Quotes about life
page 33

“The point was living with grace, decency, and attention to the world, and breaking free of the artificial constructs in your own life.”

Scott Jurek (1973) American ultramarthon runner

Source: Eat and Run (2012), Ch. 12, p. 105

World

“The best things in life cannot be willed into being.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 114

“I solemnly vow that I will safeguard and hold dear and deep in my heart our union and you…I promise to love you faithfully, forsaking all others, through the good times and the bad, in sickness and health, regardless of where life takes us. I will protect you, trust you, and respect you. I will share your joys and sorrows and comfort you in times of need. I promise to cherish you and uphold your hopes and dreams and keep you safe at my side. All that is mine is now yours. I give you my hand, my heart, and my love from this moment on for as long as we both shall live.”

E. L. James book Fifty Shades Freed

Anastasia Steele, Chapter 4, p. 74.
Fifty Shades Freed (2011)

Love, Health, Dreams, Hope

“I am credited with being one of the hardest workers and perhaps I am, if thought is the equivalent of labour, for I have devoted to it almost all of my waking hours. But if work is interpreted to be a definite performance in a specified time according to a rigid rule, then I may be the worst of idlers. Every effort under compulsion demands a sacrifice of life-energy. I never paid such a price. On the contrary, I have thrived on my thoughts.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

My Inventions (1919)

Effort, Time

“Hereafter we all have to be redeemed. The world is pulling with a thousand strings. We sin because of indifference and negligence and heap new guilt on the old original one. Our life is a chain of sin and expiation ruled by an incomprehensible providence.”

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

Wir müssen alle einmal erlöst werden. Die Welt zieht uns mit tausend Banden. Wir fehlen aus Gleichgültigkeit und Nachsicht und häufen neue eigene Schuld auf alte ererbte. Unser Leben ist eine Kette aus Schuld und Sühne, darüber ein nach unerforschlichen Gesetzen wirkendes Schicksal waltet.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

World, Indifference

“Life is a disease of the spirit; a working incited by Passion. Rest is peculiar to the spirit.”

Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer

Novalis (1829)

Disease, Passion

“Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.”

Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) American playwright

Actually by the Chinese philosopher, educator and popular lecturer Dr. Tehyi Hsieh, Chinese epigrams inside out, and proverbs, 1948.
Misattributed
Variant: Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.

Friendship, Relationship, For Friend, For Bestfriend

“A man must read widely, a little of everything or whatever he can, but given the shortness of life and the verbosity of the world, not too much should be demanded of him. Let him begin with those titles no one should omit, commonly referred to as books for learning, as if not all books were for learning, and this list will vary according to the fount of knowledge one drinks from and the authority that monitors its flow.”

José Saramago book The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis

Source: The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (1993), p. 117

Books, World, Drink, Knowledge

“In political practice, therefore, they join in all coercive measures against the working class; and in ordinary life, despite the high-falutin phrases, they stoop to pick up the golden apples, and to barter truth, love, and honour for traffic in wool, beet-root sugar, and potato spirits.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Section 3, paragraph 9.
The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)

Love, Truth

“It was true of course, what my dad had said: I did worship my grandfather. There were things about him that I needed to be true, and his being an adulterer was not one of them. When I was a kid, Grandpa Portman's fantastic stories meant it was possible to live a magical life. Even after I stopped believing them, there was still something magical about my grandfather. To have endured all the horrors he did, to have seen the worst of humanity and have your life made unrecognizable by it, to come out of all that the honorable and good and brave person I knew him to be—that was magical. So I couldn't believe he was a liar and a cheater and a bad father. Because if Grandpa Portman wasn't honorable and good, I wasn't sure anyone could be.”

Ransom Riggs book Miss Peregrine's Home of Peculiar Children

Source: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2011), Chapter 4, Page 92

Personality

“Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life. Mothers are different. Mothers are darlings.”

Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband

Lord Goring, Act IV
An Ideal Husband (1895)

Family

“But the truth of the matter is, to live a good life, as a good person, it doesn't matter how you got there. It just matters that you do.”

Hank Green (1980) American vlogger

Non-Virgin...a Lexical Gap? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LpHfPOM6GQ&feature=related Youtube

Truth, Personality

“It has become obvious to the new architect that by virtue of his work he is taking an active part in the building of a new world. For us the work of an artist has no value 'as such'; it does not represent an end in itself; it has no intrinsic beauty. The value of a work of art is determined by its relationship to the community... The artist, or the creative worker, invents nothing; there is no such thing as divine inspiration. Thus we understand by the term 'reconstruction' the conquest of the unresolved, of the 'mysterious,' and the chaotic. In our [Russian] architecture, as in our entire life, we are striving to create a social order, i. e., to raise the instinctive to a conscious level.”

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

Quote from: 'Ideological Superstructure'
1926 - 1941, Rußland: Die Rekonstruktion der Architektur in der Sowjetunion' (1929)

World, Beauty, Art, Communication

“The long term ultimate objective – the holy grail – is we would like to help make life multi-planetary.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007)

Help

“I've had groups of twentysomethings saying they still talk to each other in SpongeBob memes. It's really touching, you know? You get people who have had very difficult lives, and they say that SpongeBob got them through things, which is very touching. Someone told us that they were considering suicide, and SpongeBob made them laugh, and they cycled through that phase of their life. You get everything from that, to I had a great happy childhood and SpongeBob was part of it. You get all colours of the spectrum in terms of people coming up. Not just with SpongeBob either. It may be some cartoon that was a failure, or a videogame that took an hour to record in 1996. But they say it was the biggest thing in their life at one point. It's mind-blowing. You don't realise the footprint of what you're doing is leaving behind.”

Tom Kenny (1962) American actor

Tom Kenny Interview: The Voice of SpongeBob SquarePants http://www.denofgeek.com/us/tv/spongebob-squarepants/248119/tom-kenny-interview-the-voice-of-spongebob-squarepants (August 3, 2015)

Happiness, People, Failure, Suicide

“I am sure that university life would be better, both intellectually and morally, if most university students had temporary childless marriages. This would afford a solution to the sexual urge neither restless nor surreptitious, neither mercenary nor casual, and of such a nature that it need not take up time which ought to be given to work.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

"Sex in Education", p. 119-120
1930s, Education and the Social Order (1932)

Marriage, Nature, Universe, Time

“I was more influenced by Barças philosophy than by any other coach. They were four years of my life absolutely fundamental.”

