Quotes about strength
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“Your aim is to reduce every thing to your own mean level—to degrade every thing to your malignant standard... In all your conduct it is not difficult to detect the workings of a mean and long mortified spirit suddenly invested with power,—the struggles of a strong ambition attempting, by a wanton exercise of authority, to revenge the disgrace of a feeble intellect.”

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

Source: 'Letter VII. to Lord John Russell' (30 January 1836), The Letters of Runnymede (1836), pp. 60-61

Exercises, Revenge

“(Engr. Abah Sule favorite speech)1. Give birth to yourself. 2. Others are feeling the same. 3. As a man you got to be strong. 4. Love the one you are with, 5. Where challenges are important, 6. to live is the hardest, to die is the simplest. 7. Peace of mind, long life, 8. Can't be done without you. 9. Do what's real. 10. Live the world and live your life.”

Engr.Abah Sule

Love, Life, World, Peace

“In war, the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich makes slaves of the poor.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

War, Peace

“Shadows in shadows
He watches through
dreams
Wings black as Africa
Body strong as stone
Done waiting
The ravens call.”

Kristin Cast book Hunted

Source: Hunted

Dreams, Waiting

“Stark looked strong and healthy and totally gorgeous. I was distracting myself by wondering what exactly Scottish guys did, or didn't, wear under those kilts when he turned to face me.
His smile lit up his eyes. "I can practically hear you thinking.”

Kristin Cast book Awakened

Source: Awakened

Smile, Guy, Thinking

“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Variant: The report of my death was an exaggeration.

Death, Funny

“I am a modern man with a strong tendency to self-destruction.”

Erich Maria Remarque book The Black Obelisk

Source: The Black Obelisk

“A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It's a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity.”

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

Presidency (1977–1981), 1977

Help, Personality

“What I need… is a strong drink and a peer group.”

Douglas Adams Life, the Universe and Everything

Source: Life, the Universe and Everything

Drink

“You burn the paper, but not the words. You silence the words, but not the thoughts. You kill the thoughts only if you kill the man. And you will find that his thoughts rise again in the minds of others - twice as strong as before.”

Linda Sue Park book When My Name Was Keoko

Source: When My Name Was Keoko

Silence

“You can’t make a weak man strong by making a strong man weak”

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

“Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

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

“The chains of habit are generally too small to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

“If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, the women together ought to be able to turn back and get it right side up again! and now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.”

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

Ain't I a Woman? Speech (1851)

Women, Men, God, World

“Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts. There are seven words that will make a person love you. There are ten words that will break a strong man’s will. But a word is nothing but a painting of a fire. A name is the fire itself.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 86, “The Fire Itself” (pp. 672-673)

Love, Men, Tear, Light

“He knew you can't really be strong until you can see a funny side of things.”

Ken Kesey book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Variant: You can't really be strong until you can see a funny side to things.
Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

“Strength is paradoxical. I am not strong because I can force others to do what I wish as a result of my play with them, but because I can allow them to do what they wish in the course of my play with them.”

James P. Carse American academic

Source: Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility

“Sorrow comes in great waves… but rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us, it leaves us. And we know that if it is strong, we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain.”

Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic

“I hate you most because you attract, but are not strong enough to pull me to you.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Hate

“Anyone can hide. Facing up to things, working through them, that's what makes you strong.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

For women, Courageous

“If you feel lost, disappointed, hesitant, or weak, return to yourself, to who you are, here and now and when you get there, you will discover yourself, like a lotus flower in full bloom, even in a muddy pond, beautiful and strong.”

Masaru Emoto (1943–2014) Japanese writer

Source: Secret Life of Water

Beauty, Disappointment, Feeling, Flowers

“A window within the soul to see
Light and Magick I send with thee
Be strong, be brave, make the right choice
Though Darkness shouts with a terrible voice
Know that I am watching from above
And that always, always, the answer is love!”

P. C. Cast book Awakened

Source: Awakened

Love, Soul, Light

“Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.”

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

1960s, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (1967-1969)
Context: Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

Love, Life, Search, Knowledge

“Very' is such a strong word…”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

“My 'morals' were sound, even a bit puritanic, but when a hidebound old deacon inveighed against dancing I rebelled. By the time of graduation I was still a 'believer' in orthodox religion, but had strong questions which were encouraged at Harvard. In Germany I became a freethinker and when I came to teach at an orthodox Methodist Negro school I was soon regarded with suspicion, especially when I refused to lead the students in public prayer. When I became head of a department at Atlanta, the engagement was held up because again I balked at leading in prayer. I refused to teach Sunday school. When Archdeacon Henry Phillips, my last rector, died, I flatly refused again to join any church or sign any church creed. From my 30th year on I have increasingly regarded the church as an institution which defended such evils as slavery, color caste, exploitation of labor and war..”

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American sociologist, historian, activist and writer

Source: The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century

War, School, Religion, Color

“You are the gull, Jo, strong and wild, fond of the storm and the wind, flying far out to sea, and happy all alone.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

Happiness, Flying, Sea

“It's like a spell. It's so strong I can't fight it. Is love always like this?”

Gillian Rubinstein Tales of the Otori

Source: Brilliance of the Moon

Love, Fight

“I will simply express my strong belief, that that point of self-education which consists in teaching the mind to resist its desires and inclinations, until they are proved to be right, is the most important of all, not only in things of natural philosophy, but in every department of daily life.”

