Quotes about parting
page 34

Gerard Bilders photo

“I agree completely with your remark that in the struggle against nature lies already a part of art, and really pleasant is for me already the feeling of returning as a victor from small skirmishes, although in the great battle one always feels still defeated. As you advised me, I have made sketches of skies, indicating the effect in them, and making a note for the important colors; I also did better in making a small sky; at least people think so.”

Gerard Bilders (1838–1865) painter from the Netherlands

translation from the Dutch original: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch / citaat van Gerard Bilders' brief, in het Nederlands: Uwe opmerking, dat in den strijd tegen de natuur reeds een gedeelte der kunst ligt, vind ik volkomen juist, en regt aangenaam is reeds het gevoel, waarmede men als overwinnaar terugkeert uit kleine schermutselingen, hoewel men zich in den grooten slag toch steeds als verslagen gevoelt. Zoo als u mij aanraadt, heb ik schetsen van luchten gemaakt, het effect er in aangeduid en de voornaamste kleuren er bij geschreven; ik ben dan nu ook in een klein luchtje wat beter geslaagd; men vindt het ten minste.
Quote of Gerard Bilders, in a letter to his maecenas Johannes Kneppelhout, 5 Feb. 1858; from an excerpt of this letter https://rkd.nl/nl/explore/excerpts/526, in the RKD-Archive, The Hague
1850's

Andrew Sega photo
George Canning photo

“I for my part still conceive it to be the paramount duty of a British member of parliament to consider what is good for Great Britain…I do not envy that man's feelings, who can behold the sufferings of Switzerland, and who derives from that sight no idea of what is meant by the deliverance of Europe. I do not envy the feelings of that man, who can look without emotion at Italy – plundered, insulted, trampled upon, exhausted, covered with ridicule, and horror, and devastation – who can look at all this, and be at a loss to guess what is meant by the deliverance of Europe? As little do I envy the feelings of that man, who can view the peoples of the Netherlands driven into insurrection, and struggling for their freedom against the heavy hand of a merciless tyranny, without entertaining any suspicion of what may be the sense of the word deliverance. Does such a man contemplate Holland groaning under arbitrary oppressions and exactions? Does he turn his eyes to Spain trembling at the nod of a foreign master? And does the word deliverance still sound unintelligibly in his ear? Has he heard of the rescue and salvation of Naples, by the appearance and the triumphs of the British fleet? Does he know that the monarchy of Naples maintains its existence at the sword's point? And is his understanding, and his heart, still impenetrable to the sense and meaning of the deliverance of Europe?”

George Canning (1770–1827) British statesman and politician

Speech in 1798, quoted in Wendy Hinde, George Canning (London: Purnell Books Services, 1973), p. 66.

Vitruvius photo
Aung San Suu Kyi photo
J.D. Fortune photo
Lorin Maazel photo

“In fact the hardest part is trying to forget music when I'm not conducting it.”

Lorin Maazel (1930–2014) French-American conductor

As quoted in BBC News http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-28287217

Leon C. Marshall photo
Fenella Fielding photo

“You get set on a path and, if you succeed, you get better parts, but of the same kind. If you don't take a lot of trouble, you get stuck like that.”

Fenella Fielding (1927–2018) English actress

Interview: Independent, Sunday 24 February 2008 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/the-lady-vanishes-what-ever-happened-to-fenella-fielding-785265.html

Carl Sagan photo

“The process of formulating and structuring a system are important and creative, since they provide and organize the information, which each system. "establishes the number of objectives and the balance between them which will be optimized". Furthermore, they help identify and define the system parts. Furthermore, they help identify and define the system parts which make up its "diverse, specialized structures and subfunctions.”

Harold Chestnut (1917–2001) American engineer

Source: Systems Engineering Tools, (1965), Systems Engineering Methods (1967), p. 70; First sentences of Ch. 3. Formulating and Structuring the System
In this text Harold Chestnut is here citing:
C. West Churchman, Russell L. Ackoff, and E. Leonard Arnoff (1957) Introduction to Operations Research. Wiley. New York, and
J. Morley English (1964) "Understanding the Engineering Design Process." The Journal of Industrial Engineering, Nov-Dec. 1964 Vol 15 (6). p. 291-296

Ernesto Che Guevara photo
Mick Mulvaney photo
Theo van Doesburg photo
George Lippard photo
David Lloyd George photo
Aron Ra photo
Frances Burney photo
Calvin Coolidge photo