José Mourinho (1963) Portuguese association football player and manager

Chelsea FC, Doctorate Honoris Causa degree award (23 March 2009)

“And those who oppose all reform will do well to remember that ruin in its worst form is inevitable if our National life brings us nothing whatever but a swollen and badly distributed material prosperity. In other words, I feel that material interests are chieﬂy good, not in themselves, but as an indispensable foundation upon which we should build a higher superstructure, a superstructure without which the foundation becomes worthless. Therefore I believe that the destinies of this country should be shaped primarily by moral forces, and by material forces only as they are subordinated to these moral forces.”

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

1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)

Feeling, Country

“I'm going to end a life that I thought could contain every kind of greatness but that in fact consisted only of my incapacity to really want to be great. Whenever I arrived at a certainty, I remembered that those with the greatest certainties are lunatics.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Education Of the Stoic

Ibid., p. 13
The Education of the Stoic

“The people are hungry for the bread of life. Do not offer them a stone.”

Ellen G. White (1827–1915) American author and founder/leader of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church

Book II, Ch. 1, p. 24
Selected Messages (1958 - 1980)

People

“The Men! O what venerable and reverend creatures did the aged seem! Immortal Cherubims! And young men glittering and sparkling Angels, and maids strange seraphic pieces of life and beauty! Boys and girls tumbling in the street, and playing, were moving jewels. I knew not that they were born or should die; But all things abided eternally as they were in their proper places.”

Thomas Traherne (1636–1674) English poet

Third Century, sect. 3.
Centuries of Meditations

Men, Age, Beauty, Angels

“Thus each successive epoch of theology found its own thoughts in Jesus; that was, indeed, the only way in which it could make Him live. But it was not only each epoch that found its reflection in Jesus; each individual created Him in accordance with his own character. There is no historical task which so reveals a man's true self as the writing of a Life of Jesus.”

Albert Schweitzer book The Quest of the Historical Jesus

Source: The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906), p. 4

Way, Success

“If we have the most perfect neighborhoods without proper connections between them we do not have a city, but nomadic life in a jungle.”

Constantinos Apostolou Doxiadis (1914–1975) Greek architect

Source: Building Entopia - 1975, Chapter 16, The need for a system, p. 240

Perfection

“It lay buried here. It lay deep inside me.
It's so deep I don't think that I can speak about it.
It could take me all of my life,
But it would only take a moment to
Tell you what I'm feeling,
But I don't know if I'm ready yet.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, The Sensual World (1989)

Feeling, Thinking

“Even if it is difficult, it is ‘to develop, fix, and make yourself.’ Then you will control yourself well, live your life easily, and prosper.”

Jung Myung Seok (1945) South Korean Leader of New Religious Movement, Poet, Author, Founder of Wolmyeongdong Center

Extracted from Proverbs Blog https://providencepath.wordpress.com/2016/06/16/jung-myung-seok-develop-fix-and-make-yourself/

“The life we have on Earth must have spontaneously generated itself. It must therefore be possible for life to generate spontaneously elsewhere in the universe.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

From an appearance in the Discovery Channel program Alien Planet (14 May 2005)

Universe

“At this time of life even a day makes a difference, the only saving grace is that sometimes things improve.”

José Saramago book The Cave

Source: The Cave (2000), p. 43 (Vintage 2003)

Time

“I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex.”

Kurt Vonnegut book A Man Without a Country

A Man Without a Country (2005)

Sex, Thinking

“Nobody is safe of his life, property and health when the parliament deliberates.”

Janusz Korwin-Mikke (1942) polish politician

Health

“Life may change, but it may fly not;
Hope may vanish, but can die not;
Truth be veiled, but still it burneth;
Love repulsed, — but it returneth!”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Hellas

Source: Hellas (1821), l. 34

Love, Truth, Hope, Change

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

Mikhail Sholokhov book And Quiet Flows the Don

And Quiet Flows the Don (1934)

Pain, Grass, Memory, Time

“During his life, the witcher had met thieves who looked like town councillors, councillors who looked like beggars, harlots who looked like princesses, princesses who looked like calving cows, and kings who looked like thieves.”

Andrzej Sapkowski book The Last Wish

Wiedźmin spotykał w życiu złodziei wyglądających jak rajcy miejscy, rajców wyglądających jak proszalne dziady, nierządnice wyglądające jak królewny, królewny wyglądające jak cielne krowy i królów wyglądających jak złodzieje. (pl.)
The Last Wish (1993)
Source: The lesser evil

Princess

“Work is the outcome of effort; fruit, of life.”

James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) Missionary in China

(J. Hudson Taylor. A Ribband of Blue and Other Bible Studies. London: China Inland Mission, n.d., 45).

Effort

“International communism would entirely do away with all national and racial qualities which are founded in human nature itself; in property it sees the most primary cause of the break-down of world trade in the capitalist system. Accordingly it exploits this through an extensive and carefully organised and brutal system of action, setting aside personal values and sacrificing the individual to a hollow mass-idol that is only a travesty of actual life itself. At the same time it ignores and destroys all the idealistic and higher strivings of men and nations, through its own crass and empty materialist principles. On the other hand, National Socialism sees in all these things—in property, in personal values and in nation and race and the principles of idealism—these forces which carry on every human civilisation and fundamentally determine its worth.”