Michael Faraday (1791–1867) English scientist

Life, Education, Nature

“Time is an optical illusion- never quite as soild or strong as we think it is”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Thinking, Time

“Trifles light as air are to the jealous confirmations strong as proofs of holy writ.”

William Shakespeare Othello

Source: Othello

Light

“… how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong but to feel strong, to measure yourself at least once, to find yourself at least once…”

Primo Levi (1918–1987) Italian chemist, memoirist, short story writer, novelist, essayist

Life, Feeling

“Mothers and their children are in a category all their own. There's no bond so strong in the entire world. No love so instantaneous and forgiving.”

Gail Tsukiyama (1957) American writer

Source: Dreaming Water

Love, Children, World, Forgiveness

“Conscience is but a word that cowards use, devised at first to keep the strong in awe”

William Shakespeare Richard III

Source: Richard III

“Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”

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

Feeling, Personality

“And yet, anything real, anything strong, was never easy. She'd been taught from an early age that the things that mattered most were the hardest to obtain.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Age

“If God sends us on strong paths, we are provided strong shoes.”

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

God, Shoe

“It is not I who am strong, it is reason, it is truth.”

Emile Zola (1840–1902) French writer (1840-1902)

Truth, Deep

“To my thinking, a great librarian must have a clear head, a strong hand, and, above all, a great heart. And when I look into the future, I am inclined to think that most of the men who achieve this greatness will be women.”

Melvil Dewey (1851–1931) American librarian and educator

Women, Men, Thinking, Future

“Conscience is but a word that cowards use,
Devis'd at first to keep the strong in awe:
Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law.
March on, join bravely, let us to't pell-mell;
If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell.”

William Shakespeare Richard III

Source: Richard III

Law, Hell

“The desire for a strong faith is not the proof of a strong faith, rather the opposite. If one has it one may permit oneself the beautiful luxury of skepticism: one is secure enough, fixed enough for it.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Twilight of the Idols

Source: Twilight of the Idols

Faith, Beauty

“Bunch together a group of people deliberately chosen for strong religious feelings, and you have a practical guarantee of dark morbidities expressed in crime, perversion, and insanity.”

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

Letter to Robert E. Howard, (October 4, 1930), https://books.google.com/books?id=rVERL_j9UfcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=isbn:0809515679&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-beOVeGqHsi_ggT1vqKgCw&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=insanity&f=true Non-Fiction, Letters, to Robert E. Howard Context: It is the night-black Massachusetts legendry which packs the really macabre 'kick', Here is the material for a really profound study in group neuroticism; for certainly, no one can deny the existence of a profoundly morbid streak in the Puritan imagination.... The very pre-ponderance of passionately pious men in the colony was virtually an assurance of unnatural crime; insomuch as psychology now proves the religious instinct to be a form of transmuted eroticism precisely parallel to the transmutations in other directions which respectively produce such things as sadism, hallucination, melancholia, and other mental morbidities. Bunch together a group of people deliberately chosen for strong religious feelings, and you have a practical guarantee of dark morbidities expressed in crime, perversion, and insanity. This was aggravated, of course, by the Puritan policy of rigorously suppressing all the natural outlets of excuberant feeling--music, laughter, colour, pageantry, and so on. To observe Christmas Day was once a prison offence....

People, Feeling

“I had on a beautiful red dress, but what I saw was even more valuable. I was strong. I was pure. I had genuine thoughts inside that no one could see, that no one could ever take away from me. I was like the wind.
-Lindo”

Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club

American Acheivement interview (1996)
Source: The Joy Luck Club
Context: Reading for me was a refuge. I could escape from everything that was miserable in my life and I could be anyone I wanted to be in a story, through a character. It was almost sinful how much I liked it. That's how I felt about it. If my parents knew how much I loved it, I thought they would take it away from me. I think I was also blessed with a very wild imagination because I can remember, when I was at an age before I could read, that I could imagine things that weren't real and whatever my imagination saw is what I actually saw. Some people would say that was psychosis but I prefer to say it was the beginning of a writer's imagination. If I believed that insects had eyes and mouths and noses and could talk, that's what they did. If I thought I could see devils dancing out of the ground, that's what I saw. If I thought lightning had eyes and would follow me and strike me down, that's what would happen. And I think I needed an outlet for all that imagination, so I found it in books.

Beauty

“In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

World, Failure, Success

“Recipe For Happiness Khaborovsk Or Anyplace'

One grand boulevard with trees
with one grand cafe in sun
with strong black coffee in very small cups.

One not necessarily very beautiful
man or woman who loves you.

One fine day.”

Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919) American artist, writer and activist

Love, Happiness, Beauty, Coffee

“Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.”

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

Art

“First principle: one must need to be strong — otherwise one will never become strong. — Those large hothouses [Treibhäuser] for the strong, for the strongest kind of human being that has ever been, the aristocratic commonwealths of the type of Rome or Venice, understood freedom exactly in the sense in which I understand the word freedom: as something one has and does not have, something one wants, something one conquers…”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Twilight of the Idols

Twilight of the Idols (1888)

Understanding, Sense, Freedom

“A strong pursuit, give no time for the enemy to think, take advantage of victory, uproot him, cut off his escape route.”

