Quotes about love
page 93

“... I believe that the annihilation of even one soul spells a defeat of God’s purposes, a denial of Christ’s teaching and a closure of heaven against those who love the lost soul.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.253 [ellipsis added]

God, Soul, Christ

“He had assumed that if you removed a human being’s natural incentive to work—his initiative, his spontaneous creative energy—and replaced it with external motivation and coercion, he would become a lazy and careless worker. But no careless workers kept those lovely farmlands, or made the superb cars and comfortable trains. The lure and compulsion of profit was evidently a much more effective replacement of the natural initiative than he had been led to believe.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, (1974), Chapter 3 (p. 82)

Cars, Motivation, Nature, Training

“I'm always surprised when anything about the band connects. But I love the fact that it's hard for people to understand. We've said before that it's always been a great thing to get certain people to go away thinking, 'Oh dear, she can't play the drums!' 'Fine, if you think it's all a gimmick, go away!”

Jack White (1975) American musician and record producer

It weeds out people who wouldn't care anyway. On how they are able to "sell what is really an art concept" to a mass audience Perry, Andrew (2004). "The White Stripes uncut" http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,13887,1349947,00.html Observer Music Monthly (accessed June 19, 2007). 2007

People, Understanding, Thinking

“Clothe me entire in the final filament,
So that I tremble with such love so known
And myself am precious for your perfecting.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Change

Perfection, Clothes

“My mother and father are the only people on the whole planet for whom I will never begrudge a thing. Should I achieve great things, it is the work of their hands; they are splendid people and their absolute love of their children places them above the highest praise. It cloaks all of their shortcomings, shortcomings that may have resulted from a difficult life.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Letter to his cousin, M.M. Chekhov (July 29, 1877)
Letters

Life, Children, People

“The sin is yours, but the shame and sorrow are mine, the past I cannot retrieve, the future is still unspoiled and I will not embitter it by any willful sin. Before I was innocently guilty, now I should be doubly guilty if I went back to the 'gay free life I love.' Atone for the wrong you have done me by ceasing to tempt and trouble me. I will not yield, though you hunt me to death.”

Louisa May Alcott A Long Fatal Love Chase

A Long Fatal Love Chase (1866)

Life, Death, Past, Future

“Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time; effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end: we fancy that we have always possessed what we love, so difficult is it to imagine how we could have lived without it.”

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël book Corinne

Bk. 8, ch. 2, as translated by Isabel Hill (1833)
Variant translation: It is certainly through love that eternity can be understood; it confuses all thoughts about time; it destroys the ideas of beginning and end; one thinks one has always been in love with the person one loves, so difficult is it to conceive that one could live without him.
As translated by Sylvia Raphael (1998)
Corinne (1807)

Fear, Imagination, Memory, Time

“Listen carefully, my child, to your master's precepts, and incline the ear of your heart. Receive willingly and carry out effectively your loving father's advice, that by the labor of obedience you may return to Him from whom you had departed by the sloth of disobedience.”

Benedict of Nursia (480–547) Christian saint and monk

Rule of St. Benedict: opening words

Heart

“The teenage female has less demand to perform and more resources to attract love. Her body and mind are more genetic gifts.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 166.

“I marvelled how this Servant might meekly suffer there all this woe, and I beheld with carefulness to learn if I could perceive in him any fault, or if the Lord should assign to him any blame. And in sooth there was none seen: for only his goodwill and his great desire was cause of his falling; and he was unlothful, and as good inwardly as when he stood afore his Lord, ready to do his will. And right thus continually his loving Lord full tenderly beholdeth him.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

Summations, Chapter 51

Suffering, Learning

“Well I'm starvin' and freezin'
In this measly old bed
(Then I'll crawl across the salt flats
To stroke your sweet head)
Come across the desert,
with no shoes on?
(I love you truly,
or I love no-one)”

Joanna Newsom (1982) American musician

Only Skin
Ys (2006)

Shoe

“I think that not being loved by your parents or not having a brother or not being liked at school or even wearing glasses can be a lot worse than having a famous father.”

