“There is more beauty than our eyes can bear, precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm.”
Source: Gilead
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Marilynne Robinson51
American novelist and essayist 1943Related quotes
Penn Jillette (1955) American magician
2010s, Why Penn Jillette is Terrified of a President Trump (2016)
Context: Someone who is paying attention can do the same thing that Trump is doing with hate, and do it with love, and become president … That’s kind of beautiful. There’s nothing more optimistic than that. … Donald Trump does, when it comes right down to it, fuck up everything … He fucks up his casinos. He fucks up his buildings.... Maybe he’ll fuck up his campaign before he fucks up the country.
“All we can ever do is lay a word in the hands of those who have put one in ours.”
Richard Powers (1957) novelist
Galatea 2.2
Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America
2016, Convention (August 2016)
Context: No one -- no one -- has given more for our freedom and our security than our Gold Star families.... They represent the very best of our country. They continue to inspire us every day, every moment. They serve as a powerful reminder of the true strength of America. We have to do everything we can for those families, and honor them, and be humbled by them.
George Long (1800–1879) English classical scholar
An Old Man's Thoughts on Many Things, Of Education I
Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist
Source: The Pilgrimage: A Contemporary Quest for Ancient Wisdom
Elizabeth I of England (1533–1603) Queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until 1603
The Golden Speech (1601)
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841–1935) United States Supreme Court justice
"The Path of the Law," Address to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts at the dedication of the new hall of the Boston University School of Law (8 January 1897), published in Harvard Law Review, Vol. 10 (25 March 1897).
1890s
“If you can think of nothing that wouldn't do harm, then do nothing.”
Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist
Panel with Edward Said at Columbia University, New York, April 1999 http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/07/042214 <br class="br">Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999 <br class="br">Context: Let me just put the whole thing in a kind of mundane level. Like, suppose you walk out in the street, this evening, and you see a crime being committed, you know, somebody is robbing someone else. Well, you have three choices. One choice is to try to stop it, maybe you call 911 or something. Another choice is to do nothing. A third choice is to pick up an assault rifle and kill 'em both, and kill a bystander at the same time. Well, suppose you do that, and somebody says, "Well, you know, why did you do that?" And you say, "Look, I couldn't stand by and do nothing." I mean, is that a response? If you can think of nothing that wouldn't do harm, then do nothing. And the same is true, magnified, in international affairs. Apart from the fact that there were things that could have been done.