Alexander Suvorov (1730–1800) Russian military commander

Quoted in V. Ye. Savkin, "Basic Principles of Operational Art and Tactics," 1972.

Thinking, Time, Victory

“Be brave! Let's remember our duty and perform it without complaint. There will be a way out. God has never deserted our people. Through the ages Jews have had to suffer, but through the ages they've gone on living, and the centuries of suffering have only made them stronger. The weak shall fall and the strong shall survive and not be defeated!”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

11 April 1944
(1942 - 1944)

God, People, Age, Way

“Much has been given us, and much will rightfully be expected from us. We have duties to others and duties to ourselves; and we can shirk neither. We have become a great nation, forced by the fact of its greatness into relations with the other nations of the earth, and we must behave as beseems a people with such responsibilities. Toward all other nations, large and small, our attitude must be one of cordial and sincere friendship. We must show not only in our words, but in our deeds, that we are earnestly desirous of securing their good will by acting toward them in a spirit of just and generous recognition of all their rights. But justice and generosity in a nation, as in an individual, count most when shown not by the weak but by the strong.”

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

1900s, Inaugural Address (1905)

Friendship, People, Justice, Sincerity

“We began to stir against slavery. Hearts grew soft, here, there, and yonder. There was no place in the land where the seeker could not find some small budding sign of pity for the slave. No place in all the land but one—the pulpit. It yielded at last; it always does. It fought a strong and stubborn fight, and then did what it always does, joined the procession—at the tail end. Slavery fell. The slavery text remained; the practice changed, that was all.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Bible Teaching and Religious Practice http://books.google.com/books?id=sujuHO_fvJgC&pg=PA568&dq=twain+%22Bible+Teaching+and+Religious+Practice%22&cd=1#v=onepage&q=twain%20%22Bible%20Teaching%20and%20Religious%20Practice%22&f=false. "Bible Teaching and Religious Practice" (1923)

Change, Heart, Fight

“Voltaire, who was both the flatterer and the satirist of despotism, took another line. His force lay in exposing and ridiculing the superstitions which priest-craft, united with state-craft, had interwoven with governments. It was not from the purity of his principles, or his love of mankind (for satire and philanthropy are not naturally concordant), but from his strong capacity of seeing folly in its true shape, and his irresistible propensity to expose it, that he made those attacks. They were, however, as formidable as if the motive had been virtuous; and he merits the thanks rather than the esteem of mankind.”

Thomas Paine book Rights of Man

Part 1.3 Rights of Man
1790s, Rights of Man, Part I (1791)

Love, Motivation, Nature

“Meaning and morality of one's life come from within oneself. Healthy, strong individuals seek self-expansion by experimenting and by living dangerously. Life consists of an infinite number of possibilities, and the healthy person explores as many of them as possible. Religions that teach pity, self-contempt, humility, self-restraint and guilt are incorrect. The good life is ever-changing, challenging, devoid of regret, intense, creative, and risky.”

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

Attributed to Nietzsche on quotes sites and on social media, the original quotation is from An Introduction to the History of Psychology by B. R. Hergenhahn (2008, page 226) and is the author's summary of Nietzsche's ideas: "The meaning and morality of one's life come from within oneself. Healthy, strong individuals seek self-expansion by experimenting, by living dangerously. Life consists of an almost infinite number of possibilities, and the healthy person (the superman) explores as many of them as possible. Religions or philosophies that teach pity, humility, submissiveness, self-contempt, self-restraint, guilt, or a sense of community are simply incorrect. [...] For Nietzsche, the good life is ever-changing, challenging, devoid of regret, intense, creative, and risky."
Misattributed

Life, Religion, Change, Personality

“Some men would make it a question of indifference, neither right nor wrong, merely a question of dollars and cents, the Almighty has drawn a line across the land, below which it must be cultivated by slave labor, above which by free labor. They would say: 'If the question is between the white man and the negro, I am for the white man; if between the negro and the crocodile, I am for the negro.' There is a strong effort to make this policy of indifference prevail, but it can not be a durable one. A 'don't care' policy won't prevail, for every body does care.”

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

1860s, Speech at Hartford (1860)

Men, Question, Effort, Indifference

“The shadow of crisis has passed, and the State of the Union is strong.”

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

2015, State of the Union Address (January 2015)

“Those American comics themselves were heavily influenced by Keaton’s comedies, Mack Sennett, those sorts of films from the golden age of comedy. The gagmen that appeared there, for example Roscoe Arbuckle or Ben Turpin, there were lots of comics that used their style, their faces just as is. Especially Chaplin with his bowed legs and over-sized shoes. Those sorts of features were used directly in comics. In that era, all American cartoonists imitated the stars of comedy. That is what I worked so hard at copying, and so that’s why my comics are bowlegged and big-shoed. At the level of content too I was deeply influenced by the strong social caricatures of Chaplin’s comedies, the tears mixed with the laughter. The biggest influence of all was the rhythm.”

Osamu Tezuka (1928–1989) Japanese cartoonist and animator

Source: http://www.tcj.com/tezuka-osamu-and-american-comics/ Tezuka Osamu and American Comics

Age, Shoe, Star, Tear

“Love is swift, sincere, pious, pleasant, gentle, strong, patient, faithful, prudent, long-suffering, manly and never seeking her own; for whosoever a man seeketh his own, there he falleth from love.”

