Quotes about secrets (2119 quotes, page 2)

“One of the secrets of a happy life is continous small treats.”

Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) British writer and philosopher

Life , Happiness

“I wanted to let the world know that no one had a perfect life, that even the people who seemed to have it all had their secrets.”

Jeannette Walls book The Glass Castle

Source: The Glass Castle

Life , People , World , Perfection

“The secret of the creative life is to feel at ease with your own embarrassment.”

Paul Schrader (1946) American film director

Life , Feeling

“A passion for pleasure is the secret of remaining young.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Pleasure , Passion

“The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well.”

Horace Walpole (1717–1797) English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician

As quoted in The Christian Leader, Vol. 37, Issue 7 (17 February 1934)

Life

“Seems to me it ain't the world that's so bad but what we're doing to it, and all I'm saying is: see what a wonderful world it would be if only we'd give it a chance. Love, baby - love. That's the secret.”

Louis Armstrong (1901–1971) American jazz trumpeter, composer and singer

Spoken intro to "What a Wonderful World" (1970 version)
Context: Seems to me, it aint the world that's so bad but what we're doin' to it. And all I'm saying is, see, what a wonderful world it would be if only we'd give it a chance. Love baby, love. That's the secret, yeah. If lots more of us loved each other, we'd solve lots more problems. And then this world would be a gasser. That's wha' ol' Pops keeps saying.
Context: Some of you young folks been saying to me, "Hey Pops, what you mean 'What a wonderful world'? How about all them wars all over the place? You call them wonderful? And how about hunger and pollution? That aint so wonderful either." Well how about listening to old Pops for a minute. Seems to me, it aint the world that's so bad but what we're doin' to it. And all I'm saying is, see, what a wonderful world it would be if only we'd give it a chance. Love baby, love. That's the secret, yeah. If lots more of us loved each other, we'd solve lots more problems. And then this world would be a gasser. That's wha' ol' Pops keeps saying.

Love , World , Chance , Baby

“Reading can be a road to freedom or a key to a secret garden, which, if tended, will transform all of life.”

Katherine Paterson (1932) American children's writer born and mainly raised in China

Life , Freedom , Reading

“In mystical traditions, it is one's own readiness that makes experiences exoteric or esoteric.
The secret isn't that you're not being told.
The secret is that you're not able to hear.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

“The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible.”

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

Said in conversation with Mrs. Alan Wood; quoted in Alan Wood's Bertrand Russell, the Passionate Sceptic (Allen and Unwin, 1957), pp. 236-7
1950s

World , Happiness

“Nothing is hidden that will not be made known; nothing is secret that will not come to light.”

Dan Brown book The Lost Symbol

Source: The Lost Symbol

Light

“Never trust a pretty girl with an ugly secret.”

Sara Shepard (1973) Author

Girl

“What is man? A miserable little pile of secrets.”

André Malraux book Antimémoires

Antimémoires, preface (1967)
This preface paraphrases a line of dialogue from his own earlier work: "A man is what he hides: a miserable little pile of secrets."
Original: (fr) L'homme est ce qu'il cache : un misérable petit tas de secrets.

“The secret to life is to enjoy the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Life , Pleasure

“Don't call yourself a secret
unless you mean to keep it.”

Leonard Cohen Selected Poems 1956–1968

Source: Selected Poems 1956-1968

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small, manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Commonly attributed to Twain in computer contexts and post-2000 inspirational books — the first sentence has also been attributed to Agatha Christie and Sally Berger.
Misattributed

“Bursar?"
"Yes, Archchancellor?"
"You ain't a member of some secret society or somethin', are you?"
"Me? No, Archchancellor."
"Then it'd be a damn good idea to take your underpants off your head.”

Terry Pratchett book Lords and Ladies

Source: Lords and Ladies

Idea

“Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Life , Soul

“What was silent in the father speaks in the son, and often I found in the son the unveiled secret of the father.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

“She had a passion for secrecy, but she herself was merely a Sphinx without a secret.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Passion

“Self-respect. It would make me lovable. And it's the secret to good sex.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Source: As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980

Sex

“Art like life is an open secret.”

Lawrence Durrell The Alexandria Quartet

Source: The Alexandria Quartet

Life , Art

“You’re mad, bonkers, completely off your head. But I’ll tell you a secret. All the best people are.”

