Quotes about making love
page 18

Her last taped interview, with Richard Meryman, published in LIFE magazine a few days before her death. (3 August 1962); quoted in Ms. magazine (August 1972)

“To Sorrow
I bade good-morrow,
And thought to leave her far away behind;
But cheerly, cheerly,
She loves me dearly;
She is so constant to me, and so kind:
I would deceive her
And so leave her,
But ah! she is so constant and so kind.”

John Keats Endymion

Bk. IV, l. 173
Endymion (1818)

Love

“The Holy Spirit through blessed John the evangelist makes a terrible threat against those who add anything to or take anything from divine scripture when he says in the last chapter of Revelations [22:18–9], "If any man shall add to these things, God shall add unto him the plagues which are in this book. And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take his part out of the book of life and out of the holy city, and from these things that are written in this book."”

William of Ockham (1285–1349) medieval philosopher and theologian

We clearly gather from all these that nothing should be added to sacred scripture nor anything removed from it. To decide by way of teaching, therefore, which assertion should be considered catholic, which heretical, chiefly pertains to theologians, the experts on divine scripture.
You see that I have set out opposing assertions in response to your question and I have touched on quite strong arguments in support of each position. Therefore consider now which seems the more probable to you.
Vol. I, Book 1, Ch. 2.
Dialogus (1494)

Life, God, Books, Parting

“The condition of mankind is, and always has been, so miserable and depraved that, if anyone were to say to the poet: "For God's sake stop singing and do something useful like putting on the kettle or fetching bandages," what just reason could he give for refusing? But nobody says this. The self-appointed unqualified nurse says: "You are to sing the patient a song which will make him believe that I, and I alone, can cure him. If you can't or won't, I shall confiscate your passport and send you to the mines."”

W. H. Auden book The Dyer's Hand

And the poor patient in his delirium cries: "Please sing me a song which will give me sweet dreams instead of nightmares. If you succeed, I will give you a penthouse in New York or a ranch in Arizona."
"Writing", p. 27
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

God, Singing, Self-confidence

“he regarded it with the feelings due not to a mere mental delusion, but to a great moral evil. He looked upon it as the greatest enemy of morality: first, by setting up factitious excellencies, -- belief in creeds, devotional feelings, and ceremonies, not connected with the good of human kind, -- and causing these to be accepted as substitutes for genuine virtues: but above all, by radically vitiating the standard of morals; making it consist in doing the will of a being, on whom it lavishes indeed all the phrases of adulation, but whom in sober truth it depicts as eminently hateful.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)

https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/40/mode/1up p. 40

Hate, Truth, Feeling, Evil

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.”

Robert Frost Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

St. 4
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (1923)

Love, Sleep

“In school they told me "Practice makes perfect."”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

And then they told me "Nobody's perfect," so then I stopped practicing.
When the Leaves Blow Away (2006), I Still Have a Pony (2007)

School, Perfection

“I purpose now, while the impression is more pure and clear within me, to mark down the main things I can recollect of my father. To myself, if I live to after-years, it may be instructive and interesting, as the past grows ever holier the farther we leave it. My mind is calm enough to do it deliberately, and to do it truly. The thought of that pale earnest face which even now lies stiffened into death in that bed at Scotsbrig, with the Infinite all of worlds looking down on it, will certainly impel me. It is good to know how a true spirit will vindicate itself with truth and freedom through what obstructions soever; how the acorn cast carelessly into the wilder-ness will make room for itself and grow to be an oak. This is one of the cases belonging to that class, "the lives of remarkable men," in which it has been said, "paper and ink should least of all be spared."”

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

I call a man remarkable who becomes a true workman in this vineyard of the Highest. Be his work that of palace-building and kingdom-founding, or only of delving and ditching, to me it is no matter, or next to none. All human work is transitory, small in itself, contemptible. Only the worker thereof, and the spirit that dwelt in him, is significant. I proceed without order, or almost any forethought, anxious only to save what I have left and mark it as it lies in me.
1880s, Reminiscences (1881)

Death, Men, Truth, World

“You could not shock her more than she shocks me;
Beside her Joyce seems innocent as grass.
It makes me most uncomfortable to see
An English spinster of the middle class
Describe the amorous effects of "brass,"
Reveal so frankly and with such sobriety
The economic basis of society.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

W. H. Auden, Letter to Lord Byron (1936), lines 113–119

Grass

“For four thousand years the strong had been rushing on in the road of privilege and power, seeking greatness. Christ stood in the path, and said, " Ye seek greatness. Ye are not even in the way to it. Ye are going up, but the way to greatness is down. Let him who would be great be the love-servant of all."”

Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) American clergyman and activist

Greatness consists in the facility and power of going down, and not in the facility of going up.
Source: Life Thoughts (1858), p. 26

Love, Way, Strong, Christ

“Happy family: The existence and maintenance of [this] is thought to make a politician fit for public office. According to this theory, the public are less concerned by whether or not they are effectively represented than by the need to be assured that the penises and vaginas of public officials are only used in legally sanctioned circumstances.”

John Ralston Saul The Doubter's Companion

"Happy family"
The Doubter's Companion (1994)

Happiness, Family

“I love the word "faggot," because it describes my kind of guy! You see, I am a fag hag. Fag hags are the backbone of the gay community. Without us, you're nothing!”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

We have been there all through history guiding your sorry ass through the underground railroad! We went to the prom with you!
From Her Tours and CDs, I'm The One That I Want Tour

Love, Guy, Communication

“To a heart transformed by love, it is a mandolin.”

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

Act II
The Cherry Orchard (1904)

Love, Heart

“He was waiting for me to say something. He was staring at me. This, I think, is the first time I dared myself to stare back at him. Usually, I'd cast a glance and then look away—look away because I didn't want to swim in the lovely, clear pool of his eyes unless I'd been invited to—and I never waited long enough to know whether I was even wanted there; look away because I was too scared to stare anyone back; look away because I didn't want to give anything away; look away because I couldn't acknowledge how much he mattered. Look away because that steely gaze of his always reminded me of how tall he stood and how far below him ranked.”

André Aciman book Call Me By Your Name

Part 2, p. 78
Call Me By Your Name (2007)

Love, Thinking, Time, Waiting

“Sending Robert Downey, Jr. to prison for drug use makes no more sense than locking up Betty Ford for using alcohol. Now if it's Darryl Strawberry and he uses drugs while driving, that's a different matter; he should do time.”

James P. Gray (1945) American judge

As quote in Coast Magazine, Jim Wood, “Interview—Judge James P. Gray—The Newport Beach resident talks about America's War on Drugs” (June 2001) Vol.10 No. 7

Alcohol, Sense, Time

“I think diamonds represent luxury, indulgence, and class. So any time you can incorporate a gift that is synonymous with all those attributes, you know the other person will love it. I would challenge someone to find something that better represents Valentine's Day more than diamonds!”

Chris Evans (actor) (1981) American actor

Love, Thinking, Time, Personality

“It's as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working.... Hell is a collection of individuals who spend their time working on a task they don't like and are not especially good at.... Give them a few drinks, and they will launch into tirades about how pointless and stupid their job really is.... Nurses, garbage collectors, mechanics, it's obvious were they to vanish, results would be catastrophic.... A world without teachers or dock-workers would soon be in trouble.... It's not clear how humanity would suffer were all private equity CEOs, lobbyists, PR researchers, actuaries, telemarketers, bailiffs or legal consultants to similarly vanish.... Real productive workers are squeezed and exploited. The remainder are unemployed and a larger stratum paid to do nothing.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Dr. David Graeber, "Bullshit Jobs," Aug 2013

Stupidity, World, Hell, Drink

“Because so many of our writers were born in ugly environments, in monstrous poverty and humilitation, they continue to assert that this is the natural environment, reality, and that beauty is artifice. Why should the natural state be ugliness? Natural to whom? We may be born in ugliness, but the natural consequences should be a thirst for its opposite. To mistake ugliness for reality is one of the frauds of the realistic school. A hunger for the unknown, and an aspiration towards beauty were inseparable from civilization. In America the word art was distorted to mean artificial.
We are born with the power to alter what we are given at birth.
When the Japanese paint flowers or the sea on a kimono they mean to establish a link with nature. But they select only what is beautiful in nature to maintain their love of life.
The creative personality never remains fixed on the first world it discovers. It never resigns itself to anything. That is the deepest meaning of rebellion, not the wearing of different clothes, haircuts, or the adopting of other cultures.”

Anaïs Nin book The Novel of the Future

The Novel of the Future (1969)

Love, Life, Hunger, World

“Having dysfunction within you does not make you bad. It makes you a byproduct of your environment. It makes you a person full of adaptations, some of which do more harm than good… just like the rest of us.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Bad luck, Personality

“The kitchen was the United States; the living room was Mexico…One side was struggling with all her might to make me an American boy, and the other side, with all of his might, was trying to keep me a Mexican boy.”

