loss and Possession, Death and Life are one.
There falls no shadow where there shines no sun.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

"On the Same" (On a Sundial III)
Quoted by Kevin Smith's character in the film Catch and Release (2006)
Sonnets and Verse (1938)

Death, Loss, Sun

“Everything in life that deviates from the straight and, so to speak, normal line, makes people first curious and then indignant.”

Stefan Zweig book Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

People

“Astronomy leads us to an unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing and delicately balanced to provide exactly the conditions required to support life. In the absence of an absurdly-improbable accident, the observations of modern science seem to suggest an underlying, one might say, supernatural plan.”

Arno Allan Penzias (1933) American physicist

http://www.unm.edu/~hdelaney/cosmoquotes.html, Arno Penzias, quoted by Walter Bradley in "The Designed 'Just-so' Universe", 1999.

Support, Universe, Science

“Since everything that lives is obliged to expend and receive life, there is an exchange of modifications between the living creature and its environment.
And yet, once that vital necessity is satisfied, our species—a positively strange species—thinks it must create for itself other needs and tasks besides that of preserving life. … Whatever may be the origin or cause of this curious deviation, the human species is engaged in an immense adventure, an adventure whose objective and end it does not know. …
The same senses, the same muscles, the same limbs—more, the same types of signs, the same instruments of exchange, the same languages, the same modes of logic—enter into the most indispensable acts of our lives, as they figure into the most gratuitous. …
In short, man has not two sets of tools, he has only one, and this one set must serve him for the preservation of his life and his physiological rhythm, and expend itself at other times on illusions and on the labours of our great adventure. …
The same muscles and nerves produce walking as well as dancing, exactly as our linguistic faculty enables us to express our needs and ideas, while the same words and forms can be combined to produce works of poetry. A single mechanism is employed in both cases for two entirely different purposes.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Source: Regards sur le monde actuel [Reflections on the World Today] (1931), pp. 158-159

Idea, Thinking, Sense, Time

“If one regards life and death as natural processes, the metaphysical dread vanishes, and one obtains "peace of mind."”

Peter Wessel Zapffe (1899–1990) Norwegian philosopher, mountaineer, and author

Source: The Last Messiah (1933), To Be a Human Being https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4m6vvaY-Wo&t=1110s (1989–90)

Death, Peace, Nature

“Will you please go journeying
for your own sake,
till I come living a moment of life?”

Suman Pokhrel (1967) Nepali poet, lyricist, playwright, translator and artist

Entanglements http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1zl7d1 From Poetry

“I am reminded every day of my life, if not by events, then by my wife, that I am not a perfect man.”

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

Speech in Mitchell, South Dakota; (1 June 2008)
2008

Perfection

“John is very sweet. He always mentions me in all his interviews; saying that he’s really fond of me. He says that he thinks of me as one of his favourite actors- its very nice. I’ve seen John’s growth from his first film to Baabul and beyond. I think he’s grown as an actor and of course he has become one of the most sought after stars today. I see girl fans who’re crazy about him. I feel good about that and I always believe that good people get good things in life - John is one of them Rani quotes.”

Rani Mukerji (1978) Indian film actress

http://ranimukherji.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=interviews&action=display&thread=407.
Rani On Celebrities

People, Feeling, Quotes, Girl

“But one only woke people if one knew what one wanted to say to them. And she wanted to say not one thing, but everything. Little words that broke up the thought and dismembered it said nothing. 'About life, about death; about Mrs Ramsay”

Virginia Woolf book To the Lighthouse

no, she thought, one could say nothing to nobody.
Part III, Ch. 5
To the Lighthouse (1927)

Death, People

“I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U. S. government will lead the American people in — and the West in general — into an unbearable hell and a choking life.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

Al-Jazeera interview, (21 October 2001), as reported in "Bin Laden's sole post-September 11 TV interview aired" CNN (31 January 2002) http://articles.cnn.com/2002-01-31/us/gen.binladen.interview_1_al-jazeera-qatar-based-network-bin-laden?_s=PM:US. 2000s, 2002

People, Hell, Freedom

“It’s not unusual for us to receive an email from somebody saying, “I spend all of my time on your website and now I have less of a social life than I had before.” We would much rather have people meet people through the website and go out and party than stay at home on a Friday night reading other people’s profiles. And it’s surprising, but we have actually received far less complaints about stalking than we otherwise would have expected.”

