“Neither love nor hate, nor any order of intense adherence to personal involvement in human experience, may be so apt to serve the soul as this freedom and this necessity to be kind.”
The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills (1952)
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William Saroyan 190
American writer 1908–1981Related quotes
“An unimaginative person can neither be reverent nor kind.”
Fors Clavigera, letter xxxiv (October 1873).
Fors Clavigera (1871-1878 and 1880-1884)
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 220
True genius without heart is a thing of nought - for not great understanding alone, not intelligence alone, nor both together, make genius. Love! Love! Love! that is the soul of genius. - Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin, entry in Mozart's souvenir album (1787-04-11) from Mozart: A Life by Maynard Solomon [Harper-Collins, 1966, ISBN 0-060-92692-9], p. 312.
Misattributed
“The most intimate feeling people can share is neither love nor hate, but pain.”
Source: The Surgeon
Book VII : Modern Times, Ch. IX : The Final Consequences
Penguin Island (1908)
Context: It was high time for a generous benefactor to come to the relief of our necessities. Rich and poor, learned and ignorant are turning away from us. And when we try to lead back these misguided souls, neither threats nor promises, neither gentleness nor violence, nor anything else is now successful. The Penguin clergy pine in desolation; our country priests, reduced to following the humblest of trades, are shoeless, and compelled to live upon such scraps as they can pick up. In our ruined churches the rain of heaven falls upon the faithful, and during the holy offices they can hear the noise of stones falling from the arches. The tower of the cathedral is tottering and will soon fall. St. Orberosia is forgotten by the Penguins, her devotion abandoned, and her sanctuary deserted. On her shrine, bereft of its gold and precious stones, the spider silently weaves her web.
“I hate bainting, and boetry too! Neither the one nor the other ever did any good.”
John Ireland Hogarth Illustrated (1791); cited from John Ireland and John Nichols Hogarth's Works (1883) p. 122.
Later sources usually quote this as "I hate all bainters and boets!", or as "Damn the bainters and the boets too!" The saying is often misattributed to George I.
Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Detachment (1947), p. 260