Luis Alberto Urrea (1955) Mexican-American poet

On feeling like a border wall ran through his childhood home in “Mexican-American Author Finds Inspiration In Family, Tragedy And Trump” https://www.npr.org/2018/03/05/590839936/mexican-american-author-finds-inspiration-in-family-tragedy-and-trump in NPR (2018 Mar 5)

Boy

“I was lucky to enter economics in 1932. Analytical economics was poised for its take-off. I faced a lovely vacuum that young economists today can hardly imagine. So much remained to be done. Everything was still in an imperfect state. It was like fishing in a virgin lake: a whopper at every cast, but so many lovely new specimens that the palate never cloyed.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

Introduction to the Enlarged Edition
1940s, Foundations of Economic Analysis (1947; 1983)

Love, Imagination, Fish

“It turned into a creature with a life of its own.There was nothing we were doing to make it happen. We couldn’t recreate it because we never really understood how it happened. People decided they were all going to play it, and you feel like it’s disconnected from you. All we could do was stand back and take the congratulations that came.”

Tracey Thorn (1962) English singer and songwriter

On the Everything but the Girl album Amplified Heart in “TRACEY THORN ON THE HIT FACTORY” https://www.interviewmagazine.com/music/tracey-thorn in Interview Magazine (2010 May 13)

Life, People, Feeling

“...people shouldn’t have to make statements and their lives should be private if they want to be. But I think if someone’s feeling restricted by not making a statement, then they should be free to do so. I chose to speak to you because I don’t want to lie by omission and I want to be very straightforward about my life...”

Saffron Burrows (1972) English actress, model and writer

On whether people should feel the need to "come out" and be a role model in “Saffron Burrows: ‘I’m really proud of my family and who they are’” https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/dec/01/saffron-burrows-married-to-alison-balian-mozart-in-the-jungle in The Guardian (2014 Dec 01)

Life, People, Lie, Feeling

“It would cause nothing but madness, Thomas thought. Men would fight for it, lie for it, cheat for it, betray for it, and die for it. The Church would make money from it, it would cause nothing but evil, he thought, for it stirred horror in men's hearts. So he would do what Planchard had said he would do. 'Hurl it into the deepest sea,' he quoted the old Abbott, 'down among the monsters, and tell no one.'”

Bernard Cornwell The Grail Quest

The Grail Quest, Heretic (2003)

Men, Money, Lie, Quotes

“I feel very lucky to still feel like I’m full of ideas. I think sometimes being in the beginning or the middle of things is almost the best bit. This sounds terrible, because it sounds so ungrateful, but I’m never as excited by the aftermath of things: whether or not they are successful. It’s lovely if they are, obviously, but actually the really exciting bit is when it’s an idea in your head and you’re getting working on it.”

Tracey Thorn (1962) English singer and songwriter

On whether she feels creatively satisfied in “Tracey Thorn: ‘Not everything you do is cool’” https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jan/27/tracey-thorn-another-planet-a-teenager-in-suburbia-interview in The Guardian (2020 Jan 27)

Love, Feeling, Idea, Thinking

“…Teenagers today are so fluid and non-binary; they’re fantastically unafraid. My house [growing up] was a bit like that. I’ve loved men and I’ve loved women and I was raised to feel like I could love who I wanted. We could talk about everything in the world.”

Saffron Burrows (1972) English actress, model and writer

On her upbringing and the next generation in “Saffron Burrows: ‘I was raised to feel like I could love who I wanted’” https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/feb/19/saffron-burrows-i-was-raised-to-feel-like-i-could-love-who-i-wanted in The Guardian (2020 Feb 19)

Love, Women, Men, World

“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have these because we have acted rightly; 'these virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions'; we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit: 'the good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life... for as it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy.'”

Will Durant book The Story of Philosophy

Source: The Story of Philosophy (1926), p. 87. The quoted phrases within the quotation are from the Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, 4; Book I, 7

Life, Happiness, Art, Way

“Is it possible to successfully reject migration, to protect families, to defend Christian culture, to announce a programme of national unification and nation building, and to create an order of Christian freedom? Is it possible in all this to survive against the full force of an international headwind, and indeed to make it succeed?”

Viktor Orbán (1963) Hungarian politician, chairman of Fidesz

Tusnádfürdő speech https://www.kormany.hu/en/the-prime-minister/the-prime-minister-s-speeches/prime-minister-viktor-orban-s-speech-at-the-30th-balvanyos-summer-open-university-and-student-camp, 27 July 2019

Family, Freedom

“The problem with world hunger is that rich, powerful governments are more than happy to send guns and money to dictators and despots who’ll use food to control their populations and line their pockets. There is no ‘world hunger’ problem. There’s a corruption problem. There’s a greed problem. There’s a gullibility problem....”
“So there’s a corruption problem,” I said. “Point taken. How about if we make a solution for the corruption problem, then? Maybe we could build some kind of visualizer that shows you if your Congresscritter is taking campaign contributions from companies and then voting for laws that benefit them?”