Lewis Carroll book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Variant: Have I gone mad? I'm afraid so.
You're entirely Bonkers.
But I will tell you a secret,
All the best people are.
Source: Alice in Wonderland

People , Madness

“Things every person should have:

•A nemesis.
•An evil twin.
•A secret headquarters.
•An escape hatch.
•A partner in crime.
•A secret identity.”

Wil Wheaton (1972) American actor and writer

Evil , Personality

“The secret to so many artists living so long is that every painting is a new adventure.”

Norman Rockwell (1894–1978) Armatian

As quoted in A Rockwell Portrait : An Intimate Biography‎ (1978) by Donald Walton, p. 251
Context: The secret to so many artists living so long is that every painting is a new adventure. So, you see, they're always looking ahead to something new and exciting. The secret is not to look back.

Painting

“Oh, this was the great ploy of Satan in that kingdom of his: to display such blatant evil one could almost believe one's own secret sin didn't matter.”

Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) Dutch resistance hero and writer

Source: The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom

Evil

“For believe me! — the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously!”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Sec. 283; Variant translation: For believe me: the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and greatest enjoyment is — to live dangerously.
The Gay Science (1882)
Context: For believe me! — the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you seekers of knowledge! Soon the age will be past when you could be content to live hidden in forests like shy deer! At long last the search for knowledge will reach out for its due: — it will want to rule and possess, and you with it!

“You see, a secret is not something untold. It’s something which can’t be told.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

“We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Life

“That was how dishonesty and betrayal started, not in big lies but in small secrets.”

Amy Tan book The Bonesetter's Daughter

Source: The Bonesetter's Daughter

Betrayal

“I have unclasp'd to thee the book even of my secret soul.”

William Shakespeare Twelfth Night

Source: Twelfth Night

Books , Soul

“Often secret desires as well as abilities surface in our dreams.”

P. C. Cast book Hunted

Source: Hunted

Dreams

“Insanity's so personal. It's hard to know who shares our secrets.”

Don DeLillo The Day Room

Source: The Day Room

Personality

“Knowledge subverts love: in proportion as we penetrate our secrets, we come to loathe our kind, precisely because they resemble us.”

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

Love , Knowledge

“In secret pleasure — secret tears
This changeful life has slipped away”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

I Am the Only Being (1836)
Source: Wuthering Heights
Context: I am the only being whose doom
No tongue would ask no eye would mourn
I never caused a thought of gloom
A smile of joy since I was born
In secret pleasure — secret tears
This changeful life has slipped away
As friendless after eighteen years
As lone as on my natal day

Life , Pleasure , Tear , Change

“This is my secret," he said. "I don't mind what happens.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“Years of secret suffering had taught me superhuman self-control.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita

Source: Lolita

Suffering

“All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

Source: Gabriel García Márquez: a Life

“Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Life , Food , Success , Fight

“A visiting pastor at our church in Plains once told a story about a priest from New Orleans. Father Flanagan’s parish lay in the central part of the city, close to many taverns. One night he was walking down the street and saw a drunk thrown out of a pub. The man landed in the gutter, and Father Flanagan quickly recognized him as one of his parishioners, a fellow named Mike. Father Flanagan shook the dazed man and said, “Mike!” Mike opened his eyes and Father Flanagan said, “You’re in trouble. If there is anything I can do for you, please tell me what it is.ℍ “Well, Father,” Mike replied, “I hope you’ll pray for me.” “Yes,” the priest answered, “I’ll pray for you right now.” He knelt down in the gutter and prayed, “Father, please have mercy on this drunken man.ℍ At this, a startled Mike woke up fully and said, “Father, please don’t tell God I’m drunk.ℍ Sometimes we don’t feel much of a personal relationship between God and ourselves, as though we have a secret life full of failures and sins that God knows nothing about. We want to involve God only when we plan to give thanks or when we’re in trouble and need help. But the rest of our lives, we’d rather keep to ourselves.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Source: Through the Year with Jimmy Carter: 366 Daily Meditations from the 39th President

Life , God , Hope , Feeling

“You know what the secret is? It's so simple. We love one another. We're nice to one another. Do you know how rare that is? - Carmen”

Ann Brashares The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Source: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Love

“Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice?”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando

“All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.”