Kim Wilde (1960) English pop singer

The Face (March 1982) http://www.kimwilde.com/articles/1982/00287/ Interviews

School, Thinking, Parent

“Thank you to everyone who has embraced the gifts and talents of my beloved and amazing daughter. I am grateful for your thoughts and prayers that are now guiding her to her next stop. Love Carries Mother”

Debbie Reynolds (1932–2016) American actress, singer, and dancer

Post to Facebook (27 December 2016) https://www.facebook.com/thedebbiereynolds/posts/811585312313920

Daughters

“When you are next out of doors on a summer night, turn your head towards the zenith. Almost vertically above you will be shining the brightest star of the northern skies — Vega of the Lyre, twenty-six years away at the speed of light, near enough to the point of no return for us short-lived creatures. Past this blue-white beacon, fifty times as brilliant as our sun, we may send our minds and bodies, but never our hearts.
For no man will ever turn homewards beyond Vega, to greet again those he knew and loved on Earth.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

We'll Never Conquer Space (1960)

Star, Light, Time, Sun

“Oh night thou was my guide
Oh night more loving than the rising sun
Oh night that joined the lover to the beloved one
transforming each of them into the other.”

Loreena McKennitt (1957) Canadian musician and composer

The Mask and Mirror (1994), The Dark Night of The Soul

Lovers, Sun, Night

“Love of life, which departs last from the heart.”
Qui mente novissimus exit, lucis amor.

Statius book Thebaid

Source: Thebaid, Book VIII, Line 386 (tr. W. J. Dominik)

Life, Heart

“She smiled, and the shadows departed;
She shone, and the snows were rain;
And he who was frozen-hearted
Bloomed up into love again.”

John Addington Symonds (1840–1893) English poet and literary critic

Eyebright.

Smile, Heart

“If there is any thing that can render the soul calm, dissipate its scruples, and dispel its fears, sweeten its sufferings by the anointing of love, impart strength to it in all its actions, and spread abroad the joy of the Holy Spirit in its countenance and words, it is a simple, free, and child-like repose in the arms of God.”

François Fénelon (1651–1715) Catholic bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 446.

God, Fear, Soul, Suffering

“Only when our love for someone exceeds our need for them do we have a shot at a genuine relationship together.”

Neil Strauss book The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships

The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships (2015)

“Let the Bible itself dwell in you — Christ's own word in Christ's own tone — the truth as it was in Jesus — truth dissolved in love, and redolent of sanctity.”

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

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 91.

Truth, Christ

“… the single most important activist thing we could do is invent a good vegan cheese. If someone’s receptive to veganism, but they don’t feel like they can do it, it always is, “But I love how this or that tastes!” And it seems like as much as they’ll agree with you about the ethical arguments, their own taste preferences win out.”

Isa Chandra Moskowitz (1973) American food writer

" Isa Chandra Moskowitz: The vegan ambassador http://www.culinate.com/articles/the_culinate_interview/isa_chandra_moskowitz". Interview by Ben Grossblatt for Culinate, July 3, 2007

Feeling

“I lead a simple life now, I am foolish, an old man in love, a dreamer who dreams of nothing but reading to Allie and holding her whenever I can. I am a sinner with many faults and a man who believes in magic, but I am too old to change and too old to care.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Duke, Winter for Two, p. 212
1990s, The Notebook (1996)

Life, Dreams, Change, Reading

“Dershowitz: The Israeli military then did an analysis, and they discovered, of course, that when they dropped that bomb and killed those people, they had no idea that those people were in the building, and the people who made the decision to drop the bomb were criticized and disciplined for it. The point I make is, when they knew, for sure, that family members were there, they withheld doing it. That doesn't deny the fact that on occasion they will accidentally make a decision that's wrong. The difference is deliberateness, willfulness…
Norman Finkelstein: …That was a nice fairy tale, dropping a 1 ton bomb on a densely populated civilian neighborhood in Gaza, and they had no idea that civilians would be there. And then he goes on to fantasy #2, that those who did it were disciplined. Really, Mr. Dershowitz? I'd love the evidence for that. I mean, if I could get $10,000 for every one of your fraudulent statements…”

Alan M. Dershowitz (1938) American lawyer, author

Never Before Aired: Watch PART II of the debate between Finkelstein and Dershowitz http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=109 (archive located here http://web.archive.org/web/20120814094352/http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/never-before-aired-watch-part-ii-of-the-debate-between-finkelstein-and-dershowitz/ is a continuation of part 1 http://web.archive.org/web/20120910213955/http://www.democracynow.org/2003/9/24/scholar_norman_finkelstein_calls_professor_alan) published 2003-9-24

People, Family, Idea, Decision

“And, growing tired, we turn aside at last,
Remember our secret selves, seek out our towers,
Lay weary hands on the banisters, and climb;
Climbing, each, to his little four-square dream
Of love or lust or beauty or death or crime.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Death, Secret, Beauty, Dreams

“We are kept all as securely in Love in woe as in weal, by the Goodness of God.”