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

Speech at the Nazi party Congress at Nuremberg (September 1935) http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb58.htm 1930s

Men, World, Communication, Nature

“Ah, the freshness in the face of leaving a task undone!
To be remiss is to be positively out in the country!
What a refuge it is to be completely unreliable!
I can breathe easier now that the appointments are behind me.
I missed them all, through deliberate negligence,
Having waited for the urge to go, which I knew wouldn't come.
I'm free, and against organised, clothed society.
I'm naked and plunge into the water of my imagination.
It's too late to be at either of the two meetings where I should have been at the same time,
Deliberately at the same time…
No matter, I'll stay here dreaming verses and smiling in italics.
This spectator aspect of life is so amusing!
I can't even light the next cigarette… If it's an action,
It can wait for me, along with the others, in the non-meeting called life.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

Ah a frescura na face de não cumprir um dever!
Faltar é positivamente estar no campo!
Que refúgio o não se poder ter confiança em nós!
Respiro melhor agora que passaram as horas dos encontros,
Faltei a todos, com uma deliberação do desleixo,
Fiquei esperando a vontade de ir para lá, que'eu saberia que não vinha.
Sou livre, contra a sociedade organizada e vestida.
Estou nu, e mergulho na água da minha imaginação.
E tarde para eu estar em qualquer dos dois pontos onde estaria à mesma hora,
Deliberadamente à mesma hora...
Está bem, ficarei aqui sonhando versos e sorrindo em itálico.
É tão engraçada esta parte assistente da vida!
Até não consigo acender o cigarro seguinte... Se é um gesto,
Fique com os outros, que me esperam, no desencontro que é a vida.
Álvaro de Campos (heteronym), "A Frescura" (1929), in Fernando Pessoa & Co: Selected Poems, trans. Richard Zenith (Grove Press, 1998)

Smile, Dreams, Imagination, Light

“Whoever would fully and feelingly understand the words of Christ, must endeavor to conform his life wholly to the life of Christ.”

Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471) German canon regular

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 62.

Understanding, Christ

“In late June, my mother moved out of the Summit Town Homes and bought a house in West Hills. It was the first time my mother bought a house, as she had only rented in the past. The house had recently undergone a renovation, so it was practically brand new. The house had a swimming pool and was located in a nice enough area, though I would have still preferred it if my mother had gotten married to a wealthy man and moved into a mansion. I still continued to pester her to do this, and she still stubbornly refused. I will always resent my mother for refusing to do this. If not for her sake, she should have done it for mine. Joining a family of great wealth would have truly saved my life. I would have a high enough status to attract beautiful girlfriends and live above all of my enemies. All of my horrific troubles would have been eased instantly. It is very selfish of my mother to not consider this.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), 19-22, UC Santa Barbara, Perspective on incelness

Family, Beauty, Home, Time

“Spiritual power is the eternal guide, in this life and the life after, for man ranks supreme among all creatures. Led forward by spiritual power, man can reach the summit destined for him by the Great Creator.”

Haile Selassie (1892–1975) Emperor of Ethiopia

On the Nomination of Archbishop Basilios (19 January 1951)

“We communists know only one possession that is sacred — the life of the working man, the life of the worker, his wife and his children. That is the only possession which is sacred so far as we are concerned, and it gives us the right to do anything and everything.”

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary from Russia

Into the Fight Against Famine
6. The Kulaks - bulwark and hope of the counter-revolution
How the Revolution Armed (1923)

Children

“Genius is a will-o'-the-wisp if it lacks a solid foundation of perseverence and fanatical tenacity. This is the most important thing in all of human life…”

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

As quoted in How the Allies Won (1995) by Richard Overy, citing Hitler: The Man and the Military Leader (1972) by P.E. Schramm
Other remarks

Perseverance

“The only significance of life consists in helping to establish the kingdom of God; and this can be done only by means of the acknowledgment and profession of the truth by each one of us.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Variant translation: The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity by contributing to the establishment of the kingdom of God, which can only be done by the recognition and profession of the truth by every man.
Source: The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894), Ch. 12

God, Truth, Help

“Civil society organisations make a major contribution to human development, particularly when democracies are failing, or have failed; for it is then that the institutions of civil society can, and often do, carry an added burden to help sustain improvements in quality of life. I believe strongly that a critical part of any development strategy should include support for civil society. I know that Norway supports this approach and works actively with its own civil society organizations to build capacity in the developing world.”

Aga Khan IV (1936) 49th and current Imam of Nizari Ismailism

In a speech on Democratic Development, Pluralism and Civil Society delivered at the Nobel Institute, Oslo, Norway (7 April 2005). http://www.akdn.org/speech/nobel-institute-oslo

World, Democracy, Support, Help

“Authoritarian, paralyzing, circular, occasionally elliptical, stock phrases, also jocularly referred to as nuggets of wisdom, are malignant plague, one of the very worst ever to ravage the earth. We say to the confused, Know thyself, as if knowing yourself was not the fifth and most difficult of human arithmetical operations, we say to the apathetic, Where there’s a will, there’s a way, as if the brute realities of the world did not amuse themselves each day by turning that phrase on its head, we say to the indecisive, Begin at the beginning, as if that beginning were the clearly visible point of a loosely wound thread and that all we had to do was to keep pulling until we reached the other end, and as if, between the former and the latter, we had held in our hands a smooth, continuous thread with no knots to untie, no snarled to untangle, a complete impossibility in the life of a skien, or indeed, if we may be permitted on more stock phrase, in the skien of life. … These are the delusions of the pure and unprepared, the beginning is never the clear, precise end of a thread, the beginning is a long, painfully slow process that requires time and patience in order to find out in which direction it is heading, a process that feels its way along the path ahead like a blind man the beginning is just the beginning, what came before is nigh on worthless.”

José Saramago book The Cave

Source: The Cave (2000), p. 54 (Vintage 2003)

Wisdom, World, Way, Feeling

“I believe that one of the things Christianity says is that sound doctrines are all useless. That you have to change your life.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Or the direction of your life.
Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 53e

Change

“Will of God.. whatever you wanna call it.. you call it Jesus, call it Mohammed, call it goobybob, call it nuclear mind, call it blow the world up, call it your heart. Whatever you wanna call it, it's still music to me. It's there. It's the will of life.”

Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician

Interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4Xw5Dc_vWs by Geraldo Rivera (1981)

God, World, Music, Heart

“That every will must consider every other will its equal — would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book On the Genealogy of Morality

Essay 2, Section 11
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)

Hostility, Secret, Future

“[Unlike the] utilitarian… I judge pleasure and pain to be of small importance compared to knowledge, the appreciation and contemplation of beauty, and a certain intrinsic excellence of mind which, apart from its practical effects, appears to me to deserve the name of virtue. [For] many years it seemed to me perfectly self-evident that pleasure is the only good and pain the only evil. Now, however, the opposite seems to me self-evident.
What first turned me away from utilitarianism was the persuasion that I myself ought to pursue philosophy, although I had (and have still) no doubt that by doing economics and the theory of politics I could add more to human happiness. It appeared to me that the dignity of which human existence is capable is not attainable by devotion to the mechanism of life, and that unless the contemplation of eternal things is preserved, mankind will become no better than well-fed pigs. But I do not believe that such contemplation on the whole tends to happiness. It gives moments of delight, but these are outweighed by years of effort and depression.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Letter to Gilbert Murray, April 3, 1902
1900s

Pain, Happiness, Pleasure, Beauty

“My main difficulty was that I could not paint fast enough. My pictures are all moments of my life – I mean instantaneous visual experiences, generally noted very rapidly and spontaneously. When I begin to paint, it's like leaping suddenly into deep waters, and I never know beforehand whether I will be able to swim. Well, it was Kandinsky who taught me the technique of swimming. I mean that he taught me to work fast enough, and with enough self-assurance, to be able to achieve this kind of rapid and spontaneous recording of moments of life.”

Gabriele Münter (1877–1962) German painter

Source: Interview by Edouard Roditi (1958), p. 120

Water, Painting

“This is my principal objection to life, I think: It is too easy, when alive, to make perfectly horrible mistakes.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Deadeye Dick

Source: Deadeye Dick (1982), p. 6

Thinking

“Tragedy, you can lay that at God's feet. But if we didn't bring additional evil into the world… we could tolerate the tragedy of Being without becoming corrupt. I think the answer to that is Yes, because I've seen people react quite heroically to the arbitrary burdens of their life. But malevolence, man, that lays them low. It seems to be nothing but a destructive force. The root of malevolence, and you see this in Cain and Abel, is the desire for revenge against God for creation itself. It's revenge against Being itself for the crime of Being.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

God, People, World, Revenge

“Carlyle said "a lie cannot live." It shows that he did not know how to tell them. If I had taken out a life policy on this one the premiums would have bankrupted me ages ago.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2 (2013), p. 304

Lie, Age

“Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.”

Theodor W. Adorno book Minima Moralia

Es gibt kein richtiges Leben im falschen.
E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 18
Minima Moralia (1951)

“Let us… be careful of admitting into our souls the notion that there is no truth or health or soundness in any arguments at all; but let us rather say that there is as yet no health in us, and that we must quit ourselves like men and do our best to gain health—you and all other men with a view to the whole of your future life, and I myself with a view to death.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Death, Men, Health, Truth

“I like desires like children
and their plays
that tease me now and then into
knowing life.”

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

Desire http://lifeandlegends.com/suman-pokhrel-translated-dr-abhi-subedi/ From Poetry

Children

“Everyone must destroy their life. According to the way they do it, they're either triumphants or failures.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

The Book of Delusions (1936)

Way, Failure

“A planned life is a dead life.”

Lauren Bacall (1924–2014) American actress, model

Private Screenings interview (2005)

Dead

“I've been an animal lover my whole life and I consider myself environmentalist, and often the two subjects come together.”

Jorja Fox (1968) American actress

“ ADI Jorja Fox press conference, Austin Texas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwUa6kweniM,” interview with Animal Defenders International (14 July 2008).

Lovers, Animals

“It's like anything in life, visualizing the old man you're going to become: As long as you have a clear picture of that — the life you want to lead — eventually you'll probably get there.”

Heath Ledger (1979–2008) Australian actor

Quoted in Variety (December 2005).
Variant: It's like anything in life, visualizing the old man you're going to become: As long as you have a clear picture of that — the life you want to lead — eventually you'll probably get there.

“In name we had the Declaration of Independence in 1776; but we gave the lie by our acts to the words of the Declaration of Independence until 1865; and words count for nothing except in so far as they represent acts. This is true everywhere; but, O my friends, it should be truest of all in political life. A broken promise is bad enough in private life. It is worse in the field of politics. No man is worth his salt in public life who makes on the stump a pledge which he does not keep after election; and, if he makes such a pledge and does not keep it, hunt him out of public life. I care for the great deeds of the past chiefly as spurs to drive us onward in the present. I speak of the men of the past partly that they may be honored by our praise of them, but more that they may serve as examples for the future.”

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

1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)

Men, Lie, Past, Future

“Take our life from us. We laid it down. We got tired. We didn't commit suicide. We committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world.”

Jim Jones (1931–1978) founder and the leader of the Peoples Temple

Source: Last words on " Death Tape http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/Tapes/Tapes/DeathTape/Q042fbi.html" FBI No. Q042 (18 November 1978)

World, Suicide

“I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”

Nathan Hale (1755–1776) soldier for the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War

Last words before being hanged by the British as a spy, (September 22, 1776), according to the account by William Hull based on reports by British Captain John Montresor who was present and who spoke to Hull under a flag of truce the next day:
‘On the morning of his execution,’ continued the officer, ‘my station was near the fatal spot, and I requested the Provost Marshal to permit the prisoner to sit in my marquee, while he was making the necessary preparations. Captain Hale entered: he was calm, and bore himself with gentle dignity, in the consciousness of rectitude and high intentions. He asked for writing materials, which I furnished him: he wrote two letters, one to his mother and one to a brother officer.’ He was shortly after summoned to the gallows. But a few persons were around him, yet his characteristic dying words were remembered. He said, ‘I only regret, that I have but one life to lose for my country.’
Some speculation exists that Hale might have been repeating or paraphrasing lines from Joseph Addison's play Cato, Act IV, Scene IV:
How beautiful is death when earned by virtue.
Who would not be that youth? What pity is it
that we can die but once to serve our country.
See George Dudley Seymour, Captain Nathan Hale, Major John Palsgrave Wyllys, A Digressive History, (1933), p. 39.
Another early variant of his last words exists, as reported in the Independent Chronicle and the Universal Advertiser (17 May 1781):
I am so satisfied with the cause in which I have engaged, that my only regret is, that I have not more lives than one to offer in its service.