Thomas à Kempis book The Imitation of Christ

Book III, ch. 5.
The Imitation of Christ (c. 1418)

Love, Faith, Suffering, Sincerity

“Some more in this convention came from Kentucky to Illinois (instead of going to Missouri), not only to better their conditions, but also to get away from slavery. They have said so to me, and it is understood among us Kentuckians that we don't like it one bit. Now, can we, mindful of the blessings of liberty which the early men of Illinois left to us, refuse a like privilege to the free men who seek to plant Freedom's banner on our Western outposts? Should we not stand by our neighbors who seek to better their conditions in Kansas and Nebraska? Can we as Christian men, and strong and free ourselves, wield the sledge or hold the iron which is to manacle anew an already oppressed race? "Woe unto them," it is written, "that decree unrighteous decrees and that write grievousness which they have prescribed."”

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

Can we afford to sin any more deeply against human liberty? From the Speech Delivered Before the First Republican State Convention of Illinois, Held at Bloomington (1856); found in Speeches & Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1865 (1894), J. M. Dent & Company, p. 56. Also quoted by Ida Minerva Tarbell, The Life of Abraham Lincoln: Drawn from Original Sources and Containing Many Speeches, Letters, and Telegrams Hitherto Unpublished, and Illustrated with Many Reproductions from Original Paintings, Photographs, etc, Volume 4 (1902), Lincoln History Society http://lincolnhistoricalsociety.org/; and by William C. Whitney; in The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, v. 2' . (1905) Lapsley, Arthur Brooks, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons 1850s

Men, Freedom

“America is the world’s oldest constitutional democracy; that means we’re going to stand up for democracy -- it’s a part of who we are. And we do this not only because we think it’s right, but because it’s been proven to be the most stable and successful form of government. In recent decades, many Asian nations have shown that different nations can realize the promise of self-government in their own way; they have their own path. But we must recognize that democracies don’t stop just with elections; they also depend on strong institutions and a vibrant civil society, and open political space, and tolerance of people who are different than you. We have to create an environment where the rights of every citizen, regardless of race or gender, or religion or sexual orientation are not only protected, but respected.”

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

2014, Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative Town Hall (April 2014)

People, World, Religion, Way

“How would the world respond if a European prime minister called for the mass deportation of all Turks? Yet Erdogan's xenophobic demagoguery attracted precisely no condemnation from Washington or Brussels. He probably overestimated the number of "tolerated" economic refugees from neighboring and former Soviet Armenia, but is it not interesting that he keeps a count in his head? And a count of the tiny number of surviving Turkish Armenians as well? The outburst strengthens the already strong case for considering Erdogan to be somewhat personally unhinged.”

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (1954) 12th President of Turkey from 2014

Christopher Hitchens, "Shut Up About Armenians or We'll Hurt Them Again" http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2010/04/shut_up_about_armenians_or_well_hurt_them_again.html, Slate (April 5, 2010) About

World, Personality

“The pursuit of knowledge is, I think, mainly actuated by love of power. And so are all advances in scientific technique. In politics, also, a reformer may have just as strong a love of power as a despot. It would be a complete mistake to decry love of power altogether as a motive. Whether you will be led by this motive to actions which are useful, or to actions which are pernicious, depends upon the social system, and upon your capacities.”

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

1950s, What Desires Are Politically Important? (1950)

Love, Motivation, Knowledge, Thinking

“Law is a thing which is insensible, and inexorable, more beneficial and more profitious to the weak than to the strong; it admits of no mitigation nor pardon, once you have overstepped its limits.”

Livy (-59–17 BC) Roman historian

Book II, sec. 3
History of Rome

Law

“Since I have always been a strong believer in God, I knew that He was with me, and only He could get me through that next step.”

Rosa Parks (1913–2005) African-American civil rights activist

Quiet Strength (2000)

God

“The past was real. The present, all about me, was unreal, unnatural, repellent. I saw the big ships lying in the stream… the home of hardship and hopelessness; the boats passing to and fro; the cries of the sailors at the capstan or falls; the peopled beach; the large hide houses, with their gangs of men; and the Kanakas interspersed everywhere. All, all were gone! Not a vestige to mark where one hide house stood. The oven, too, was gone. I searched for its site, and found, where I thought it should be, a few broken bricks and bits of mortar. I alone was left of all, and how strangely was I here! What changes to me! Where were they all? Why should I care for them — poor Kanakas and sailors, the refuse of civilization, the outlaws and the beachcombers of the Pacific! Time and death seemed to transfigure them. Doubtless nearly all were dead; but how had they died, and where? In hospitals, in fever climes, in dens of vice, or falling from the mast, or dropping exhausted from the wreck "When for a moment, like a drop of rain/He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan/Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown." The lighthearted boys are now hardened middle-aged men, if the seas, rocks, fevers, and the deadlier enemies that beset a sailor's life on shore have spared them; and the then strong men have bowed themselves, and the earth or sea has covered them. How softening is the effect of time! It touches us through the affections. I almost feel as if I were lamenting the passing away of something loved and dear — the boats, the Kanakas, the hides, my old shipmates! Death, change, distance, lend them a character which makes them quite another thing.”