“Peace has an economic foundation to which too little attention has been given. No student can doubt that it was to a large extent the economic condition of Europe that drove those overburdened countries headlong into the World War. They were engaged in maintaining competitive armaments. If one country laid the keel of one warship, some other country considered it necessary to lay the keel of two warships. If one country enrolled a regiment, some other country enrolled three regiments. Whole peoples were armed and drilled and trained to the detriment of their industrial life, and charged and taxed and assessed until the burden could no longer be borne. Nations cracked under the load and sought relief from the intolerable pressure by pillaging each other. It was to avoid a repetition of such a catastrophe that our Government proposed and brought to a successful conclusion the Washing- ton Conference for the Limitation of Naval Armaments. We have been altogether desirous of an extension of this principle and for that purpose have sent our delegates to a preliminary conference of nations now sitting at Geneva. Out of that conference we expect some practical results. We believe that other nations ought to join with us in laying aside their suspicions and hatreds sufficiently to agree among themselves upon methods of mutual relief from the necessity of the maintenance of great land and sea forces. This can not be done if we constantly have in mind the resort to war for the redress of wrongs and the enforcement of rights. Europe has the League of Nations. That ought to be able to provide those countries with certain political guaranties which our country does not require. Besides this there is the World Court, which can certainly be used for the determination of all justifiable disputes. We should not underestimate the difficulties of European nations, nor fail to extend to them the highest degree of patience and the most sympathetic consideration. But we can not fail to assert our conviction that they are in great need of further limitation of armaments and our determination to lend them every assistance in the solution of their problems. We have entered the conference with the utmost good faith on our part and in the sincere belief that it represents the utmost good faith on their part. We want to see the problems that are there presented stripped of all technicalities and met and solved in a way that will secure practical results. We stand ready to give our support to every effort that is made in that direction.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Ways to Peace (1926)

Francis Bacon photo
Herbert Marcuse photo

“The world of their [the bourgeois’] predecessors was a backward, pre-technological world, a world with the good conscience of inequality and toil, in which labor was still a fated misfortune; but a world in which man and nature were not yet organized as things and instrumentalities. With its code of forms and manners. with the style and vocabulary of its literature and philosophy. this past culture expressed the rhythm and content of a universe in which valleys and forests, villages and inns, nobles and villains, salons and courts were a part of the experienced reality. In the verse and prose of this pre-technological culture is the rhythm of those who wander or ride in carriages. who have the time and the pleasure to think, contemplate, feel and narrate. It is an outdated and surpassed culture, and only dreams and childlike regressions can recapture it. But this culture is, in some of its decisive elements. also a post-technological one. Its most advanced images and positions seem to survive their absorption into administered comforts and stimuli; they continue to haunt the consciousness with the possibility of their rebirth in the consummation of technical progress. They are the expression of that free and conscious alienation from the established forms of life with which literature and the arts opposed these forms even where they adorned them. In contrast to the Marxian concept, which denotes man's relation to himself and to his work in capitalist society, the artistic alienation is the conscious transcendence of the alienated existence—a “higher level” or mediated alienation. The conflict with the world of progress, the negation of the order of business, the anti-bourgeois elements in bourgeois literature and art are neither due to the aesthetic lowliness of this order nor to romantic reaction—nostalgic consecration of a disappearing stage of civilization. “Romantic” is a term of condescending defamation which is easily applied to disparaging avant-garde positions, just as the term “decadent” far more often denounces the genuinely progressive traits of a dying culture than the real factors of decay. The traditional images of artistic alienation are indeed romantic in as much as they are in aesthetic incompatibility with the developing society. This incompatibility is the token of their truth. What they recall and preserve in memory pertains to the future: images of a gratification that would dissolve the society which suppresses it”

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 59-60

Adam Smith photo
Umberto Eco photo
Jefferson Davis photo
Juan Cole photo
Tariq Aziz photo
Alexander Grothendieck photo

“It is less than four years since cohomological methods (i. e. methods of Homological Algebra) were introduced into Algebraic Geometry in Serre's fundamental paper[11], and it seems certain that they are to overflow the part of mathematics in the coming years, from the foundations up to the most advanced parts. … [11] Serre, J. P. Faisceaux algébriques cohérents. Ann. Math. (2), 6, 197–278”

Alexander Grothendieck (1928–2014) French mathematician

1955
[1960, Cambridge University Press, The cohomology theory of abstract algebraic varieties, Proc. Internat. Congress Math.(Edinburgh, 1958), 103–118, https://webusers.imj-prg.fr/~leila.schneps/grothendieckcircle/CohomologyVarieties.pdf] (p. 103)

John Mayer photo

“When you’re dreaming with a broken heart,
The waking up is the hardest part.”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

Dreaming with a Broken Heart
Song lyrics, Continuum (2006)

Gangubai Hangal photo

“It’s a hard life, she said, and not everyone can bear the hardships that are part of a life of music.”