Country

“The Church acknowledges the indispensable contribution which women make to society through the sensitivity, intuition and other distinctive skill sets which they, more than men, tend to possess. I think, for example, of the special concern which women show to others, which finds a particular, even if not exclusive, expression in motherhood. I readily acknowledge that many women share pastoral responsibilities with priests, helping to guide people, families and groups and offering new contributions to theological reflection. But we need to create still broader opportunities for a more incisive female presence in the Church. Because “the feminine genius is needed in all expressions in the life of society, the presence of women must also be guaranteed in the workplace”[72] and in the various other settings where important decisions are made, both in the Church and in social structures.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

Section 103
2010s, 2013, Evangelii Gaudium · The Joy of the Gospel

Women, Men, People, Family

“Africa’s progress will depend on unleashing economic growth -- not just for the few at the top, but for the many, because an essential element of dignity is being able to live a decent life. That begins with a job. And that requires trade and investment.”

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

2015, Remarks to the People of Africa (July 2015)

Dependency

“When I was a child of ten, I went on my bare knees by my bedside one night and promised God that I should devote my Life to an effort to free my country. I have kept the promise. I have helped to organise, to train, and to discipline my fellow-countrymen to the sole end that, when the time came, they might fight for Irish freedom. The time, as it seemed to me, did come, and we went into the fight. I am glad that we did. We seem to have lost; but we have not lost. To refuse to fight would have been to lose; to fight is to win. We have kept faith with the past, and handed on its tradition to the future. I repudiate the assertion of the Prosecutor that I sought to aid and abet England’s enemy. Germany is no more to me than England is. I asked and accepted German aid in the shape of arms and an expeditionary force; we neither asked for nor accepted German gold, nor had any traffic with Germany but what I state. My object was to win Irish freedom. We struck the first blow ourselves, but I should have been glad of an ally’s aid. I assume that I am speaking to Englishmen who value their freedom, and who profess to be fighting for the freedom of Belgium and Serbia. Believe that we too love freedom and desire it. To us it is more than anything else in the world. If you strike us down now, we shall rise again, and renew the fight. You cannot conquer Ireland; you cannot extinguish the Irish passion for freedom. If our deed has not been sufficient to win freedom, then our children will win it by a better deed.”

Patrick Pearse (1879–1916) Irish revolutionary, shot by the British Army in 1916

Patrick Pearse at his court-martial.Publish by the 75th Anniversary Committee, Dublin, 1991.

Love, God, Children, World

“Life has improved, comrades. Life has become more joyous.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

In Russian: Жить стало лучше, товарищи. Жить стало веселее. Speech at the Conference of Stakhanovites http://marx2mao.com/Stalin/SCS35.html (17 November 1935) Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

“The one sure way to have secured the defeat of every good principle worth fighting for would have been to have permitted the fight to be changed into one along sectarian lines and inspired by the spirit of sectarian bitterness, either for the purpose of putting into public life or of keeping out of public life the believers in any given creed. Such conduct represents an assault upon Americanism. The man guilty of it is not a good American. I hold that in this country there must be complete severance of Church and State; that public moneys shall not be used for the purpose of advancing any particular creed; and therefore that the public schools shall be non-sectarian. As a necessary corollary to this, not only the pupils but the members of the teaching force and the school officials of all kinds must be treated exactly on a par, no matter what their creed; and there must be no more discrimination against Jew or Catholic or Protestant than discrimination in favor of Jew, Catholic or Protestant. Whoever makes such discrimination is an enemy of the public schools.”

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

1910s, Address to the Knights of Columbus (1915)
Context: For thirty-five years I have been more or less actively engaged in public life, in the performance of my political duties, now in a public position, now in a private position. I have fought with all the fervor I possessed for the various causes in which with all my heart I believed; and in every fight I thus made I have had with me and against me Catholics, Protestants, and Jews. There have been times when I have had to make the fight for or against some man of each creed on ground of plain public morality, unconnected with questions of public policy. There were other times when I have made such a fight for or against a given man, not on grounds of public morality, for he may have been morally a good man, but on account of his attitude on questions of public policy, of governmental principle. In both cases, I have always found myself 4 fighting beside, and fighting against, men of every creed. The one sure way to have secured the defeat of every good principle worth fighting for would have been to have permitted the fight to be changed into one along sectarian lines and inspired by the spirit of sectarian bitterness, either for the purpose of putting into public life or of keeping out of public life the believers in any given creed. Such conduct represents an assault upon Americanism. The man guilty of it is not a good American. I hold that in this country there must be complete severance of Church and State; that public moneys shall not be used for the purpose of advancing any particular creed; and therefore that the public schools shall be non-sectarian. As a necessary corollary to this, not only the pupils but the members of the teaching force and the school officials of all kinds must be treated exactly on a par, no matter what their creed; and there must be no more discrimination against Jew or Catholic or Protestant than discrimination in favor of Jew, Catholic or Protestant. Whoever makes such discrimination is an enemy of the public schools.

Money, School, Way, Change

“Whoever prefers the material comforts of life over intellectual wealth is like the owner of a palace who moves into the servants’ quarters and leaves the sumptuous rooms empty.”

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

Wer die materiellen Genüsse des Lebens seinen idealen Gütern vorzieht, gleicht dem Besitzer eines Palastes, der sich in den Gesindestuben einrichtet und die Prachtsäle leer stehen lässt.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 53.

Wealth

“The performance of duty, and not an indulgence in vapid ease and vapid pleasure, is all that makes life worth while.”

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

Chapter V Applied Idealism http://www.bartleby.com/55/5.html 1910s, Theodore Roosevelt — An Autobiography (1913)

Pleasure

“A play is made by sensing how the forces in life simulate ignorance — you set free the concealed irony, the deadly joke.”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

"The State of the Theatre" an interview by Henry Brandon in Harpers 221 (November 1960)

Sense

“Everything I loved had been dead for two centuries—or, as in the case of Graeco-Roman classicism, for two milenniums. I am never a part of anything around me—in everything I am an outsider. Should I find it possible to crawl backward through the Halls of Time to that age which is nearest my own fancy, I should doubtless be bawled out of the coffee-houses for heresy in religion, or else lampooned by John Dennis till I found refuge in the deep, silent Thames, that covers many another unfortunate. Yes, I seem to be a decided pessimist!—But pray do not think, gentlemen, that I am utterly forlorn and misanthropick creature. … Despite my solitary life, I have found infinite joy in books and writing, and am by far too much interested in the affairs of the world to quit the scene before Nature shall claim me. Though not a participant in the Business of life; I am, like the character of Addison and Steele, an impartial (or more or less impartial) Spectator, who finds not a little recreation in watching the antics of those strange and puny puppets called men. A sense of humour has helped me to endure existence; in fact, when all else fails, I never fail to extract a sarcastic smile from the contemplation of my own empty and egotistical career!”