Julian of Norwich book Revelations of Divine Love

Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Chapter 1

God

“If you look at early shamanic texts and cultures, the magical powers that the shaman hopes the gods might give him, flying, turning into animals, invisibility, poetry – as if poetry was a magic power. As if it was the equivalent of turning into a dog or flying. As if. What does this tell us? Maybe there was a time when we could legitimately ask the gods for it as a gift. But we know there aren’t any gods, and that they can’t give those gifts, so the best thing we can do is go to church, listen to the lesson and hope we don’t burn. Have no direct contact with whatever form of god we choose to worship. It’s like the magical or spiritual equivalent of the big flaw in Marxism. Karl Marx, lovely geezer, very humane, a bit middle class but we’ll gloss over that, but his big flaw was that when he said “The reins of society will inevitably rest in the hands of those who control the means of production” didn’t take into account middle management. All the people who get between those with the means of production and the society. That translates onto a spiritual level as the shift from our earliest beliefs, which are all shamanic.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

De Abaitua interview (1998)

God, People, Dogs, Hope

“Love alone was left, as a great image of a dream that was erased.”

Alphonse de Lamartine (1790–1869) French writer, poet, and politician

The Valley (1820), st. 9

Dreams

“I hate the day, because it lendeth light
To see all things, but not my love to see.”

Edmund Spenser (1552–1599) English poet

Daphnaida, v. 407; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Hate, Light

“Since I love him so much, I can easily forgive him for loving himself.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XXIII : First weeks of Matrimony; Helen to Arthur

Forgiveness

“Shall I come, sweet Love, to thee,
When the ev'ning beams are set?”

Thomas Campion (1567–1620) English composer, poet and physician

Shall I Come, Sweet Love, to Thee?

“Love is a universal migraine.
A bright stain on the vision
Blotting out reason.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"Symptoms of Love," lines 1-3, from More Poems (1961).
Poems

Universe

“Ah, Love! could you and I with Him conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits — and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)

Heart

“The act of love strongly resembles torture or surgery.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

L’amour ressemblait fort à une torture ou à une opération chirurgicale. III http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Fus%C3%A9es#III Journaux intimes (1864–1867; published 1887), Fusées (1867)

“I still don't know what I was waiting for / A big love to fall down from the sky
Heaven must have sent you / To save me from the rapture”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

Waiting for the Rapture
Dig Out Your Soul (2008)

Waiting

“The leg division, Mr Spiggot. You are deficient in it to the tune of one. Your right leg, I like. I like your right leg, it's a lovely leg for the role. That's what I said when I saw it come in. I said, "that's a lovely leg for the role". I've got nothing against your right leg. The trouble is — neither have you. You fall down on your left.”

Peter Cook Beyond the Fringe

"One Leg Too Few" (1964) involving a one-legged man auditioning for the role of Tarzan.
Beyond the Fringe (1960 - 1966)

“Here the reason
no less than all separate acts
Must give way,
For our powers become simple in Love;
They are silent
And In the most secret part of the understanding, the simple eye is ever open. It contemplates and gazes at the Light with a pure sight that is lit by the Light itself: eye to eye, mirror to mirror, image to image. The sight of the simple eye is a living mirror bowed down in the Presence of the Father.
And this revelation of the Father
Lifts the soul above the reason
Into the Imageless Nudity.
There the soul is simple, pure, spotless,
Empty of all things;
And it is in this state of perfect emptiness
That the Father manifests His Divine radiance.
To this radiance neither reason nor sense,
Observation nor distinction,
Can attain.
All this must stay below;
For the measureless radiance
Blinds the eyes of the reason,
They cannot bear the Incomprehensible Light.
But above the reason,
In the most secret part of the understanding,
The simple eye is ever open.
It contemplates and gazes at the Light
With a pure sight that is lit by the Light itself:
Eye to eye,
Mirror to mirror,
Image to image.
This threefold act makes us like God,
And unites us to Him;
For the sight of the simple eye is a living mirror,
Which God has made for His image,
And whereon He has impressed it.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

A Mirror of Eternal Blessedness

God, Secret, Way, Soul

“Thou canst not pray to God without praying to Love, but mayest pray to Love without praying to God.”