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

Pearls of Wisdom

World

“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

Table-Talk (1857)
Source: The Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Sad , Life , Hostility , History

“Look: the trees exist; the houses
we dwell in stand there stalwartly.
Only we
pass by it all, like a rush of air.
And everything conspires to keep quiet
about us,
half out of shame perhaps, half out of
some secret hope.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Duino Elegies

Source: Duino Elegies

Hope , Tree , Housing

“Remember, young man, experience is not the best teacher. Other people's experience is the best teacher. By reading about the lives of great people, you can unlock the secrets to what made them great.”

Andy Andrews (1959) author and corporate speaker

Source: The Noticer: Sometimes, All a Person Needs Is a Little Perspective

People , Teachers , Reading

“If Disneyland was indeed the Happiest Place on Earth, you'd either keep it a secret or the price of admission would be free and not equivalent to the yearly per capita income of a small sub-Saharan African nation like Detroit.”

Paul Beatty book The Sellout

Source: The Sellout

“All through your life your soul takes care of you… your soul is alive and awakened, gathering, sheltering and guiding your ways and days in the world. In effect, your soul is your secret shelter.”

John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher

Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Life , World , Way , Soul

“It was a melancholy secret that reality can arouse desires but never satisfy them.”

Erich Maria Remarque book Three Comrades

Source: Three Comrades

Reality

“You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver, didn't I? I mean it was careless of me to makes such a wrong guess. I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person I thought it was your secret pride."

"I'm thirty," I said. "I'm five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor."

She didn't answer. Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Love , Lie , Personality

“Hide your intentions not by closing up (with the risk of appearing secretive, and making people suspicious) but by talking endlessly about your desires and goals-just not the real ones.”

Robert Greene book The 48 Laws of Power

Source: The 48 Laws of Power

People , Appearance

“Never do anything complicated when something simple will serve as well. It's one of the most important secrets of living.”

Erich Maria Remarque book The Black Obelisk

Source: The Black Obelisk

“The secret is not to dream," she whispered. "The secret is to wake up. Waking up is harder. I have woken up and I am real. I know where I come from and I know where I'm going. You cannot fool me any more. Or touch me. Or anything that is mine.”

Terry Pratchett book The Wee Free Men

Source: The Wee Free Men

Dreams , Fools

“… every person has a star, every star has a friend, and for every person carrying a star there is someone else who reflects it, and everyone carries this reflection like a secret confidante in the heart.”

Orhan Pamuk book Snow

Source: Snow

Star , Heart , Personality

“The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending; and to have the two as close together as possible.”

George Burns (1896–1996) American comedian, actor, and writer

“you are not too old
and it is not too late
to dive into your increasing depths
where life calmly gives out
it's own secret”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Life

“The deeper we look into nature, the more we recognize that it is full of life, and the more profoundly we know that all life is a secret and that we are united with all life that is in nature. Man can no longer live for himself alone. We realize that all life is valuable, and that we are united to all this life. From this knowledge comes our spiritual relationship to the universe.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 248

Life , Nature

“We must keep our thought secret, and judge everything by it, while talking like the people.”

Blaise Pascal Pensées

Source: Pensées

People

“The secret to being wrong isn't to avoid being wrong! The secret is being willing to be wrong. The secret is realizing that wrong isn't fatal.”

Seth Godin (1960) American entrepreneur, author and public speaker

Source: Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

“Possessing by letting go of things was a secret of ownership unknown to youth.”

Yukio Mishima (1925–1970) Japanese author

Youth

“The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.”

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

Motivational , Success , Life , Relationship

“One person can keep a secret, but not two.”

Ernest Cline book Ready Player One

Source: Ready Player One

Personality

“Through all this horror my cat stalked unperturbed. Once I saw him monstrously perched atop a mountain of bones, and wondered at the secrets that might lie behind his yellow eyes.”

H.P. Lovecraft book The Rats in the Walls

Source: The Rats in the Walls

Lie , Mountain , Cats

“The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion-these are the two things that govern us.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

God , Religion

“The greatest sweetener of human life is Friendship. To raise this to the highest pitch of enjoyment, is a secret which but few discover.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

As quoted in Hugs for Girlfriends : Stories, Sayings, and Scriptures to Encourage and Inspire (2001) by Philis Boultinghouse and LeAnn Weiss, p. 7; there seem to be no published sources available for this statement prior to 2001.
Disputed

For Friend , Life , Friendship

“It's not me who can't keep a secret. It's the people I tell that can't.”