Gangubai Hangal (1913–2009) Indian singer

In Legacy of Two Rich Voices - Upholding tradition without being traditionalists http://www.telegraphindia.com/1100425/jsp/opinion/story_12359659.jsp

Samuel R. Delany photo
Enoch Powell photo
Robert Murray M'Cheyne photo

“Break my hard heart,
Jesus my Lord;
In the inmost part
Hide Thy sweet word.”

Robert Murray M'Cheyne (1813–1843) British writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 449.

Ian McDonald photo
Catherine the Great photo
Pearl S.  Buck photo
Luther H. Gulick photo

“The present has its élan because it is always on the edge of the unknown and one misunderstands the past unless one remembers that this unknown was once part of its nature.”

V.S. Pritchett (1900–1997) British writer and critic

"Boris Pasternak: Unsafe Conduct", p. 14
The Myth Makers: European and Latin American Writers (1979)

Ralph Bakshi photo
Russell Brand photo
Allan Kardec photo
William Ewart Gladstone photo
Ernest Mandel photo
David Hume photo
Russell Brand photo
Alastair Reynolds photo
Paul Karl Feyerabend photo
Arthur Hugh Clough photo
Alice A. Bailey photo
Dexter S. Kimball photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Hermann Göring photo
Natalie Portman photo

“There’s so much goodness there, and such a value placed on education, which is sort of universal among Jews around the world. I appreciate that obviously, to be a part of that.”

Natalie Portman (1981) Israeli-American actress

Interview, Jewish Chronicle, 6 July 2007 http://thejc.com/home.aspx?AId=44797&ATypeId=1&search=true2&srchstr=Natalie%20Portman&srchtxt=1&srchhead=1&srchauthor=1&srchsandp=1&scsrch=0

Donald J. Trump photo

“For his part, Obama said he's just focused on winning the nomination although at least one member on his team said Clinton would make a good vice president. Well, I know her and she'd make a good president or good vice president.”

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

About the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries in an audio from "Trumped!", a syndicated radio feature that aired from 2004 to 2008. As quoted in Donald Trump Once Said Hillary Clinton Would Make A 'Good President' http://time.com/4402522/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-good-president/ (July 12, 2016) by Tara John, The Times.

Robert Crumb photo
Chad Johnson photo
Joan Miró photo
Frank Wilczek photo

“The whole idea of science is really to listen to nature, in her own language, as part of a continuing dialogue.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

Source: Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987), Ch.32 Hidden Harmonies

TotalBiscuit photo

“Critique exists to protect consumers from unscrupulous companies, and is a necessary part of our society. Wild Games Studio disagrees.”

TotalBiscuit (1984–2018) British game commentator

Other videos, This video is no longer available: The Day One[:<nowiki>]</nowiki> Garry's Incident Incident

Steve Sailer photo

“Finding your path is part of your path.”

Carlos Gershenson (1978) Mexican researcher

Treo Notes (December 2006 - December 2009)