Richard Garnett (1835–1906) British scholar, librarian, biographer and poet

De Flagello myrteo. xiii.

God

“Hardly we find the path of love, to sink the self, forget the "I,"
When sad suspicion grips the heart, when Man, the Man begins to die:”

Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) British explorer, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, lin…

The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

Sadness, Heart, Forgetting

“Showbiz is a very strange thing, I’ve got a love-hate relationship with that. In Liverpool your mates say, ‘You’re there, Holly, you’re there’ but they only see the end product, not what that entails.”

Holly Johnson (1960) British artist

Frankie says... http://www.zttaat.com/article.php?title=751 at zttaat.com, Accessed May 2014.

Hate

“I've always thought of being in love as being willing to do anything for the other person — starve to buy them bread and not mind living in Siberia with them — and I've always thought that every minute away from them would be hell — so looking at it that [way] I guess I'm not in love with you.”

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929–1994) public figure, First Lady to 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy

Letter breaking up with a boyfriend in 1947, as quoted in Jacqueline Kennedy's Old Love Letters Will School You in the Art of Breaking Up" by Laura Beck, in Cosmopolitan (2 September 2015)]

Way, Hell, Personality

“Well I love her;
But I love to fish.
I spend all day out on this lake
And hell is all I catch.
Today she met me at the door
Said I would have to choose.
If I hit that fishin' hole today,
She'd be packin' all her things,
And she'd be gone by noon.Well, I'm gonna miss her
When I get home.
But right now I'm on this lake shore
And I'm sittin' in the sun.
I'm sure it'll hit me
When I walk through that door tonight
That I'm gonna miss her.
Oh, lookie there, I've got a bite.”

Brad Paisley (1972) American country music singer

I'm Gonna Miss Her (The Fishin' Song), written by Brad Paisley and Frank Rogers
Song lyrics, Part II (2001)

Home, Hell, Fish, Sun

“Women are always glad to listen when you discourse upon love…”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Razor's Edge

p, 125
The Razor's Edge (1943)

Women

“The major obstacle and most difficult challenge in pursuit of a genuinely loving and caring relationship is to overcome the seductive powers and the addiction to the content approach to entering, creating, and maintaining it. The elusive golden thread of understanding lies in the how, and not the what. Specifically, as gender polarization in a relationship decreases, the experience of it improves. Without that rebalancing, even the most perfect content will unravel increasingly. Once the process is balanced, the magic of having ideal content is no longer necessary. The rebalancing process which creates a relationship free of polarizing gender defenses is clearly difficult and threatening initially in the same way that giving up an addiction seems to be. Once achieved however, a relationship free of distortion, false illusions, resentment, and hopelessness truly becomes possible.”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

What Men Still Don't Know About Transforming Their Relationships, pp. 194–198
What Men Still Don't Know About Women, Relationships, and Love (2007)

Way, Understanding, Perfection, Falseness

“We must mention the higher, nobler wealth, which does not belong to all, but to truly noble and divinely gifted men. This wealth is bestowed by wisdom through the doctrines and principles of ethic, logic and physic, and from these spring the virtues, which rid the soul of its proneness to extravagance, and engender the love of contentment and frugality, which will assimilate it to God. For God has no wants, He needs nothing, being in Himself all-sufficient to Himself, while the fool has many wants, ever thirsting for what is not there, longing to gratify his greedy and insatiable desire, which he fans into a blaze like a fire and brings both great and small within its reach. But the man of worth has few wants, standing midway between mortality and immortality.”

Philo (-15–45 BC) Roman philosopher

167-169.
On the Virtues

Wisdom, Men, God, Fools

“…Wisdom says: be strong! Then canst thou bear more joy. Be not animal; refine thy rapture! If thou drink, drink by the eight and ninety rules of art: if thou love, exceed by delicacy; and if thou do aught joyous, let there be subtlety therein!”