Mark Zuckerberg (1984) American internet entrepreneur

People, Home, Time, Reading

“However—the crucial thing is my lack of interest in ordinary life. No one ever wrote a story yet without some real emotional drive behind it—and I have not that drive except where violations of the natural order… defiances and evasions of time, space, and cosmic law… are concerned. Just why this is so I haven't the slightest idea—it simply is so. I am interested only in broad pageants—historic streams—orders of biological, chemical, physical, and astronomical organisation—and the only conflict which has any deep emotional significance to me is that of the principle of freedom or irregularity or adventurous opportunity against the eternal and maddening rigidity of cosmic law… especially the laws of time…. Hence the type of thing I try to write. Naturally, I am aware that this forms a very limited special field so far as mankind en masse is concerned; but I believe (as pointed out in that Recluse article) that the field is an authentic one despite its subordinate nature. This protest against natural law, and tendency to weave visions of escape from orderly nature, are characteristic and eternal factors in human psychology, even though very small ones. They exist as permanent realities, and have always expressed themselves in a typical form of art from the earliest fireside folk tales and ballads to the latest achievements of Blackwood and Machen or de la Mare or Dunsany. That art exists—whether the majority like it or not. It is small and limited, but real—and there is no reason why its practitioners should be ashamed of it. Naturally one would rather be a broad artist with power to evoke beauty from every phase of experience—but when one unmistakably isn't such an artist, there's no sense in bluffing and faking and pretending that one is.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to E. Hoffmann Price (15 August 1934) , quoted in Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters edited by S.T. Joshi, p. 268
Non-Fiction, Letters, to E. Hoffmann Price

Law, Beauty, Art, Idea

“Simply: the practice makes the master. Practice every day, or at least try to sing, as much as you can. And I don´t stop, if I´m not on tour, I´m on a studio, and if I don´t, I do it for pleasure, I do it every day, is something that is part of my life.”

Luis Miguel (1970) Puerto Rican singer; music producer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jI_sg_mBSLk
About his singing.
Interview with Buenos Dias a Todos, 2008

Pleasure, Singing, Parting

“Jack Reacher ordered espresso, double, no peel, no cube, foam cup, no china, and before it arrived at his table he saw a man's life change forever. Not that the waiter was slow. Just that the move was slick. So slick, Reacher had no idea what he was watching. It was just an urban scene, repeated everywhere in the world a billion times a day: A guy unlocked a car and got in and drove away. That was all. But that was enough.”

Lee Child book The Hard Way

The Hard Way, Ch. 1 (2006).

World, Cars, Guy, Idea

“All my life I have made it a rule never to permit a religious man or woman take for granted that his or her religious beliefs deserved more consideration than non-religious beliefs or anti-religious ones.
I never agree with that foolish statement that I ought to respect the views of others when I believe them to be wrong.”

Chapman Cohen (1868–1954) British atheist and secularist writer and lecturer

The Credo of Empowerment, as quoted in David M. Mandell Atheist Acrimonious (Vervante, 2008), p. 176.