Cory Doctorow (1971) Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author

“What, you mean like every single one of them?”
Source: Short fiction, The Man Who Sold The Moon (2014), p. 149 (ellipsis represents a brief elision of text)

Money, Hunger, Happiness, World

“Look, whatever else happiness is, it’s also some kind of chemical reaction. Your body making and experiencing a cocktail of hormones and other molecules in response to stimulus. Brain reward. A thing that feels good when you do it. We’ve had millions of years of evolution that gave a reproductive edge to people who experienced pleasure when something pro-survival happened. Those individuals did more of whatever made them happy, and if what they were doing more of gave them more and hardier offspring, then they passed this on.”
“Yes,” I said. “Sure. At some level, that’s true of all our emotions, I guess.”

Cory Doctorow (1971) Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author

“I don’t know about that,” she said. “I’m just talking about happiness. The thing is, doing stuff is pro-survival—seeking food, seeking mates protecting children, thinking up better ways to hide from predators...Sitting still and doing nothing is almost never pro-survival, because the rest of the world is running around, coming up with strategies to outbreed you, to outcompete you for food and territory...If you stay still, they’ll race past you.”
Source: Short fiction, The Man Who Sold The Moon (2014), p. 130

Happiness, People, Pleasure, Feeling

“Much has been written of love turning to hatred, of the heart growing cold with the death of love. It is a remarkable process. It is far more terrible than anything I have ever read about it, more terrible than anything I will ever be able to say.”

James Baldwin book Giovanni's Room

Pt. 2, Ch. 5 - p.139
Giovanni's Room (1956)

Love, Death, Reading, Heart

“Maybe everything bad that happens to you makes you weaker, and so you can stand less and less.”

James Baldwin book Giovanni's Room

Pt. 2, Ch. 3 - p.97
Giovanni's Room (1956)

Bad luck

“Life has two wings : one, sorrow; one, delight;
Love gives it pinions, God directs its flight.”

Francesco Dall'Ongaro (1808–1873) Italian poet, playwright and librettist

Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 308.
Original: (it) Ha due ali la vita : il gaudio e il duolo;
L’amor la impenna, e Dio dirige il volo.
Original: (it) Stornelli, "Una Vedova ad una Sjéosa".

Love, Life, God

“I'd rather hear a truth that'll make me cry than a lie that'll make me smile!”

Luiz Carlos Alborghetti (1945–2009) Italian-Brazilian radio commenter, showman and political figure

Original: (pt) Eu prefiro uma verdade que me faça chorar a uma mentira que me faça sorrir!

Truth, Lie, Smile, Cry

“We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great,
Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn this iron helm of fate,
But the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din,
List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,—
"They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin."”

James Russell Lowell The Present Crisis

St. 9
The Present Crisis (1844)

Fate, Children, Faith, Soul

“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

2000s, Address at Stanford University (2005)

Life, Death, People, Way

“Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

2000s, Address at Stanford University (2005)

Life, Death, Fear, Way

“The system is that there is no system. That doesn't mean we don't have process. Apple is a very disciplined company, and we have great processes. But that's not what it's about. Process makes you more efficient.
But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we've been thinking about a problem. It's ad hoc meetings of six people called by someone who thinks he has figured out the coolest new thing ever and who wants to know what other people think of his idea.
And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don't get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We're always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it's only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

As quoted in "The Seed of Apple's Innovation" in BusinessWeek (12 October 2004)
2000s

People, Idea, Problem, Thinking

“Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower,
We feel that we are greater than we know.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

The River Duddon, sonnet 34 - Afterthought, l. 13 (1820)

Love, Faith, Hope, Feeling

“It is actually, in a way, an incredibly mundane experience. Not everyone has a heart attack but everyone has something or other, so I'm not remotely special. Just because I write songs doesn't make it a better or worse near-death experience.”

Peter Hammill (1948) British musician

Interview with Mike Barnes, The Wire, March 2007

Death, Way, Heart

“Being beautiful can never hurt, but you have to have more. You have to sparkle, you have to be fun, you have to make your brain work if you have one. Being a Hollywood beauty was a mixed blessing. Men are men, with all that testosterone, and when a pretty girl comes in front of them what can you expect? The fact that I became one is probably the loveliest, most glamorous and fortunate misunderstanding.”