Aleister Crowley book The Book of the Law

The Book of the Law (1904)

Wisdom, Art, Drink, Strong

“Tomorrow, millions of people will gather with loved ones across Canada and around the world to mark the Christmas holiday.
On this day, Christians reflect on their faith and celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. This occasion inspires families and communities to come together, share what they have, and give back to those less fortunate.
May we take this time to reflect on our many blessings, and remind our loved ones how much they mean to us.
On behalf of the Liberal Party of Canada and our entire Liberal Caucus, Sophie and I wish you all a most joyous holiday season. From my family to yours: merry Christmas.”

Justin Trudeau (1971) 23rd Prime Minister of Canada; eldest son of Pierre Trudeau

Statement by Liberal Party of Canada Leader Justin Trudeau on Christmas http://www.liberal.ca/statement-by-liberal-party-of-canada-leader-justin-trudeau-on-christmas/ (24 December 2014) 2014

People, World, Family, Faith

“As the French say, aimer est souffrir, to love is to suffer, and therefore, to say that love is essential to the Being of God is to say that in one way or another suffering is essential to his nature. That is to say something our forefathers would have declined to accept. They would have retorted that God, as Father, must be above or beyond suffering. If, however, we take seriously the declaration "God is love," how can we avoid the entailment that suffering is essential to the divine Being?”

Geddes MacGregor

He Who Lets Us Be: A Theology of Love (1975), p. 4

God, Way, Nature, Suffering

“A friendship that like love is warm;
A love like friendship, steady.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

How shall I woo?
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Friendship, Valentine's Day

“If my parents had made love a tenth of a second earlier or later, I wouldn’t exist. What an enormous miracle, just being given life.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Interview by Jonathan Robinson (1994), p. 163.

Life, Parent

“well boss
mehitabel the cat
has reappeared in her old
haunts with a
flock of kittens

archy she said to me
yesterday
the life of a female
artist is continually
hampered what in hell
have i done to deserve
all these kittens
i look back on my life
and it seems to me to be
just one damned kitten
after another
i am a dancer archy
and my only prayer
is to be allowed
to give my best to my art
but just as i feel
that i am succeeding
in my life work
along comes another batch
of these damned kittens
it is not archy
that i am shy on mother love
god knows i care for
the sweet little things
curse them
but am i never to be allowed
to live my own life
i have purposely avoided
matrimony in the interests
of the higher life
but i might just
as well have been a domestic
slave for all the freedom
i have gained
i hope none of them
gets run over by
an automobile
my heart would bleed
if anything happened
to them and i found it out
but it isn t fair archy
it isn t fair
these damned tom cats have all
the fun and freedom
if i was like some of these
green eyed feline vamps i know
i would simply walk out on the
bunch of them and
let them shift for themselves
but i am not that kind
archy i am full of mother love
my kindness has always
been my curse
a tender heart is the cross i bear
self sacrifice always and forever
is my motto damn them
i will make a home
for the sweet innocent
little things
unless of course providence
in his wisdom should remove
them they are living
just now in an abandoned
garbage can just behind
a made over stable in greenwich
village and if it rained
into the can before i could
get back and rescue them
i am afraid the little
dears might drown
it makes me shudder just
to think of it
of course if i were a family cat
they would probably
be drowned anyhow
sometimes i think
the kinder thing would be
for me to carry the
sweet little things
over to the river
and drop them in myself
but a mother s love archy
is so unreasonable
something always prevents me
these terrible
conflicts are always
presenting themselves
to the artist
the eternal struggle
between art and life archy
is something fierce
yes something fierce
my what a dramatic
life i have lived
one moment up the next
moment down again
but always gay archy always gay
and always the lady too
in spite of hell
well boss it will
be interesting to note
just how mehitabel
works out her present problem
a dark mystery still broods
over the manner
in which the former
family of three kittens
disappeared
one day she was talking to me
of the kittens
and the next day when i asked
her about them
she said innocently
what kittens
interrogation point
and that was all
i could ever get out
of her on the subject
we had a heavy rain
right after she spoke to me
but probably that garbage can
leaks so the kittens
have not yet
been drowned”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

mehitabel and her kittens http://donmarquis.com/reading-room/kittens/ archy and mehitabel (1927)

Life, Wisdom, God, Family

“All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn.”

E.E. Cummings book Tulips and Chimneys

Tulips and Chimneys (1923) IV

Horse

“True Love in this differs from gold and clay,
That to divide is not to take away.
Love is like understanding, that grows bright,
Gazing on many truths; 'tis like thy light,
Imagination! which from earth and sky,
And from the depths of human phantasy,
As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills
The Universe with glorious beams, and kills
Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow
Of its reverberated lightning.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Epipsychidion

Epipsychidion (1821)

Truth, Error, Imagination, Understanding

“Pains of love be sweeter far
Than all other pleasures are.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

Variant: Pains of love be sweeter far
Than all other pleasures are.