“If you love me true
And if you love me true
I'll spend my life with you
And Timer
You're a jigsaw, Timer”

Laura Nyro (1947–1997) American musician and songwriter

"Timer"
Lyrics

Love

“An additional reason for caution in dealing with corporations is to be found in the international commercial conditions of to-day. The same business conditions which have produced the great aggregations of corporate and individual wealth have made them very potent factors in international Commercial competition. Business concerns which have the largest means at their disposal and are managed by the ablest men are naturally those which take the lead in the strife for commercial supremacy among the nations of the world. America has only just begun to assume that commanding position in the international business world which we believe will more and more be hers. It is of the utmost importance that this position be not jeoparded, especially at a time when the overflowing abundance of our own natural resources and the skill, business energy, and mechanical aptitude of our people make foreign markets essential. Under such conditions it would be most unwise to cramp or to fetter the youthful strength of our Nation. Moreover, it cannot too often be pointed out that to strike with ignorant violence at the interests of one set of men almost inevitably endangers the interests of all. The fundamental rule in our national life —the rule which underlies all others—is that, on the whole, and in the long run, we shall go up or down together.”

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

1900s, First Annual Message to Congress (1901)

Men, People, Youth, World

“Even in the most insignificant details of our daily life, none of us can be said to constitute a material whole, which is identical for everyone, and need only be turned up like a page in an account-book or the record of a will; our social personality is created by the thoughts of other people.”

Marcel Proust book In Search of Lost Time

Même au point de vue des plus insignifiantes choses de la vie, nous ne sommes pas un tout matériellement constitué, identique pour tout le monde et dont chacun n'a qu'à aller prendre connaissance comme d'un cahier des charges ou d'un testament; notre personnalité sociale est une création de la pensée des autres.
"Overture"
In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol I: Swann's Way (1913)

People, Books, Personality

“A book in shape but, really, pure crude fact
Secreted from man's life when hearts beat hard,
And brains, high-blooded, ticked two centuries since.
Give it me back! The thing's restorative
I'the touch and sight.”

Robert Browning The Ring and the Book

Book I : The Ring and the Book.
The Ring and the Book (1868-69)

Secret, Books, Heart

“There were profound reasons for his attachment to the sea: he loved it because as a hard-working artist he needed rest, needed to escape from the demanding complexity of phenomena and lie hidden on the bosom of the simple and tremendous; because of a forbidden longing deep within him that ran quite contrary to his life’s task and was for that very reason seductive, a longing for the unarticulated and immeasurable, for eternity, for nothingness. To rest in the arms of perfection is the desire of any man intent upon creating excellence; and is not nothingness a form of perfection?”

Thomas Mann book Death in Venice

Source: Death in Venice (1912), Ch. 3, as translated by David Luke

Love, Lie, Perfection, Sea

“Fear is death, fear is sin, fear is hell, fear is unrighteousness, fear is wrong life. All the negative thoughts and ideas that are in the world have proceeded from this evil spirit of fear.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Death, World, Fear, Idea

“One may view the individual’s everyday life in terms of the working away of a conversational apparatus that ongoingly maintains, modifies and reconstructs his subjective reality… [for example] ‘Well, it’s time for me to get to the station,’ and ‘Fine, darling, have a good day at the office’ implies an entire world within which these apparently simple propositions make sense… the exchange confirms the subjective reality of this world… the great part, if not all, of everyday conversation maintains subjective reality… imagine the effect…of an exchange like this: ‘Well, it’s time for me to get to the station,’ ‘Fine, darling, don’t forget to take along your gun.”

Peter L. Berger book The Social Construction of Reality

Source: The Social Construction of Reality, 1966, p. 147-163

World, Imagination, Reality, Sense

“Someone said to me 'To you football is a matter of life or death!' and I said 'Listen, it's more important than that'.”

Bill Shankly (1913–1981) Scottish footballer and manager

An interview on a Granada Television chat-show, hosted by Shelley Rohde on Wednesday 20th of May 1981

Death, Football

“Suicide was against the law. Johnny had wondered why. It meant that if you missed, or the gas ran out, or the rope broke, you could get locked up in prison to show you that life was really very jolly and thoroughly worth living.”