Sophia Loren (1934) Italian actress

As quoted in Bombshell (2004) by Lynda Curnyn, p. 196.

Men, Beauty, Girl, Hurt

“Sometimes when we make these distinctions, we’re really creating them more than describing anything that’s already there.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: Nemesis Games (2015), Chapter 48 (p. 488)

“Woman is an existent who is called upon to make herself object; as subject she has an aggressive element in her sensuality which is not satisfied on the male body: hence the conflicts that her eroticism must somehow overcome.”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Second Sex

Bk. 2, Pt.. 3, Ch. 4: The Lesbian. P. 445 (1974 Vintage edition)
The Second Sex (1949)

“Oops. Did I just make a “judgment?””

Steven Crowder (1987) American actor

You’re darn right I did.

“Funnily enough, today there is one area of sex that when discussed, still makes people’s posteriors pucker with discomfort… abstinence.”

Steven Crowder (1987) American actor

People, Sex

“Yes, I admit it, I’m in a long-term relationship and I’m abstinent. Scandalous, I know. It’s an incredibly difficult thing to do (mostly for me, because she’s way out of my league), and that’s what makes it so important.”

Steven Crowder (1987) American actor

Way

“There are two types of writers: those who write to support the existing system and prove and augment its legitimacy through their writings. On the other hand, there are those who critically examine society and make an attempt to restructure and reform it on the basis of fresh ideas.”

Mubarak Ali (1941) Historian, activist, scholar

Dimensions of History, Chapter: Intellectuals and Society, p. 56
Writer

Idea, Support

“How come the Mac group produced Mac and the people at IBM produced the PCjr? We think the Mac will sell zillions, but we didn’t build Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. We weren’t going to go out and do market research. We just wanted to build the best thing we could build. When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

1980s, Playboy interview (1985)

People, Beauty, Way, Thinking

“The way to make peace is not through governments. It is through people.”

Shimon Peres (1923–2016) Israeli politician, 8th prime minister and 9th president of Israel

https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2017-01-18/debates/89C645E3-674E-488C-8223-D4C20634C1ED/PromotionOfIsraeli-PalestinianPeace(UnitedKingdomParticipation)?highlight=joan%20ryan%20israel#contribution-5AAC9F18-D1E8-49F2-9352-430D75AFDFDA

People, Peace, Way

“We must ally ourselves with the oppressed communities of the world. We cannot make our stand as nationalists, we cannot even make our stand as internationalists. We must place our future hopes upon the philosophy of intercommunalism, a philosophy which holds that the rise of imperialism in America transforms all other nations into oppressed communities. In revolutionary love we must make common cause with these oppressed communities.”

Huey P. Newton (1942–1989) Co-founder of the Black Panther Party

Resolutions and Declarations (1970)
To Die For The People

Love, World, Hope, Communication

“Now because 18 months ago the first dawn, 3 months ago broad daylight but a very few days ago the full sun of the most highly remarkable spectacle has risen — nothing holds me back. I can give myself up to the sacred frenzy, I can have the insolence to make a full confession to mortal men that I have stolen the golden vessel of the Egyptians to make from them a tabernacle for my God far from the confines of the land of Egypt. If you forgive me I shall rejoice; if you are angry, I shall bear it; I am indeed casting the die and writing the book, either for my contemporaries or for posterity to read, it matters not which: let the book await its reader for a hundred years; God himself has waited six thousand years for his work to be seen.”

Johannes Kepler book Mysterium Cosmographicum

Book V, Introduction
Variant translation: It may well wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer.
As quoted in The Martyrs of Science; or, the Lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler (1841) by David Brewster, p. 197. This has sometimes been misquoted as "It may be well to wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer."
Variant translation: I feel carried away and possessed by an unutterable rapture over the divine spectacle of heavenly harmony... I write a book for the present time, or for posterity. It is all the same to me. It may wait a hundred years for its readers, as God has also waited six thousand years for an onlooker.
As quoted in Calculus. Multivariable (2006) by Steven G. Krantz and Brian E. Blank. p. 126
Mysterium Cosmographicum (1596), Harmonices Mundi (1618)

Men, God, Books, Forgiveness

“To an atheist […], there is no all-seeing all-loving god to keep us free from harm. But atheism is not a recipe for despair. I think the opposite. By disclaiming the idea of the next life, we can take more excitement in this one. The here and now is not something to be endured before eternal bliss or damnation. The here and now is all we have, an inspiration to make the most of it. So atheism is life-affirming, in a way religion can never be. Look around you. Nature demands our attention, begs us to explore, to question. Religion can provide only facile, ultimately unsatisfying answers. Science, in constantly seeking real explanations, reveals the true majesty of our world in all its complexity. People sometimes say "There must be more than just this world, than just this life."”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