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

People

“I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light was laughter, and that this was the secret of the universe.”

Donna Tartt book The Goldfinch

Source: The Goldfinch

Laughter , Light , Universe

“My soul is full of longing
For the secret of the Sea,
And the heart of the great ocean
Sends a thrilling pulse through me.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

The Secret of the Sea, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Soul , Heart , Sea

“The real secret of magic is that the world is made of words, and that if you know the words that the world is made of you can make of it whatever you wish.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

"Alien Dreamtime" a multimedia event recorded live. (27 February 1993)

World

“Our discreditable secret is that we don't know anything at all, and our horrid inner secret is that we don't care that we don't.”

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) Welsh poet and writer

“The secret to living long is to have something to live for.”

David Levithan book Love Is the Higher Law

Source: Love Is the Higher Law

“The secret is that only that which can destroy itself is truly alive.”

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

Psychology and Alchemy (1944)
Source: Dreams

“It seemed that at the end of the lecture Dr. Krokowski was making propaganda for psycho-analysis; with open arms he summoned all and sundry to come unto him. "Come unto me," he was saying, though not in those words, " come unto me, all ye who are weary and heavy-laden." And he left no doubt of his conviction that all those present were weary and heavy-laden. He spoke of secret suffering, of shame and sorrow, of the redeeming power of the analytic. He advocated the bringing of light into the unconscious mind and explained how the abnormality was metamorphosed into the conscious emotion; he urged them to have confidence; he promised relief.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 4

Confidence , Light , Suffering

“Strange secrets are let out by Death
Who blabs so oft the follies of this world.”

Robert Browning Paracelsus

Part 2, line 112.
Paracelsus (1835)

Death , World

“Honey, I jes' walked round an' round in a dream. Jesus loved me! I knowed it - I fel it. Jesus was my Jesus. Jesus would love me always. I did n't dare tell nobody; it was a great secret. Everything had been got away from me that I ever had; an' I thought that ef I let white folks know about this, maybe they'd get him away - so I said, 'I'll keep this close. I wont let any one know.”

Sojourner Truth (1797–1883) African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist

Olive Gilbert & Sojourner Truth (1878), Narrative of Sojourner Truth, a Bondswoman of Olden Time, page 159. ( text at sojournertruth.org http://www.sojournertruth.org/Library/Archive/LibyanSibyl.htm)

Love , Dreams

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

Robert Browning The Ring and the Book

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

Life , Books , Heart

“That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom. Meanwhile the cult, by appropriate rites, must keep alive the memory of those ancient ways and shadow forth the prophecy of their return.”

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

Fiction, The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

Men , Law , Way , Star

“The biggest mistake of Hitler, I have to say the main fault, was that under his government these terrific exterminations of men happened, which went on behind the backs of the German nation, which would never have tolerated them, but the government kept these crimes completely secret from the German people.”

Karl Dönitz (1891–1980) President of Germany; admiral in command of German submarine forces during World War II

The World at War: the Landmark Oral History from the Classic TV Series (2007) by Richard Holmes, Page 316.

Men , People

“I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct for revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, petty — I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Antichrist

Sec. 62
The Antichrist (1888)

Revenge

“I believed before that (journey to Italy in 1875)… that movement was the whole secret of this art, and I put my models into positions like those of Michael Angelo. But as I went on observing the free attitudes of my models I perceived that they possessed thèse naturally^ and that Michael Angelo had not preconceived them, but merely transcribed them according to the Personal inspiration of human beings moved by the need of action. I went to Rome to look for what may be found everywhere : the latent heroic in every natural movement.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Auguste Rodin: The Man, His Ideas, His Works, 1905, p. 65

Art , Nature , Personality

“Love is to recognize that the other person is a person, is precious, is important and has value.. Each one has a gift to bring to others. Each one has his or her mission in the larger family of humanity. Each one reveals the secret face of God.”