Terry Pratchett book Johnny and the Dead

Johnny and the Dead (1993)

Law, Suicide

“We must remember that the greatest price of this conflict is not paid by us. It is paid by the Israeli girl in Sderot who closes her eyes in fear that a rocker will take her life in the night. It is paid by he Palestinian boy in Gaza who has no clean water and no country to call his own. These are God's children. And after all of the politics and all of the posturing, this is about the right of every human being to live with dignity and security. This is a lesson embedded in the three great faiths that call one small slice of Earth the Holy Land.”

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

United Nations, General Debate of the 64th Session (2009), United States of America, H.E. Mr. Barack Obama, President p. 6 http://un.org/ga/64/generaldebate/pdf/US_en.pdf, (23 September 2009) 2009

God, Children, Fear, Faith

“Serving means developing love. So unless you develop your love for God you cannot serve Him. Anywhere. Whenever you give some service, it is based on love. Just like mother giving service to the helpless child. Why? Love. So similarly, our life will be perfect when our love is perfect with the perfect Supreme Personality of Godhead. Then it is all right.”

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977) Indian guru

Lecture - Seattle, https://vanisource.org/wiki/680927_-_Lecture_-_Seattle (30 September 1968) Quotes from other Sources, Quotes from other Sources: Loving God

Love, God, Personality, Perfection

“The very fact that religions are not content to stand on their own feet, but insist on crippling or warping the flexible minds of children in their favour, forms a sufficient proof that there is no truth in them. If there were any truth in religion, it would be even more acceptable to a mature mind than to an infant mind—yet no mature mind ever accepts religion unless it has been crippled in infancy. … The whole basis of religion is a symbolic emotionalism which modern knowledge has rendered meaningless & even unhealthy. Today we know that the cosmos is simply a flux of purposeless rearrangement amidst which man is a wholly negligible incident or accident. There is no reason why it should be otherwise, or why we should wish it otherwise. All the florid romancing about man's "dignity", "immortality", &c. &c. is simply egotistical delusions plus primitive ignorance. So, too, are the infantile concepts of "sin" or cosmic "right" & "wrong". Actually, organic life on our planet is simply a momentary spark of no importance or meaning whatsoever. Man matters to nobody except himself. Nor are his "noble" imaginative concepts any proof of the objective reality of the things they visualise. Psychologists understand how these concepts are built up out of fragments of experience, instinct, & misapprehension. Man is essentially a machine of a very complex sort, as La Mettrie recognised nearly 2 centuries ago. He arises through certain typical chemical & physical reactions, & his members gradually break down into their constituent parts & vanish from existence. The idea of personal "immortality" is merely the dream of a child or savage. However, there is nothing anti-ethical or anti-social in such a realistic view of things. Although meaning nothing in the cosmos as a whole, mankind obviously means a good deal to itself. Therefore it must be regulated by customs which shall ensure, for its own benefit, the full development of its various accidental potentialities. It has a fortuitous jumble of reactions, some of which it instinctively seeks to heighten & prolong, & some of which it instinctively seeks to shorten or lessen. Also, we see that certain courses of action tend to increase its radius of comprehension & degree of specialised organisation (things usually promoting the wished-for reactions, & in general removing the species from a clod-like, unorganised state), while other courses of action tend to exert an opposite effect. Now since man means nothing to the cosmos, it is plan that his only logical goal (a goal whose sole reference is to himself) is simply the achievement of a reasonable equilibrium which shall enhance his likelihood of experiencing the sort of reactions he wishes, & which shall help along his natural impulse to increase his differentiation from unorganised force & matter. This goal can be reached only through teaching individual men how best to keep out of each other's way, & how best to reconcile the various conflicting instincts which a haphazard cosmic drift has placed within the breast of the same person. Here, then, is a practical & imperative system of ethics, resting on the firmest possible foundation & being essentially that taught by Epicurus & Lucretius. It has no need of supernatualism, & indeed has nothing to do with it.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Natalie H. Wooley (2 May 1936), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 240-241
Non-Fiction, Letters

Men, Children, Truth, Religion