The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: I put my body through its paces like a war horse; I keep it lean, sturdy, prepared. I harden it and I pity it. I have no other steed.
I keep my brain wide awake, lucid, unmerciful. I unleash it to battle relentlessly so that, all light, it may devour the darkness of the flesh. I have no other workshop where I may transform darkness into light.
I keep my heart flaming, courageous, restless. I feel in my heart all commotions and all contradictions, the joys and sorrows of life. But I struggle to subdue them to a rhythm superior to that of the mind, harsher than that of my heart — to the ascending rhythm of the Universe.
“Optimism, then, is a fact within my own heart. But as I look out upon life, my heart meets no contradiction. The outward world justifies my inward universe of good.”
Optimism (1903)
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Helen Keller 156
American author and political activist 1880–1968Related quotes
On refusing the Republican nomination for Illinois governor, as quoted in "Ingersoll the Magnificent" (11 August 1954) by Joseph Lewis http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/lewis/lewing01.htm
Context: Good-by, gentlemen! I am not asking to be Governor of Illinois … I have in my composition that which I have declared to the world as my views upon religion. My position I would not, under any circumstances, not even for my life, seem to renounce. I would rather refuse to be President of the United States than to do so. My religious belief is my own. It belongs to me, not to the State of Illinois. I would not smother one sentiment of my heart to be the Emperor of the round world.
“For my part, I prefer my heart to be broken. It is so lovely, dawn-kaleidoscopic within the crack.”
Song 22: "Against Pride in Clothes".
1710s, Divine Songs Attempted in the Easy Language of Children (1715)
Half of My Heart
Song lyrics, Battle Studies (2009)
Source: John Mayer - Battle Studies
Context: I was born in the arms of imaginary friends,
Free to roam, made a home out of everywhere I've been.
Then you come crashing in, like the realest thing,
Trying my best to understand all that your love can bring.Oh half of my heart's got a grip on the situation;
Half of my heart takes time.
Half of my heart's got a right mind to tell you
That I can't keep loving you (can't keep loving you)
Oh, with half of my heart.
Interview in O : The Oprah Magazine (November 2000)
“The fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart.”
Source: Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Lines completed a few miles above Tintern Abbey.