Pain, Pleasure, For Him

“Scarcely a tear to shed;
Hardly a word to say;
The end of a Summer's day;
Sweet Love is dead.”

William Allingham (1824–1889) Irish man of letters and poet

An Evening; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Tear, Summer, Dead

“I have often asked myself whether, given the choice, I would choose to have manic-depressive illness. … Strangely enough, I think I would choose to have it. It's complicated. Depression is awful beyond words or sounds or images … So why would I want anything to do with this illness? Because I honestly believe that as a result of it I have felt more things, more deeply; had more experiences, more intensely; … worn death 'as close as dungarees', appreciated it - and life - more; seen the finest and most terrible in people … But, normal or manic, I have run faster, thought faster, and loved faster than most I know. And I think much of this is related to my illness - the intensity it gives to things”

Kay Redfield Jamison (1946) American bipolar disorder researcher

An Unquiet Mind

Life, Death, People, Thinking

“All is gone, all is gone, admit it, take flight.
I gagged twice, doubled, tears blinding my sight.
My mind it was mangled, I ran into the night
Leaving all of love's ashes behind me.
The wind knocks my window, the room it is wet.
The words to say I'm sorry, I haven't found yet.
I think of her often and hope whoever she's met
Will be fully aware of how precious she is.
Ah, my friends from the prison, they ask unto me,
"How good, how good does it feel to be free?"”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

And I answer them most mysteriously,
"Are birds free from the chains of the skyway?"
Song lyrics, Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964), Ballad In Plain D

Hope, Feeling, Bird, Thinking

“Every natural longing has its natural satisfaction. If we thirst, God has created liquid to gratify thirst. If we are susceptible of attachment, there are beings to gratify that love. If we thirst for life and love eternal, it is likely there are an eternal life and an eternal love to satisfy that craving.”

Frederick William Robertson (1816–1853) British writer and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 210.

Life, God, Nature

“It is thought pretty to say that "Women have no passion." If passion is excitement in the daily social intercourse with men, women think about marriage much more than men do; it is the only event of their lives. It ought to be a sacred event, but surely not the only event of a woman's life, as it is now. Many women spend their lives in asking men to marry them, in a refined way. Yet it is true that women are seldom in love. How can they be?”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Cassandra (1860)

Life, Women, Men, Marriage

“They who would grow in grace, must love the habitation of God's house. It is those that are planted in the courts of the Lord who shall flourish, and not those that are occasionally there.”

John Angell James (1785–1859) British abolitionist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 150.

God, Housing

“People don't do them around me. I would never allow it. The people who are around me are people that I love, and I don't want to see people that I love hurt themselves.”

Rihanna (1988) Barbadian singer, songwriter, and actress

On drugs. Allure magazine, January 2008.

People, Hurt

“I propose to tell you a very brief tale about a love which…ran a smooth course to its happy conclusion.”

Giovanni Boccaccio book The Decameron

Uno amore...a lieto fin pervenuto, in una novelletta assai piccola intendo di raccontarvi.
Fifth Day, Fourth Story
The Decameron (c. 1350)

Happiness

“It was true, of course, there was an abnormal level of narcissism in our society, but it did not do, he told himself, to spend too much time going on about it. Society changed. Narcissism was about love, ultimately, even if only love of self. And that was better than hate…. Did it matter if young men thought of fashion and hair gel when, not all that many years ago, their thoughts tended to turn to war and flags and the grim partisanship of the football terrace?”

Alexander McCall Smith book Espresso Tales

Espresso Tales, chapter 3.
The 44 Scotland Street series

Men, Hate, War, Fashion

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm only going to talk to you just for a minute or so this evening, because I have some very sad news for all of you, and, I think, sad news for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world; and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

Speech on the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1968)

People, World, Sadness, Peace

“I also appeal to those who have already done most of their work for society. I hope that the changes you awaited or worked for for so long will bring joy and satisfaction into your lives. We need your experience, your wisdom and your love.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

New Year's Address to the Nation (1991)

Wisdom, Hope, Change, Joy

“The stars blazed like the love of God, cold and distant.”

