“I did not need to know if he could love me.
I needed to know if he could need me.”
Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
The Tale of Despereaux (2004)
“I did not need to know if he could love me.
I needed to know if he could need me.”
Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Vasyl Slipak (1974–2016) Ukrainian opera singer
2017 <br class="br">Orest Slipak, the brother of singer. Brother about brother. The Day. Кyiv.ua. - 2017. - 27 April. https://day.kyiv.ua/en/article/topic-day/brother-about-brother
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher
Second Dialogue; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
Dialogues: Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques (published 1782)
Leo Tolstoy book What Men Live By
Source: What Men Live By (1881), Ch. XII
Context: And the angel's body was bared, and he was clothed in light so that eye could not look on him; and his voice grew louder, as though it came not from him but from heaven above. And the angel said:
I have learnt that all men live not by care for themselves, but by love.
It was not given to the mother to know what her children needed for their life. Nor was it given to the rich man to know what he himself needed. Nor is it given to any man to know whether, when evening comes, he will need boots for his body or slippers for his corpse.
I remained alive when I was a man, not by care of myself, but because love was present in a passer-by, and because he and his wife pitied and loved me. The orphans remained alive, not because of their mother's care, but because there was love in the heart of a woman a stranger to them, who pitied and loved them. And all men live not by the thought they spend on their own welfare, but because love exists in man.
I knew before that God gave life to men and desires that they should live; now I understood more than that.
I understood that God does not wish men to live apart, and therefore he does not reveal to them what each one needs for himself; but he wishes them to live united, and therefore reveals to each of them what is necessary for all.
I have now understood that though it seems to men that they live by care for themselves, in truth it is love alone by which they live. He who has love, is in God, and God is in him, for God is love.
George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish journalist, novelist
The Fantastic Imagination (1893)
Context: If there be music in my reader, I would gladly wake it. Let fairytale of mine go for a firefly that now flashes, now is dark, but may flash again. Caught in a hand which does not love its kind, it will turn to an insignificant, ugly thing, that can neither flash nor fly.
The best way with music, I imagine, is not to bring the forces of our intellect to bear upon it, but to be still and let it work on that part of us for whose it exists. We spoil countless precious things by intellectual greed. He who will be a man, and will not be a child, must — he cannot help himself — become a little man, that is, a dwarf. He will, however, need no consolation, for he is sure to think himself a very large creature indeed.
If any strain of my "broken music" make a child's eyes flash, or his mother's grow for a moment dim, my labour will not have been in vain.
Haidakhan Babaji teacher in northern India
Courage and alertness
Source: The Teachings of Babaji, 5 July 1983.
Zinedine Zidane (1972) French association football player and manager
Marcello Lippi, September 2011 http://www.espnstar.com/football/serie-a/news/detail/item683056/%22Zidane-is-greatest-football-player%22/
Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher
Diogenes Laertius
Variant: How many things I can do without!