Richard Henry Dana Jr. (1815–1882) United States author and lawyer

Twenty-Four Years After (1869)

Love, Life, Death, Men

“The impetuous conquests of Alexander, the more politic and premeditated extension of territory made by the Romans, the wild and cruel incursions of the Mexicans, and the despotic acquisitions of the incas, have in both hemispheres contributed to put an end to the separate existence of many tribes as independent nations, and tended at the same time to establish more extended international amalgamation. Men of great and strong minds, as well as whole nations, acted under the influence of one idea, the purity of which was, however, utterly unknown to them. It was Christianity which first promulgated the truth of its exalted charity, although the seed sown yielded but a slow and scanty harvest. Before the religion of Christ manifested its form, its existence was only revealed by a faint foreshadowing presentiment. In recent times, the idea of civilization has acquired additional intensity, and has given rise to a desire of extending more widely the relations of national intercourse and of intellectual cultivation; even selfishness begins to learn that by such a course its interests will be better served than by violent and forced isolation. Language more than any other attribute of mankind, binds together the whole human race. By its idiomatic properties it certainly seems to separate nations, but the reciprocal understanding of foreign languages connects men together on the other hand without injuring individual national characteristics.”

Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835) German (Prussian) philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the University of Berlin

Kosmos (1847)

Men, Truth, Religion, Idea

“In fact, there is something puzzling about the Higgs mass we now do observe. It is generally known as the “hierarchy problem.” Since it is the Higgs mass that sets the scale for the masses of all other known elementary particles, one might guess that it should be similar to another mass that plays a fundamental role in physics, the so-called Planck mass, which is the fundamental unit of mass in the theory of gravitation. (It is the mass of hypothetical particles whose gravitational attraction for one another would be as strong as the electric force between two electrons separated by the same distance.) But the Planck mass is about a hundred thousand trillion times larger than the Higgs mass. So, although the Higgs particle is so heavy that a giant particle collider was needed to create it, we still have to ask, why is the Higgs mass so small?”

Steven Weinberg (1933) American theoretical physicist

"The Big Higgs Question" http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2012/07/09/big-higgs-question/, The New York Review of Books, 9 July 2012

Problem, Time

“For most countries, serving the UN's objectives has never seemed worth even the smallest of risks. Member nations do not want a large, reputable, strong and independent United Nations, no matter their hypocritical pronouncements otherwise. What they want is a weak, beholden, indebted scapegoat of an organization, which they can blame for their failures or steal victories from.”

Roméo Dallaire book Shake Hands with the Devil

Shake Hands with the Devil (2003)

Failure, Victory, Country

“Already, the United States has imposed strong sanctions on Syria’s leaders. We supported a transfer of power that is responsive to the Syrian people. And many of our allies have joined in this effort. But for the sake of Syria -- and the peace and security of the world -- we must speak with one voice. There's no excuse for inaction. Now is the time for the United Nations Security Council to sanction the Syrian regime, and to stand with the Syrian people.”

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

2011, UN speech to General Assembly (September 2011)

People, World, Peace, Support

“The homogenizing of European man … requires a justification: it lies in serving a higher sovereign species that stands upon the former which can raise itself to its task only by doing this. Not merely a master race whose sole task is to rule, but a race with its own sphere of life, with an excess of strength … strong enough to have no need of the tyranny of the virtue-imperative.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Will to Power

Sec. 898 (Notebook W II 1. Fall 1887, KGW VIII, 2.88-90, KSA 12.424-6)
The Will to Power (1888)

Life

“It will be a very hard thing to leave the country that God gave us. Our friends are buried there, and we hate to leave these grounds…. There is something strong for us — that fool band of soldiers that cleared out our lodges and killed our women and children. This is hard on us. There at Sand Creek — White Antelope and many other chiefs lie there; our women and children lie there. Our lodges were destroyed there, and our horses were taken from us there, and I do not feel disposed to go right off to a new country and leave them.”

Little Raven (Arapaho leader) (1810–1889) Southern Arapaho chief

At the signing of the Little Arkansas Treaty (October 1865), as quoted in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1970), p. 100

Women, God, Hate, Children

“I'm as strong as a bull moose and you can use me to the limit.”

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

Letter to Mark Hannah (27 June 1900)
1900s

“When is man strong until he feels alone?”

Robert Browning Colombe's Birthday

Act III.
Colombe's Birthday (1844)

Feeling

“Russia will in due time become a power almost as great as the old Roman Empire. She can become mistress of all Asia, except British India, whenever she chooses to take it; and when enlightened arrangements shall have made her revenue proportioned to her territory, and railways shall have abridged distances her command of men will become enormous, her pecuniary means gigantic, and her power of transporting armies over great distances most formidable. Germany ought to be strong in order to resist Russian aggression, and a strong Prussia is essential to German strength.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Letter to Lord John Russell (13 September 1865), quoted in E. Ashley (ed.), The Life of Henry John Temple, Viscount Palmerston 1846-1865 (London, 1876), pp. 270-1
1860s