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

Letter to "The Keicomolo"—Kleiner, Cole, and Moe (October 1916), in Selected Letters I, 1911-1924 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 27
Non-Fiction, Letters

Love, Men, Books, Age

“It lies not in man's right nor in man's power truly to justify the guilty. This is a miracle reserved for the Lord alone. God, the infinitely just Sovereign, knows that there is not a just man upon earth that doeth good and sinneth not, and therefore, in the infinite sovereignty of His divine nature and in the splendor of His ineffable love, He undertakes the task, not so much of justifying the just as of justifying the ungodly. God has devised ways and means of making the ungodly man to stand justly accepted before Him: He has set up a system by which with perfect justice He can treat the guilty as if he had been all his life free from offence, yea, can treat him as if he were wholly free from sin. He justifieth the ungodly.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

All of Grace

Love, God, Justice, Way

“What a wonderful work Wagner has done for humanity in translating the toil of life into the readable script of music! For those who seek the tale of other worlds his magic is silent; but earth-travail under his wand becomes instinct with rhythmic song to an accompaniment of the elements, and the blare and crash of the bottomless pit itself.”

Margaret Barber book The Roadmender

Source: The Roadmender (1902), Chapter II

World, Music

“Life is, after all, not a product of morality.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

Preface 1, tr. R.J. Hollingdale. The German original has slightly other meaning: "das Leben ist nun einmal nicht von der Moral ausgedacht" ("...and the life was not invented, one day, by morality").
Human, All Too Human (1878)

“If we lose the virile, manly qualities, and sink into a nation of mere hucksters, putting gain over national honor, and subordinating everything to mere ease of life, then we shall indeed reach a condition worse than that of the ancient civilizations in the years of their decay.”

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

"The Law of Civilization and Decay", The Forum (January 1897), reprinted in American Ideals (1926), vol. 13 of The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, national ed., chapter 15, pp. 259–60
1890s

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”

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

This quotation, often attributed on the Internet to Plato, cannot be found in any of Plato's writings, nor can it be found in any published work anywhere until recent years. If it really were a quotation by Plato, then some author in the recorded literature of the last several centuries would have mentioned that quote, but they did not. The sentiment isn't new, however. The ancient Roman Seneca, in his work on "Morals," quoted an earlier Roman writer, Lucretius (who wrote about the year 50 B.C.), as saying "we are as much afraid in the light as children in the dark." (Seneca was paraphrasing a longer passage by Lucretius from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), Book II, lines 56 et seq.)
Misattributed

Men, Forgiveness, Light, Motivational

“The prison of life and the bondage of grief are one and the same.
Before the onset of death, why should man expect to be free of grief?”

Ghalib (1797–1869) Urdu-Persian poet

Death

“The willfully idle man, like the willfully barren woman, has no place in a sane, healthy, and vigorous community. Moreover, the gross and hideous selfishness for which each stands defeats even its own miserable aims. Exactly as infinitely the happiest woman is she who has borne and brought up many healthy children, so infinitely the happiest man is he who has toiled hard and successfully in his life-work. The work may be done in a thousand different ways —with the brain or the hands, in the study, the field, or the workshop—if it is honest work, honestly done and well worth doing, that is all we have a right to ask. Every father and mother here, if they are wise, will bring up their children not to shirk difficulties, but to meet them and overcome them; not to strive after a life of ignoble ease, but to strive to do their duty, first to themselves and their families, and then to the whole state; and this duty must inevitably take the shape of work in some form or other.”

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

1900s, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900), National Duties

Children, Family, Way, Communication

“Education and training for all children to be equal in opportunity in all schools, colleges, universities, and other institutions of training in the professions and vocations in life; to be regulated on the capacity of children to learn, and not on the ability of parents to pay the costs. Training for life's work to be as much universal and thorough for all walks of life as has been the training in the arts of killing.”

Huey Long (1893–1935) American politician, Governor of Louisiana, and United States Senator

Number 7 in the sum and substance of the Share our Wealth program (1935); quoted in Hugh Davis Graham, Huey Long (1970), p. 74.

Children, Education, School, Art

“It delights me even more, though, to hear that my nameless cosmic monsters have an air of originality about them! Shapeless, unheard-of creatures are not original with me; for although Poe did not use them, they figure quite widely in minor horror-writing since his time. Usually they tend to be exaggerations of certain known life-forms such as insects, poisonous plants, protozoa, & the like, although a few writers break away wholly from terrestrial analogy & depict things as abstractly cosmic as luminous protoplasmic globes. If I have gone beyond these, it is only subtly & atmospherically—in details, & in occasional imputations of geometrical, biological, & physico-chemical properties definitely outside the realm of matter as understood by us. Most of my monsters fail altogether to satisfy my sense of the cosmic—the abnormally chromatic entity in The Colour Out of Space being the only one of the lot which I take any pride in.”

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

Letter to Elizabeth Toldridge (8 March 1929), in Selected Letters II, 1925-1929 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 316
Non-Fiction, Letters

Sense, Time

“I'm gonna marry the night.
I won't give up on my life.
I'm a warrior queen,
Live passionately tonight.I'm gonna marry the dark,
Gonna make love to the stark.
I'm a soldier to my own emptiness.
I am a winner.”

Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Marry the Night, written by Lady Gaga and Fernando Garibay
Song lyrics, Born This Way (2011)

Love, Making love, Passion, Night

“As you are aware, I have never been able to soothe myself with the sugary delusions of religion; for these things stand convicted of the utmost absurdity in light of modern scientific knowledge. With Nietzsche, I have been forced to confess that mankind as a whole has no goal or purpose whatsoever, but is a mere superfluous speck in the unfathomable vortices of infinity and eternity. Accordingly, I have hardly been able to experience anything which one could call real happiness; or to take as vital an interest in human affairs as can one who still retains the hallucination of a "great purpose" in the general plan of terrestrial life. … However, I have never permitted these circumstances to react upon my daily life; for it is obvious that although I have "nothing to live for", I certainly have just as much as any other of the insignificant bacteria called human beings. I have thus been content to observe the phenomena about me with something like objective interest, and to feel a certain tranquillity which comes from perfect acceptance of my place as an inconsequential atom. In ceasing to care about most things, I have likewise ceased to suffer in many ways. There is a real restfulness in the scientific conviction that nothing matters very much; that the only legitimate aim of humanity is to minimise acute suffering for the majority, and to derive whatever satisfaction is derivable from the exercise of the mind in the pursuit of truth.”

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

Letter to Reinhardt Kleiner (14 September 1919), in Selected Letters I, 1911-1924 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 86-87
Non-Fiction, Letters

Happiness, Truth, Religion, Way

“If you ever wonder whether America is big enough to hold multitudes, strong enough to withstand the forces of change, brave enough to live up to our ideals even in times of trial, then look to the generations of ordinary citizens who have proven again and again that we are worthy of that. That’s our great inheritance -- what ordinary people have done to build this country and make these words live. And it’s our generation’s task to follow their example in this journey -- to keep building an America where no matter who we are or what we look like, or who we love or what we believe, we can make of our lives what we will. You will not and should not forget your history and your past. That adds to the richness of American life. But you are now American. You’ve got obligations as citizens. And I’m absolutely confident you will meet them.”

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

2015, Naturalization Ceremony speech (December 2015)

Love, People, Confidence, History

“Moreover, it is well to remember that these movements never achieve the end they nominally have in view. They do nothing whatsoever except to increase among the men of the various churches the spirit of sectarian intolerance which is base and unlovely in any civilization, but which is utterly revolting among a free people that profess the principles we profess. No such movement can ever permanently succeed here. All that it does is for a decade or so to greatly increase the spirit of theological animosity, both among the people to whom it appeals and among the people whom it assails. Furthermore, it has in the past invariably resulted, in so far as it was successful at all, in putting unworthy men into office; for there is nothing that a man of loose principles and of evil practices in public life so desires as the chance to distract attention from his own shortcomings and misdeeds by exciting and inflaming theological and sectarian prejudice.”

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

1910s, Address to the Knights of Columbus (1915)

Men, People, Evil, Chance

“As the liberal sees it, the task of the state consists solely and exclusively in guaranteeing the protection of life, health, liberty, and private property against violent attacks. Everything that goes beyond this is an evil. A government that, instead of fulfilling its task, sought to go so far as actually to infringe on personal security of life and health, freedom, and property would, of course, be altogether bad.”

Ludwig von Mises book Liberalism

Source: Liberalism (1927), Ch. 1 : The Foundations of Liberal Policy § 11. The Limits of Governmental Activity

Health, Freedom, Evil, Personality

“Skepticism is part of reflection… In religion and ethics, in politics, you have to be skeptical of claims that people make. It applies to all parts of life. Your own beliefs and the beliefs of others, and your willingness to examine these, to see if they hold up under scrutiny.”

Paul Kurtz (1925–2012) American professor of philosophy

9:40–10:10
Exuberant Skepticism (2012)

People, Religion, Parting

“I firmly believe that the higher [spiritual] experience can to a certain extent be prepared for by absolute devotion in the material world to another human being. Thus from the most worldly point of view and with no comprehension of the higher life of the spirit, the lower, more terrestrial spirit makes us aware that all the treasures of this life, all that fame, wealth and health can bring are nothing beside the happiness which is created and sustained by the love of one human being for another… but as the joys of human love surpass all that riches and power may bring a man, so does that greater spiritual love and enlightenment, the fruit of that sublime experience of the direct vision of reality which is God's gift and grace, surpass all that the finest, truest human love can offer.”

Aga Khan III (1877–1957) 48th Imam of the Nizari Ismaili community

Memoirs of Aga Khan: World Enough & Time (1954)

Love, God, Happiness, Health

“Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1900s, A Free Man's Worship (1903)

Freedom, Time, Personality

“Women believed in death. Without exception. It was part of their makeup. Whereas men refused to face up to it. Not only death, in fact, but life, too: a man, learning that his wife or girlfriend is pregnant, reacts like some beast of the field - "I can't believe it's true!" - while women look at the same situation as either happy news or a momentary inconvenience.”

Françoise Sagan (1935–2004) French writer

Un chagrin de passage (1994, A Fleeting Sorrow, translated 1995)

Death, Women, Men, Happiness

“The Road of life is rocky and you may stumble too,
so while you talk about me, someone else is judging you.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

Song lyrics, Judge Not (single, 1961)

“Twenty years ago I thought: "What's the difference between eating a bloody steak and killing my dog, slitting him open and roasting him?" I've always loved animals but it was around the late 80s that I realised I had to go vegetarian. A lot of things converged in my life then – musically, emotionally – but mainly it was my love of animals and spending so much time touring that made me decide I had to change my diet. In the Runaways we used to eat a ton of junk food. So something had to give.”

Joan Jett (1958) American rock musician, former member of The Runaways

“What's in your basket, Joan Jett?”, in theguardian.com (18 July 2010) https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/jul/18/joan-jett-vegetarian-diet.

Love, Food, Dogs, Music

“Repression for the attainment of economic ends is a necessary weapon of the socialist dictatorship.** Terrorism and Communism : A Reply to Karl Kautsky (1920; 1975), p. 153* The road to socialism lies through a period of the highest possible intensification of the principle of the state … Just as a lamp, before going out, shoots up in a brilliant flame, so the state, before disappearing, assumes the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, i. e., the most ruthless form of state, which embraces the life of the citizens authoritatively in every direction.”