Jean Vanier (1928–2019) Canadian humanitarian

Google this: Jean Vanier and what it means to be human http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-briggs/google-this-jean-vanier-a_b_7484702.html Huffington Post, 02/06/2015
From interviews and talks

Love , God , Family , Personality

“My debts are large, my failures great, my shame secret and heavy; yet I come to ask for my good, I quake in fear lest my prayer be granted.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

28
Gitanjali http://www.spiritualbee.com/gitanjali-poems-of-tagore/ (1912)

Fear , Failure

“Once centenarian teacher who had the body of an adolescent told me he had studied martial arts. "Me, too," I answered. We were in Notre Dame, and he said, "Attack me." I put myself in a combat position, and he moved his left hand in such an incredibly beautiful way that while I looked at it, fascinated, he gave me a big slap. "Beauty is the most dangerous weapon," he warned. It took me a long time to understand. He used a secret Chinese practice, which consists of drawing a snake in the air with your hand to distract the enemy. And that is how beauty is: the most awful weapon.”

Alejandro Jodorowsky (1929) Filmmaker and comics writer

Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy (2010)

Beauty , Art , Way , Understanding

“In this time, when the games and abuses of secret societies were without end, I wanted to make use of this human weakness for a real and worthy goal, the welfare of mankind.… I wanted what the heads of the ecclesiastical and secular powers should do and want by virtue of their offices.”

Adam Weishaupt (1748–1830) German philosopher and founder of the Order of Illuminati

Die Leuchte des Diogenes (1804) p. 329.

Game , Time

“To say it once again: today I find it an impossible book — badly written, clumsy and embarrassing, its images frenzied and confused, sentimental, in some places saccharine-sweet to the point of effeminacy, uneven in pace, lacking in any desire for logical purity, so sure of its convictions that it is above any need for proof, and even suspicious of the propriety of proof, a book for initiates, 'music' for those who have been baptized in the name of music and who are related from the first by their common and rare experiences of art, a shibboleth for first cousins in artibus [in the arts] an arrogant and fanatical book that wished from the start to exclude the profanum vulgus [the profane mass] of the 'educated' even more than the 'people'; but a book which, as its impact has shown and continues to show, has a strange knack of seeking out its fellow-revellers and enticing them on to new secret paths and dancing-places.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Birth of Tragedy

Nochmals gesagt, heute ist es mir ein unmögliches Buch, - ich heisse es schlecht geschrieben, schwerfällig, peinlich, bilderwüthig und bilderwirrig, gefühlsam, hier und da verzuckert bis zum Femininischen, ungleich im Tempo, ohne Willen zur logischen Sauberkeit, sehr überzeugt und deshalb des Beweisens sich überhebend, misstrauisch selbst gegen die Schicklichkeit des Beweisens, als Buch für Eingeweihte, als "Musik" für Solche, die auf Musik getauft, die auf gemeinsame und seltene Kunst-Erfahrungen hin von Anfang der Dinge an verbunden sind, als Erkennungszeichen für Blutsverwandte in artibus, - ein hochmüthiges und schwärmerisches Buch, das sich gegen das profanum vulgus der "Gebildeten" von vornherein noch mehr als gegen das "Volk" abschliesst, welches aber, wie seine Wirkung bewies und beweist, sich gut genug auch darauf verstehen muss, sich seine Mitschwärmer zu suchen und sie auf neue Schleichwege und Tanzplätze zu locken.
"Attempt at a Self-Criticism", p. 5
The Birth of Tragedy (1872)

People , Books , Education , Art

“The overdevelopment of the maternal instinct is identical with that well-known image of the mother which has been glorified in all ages and all tongues. This is the motherlove which is one of the most moving and unforgettable memories of our lives, the mysterious root of all growth and change; the love that means homecoming, shelter, and the long silence from which everything begins and in which everything ends. Intimately known and yet strange like Nature, lovingly tender and yet cruel like fate, 'oyous and untiring giver of life-mater dolorosa and mute implacable portal that closes upon the dead. Mother is motherlove, my experience and my secret. Why risk saying too much, too much that is false and inadequate and beside the point, about that human being who was our mother, the accidental carrier of that great experience which includes herself and myself and all mankind, and indeed the whole of created nature, the experience of life whose children we are? The attempt to say these things has always been made, and probably always will be; but a sensitive person cannot in all fairness load that enormous burden of meaning, responsibility, duty, heaven and hell, on to the shoulders of one frail and fallible human being-so deserving of love, indulgence, understanding, and forgiveness-who was our mother. He knows that the mother carries for us that inborn image of the mater nature and mater spiritualis, of the totality of life of which we are a small and helpless part.”