Roger Zelazny Isle of the Dead

Source: Isle of the Dead (1969), Chapter 4 (p. 87)

God, Star, Distant

“Man becomes, as it were, the sex organs of the machine world, as the bee of the plant world, enabling it to fecundate and to evolve ever new forms. The machine world reciprocates man's love by expediting his wishes and desires, namely, in providing him with wealth. (p.46)”

Marshall McLuhan book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

Understanding Media (1964)

World, Sex, Bee, Wealth

“We learn in the past, but we are not the result of that. We suffered in the past, loved in the past, cried and laughed in the past, but that’s of no use to the present. The present has its challenges, its good and bad side. We can neither blame nor be grateful to the past for what is happening now. Each new experience of love has nothing whatsoever to do with past experiences. It’s always new.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Aleph (2011)

Suffering, Learning, Past

“Since the light of God’s truth beamed upon my mind, I have become a friend of that religion which teaches us to pray for our enemies — which, instead of shooting balls into their hearts, loves them. I would not hurt a hair of a slaveholder’s head. I will tell you what else I would not do. I would not stand around the slave with my bayonet pointed at his breast, in order to keep him in the power of the slaveholder.”

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

Love of God, Love of Man, Love of Country (October 22, 1847), Delivered at Market Hall, New York City, New York.
1840s, Love of God, Love of Man, Love of Country (1847)

God, Truth, Religion, Light

“I had one friend in high school, recently he hung himself with string,
His note said "If livin' is the problem, well that's just baffling."
And at the wake I waited around to see my ex-first love,
And I barely recognized her but I knew exactly what she was thinkin' of
. We sat quietly in the corner, whisperin' close about loss,
And I remembered why I loved her and I asked her why I drove her off.”

Jenny Lewis (1976) American actor, singer-songwriter

"A Man/Me/Then Jim"
Song lyrics, More Adventurous (2004)

School, Problem, Loss, Waiting

“Goodness was more difficult than evil. Evil men knew that more than good men. That's why they became evil. That's why it stuck with them. Evil was for those who could never reach the truth. It was a mask for stupidity and lack of love. even of people laughed at the notion of goodness, if they found it sentimental, or nostalgic, he said, it had to be fought for.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book One: A Fear of Love

Men, People, Truth, Stupidity

“"Nude" is about an relationship I was in during that period and there is a joyful beginning and creepy end … yeah life can be cruel, but god dammit how I love to write when my life is miserable.”

Jaani Peuhu (1978) Finnish musician

Iconcrash: Interview with Jaani Peuhu, 2007-04-06, 2008-02-12 http://www.eurobands.us/2007/04/06/iconcrash-506/,

Life, God

“Oh, fame is as the moon above,
Whose sun of light and life is love.
There is more in the smile of one gentle eye
Then the thousand pages of history;
Than the loudest plaudits the crowd can raise.
Take the gems in glory's coronal,
And one smile of beauty is worth them all.”

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

Inez from The London Literary Gazette (24th May 1823)
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Life, Smile, Beauty, History

“I know something of the good of Moammar Gadhafi that made me to love him as a brother and to feel a great sense of loss at his assassination, He died in honor, fighting for the Libya that he believed in.”

Louis Farrakhan (1933) leader of the Nation of Islam

On Muammar Gaddafi's Death http://www.theblaze.com/stories/farrakhan-condemns-killing-of-brother-gadhafi-assassination (26 October 2011]

Feeling, Sense, Loss, Fight

“Use art, be creative. No more war. No more children dying. A pawn that does not move in chess upsets the game. I know there is love in the world still and that is what I wish to surround myself with. Sacrifice your time and energy into something positive instead of the negative and you will see that change around you.”

Lorin Morgan-Richards (1975) American poet, cartoonist, and children's writer

Speaking at the Get Shamrocked Irish Festival (19 September 2014).

War, Children, World, Art

“Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

Encyclical Fides et Ratio, 14 September 1998 Source: www.vatican.va http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091998_fides-et-ratio_en.html

Women, Men, God, Truth

“If you've lost your faith in love and music, oh, the end won't be long.”

Carl Barât (1978) English musician

"The Good Old Days" (with Pete Doherty)
Music

Faith, Music

“Often we comfort ourselves only with words, but if we pray enough, the conviction will come too that Christ is our King, not Stalin, Bevins, or Truman. That He has all things in His hands, that 'all things work together for good for those that love Him.”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

On Pilgrimage (1948), p. 18

Christ

“This gorgeous Chinese girl gets up and I fell in love instantly.”