Isaac Watts photo
Max Müller photo

“As for more than twenty years my principal work has been devoted to the ancient literature of India, I cannot but feel a deep and real sympathy for all that concerns the higher interests of the people of that country. Though I have never been in India, I have many friends there, both among the civilians and among the natives, and I believe I am not mistaken in supposing that the publication in England of the ancient sacred writings of the Brahmans, which had never been published in India, and other contributions from different European scholars towards a better knowledge of the ancient literature and religion of India, have not been without some effect on the intellectual and religious movement that is going on among the more thoughtful members of Indian society. I have sometimes regretted that I am not an Englishman, and able to help more actively in the great work of educating and improving the natives. But I do rejoice that this great task of governing and benefiting India should have fallen to one who knows the greatness of that task and all its opportunities and responsibilities, who thinks not only of its political and financial bearings, but has a heart to feel for the moral welfare of those millions of human beings that are, more or less directly, committed to his charge. India has been conquered once, but India must be conquered again, and that second conquest should be a conquest by education. Much has been done for education of late, but if the funds were tripled and quadrupled, that would hardly be enough. The results of the educational work carried on during the last twenty years are palpable everywhere. They are good and bad, as was to be expected. It is easy to find fault with what is called Young Bengal, the product of English ideas grafted on the native mind. But Young Bengal, with all its faults, is full of promise. Its bad features are apparent everywhere, its good qualities are naturally hidden from the eyes of careless observers.... India can never be anglicized, but it can be reinvigorated. By encouraging a study of their own ancient literature, as part of their education, a national feeling of pride and self-respect will be reawakened among those who influence the large masses of the people. A new national literature may spring up, impregnated with Western ideas, yet retaining its native spirit and character. The two things hang together. In order to raise the character of the vernaculars, a study of the ancient classical language is absolutely necessary: for from it these modern dialects have branched off, and from it alone can they draw their vital strength and beauty. A new national literature will bring with it a new national life and new moral vigour. As to religion, that will take care of itself. The missionaries have done far more than they themselves seem to be aware of, nay, much of the work which is theirs they would probably disclaim. The Christianity of our nineteenth century will hardly be the Christianity of India. But the ancient religion of India is doomed — and if Christianity does not step in, whose fault will it be?”

Max Müller (1823–1900) German-born philologist and orientalist

Letter to the Duke of Argyll, published in The Life and Letters of Right Honorable Friedrich Max Müller (1902) edited by Georgina Müller

“I am in this same river. I can't much help it. I admit it: I'm racist. The other night I saw a group (or maybe a pack?) or white teenagers standing in a vacant lot, clustered around a 4x4, and I crossed the street to avoid them; had they been black, I probably would have taken another street entirely. And I'm misogynistic. I admit that, too. I'm a shitty cook, and a worse house cleaner, probably in great measure because I've internalized the notion that these are woman's work. Of course, I never admit that's why I don't do them: I always say I just don't much enjoy those activities (which is true enough; and it's true enough also that many women don't enjoy them either), and in any case, I've got better things to do, like write books and teach classes where I feel morally superior to pimps. And naturally I value money over life. Why else would I own a computer with a hard drive put together in Thailand by women dying of job-induced cancer? Why else would I own shirts made in a sweatshop in Bangladesh, and shoes put together in Mexico? The truth is that, although many of my best friends are people of color (as the cliche goes), and other of my best friends are women, I am part of this river: I benefit from the exploitation of others, and I do not much want to sacrifice this privilege. I am, after all, civilized, and have gained a taste for "comforts and elegancies" which can be gained only through the coercion of slavery. The truth is that like most others who benefit from this deep and broad river, I would probably rather die (and maybe even kill, or better, have someone kill for me) than trade places with the men, women, and children who made my computer, my shirt, my shoes.”

Source: The Culture of Make Believe (2003), p. 69

Samuel Vince photo

“I have lately spent some Thoughts relative to the Nature of Light, whether it be subject to the common Laws of Motion. In this particular Newton seems to contradict himself. For in his Principia Sect. 14th he applies the common Laws of Motion to account for Reflection and Refraction, as he does also in one Part of his Optics where he proves the Sine of Incid. to Sine Refr, in a given in a given Ratio. But in another Part he says, “nothing more is requisite for producing all the Variety of Colours and Degrees of Refrangibility than that the Rays of Light be Bodies of different Sizes, the least of which may make Violet, and the Greatest the Red"; this manifestly is not consistent with the Theory of Motion applied to Bodies, where the Magnitude of the Bodies is of no Consequence. Now it is evident that if the common Theory of Motion can be applied to Light, the Red Light must have had the greatest Velocity before Incidence, as it suffers the least Deviation, for if the Vels of all the Difft colour'd Light were equal before Incidence, they must by Newton's Principia Sect. Sect. 8. Prop. 1. have continued equal after, and therefore must have suffered the same Deviation. The Determination of this Point seems to be of considerable Importance, as we so often apply the Theory of Motion to Light.”

Samuel Vince (1749–1821) British mathematician, astronomer and physicist

As quoted in: Russell McCormmach (2011) Weighing the World: The Reverend John Michell of Thornhill. p. 193

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg photo

“A good means to discovery is to take away certain parts of a system to find out how the rest behaves.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

As quoted in A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1991) edited by Alan Lindsay Mackay, p. 154

David Lange photo

“I've got two shirts still missing from the Bahamas. I'm sure they are part of a youth camping programme somewhere in Tanzania by now.”