Men, Time

“In infancy I was afraid of the dark, which I peopled with all sorts of things; but my grandfather cured me of that by daring me to walk through certain dark parts of the house when I was 3 or 4 years old. After that, dark places held a certain fascination for me. But it is in dreams that I have known the real clutch of stark, hideous, maddening, paralysing fear. My infant nightmares were classics, & in them there is not an abyss of agonising cosmic horror that I have not explored. I don't have such dreams now—but the memory of them will never leave me. It is undoubtedly from them that the darkest & most gruesome side of my fictional imagination is derived. At the ages of 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, & 8 I have been whirled through formless abysses of infinite night and adumbrated horrors as black & as seethingly sinister as any of our friend Fafhrd's [a nickname Lovecraft used for Fritz Leiber] "splatter-stencil" triumphs. That's why I appreciate such triumphs so keenly, I have seen these things! Many a time I have awaked in shrieks of panic, & have fought desperately to keep from sinking back into sleep & its unutterable horrors. At the age of six my dreams became peopled with a race of lean, faceless, rubbery, winged things to which I applied the home-made name of night-gaunts. Night after night they would appear in exactly the same form—& the terror they brought was beyond any verbal description. Long decades later I embodied them in one of my Fungi from Yuggoth pseudo-sonnets, which you may have read. Well—after I was 8 all these things abated, perhaps because of the scientific habit of mind which I was acquiring (or trying to acquire). I ceased to believe in religion or any other form of the supernatural, & the new logic gradually reached my subconscious imagination. Still, occasional nightmares brought recurrent touches of the ancient fear—& as late as 1919 I had some that I could use in fiction without much change. The Statement of Randolph Carter is a literal dream transcript. Now, in the sere & yellow leaf (I shall be 47 in August), I seem to be rather deserted by stark horror. I have nightmares only 2 or 3 times a year, & of these none even approaches those of my youth in soul-shattering, phobic monstrousness. It is fully a decade & more since I have known fear in its most stupefying & hideous form. And yet, so strong is the impress of the past, I shall never cease to be fascinated by fear as a subject for aesthetic treatment. Along with the element of cosmic mystery & outsideness, it will always interest me more than anything else. It is, in a way, amusing that one of my chief interests should be an emotion whose poignant extremes I have never known in waking life!”

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

Letter to Harry O. Fischer (late February 1937), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 416-417
Non-Fiction, Letters

Life, People, Youth, Age

“Her strong sense that neither she nor any human being deserved less than was given, did not blind her to the fact that there were others receiving less who had deserved much more. And in being forced to class herself among the fortunate she did not cease to wonder at the persistence of the unforeseen, when the one to whom such unbroken tranquility had been accorded in the adult stage was she whose youth had seemed to teach that happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain.”

Thomas Hardy book The Mayor of Casterbridge

Source: The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Ch. 45 (last lines)

Pain, Happiness, Youth, Sense

“On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes — and I see many of them in the audience here today — our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.”

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

Campaign rally on Memorial Day, New Mexico (26 May 2008) http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/studentnews/05/26/transcript.tue/ 2008

Sense, Memory

“By the approach through abnormality we have succeeded in penetrating most deeply into the darkness of human nature … The literary person should be the last person to be surprised at this fact. Sooner might he be surprised that he, considering his strong generally and individual tendency, should have so late become aware of the close sympathetic relations which connected his own existence with psychoanalytic research and the life-work of Sigmund Freud. I realized this connection only at a time when his achievement was no longer thought of as merely a therapeutic method, whether recognized or disputed; when it had long since outgrown his purely medical implications and become a world movement which penetrated into every field of science and every domain of the intellect: literature, the history of art, religion and prehistory; mythology, folklore, pedagogy, and what not.”

Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate

Freud and the Future (1937)

Life, World, Religion, Art

“Our life is half natural and half technological. Half-and-half is good. You cannot deny that high-tech is progress. We need it for jobs. Yet if you make only high-tech, you make war. So we must have a strong human element to keep modesty and natural life.”

Nam June Paik (1932–2006) American video art pioneer

1970s Source: Douglas C. McGill, ART PEOPLE http://www.nytimes.com/1986/10/03/arts/art-people.html, New York Times, October 3, 1986

Life, War, Nature

“A really intelligent nation might be held together by far stronger forces than are derived from the purely gregarious instincts. A nation need not be a mob of slaves, clinging to one another through fear, and for the most part incapable of self-government, and begging to be led; but it might consist of vigorous self-reliant men, knit to one another by innumerable ties, into a strong, tense, and elastic organisation.”

Francis Galton (1822–1911) British polymath: geographer, statistician, pioneer in eugenics

Inquiries Into Human Faculty and Its Development (1883), p. 80
Inquiries Into Human Faculty and Its Development (1883)

Men, Fear, Intelligence, Parting

“I believe I am not interested to know whether Vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't. To know that the results are profitable to the race would not remove my hostility to it. The pains which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity towards it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further. It is so distinctly a matter of feeling with me, and is so strong and so deeply-rooted in my make and constitution, that I am sure I could not even see a vivisector vivisected with anything more than a sort of qualified satisfaction.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Letter https://books.google.it/books?id=-rgnCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT370 to Sidney G. Trist, Editor of the Animals' Friend Magazine, in his capacity as Secretary of the London Anti-Vivisection Society (26 May 1899), in Mark Twain's Notebooks, ed. Carlo De Vito (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2015)