Jack Layton (1950–2011) Leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada

On meeting Olivia Chow for the first time in 1985, May 2003.[citation needed]

Girl

“I dedicate this light tower to John Lennon
my love for you is forever
yoko ono
October 9th 2007”

Yoko Ono (1933) Japanese artist, author, and peace activist

Dedication on the Imagine Peace Tower base (2007).

Light

“Oh, hello," Dr. M says, shaking Balder's hand. "Wonderful costume. I'm a bit of a role player myself on the weekends. Tell me, where did you get the helmet?"
"It was forged in the North, blessed by the hands of Odin, given to me by my mother, Frigg," Balder answers.
"Lovely. I got mine on the Internet.”

Libba Bray Going Bovine

Source: Going Bovine (2009), p. 318

“If only people freed themselves from their beliefs in all kinds of Ormuzds, Brahmas, Sabbaoths, and their incarnation as Krishnas and Christs, from beliefs in Paradises and Hells, in reincarnations and resurrections, from belief in the interference of the Gods in the external affairs of the universe, and above all, if they freed themselves from belief in the infallibility of all the various Vedas, Bibles, Gospels, Tripitakas, Korans, and the like, and also freed themselves from blind belief in a variety of scientific teachings about infinitely small atoms and molecules and in all the infinitely great and infinitely remote worlds, their movements and origin, as well as from faith in the infallibility of the scientific law to which humanity is at present subjected: the historic law, the economic laws, the law of struggle and survival, and so on, — if people only freed themselves from this terrible accumulation of futile exercises of our lower capacities of mind and memory called the "Sciences", and from the innumerable divisions of all sorts of histories, anthropologies, homiletics, bacteriologics, jurisprudences, cosmographies, strategies — their name is legion — and freed themselves from all this harmful, stupefying ballast — the simple law of love, natural to man, accessible to all and solving all questions and perplexities, would of itself become clear and obligatory.”

Leo Tolstoy A Letter to a Hindu

Source: A Letter to a Hindu (1908), VI

God, People, World, Faith

“Along with our passivity, we're entering a profoundly masochistic phase — everyone is a victim these days, of parents, doctors, pharmaceutical companies, even love itself. And how much we enjoy it. Our happiest moments are spent trying to think up new varieties of victimhood…”

J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) British writer

As quoted in "Age of unreason" by Jeannette Baxter in The Guardian (22 June 2004)

Thinking, Parent

“I love my clit. I use it every day. Not a day goes by when I don't use it for something.”

Kathy Griffin (1960) American actress and comedian

Allegedly (2004)

“A leader isn't made, he is born. And Juka was a leader: he was able to lead the masses, he had that chemistry. People loved him, stood by him, there is no need to lie: everybody gathered around him.”

Jusuf Prazina (1962–1993) Bosnian mobster

Adnan Solaković http://www.bhdani.com/arhiva/260/t26008.shtml

People, Lie

“Books serve us simply by opening a window on all we wanted to say and feel and think about. We may not even notice that they have not said it themselves till we go back to them years later and do not find what we loved in them. You cannot keep the view by taking the window with you.”

James Richardson (1950) American poet

#92
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

Books, Feeling, Thinking

“We would most gladly ye came yourself if that ye may, and if ye may not, we pray you not to fail, but to accomplish in all diligence our said commandment, to send our Seal incontinent upon the sight hereof, as we trust you, with such as ye trust and the Officers pertaining to attend with it; praying you to ascertain us of your News. Here, loved be God, is all well and truly determined, and for to resist the Malice of him that had best Cause to be true, the Duke of Buckingham, the most untrue creature living; whom with God’s Grace we shall not be long till that we will be in those parts, and subdue his Malice. We assure you there was never false traitor better purveyed for, as this bearer Gloucester shall show you.”

Richard III of England (1452–1485) English monarch

Postscript from a letter to his Chancellor, 12 October, 1483. Reprinted in Richard the Third (1956) http://books.google.com/books?id=dNm0JgAACAAJ&dq=Paul+Murray+Kendall+Richard+the+Third&ei=TZHDR8zXKZKIiQHf2NCpCA

God, Parting, Falseness