But how much more do you want? We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they’re never going to be born. The number of people who could be here, in my place, outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. If you think about all the different ways in which our genes could be permuted, you and I are quite grotesquely lucky to be here, the number of events that had to happen in order for you to exist, in order for me to exist. We are privileged to be alive and we should make the most of our time on this world. <br class="br">End of the part 2: "The Virus of Faith" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMUG6qd98wc <br class="br">The Root of All Evil? (January 2006)

Love, Life, God, People

“These considerations did not make us overlook the folly of premature attempts to dispense with the inducements of private interest in social affairs, while no substitute for them has been or can be provided: but we regarded all existing institutions and social arrangements as being (in a phrase I once heard from Austin) "merely provisional," and we welcomed with the greatest pleasure and interest all socialistic experiments by select individuals (such as the Co-operative Societies), which, whether they succeeded or failed, could not but operate as a most useful education of those who took part in them, by cultivating their capacity of acting upon motives pointing directly to the general good, or making them aware of the defects which render them and others incapable of doing so.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/233/mode/1up pp. 233-234

Pleasure, Education, Motivation, Parting

“Once I knew the depth where no hope was, and darkness lay on the face of all things. Then love came and set my soul free. Once I knew only darkness and stillness. Now I know hope and joy. Once I fretted and beat myself against the wall that shut me in. Now I rejoice in the consciousness that I can think, act and attain heaven. My life was without past or future; death, the pessimist would say, "a consummation devoutly to be wished."”

Helen Keller book Optimism

But a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living. Night fled before the day of thought, and love and joy and hope came up in a passion of obedience to knowledge. Can anyone who has escaped such captivity, who has felt the thrill and glory of freedom, be a pessimist?
Optimism (1903)

Love, Life, Death, Hope

“Love not Pleasure; love God.”

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

Bk. II, ch. 9.
1830s, Sartor Resartus (1833–1834)

Love, God, Pleasure

“I'm very inappropriate, which makes me a problem dinner guest, because at some point during the evening someone inevitably says, "OK, heh heh heh, OK, too much information!”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

Heh heh heh. Don't go there!" I live there. I bought a house there.
From Her Tours and CDs, Revolution Tour

Problem

“I can't even look at those "women's magazines" anyway. I love fashion, but I look at the pictures of the skinny models, and they're wearing clothes I can't even fit on my fingers.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

And I look at that and I think, if that is what a woman is supposed to look like, then I must not be one.
From Her Tours and CDs, The Notorious C.H.O. Tour

Love, Women, Fashion, Clothes

“The man was not merely very human; he was humanity. And I reflected that it is only by preserving faith in human dreams that we may, after all, perhaps some day make them come true.”

James Branch Cabell book The Cream of the Jest

Source: The Cream of the Jest (1917), Ch. 40 : Which Mr. Flaherty Does Not Quite Explain

Faith, Dreams

“The truth will always be innately painful,… Like dry, crusty bread, it can be hard to swallow. But mankind has an affinity for evil. ’Tis a distemper that burrows deep under the skin like an abscess. We all wish to make slaves of others: one man over another, one clan over another, one kingdom over another. Never ending, never ceasing. A world of battle to conquer one’s fellow man before he conquers you.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: Ferret: The Reluctant King (2020), p. 139

Pain, Truth, World, Evil

“Putting the word democratic in front of your Socialism doesn't make it any inherently more moral nor less violent.”

Steven Crowder (1987) American actor

“Dianne, thank you for teaching me about caring about the right things, and I love you.”

Kevin Spacey (1959) American actor, director and producer

Oscar acceptance speech for his performance in American Beauty (March 2000)

Love

“While others make obtuse remarks about the state of our roads and some turn into anthropological visitors who come to ogle the condition of our people, we cannot stand by as a society and do nothing. We have an obligation to answer this difficult question of poverty and also do something about it. First, we need to understand poverty in a very basic way and how it is impacting our society.”

Samuel Sejjaaka (1964) Ugandan businessman

When our potholes, poverty become tourist attractions https://www.monitor.co.ug/OpEd/Commentary/-potholes-poverty-tourist-attractions-politicians/689364-5472846-14ittep/index.html (February 29, 2020), Daily Monitor.