Pain, Hostility, Feeling, Animals

“If I take the wages of everyone here, individually it means nothing, but collectively all of the earning power or wages that you earned in one week would make me wealthy. And if I could collect it for a year, I'd be rich beyond dreams. Now, when you see this, and then you stop and consider the wages that were kept back from millions of Black people, not for one year but for 310 years, you'll see how this country got so rich so fast. And what made the economy as strong as it is today. And all that slave labor that was amassed in unpaid wages, is due someone today. And you're not giving us anything when we say that it's time to collect.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

"Twenty million black people in prison," in Malcolm X: The Last Speeches, p. 51

People, Dreams, Time, Country

“In Paris one is too preoccupied by what one sees and what one hears, however strong one is; what I am doing here has, I think, the merit of not resembling anyone, because it is simply the expression of what I myself have experienced.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

in a letter to Frédéric Bazille from Etretat, December 1868; as cited in: Mary Tompkins Lewis (2007) Critical Readings in Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. p. 83
1850 - 1870

Thinking

“Young love is errant, but it needs to get around;
The time and practice make it strong and sound.
That bull you fear, you petted when it wasn't big;
What now you sleep beneath was once a twig.
That little stream, in gaining waters as it goes,
Grows stronger, till at last a river flows.”
Dum novus errat amor, vires sibi colligat usu: Si bene nutrieris, tempore firmus erit. Quem taurum metuis, vitulum mulcere solebas: Sub qua nunc recubas arbore, virga fuit: Nascitur exiguus, sed opes adquirit eundo, Quaque venit, multas accipit amnis aquas.

Ovid book Ars amatoria

Book II, lines 339–344 (tr. Len Krisak)
Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love)

Love, Fear, Sleep, Water

“As a strong horse that has often won on the last lap at Olympia is now resting, tired out by old age.”
Sicut fortis equus, spatio qui saepe supremo Vicit Olympia, nunc senio confectus quiescit.

Ennius (-239–-169 BC) Roman writer

As quoted by Cicero in De Senectute, Chapter V (tr. K. Volk)

Age, Horse

“If, against all expectation, Germany finds itself in a difficult situation then she can be sure that the Soviet people will come to Germany's aid and will not allow Germany to be strangled. The Soviet Union wants to see a strong Germany and we will not allow Germany to be thrown to the ground.”

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

Statement in September 1939, as quoted in "Stalin's pact with Hitler" in WWII Behind Closed Doors at PBS http://www.pbs.org/behindcloseddoors/episode-1/ep1_stalins_pact.html Contemporary witnesses

People

“I don't need any support, advice, or compassion, because even if I am the most ruinous man, I still feel so powerful, so strong and fierce. For I am the only one that lives without hope.”

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

On the Heights of Despair (1934)

Hope, Feeling, Support

“She wanted to put her head down on her knees and close her eyes. She felt the way she had years ago when she'd tumbled down the stairs and had the wind knocked out of her: a pain in the chest and stomach so strong it was hard to breathe.”

Patricia Reilly Giff (1935) American children's writer

Source: Water Street (2006), Chapters 21-29, p. 139

Pain, Way

“Taking the strong believing women as role models for both men and women, clearly indicates that the Quran acknowledges the woman's ability to be a strong person who can overcome any innate weakens in her.”

Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah (1935–2010) Lebanese faqih

The Woman's Personality and Role in Life http://english.bayynat.org.lb/WomenFamily/role.htm.

Women, Men, Personality

“For Man's grim Justice goes its way,
And will not swerve aside:
It slays the weak, it slays the strong,
It has a deadly stride:
With iron heel it slays the strong,
The monstrous parricide!”

Oscar Wilde book The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Pt. III, st. 19
The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

Justice, Way

“Amusements are to religion like breezes of air to the flame; gentle ones will fan it, but strong ones will put it out.”

David Thomas (born 1813) (1813–1894) 19th-century Welsh preacher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 12.

Religion

“You put the government on the spot when you even mention Vietnam. They feel embarrassed — you notice that?… It's just a trap that they let themselves get into. … But they're trapped, they can't get out. You notice I said 'they.' They are trapped, They can't get out. If they pour more men in, they'll get deeper. If they pull the men out, it's a defeat. And they should have known that in the first place. France had about 200,000 Frenchmen over there, and the most highly mechanized modern army sitting on this earth. And those little rice farmers ate them up, and their tanks, and everything else. Yes, they did, and France was deeply entrenched, had been there a hundred or more years. Now, if she couldn't stay there and was entrenched, why, you are out of your mind if you think Sam can get in over there. But we're not supposed to say that. If we say that, we're anti-American, or we're seditious, or we're subversive…. They put Diem over there. Diem took all their money, all their war equipment and everything else, and got them trapped. Then they killed him. Yes, they killed him, murdered him in cold blood, him and his brother, Madame Nhu's husband, because they were embarrassed. They found out that they had made him strong and he was turning against them…. You know, when the puppet starts talking back to the puppeteer, the puppeteer is in bad shape….”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

January 1965, p. 217
Malcolm X Speaks (1965)

Men, Money, War, Feeling

“An individual's self-concept is the core of his personality. It affects every aspect of human behavior: the ability to learn, the capacity to grow and change. A strong, positive self-image is the best possible preparation for success in life.”

Joyce Brothers (1927–2013) Joyce Brothers

As quoted in Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing (2006) by Larry Chang, p. 43

Life, Behavior, Learning, Change

“I am weak and therefore I am strong.”