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

"Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype" (1939) In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious P.172

Love , Life , Fate , Children

“Every child saved with my help and the help of all the wonderful secret messengers, who today are no longer living, is the justification of my existence on this earth, and not a title to glory.”

Irena Sendler (1910–2008) Polish resistance fighter and Holocaust rescuer

Letter to the Polish Senate (2007), quoted in "Irena Sendler, Lifeline to Young Jews, Is Dead at 98" http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/world/europe/13sendler.html?em&ex=1210824000&en=cecafcbe4079750b&ei=5087%0A by Dennis Hevesi in The New York Times (13 May 2008)

Help

“Many a one commits a reprehensible action, who is at bottom an honourable man, because man seldom acts upon natural impulse, but from some secret passion of the moment which lies hidden and concealed within the narrowest folds of his heart.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Political Aphorisms, Moral and Philosophical Thoughts (1848)

Nature , Passion , Heart

“Confidences are always risky: a secret entrusted to a stranger make him less of one. You've given away something of yourself, given him the advantage.”

Stefan Zweig book The Post Office Girl

The Post Office Girl (published posthumously in 1982)

Confidence

“The secret to feeling great about yourself is not to be found in searching for people who are less than you and then show yourself superior to them, but in searching for people who are more than you and then show yourself worthy of their company.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: CLL statistics for 2002 (was: Looking for Lisp compiler) http://www.xach.com/naggum/articles/3250612397276876@naggum.no.html (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

People , Feeling , Search

“It is as though a star throws the whole secret history of its being into its spectrum, and we have only to learn how to read it aright in order to solve the most abstruse problems of the physical Universe.”

Herbert Dingle (1890–1978) British astronomer

Introduction, page xxv
Modern Astrophysics, London, 1924

History , Star , Problem , Learning

“[Intelligence services] are poor pigs suffering from two mental illnesses: The one disease is because they never get public recognition for what they actually do. This is inevitable, as they have to work in secret. This deformes the soul. The other disease bases on the fact that they have the tendency to believe they understood the national interests of their own country much better than their own government. This latter disease is the reason that I do not trust them.”

Helmut Schmidt (1918–2015) Chancellor of West Germany 1974-1982

DIE ZEIT, 30. August 2007, Zeit.de http://www.zeit.de/2007/36/Interview-Helmut-Schmidt?page=all

Disease , Soul , Intelligence , Suffering

“I do differ from you radically in respect to familiar things & scenes; for I always demand close correlation with the landscape & historic stream to which I belong, & would feel completely lost in infinity without a system of reference-points based on known & accustomed objects. I take complete relativity so much for granted, that I cannot conceive of anything as existing in itself in any recognisable form. What gives things an aspect & quasi-significance to us is the fact that we view things consistently from a certain artificial & fortuitous angle. Without the preservation of that angle, coherent consciousness & entity itself becomes inconceivable. Thus my wish for freedom is not so much a wish to put all terrestrial things behind me & plunge forever into abysses beyond light, matter, & energy. That, indeed, would mean annihilation as a personality rather than liberation. My wish is perhaps best defined as a wish for infinite visioning & voyaging power, yet without loss of the familiar background which gives all things significance. I want to know what stretches Outside, & be able to visit all the gulfs & dimensions beyond Space & Time. I want, too, to juggle the calendar at will; bringing things from the immemorial past down into the present, & making long journeys into the forgotten years. But I want the familiar Old Providence of my childhood as a perpetual base for these necromancies & excursions—& in a good part of these necromancies & excursions I want certain transmuted features of Old Providence to form part of the alien voids I visit or conjure up. I am as geographic-minded as a cat—places are everything to me. Long observation has shewn me that no other objective experience can give me even a quarter of the kick I can extract from the sight of a fresh landscape or urban vista whose antiquity & historic linkages are such as to correspond with certain fixed childhood dream-patterns of mine. Of course my twilight cosmos of half-familiar, fleetingly remembered marvels is just as unattainable as your Ultimate Abysses—this being the real secret of its fascination. Nothing really known can continue to be acutely fascinating—the charm of many familiar things being mainly resident in their power to symbolise or suggest unknown extensions & overtones.”

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

Letter to Clark Ashton Smith (7 November 1930), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 214
Non-Fiction, Letters

Dreams , Feeling , Cats , Freedom