People, Way, Understanding, Question

“What makes an experience yours is none of the specification of its content or of the particularity or other properties of its possessor. All that is required for an experience to be yours, to be 'mine', is that it be immediate in its character as its character is experienced within it, that it be first person. My pains are pains that are not remote like those that belong to another. My pains are those that are immediate. They have internality. They are experienced in a first person way. They are subjectively at the center of the world, here in me. But all real pains must be had with this quality of immediacy that makes them 'mine.'”

Arnold Zuboff (1946) American philosopher

What could really be a pain without its thus hurting? <br class="br">" My 8 Big Ideas https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286624424_My_8_Big_Ideas" (2011), p. 8

Pain, World, Way, Personality

“I am countless conscious organisms, but each of these possesses only one package of experiential content, isolated from that of every other. And within any of these packages only that much of the content of experience is displayed as having the quality of immediacy that makes experience be mine. So being mine is naturally confused in each with being the experience of only that organism. One must be jolted into realising that being mine is instead an abstract quality like being red. And, further, that this is a quality that must pervade all experience. For what could count as experience that didn't have that quality? I hope that I have succeeded now in doing that jolting.”

Arnold Zuboff (1946) American philosopher

" Time, Self and Sleeping Beauty https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282052756_Time_Self_and_Sleeping_Beauty" (2008), p. 78

Hope, Nature

“For me, research is very important. But I do not begin with research. I begin with writing the story, which for me is the relationship between the characters. It is after I have written or pretty much have a sense of the story that I go and do research. I am conscious that I am writing about poor people for the most part. They don’t have much other than their space or dirt. I want to do my best to represent that well. I am also conscious that I am writing about other countries. I want to make sure I understand those cultures as best as possible and represent them well…”

Uwem Akpan (1971) Nigerian Jesuit priest and writer

On the secondary nature of historical research in his writing process in “UWEM AKPAN | INTERVIEW” https://granta.com/interview-uwem-akpan/ in Granta (2008 Nov 14)

People, Understanding, Sense, Parting

“The artist, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an officious state. The great artist is thus a solitary figure. He has, as Frost said, a lover's quarrel with the world. In pursuing his perceptions of reality, he must often sail against the currents of his time. This is not a popular role. If Robert Frost was much honored in his lifetime, it was because a good many preferred to ignore his darker truths. Yet in retrospect, we see how the artist's fidelity has strengthened the fiber of our national life. If sometimes our great artist have been the most critical of our society, it is because their sensitivity and their concern for justice, which must motivate any true artist, makes him aware that our Nation falls short of its highest potential. I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, Speech at Amherst College

Life, Truth, World, Faith

“If they will not love me, fear is an acceptable substitute.”

N. K. Jemisin book The Kingdom of Gods

Source: The Kingdom of Gods (2011), Chapter 13 (p. 331)

Love, Fear

“Well. Adolescence is all about making mistakes.”

N. K. Jemisin book The Kingdom of Gods

Source: The Kingdom of Gods (2011), Chapter 9 (p. 200)

“The child in her wanted to do as she pleased, cling to impossible hopes. The woman in her wanted to make sound decisions, succeed even if it meant sacrifice. The woman would win; that was inevitable. But the child would not go quietly.”

N. K. Jemisin book The Kingdom of Gods

Source: The Kingdom of Gods (2011), Chapter 7 (p. 173)

Hope, Decision

“There was no point in making myself suffer unnecessarily. As a mortal, there would be pain enough in my life, whether I sought it out or not.”

N. K. Jemisin book The Kingdom of Gods

Source: The Kingdom of Gods (2011), Chapter 5 (p. 119)

Life, Pain, Suffering

“Unconditional love: childhood’s greatest magic.”

N. K. Jemisin book The Kingdom of Gods

Source: The Kingdom of Gods (2011), Chapter 1 (p. 35)

Love, Childhood

“In any case it is evident that there is a psychology as well as a sociology of handwriting. Tremendously complicated as the problem of diagnosis of individual traits from those tiny strokes of the pen appears, it is yet a legitimate problem of science; for the more progress psychology makes, the more evident it becomes that there is not a mode of expression which is not rooted to its finest detail in the complex psycho-physical organism. Meanwhile, it is fortunate that the task of identifying graphic signs should not be left wholly to the intuitions of the graphologist. Experimental work that seeks to induce variation in writing through a control of outer conditions must in time correlate certain definite variations in conditions with variation in such aspects of writing as size, speed, accuracy in alignment, inequality of control and the like.”

June Downey (1875–1932) American psychologist

August 1909, Popular Science Monthly Volume 75, Article:"The Varificational Factor in Handwriting", p. 150-151
about Handwriting

Problem, Appearance, Science, Time

“Do not seek for information of which you cannot make use.”