Bing Xin (1900–1999) Chinese writer

As quoted in Haiping Yan's Chinese Women Writers and the Feminist Imagination, 1905–1948 (New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 8

“Your minds that once did stand erect and strong,
What madness swerves them from their wonted course?”
Quo vobis mentes, rectae quae stare solebant Antehac, dementis sese flexere viai?

Ennius (-239–-169 BC) Roman writer

As quoted by Cicero in De Senectute, Chapter VI (Loeb translation)

Madness

“As strong, as deep, as wide as is the sea,
Though by the wind made restless as the wind,
By billows fretted and by rocks confined,
So strong, so deep, so wide my love for thee.”

Francis William Bourdillon (1852–1921) British poet

"Sonnet II" in Scribner's Monthly Vol. IX (November 1874 - April 1875), p. 359.

Love, Sea

“I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it's just too much. The current's too strong. They've got to let go, drift apart. That's how it is with us. It's a shame, Kath, because we've loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can't stay together forever.”

Kazuo Ishiguro book Never Let Me Go

Source: Never Let Me Go (2005), Chapter 23, p. 282

Love, People, Thinking, Water

“Something indefinite is always worse than something definite, a strong fear that doesn't last very long is easier than one that's nebulous but doesn't go away.”

Stefan Zweig book The Post Office Girl

The Post Office Girl (published posthumously in 1982)

Fear

“On the receipt of this letter, Hijaj obtained the consent of Wuleed, the son of Abdool Mullik, to invade India, for the purpose of propagating the faith and at the same time deputed a chief of the name of Budmeen, with three hundred cavalry, to join Haroon in Mikran, who was directed to reinforce the party with one thousand good soldiers more to attack Deebul. Budmeen failed in his expedition, and lost his life in the first action. Hijaj, not deterred by this defeat, resolved to follow up the enterprise by another. In consequence, in the year AH 93 (AD 711) he deputed his cousin and son-in-law, Imad-ood-Deen Mahomed Kasim, the son of Akil Shukhfy, then only seventeen years of age, with six thousand soldiers, chiefly Assyrians, with the necessary implements for taking forts, to attack Deebul'… 'On reaching this place, he made preparations to besiege it, but the approach was covered by a fortified temple, surrounded by strong wall, built of hewn stone and mortar, one hundred and twenty feet in height. After some time a bramin, belonging to the temple, being taken, and brought before Kasim, stated, that four thousand Rajpoots defended the place, in which were from two to three thousand bramins, with shorn heads, and that all his efforts would be vain; for the standard of the temple was sacred; and while it remained entire no profane foot dared to step beyond the threshold of the holy edifice. Mahomed Kasim having caused the catapults to be directed against the magic flag-staff, succeeded, on the third discharge, in striking the standard, and broke it down… Mahomed Kasim levelled the temple and its walls with the ground and circumcised the brahmins. The infidels highly resented this treatment, by invectives against him and the true faith. On which Mahomed Kasim caused every brahmin, from the age of seventeen and upwards, to be put to death; the young women and children of both sexes were retained in bondage and the old women being released, were permitted to go whithersoever they chose… On reaching Mooltan, Mahomed Kasim also subdued that province; and himself occupying the city, he erected mosques on the site of the Hindoo temples.”

Muhammad bin Qasim (695–715) Umayyad general

Tarikh-i-Firishta, translated into English by John Briggs under the title History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, 4 Volumes, New Delhi Reprint, 1981. p. 234-238

Life, Death, Women, Children

“Today it is time for strong and courageous people because only they can achieve victory and rid the world of tyranny.”

Wladyslaw Sikorski (1881–1943) Polish military and political leader

in Kazimierz Ziobro Poseł na Sejm RP http://www.kazimierzziobro.pl/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=13:dnia-4-lipca-2012-roku-delegacja-solidarnej-polski-zoya-kwiaty-pod-pomnikiem-generaa-wadysawa-sikorskiego-podczas-uroczystoci-upamitniajcych-69-rocznic-jego-mierci-w-katastrofie-lotniczej-na-gibraltarze and Cytatybaza: Władysław Sikorski http://cytatybaza.pl/autorzy/wladyslaw-sikorski.html Original: Dziś czas jest dla ludzi silnych i odważnych, ci bowiem tylko mogą uzyskać zwycięstwo i uwolnić świat od tyranii.

People, World, Courage, Time

“True courage consists in being strong enough to master and overcome oneself and subordinate one’s will to the will of the collective, the will of the higher party body.”

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

Quoted in The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom, Arthur M. Schesinger, New Brunswick: NJ, Transaction Publishers (1998) p. 56. First printed in 1949. Second Speech Delivered at the Presidium of the ECCI on the American Question (May 14, 1929)
Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

Courage

“For all of ignorant people of a nation, even if their body is somehow strong, somehow grand, even then they can only make meaningless displays [of this "strength"]. [As for] the multitude of constituents and observers, however many may die from [this] sickness, this is [still] not to be considered as unfortunate.”

Lu Xun book Call to Arms

Lu Xun studied medicine before he became a writer. Once he saw on a film a Chinese being executed by Japanese while many other Chinese were watching this "spectacular event". This made him feel that saving the "souls" of people is more important than saving their bodies.
Source: From the preface of his work Na Han (Call to Arms) (1922)

People

Quotes about strength page 2

Quotes about strength
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