Leon Trotsky book Terrorism and Communism

Source: Terrorism and Communism (1920), p. 177

Communication

“No, the reward comes in knowing that our entire way of life in America depends on the rule of law; that the maintenance of that law is a hard and daily labor; that in this country, we don’t have soldiers in the streets or militias setting the rules. Instead, we have public servants -- police officers -- like the men who were taken away from us.”

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

2016, Memorial Service for Fallen Dallas Police Officers (July 2016)

Men, Law, Way, Dependency

“I can get caught in many things but there is one thing I will never get caught in, and that is acting - because I don't act. On screen I am like I am in real life.”

Salman Khan (1965) Indian film actor

Quotes By Salman

“Whether it be generally recognized or not, what we call the civilized world, which for seven hundred years has been moving steadily forward in the spirit of liberalism and toward liberalism s high ideals, has now turned suddenly and violently backward. The guidance of reason and of understanding, of moral principle and of religious faith, has been shockingly and cruelly disslaced by the rule of brute force. Our literally stupendous achievements in literature, in philosophy, in the arts, in the sciences and in the comforts and conveniences of life count for nothing in the control of no national policy and of national conduct, and by far the major portion of the world is now under the rule of brutal compulsion. Such portion of the world as is not in that condition may soon be struggling for its life.”

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

Liberty-Equality-Fraternity (1942)

World, Faith, Art, Literature

“You will soon find that it is not his clothes but his political sense and energy that control. You will find that if you expect to do anything there will be mighty little temptation to try to treat the men with whom you are working on any basis save the fundamental democratic basis of what they amount to, and what you can show you amount to as compared to them. So that if you go into life to do anything, it is perfectly useless for me to tell you to get rid of snobbery, because you will have to. It is just as true in every other field as in politics. Every man who works in philanthropy and he can do nothing in philanthropy unless he combines a very earnest desire to accomplish what is decent with the determination to accomplish it in practical fashion […] if he goes into philanthropy and tries to do something in a college settlement, tries to do his part in working to disentangle the tangled knot of our social and civic life, he will find just as soon as he gets interested in his work he wont care and won't know who the people are who are with him except as he judges them by their fruits. The interest that you take in him is, can a given man accomplish something? If he can not, then let him give place to the man who can.”

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

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

Men, People, Fashion, Sense

“Global Classrooms are a cinch, with the help of Merrill Lynch.
When you put the org in Google, partnerships go truly gloooobal.
There is hope for Earth's salvation, with the Cisneros Foundation.
With Jay-Z there's double strife, life for children and water for life.
Human health will get ahead, with the valiant work of (RED).
For the poor and doing good, stays the job of Robin Hood.
UN stays on the front burner, thanks to our champ Ted Turner.
And whole revolutions stem, from the work of UNIFEM.
But tonight my special shout-out, goes to one I can't do without.
We have traveled up and down, Frisco, Atlanta, Chicago town.
Yes, the king of all the doers, is my trusty friend Bill Luers.”

Ban Ki-moon (1944) 8th Secretary-General of the United Nations

Ban at the 2008 Global Leadership Awards Gala, held October 1, 2008 http://www.unausa.org/site/pp.asp?b=260414 by the United Nations Association of the United States of America. It's a "lyric acknowledgment"—inspired by honoree Jay-Z—of the award winners, sung by Ban as a rap.

Children, Health, Hope, Travel

“If any continue through life in the condition of the hired laborer, it is not the fault of the system, but because of either a dependent nature which prefers it, or improvidence, folly, or singular misfortune.”

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

1850s, Address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society (1859)

Nature, Dependency

“The tendency of women to push aside man, supplanting the old spirit of cooperation with him in all the affairs of life, is very disappointing to me.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

Mr. Tesla Explains Why He Will Never Marry (1924)

Women, Disappointment

“It sometimes strikes me how immensely fortunate I am that each day should take its place in my life, either reddened with the rising and setting sun, or refreshingly cool with deep, dark clouds, or blooming like a white flower in the moonlight. What untold wealth!”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Glimpses of Bengal http://www.spiritualbee.com/tagore-book-of-letters/ (1921)

Flowers, Sun, Wealth

“When I left Springfield I asked the people to pray for me. I was not a Christian. When I buried my son, the severest trial of my life, I was not a Christian. But when I went to Gettysburg and saw the graves of thousands of our soldiers, I then and there consecrated myself to Christ. Yes, I do love Jesus.”

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

This anecdote apparently dates from 1864 Massachusetts Sunday School Teachers' Convention. This has been portrayed to have been Lincoln's "reply" to an unnamed Illinois clergyman when asked if he loved Jesus, as quoted in The Lincoln Memorial Album — Immortelles (1882) edited by Osborn H. Oldroyd [New York: G.W. Carleton & Co. p. 366 http://books.google.com/books?id=pX5DEhCM9M0C&pg=RA10-PA366&lpg=RA10-PA366&dq=%22and+saw+the+graves+of+thousands+of+our+soldiers%22&source=web&ots=Alddnu8KL8&sig=IhhhPHp6tuB7FoiRI8c71w5NUH4#PRA10-PA365,M1 This incident must have appeared in print immediately after Lincoln's death, for I find it quoted in memorial addresses of May, 1865. Mr Oldroyd has endeavored to learn for me in what paper he found it and on whose authority it rests, but without result. He does not remember where he found it. It is inherently improbable, and rests on no adequate testimony. It ought to be wholly disregarded. The earliest reference I have found to the story in which Lincoln is alleged to have said to an unnamed Illinois minister, "I do love Jesus" is in a sermon preached in the Baptist Church of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, April 19, 1865, by Rev. W. W. Whitcomb, which was published in the Oshkosh Northwestern, April 21, 1865, and in 1907 issued in pamphlet form by John E. Burton. William Eleazar Barton (1920) The Soul of Abraham Lincoln http://books.google.com/books?id=UDEOAAAAIAAJ&pg=RA1-PA208&lpg=RA1-PA208&dq=%22and+saw+the+graves+of+thousands+of+our+soldiers%22&source=web&ots=kDphIXKsy-&sig=GclPy5wecnvSuGHYO2R1bhb6lUQ. Further discussion appears in They Never Said It (1989) by Paul F. Boller & John George, p. 91. Disputed

Love, People, Christ

Quotes about life page 33

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Quotes about life
page 33