Anna Brackett (1836–1911) American philosopher

The Technique of Rest, Ch. 2 (1892).

“Art is the principal way in which the human mind has tried to remake the world in a way that makes sense. The carefully edited, slow-motion, action replay of a rugby tackle, a car crash or a sex act has more significance than the original event. Thanks to virtual reality, we will soon be moving into a world where a heightened super-reality will consist entirely of action replays, and reality will therefore be all the more rich and meaningful.”

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

"JG Ballard: Theatre of Cruelty" interview by Jean-Paul Coillard in Disturb ezine (1998) https://www.jgballard.ca/media/1998_disturb_magazine.html

World, Art, Sex, Cars

“Birds' songs express joy, beauty, and purity, and evoke in us vitality and love. So many beings in the universe love us unconditionally. The trees, the water, and the air don't ask anything of us; they just love us. Even though we need this kind of love, we continue to destroy them. By destroying the animals, the air, and the trees, we are destroying ourselves.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Love in Action: Writings on Nonviolent Social Change (1993), p. 131

Love, Beauty, Bird, Tree

“Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism. By saying our interests first, who cares about the others, we erase what a nation holds dearest, what gives it life, what makes it great and what is essential: its moral values.”

Emmanuel Macron (1977) 25th President of the French Republic

11 November 2018, French>English translation reported by CNN https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/11/politics/donald-trump-armistice-day-paris/index.html <br class="br">2017, 2018

Life, Betrayal

“The truth is plain to see — if you want freedom, take pride in your country; if you want democracy, hold onto your sovereignty, and if you want peace, love your nation. Wise leaders always put the good of their own people and their own country first. The future does not belong to globalists. The future belongs to patriots. The future belongs to sovereign and independent nations who protect their citizens, respect their neighbours, and honor the differences that make each country special and unique.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Address to United Nations General Assembly, quoted in * 2019-09-24
Trump UN speech knocks globalism: The future belongs to nationalism
Tim Pearce
Washington Examiner
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/trump-un-speech-knocks-globalism-the-future-belongs-to-nationalism
2010s, 2019, September

Love, People, Truth, Peace

“We all – adults and children, writers and readers – have an obligation to daydream. We have an obligation to imagine. It is easy to pretend that nobody can change anything, that we are in a world in which society is huge and the individual is less than nothing: an atom in a wall, a grain of rice in a rice field. But the truth is, individuals change their world over and over, individuals make the future, and they do it by imagining that things can be different.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming (2013)

Children, Truth, World, Imagination

“We picked some pea pods, opened them and ate the peas inside. Peas baffled me. I could not understand why grown-ups would take things that tasted so good when they were freshly-picked and raw, and put them in tin cans, and make them revolting.”

Neil Gaiman book The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Source: The Ocean at the End of the Lane (2013), Chapter 10 (p. 152)

Understanding

“Let us ask ourselves seriously and honestly, " What do I believe after all? What manner of man am I after all? What sort of show would I make after all, if the people around me knew my heart and all my secret thoughts?"”

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) English clergyman, historian and novelist

What sort of show then do I already make in the sight of Almighty God, who sees every man exactly as he is?

P. 276.
Attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

People, Secret, Heart

“If a Communist shouts “Down with nationalism!”, he means the hypocritical bourgeois patriotism that sees the economy only as a system of slavery. If we make clear to the man of the left that nationalism and capitalism, that is the affirmation of the Fatherland and the misuse of its resources, have nothing to do with each other, indeed that they go together like fire and water, then even as a socialist he will come to affirm the nation, which he will want to conquer.”

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

1930s, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932)

Water

“Consistent with his spiritual attitude, the National Socialist makes uncompromising demands in politics.”

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

1930s, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932)

“The faith in the nation is a matter for everyone, never a group, a class or an economic clique. The eternal must be distinguished from the temporal. Maintaining a rotten economic system has nothing to do with nationalism, which is an affirmation of the Fatherland. I can love Germany and hate capitalism. Not only can I, I must. Only the annihilation of a system of exploitation carries with it the core of the rebirth of our people.”

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

1930s, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932)

Love, Hate, People, Faith

“Thus the tears flowed down on my breast, remembering days of love;
The tears wetted even my sword-belt, so tender was my love.”

Imru' al-Qais (501–544) Arabic Poet

The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East, Vol. 5, p. 20
Poetry, Couplets
Source: https://archive.org/details/sacredbooksearly05hornuoft/page/18/mode/2up

Love, Tear

Quotes about making love page 18

Quotes about making love
page 18