David Lange (1942–2005) New Zealand politician and 32nd Prime Minister of New Zealand

Source: Herald on Sunday, 7/8/05.

Vincent Van Gogh photo

“What surprising fellows those French painters are. A Millet, Delacroix, Corot, Troyon, Daubigny, Rousseau, and a Daumier.... Something else about Delacroix - he had a discussion with a friend about the question of working absolutely from nature, and said on that occasion that one should take one's 'studies' from nature - but that the 'actual painting' had to be made 'by heart'. This friend was walking along the boulevard when they had this discussion - which was already fairly heated. When they parted the other man was still not entirely persuaded. After they parted, Delacroix let him stroll on for a bit - then (making a trumpet of his two hands) bellowed after him in the middle of the street - to the consternation of the worthy passers-by:
'By heart! By heart!”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

(Par coeur! Par coeur!)
I can't tell you how much I enjoyed reading this article and some other things about Delacroix..
In his letter to Anthon van Rappard, from Nuenen, The Netherlands, 8 and c. 15 August 1885 - original manuscript, letter 526, at Van Gogh Museum, location Amsterdam - inv. nos. b8390 V/2006, http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let526/letter.html
See for this anecdote, taken from Charles Blanc, Les artistes de mon temps, letter 496, n. 7.
1880s, 1885

Susan Faludi photo
Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo

“What outward form and feature are
He guesseth but in part;
But what within is good and fair
He seeth with the heart.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

To a Lady, Offended by a Sportive Observation
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Charles Lamb photo
David Whitmer photo
Martin Buber photo
Edwin Abbott Abbott photo
Theodore Dalrymple photo

“14:06> …Of course I made it quite clear to the women that I thought that that the way that they had been abused was terrible and completely unjustifiable. However, I thought that it was very important that they should understand their own complicity in it; so that, for example, they understood that the way they chose men, and their refusal to see signs (which they were capable of seeing) resulted in their misery… <14:40> To give you a concrete example, I would say to them, ‘This man of yours, who’s very nasty to you, and drags you across the floor, and puts your head through the window, and sometimes even hangs you out of the window by your ankles: How long do you think it would take me to realise he was no good, as he came through the door? Would it take me a second, or half a second, or an eighth of a second, or would I not notice that there was anything wrong with him at all?’ And they’d say, ‘Oh, an eighth of a second, you’d know immediately.’ And I would say to them, ‘Well, if you know that I would know immediately, then you knew immediately as well.’ It’s a logical consequence, really. And they would accept that. ‘And yet, you chose to associate with him, knowing full well that he was no good; and I tell you this, because it’s very necessary you should understand your own part in the predicament you now find yourself in, because if you don’t understand it, or don’t think about it, you’re just going to repeat it.’ which is of course, a very, very common pattern.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

Daniels http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Daniels_(psychiatrist) on helping victims of abuse understand how they can help to break the cycle.
CBC Ideas Interview (podcast) (September 25, 2006)

“The truth is the United States has to this point never recognized that Taiwan is part of China.”

Mark Chen (2016) cited in " US ‘one China’ policy debated at forum http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2016/12/15/2003661235" on Taipei Times, 15 December 2016

Thanissaro Bhikkhu photo
John B. Cobb photo
Chester W. Wright photo
Jeffrey D. Sachs photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Bob Dylan photo

“I put one on the turntable and when the needle dropped, I was stunned — didn't know if I was stoned or straight… All these songs together, one after another made my head spin. It made me want to gasp. It was like the land parted.”

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

Referring to the first Woody Guthrie record he ever heard, p. 243
Chronicles: Vol. One (2004)

Harvey Milk photo
Carol Leifer photo

“I recently became vegan because I felt that as a Jewish lesbian, I wasn’t part of a small enough minority. So now I’m a Jewish lesbian vegan.”

Carol Leifer (1956) American actor and comedian

“Confessions of a Jewish *** Vegan,” in PETA.org (9 July 2009) https://www.peta.org/blog/confessions-jewish-lesbian-vegan/.

Markandey Katju photo
Norman Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank photo

“Sonata form could not be defined until it was dead. Czerny claimed with pride around 1840 that he was the first to describe it, but then it was already part of history.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Part I. Introduction. 2. Theories of Form
Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven (Expanded edition, 1997)