Strength quotes (page 82) | Quotes of famous people

“So far from enjoying the undisputed hegemony which was so confidently predicted for British trade 50 years ago, there was not now an inch of ground in any one of the international markets for which we were not fighting with all our available strength. We had long ceased to enjoy that relative superiority in natural advantages with which we started upon the race.”

H. H. Asquith (1852–1928) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Leeds (23 November 1900), quoted in The Times (24 November 1900), p. 8
Opposition MP

“Communism draws its strength from deeper, more serious sources. Offered to us as a means of improving the economic situation, it is an insult to our intelligence. But offered as a means of making the economic situation worse, that is its subtle, its almost irresistible, attraction. Communism is not a reaction against the failure of the nineteenth century to organize optimal economic output. It is a reaction against its comparative success.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

“Stalin-Wells Talk: The Verbatim Report and A Discussion”, G.B. Shaw, J.M. Keynes et al., London, The New Statesman and Nation, (1934) p. 35

“In our weakness, His strength is ours. In our conflicts, His victories are ours. In our bereavements and sorrows, His grace is ours. He had not where to lay His weary head, that we might have His bosom on which to lean our fevered brows. He endured the cross, and despised the shame, that, instead of weeping and wailing, we might share His immortal blessedness.”

Richard Fuller (minister) (1804–1876) United States Baptist minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 246.

“But, good God, what is this when compared with that deep and true music of the wise, whereby the proportions of natural things are investigated, the harmonical concord and the qualities of the whole world are revealed, by which also connected things are bound together, peace established between conflicting elements, and whereby each star is perpetually suspended in its appointed place by its weight and strength, and by the harmony of its lucent spirit”

Robert Fludd (1574–1637) British mathematician and astrologer

Robert Fludd, cited in: Waite (1887, p. 291)

“… To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget. …”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

From the book "The cost of living".
Speeches

“If you were good enough, there would be no need of confessing Christ at all. It is just because you are not good enough, that Christ says to you, "Follow me." He came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. It is not the perfect people whom He wants in His church, but those who have a deep sense of their own imperfection, and who believe that His strength is made perfect in weakness.”

Washington Gladden (1836–1918) American pastor

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 155.

“A visible darkness grows up mountain paths;
I lodge by the river gate high in a study,
Frail cloud on a cliff edge passing the night.
The lonely moon topples amid the waves;
Steady, one after another, a line of cranes in flight.
Howling over the kill, wild dogs and wolves.
No sleep for me. I worry over battles—
I have no strength to right the universe.”

Du Fu (712–770) Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty

"Spending the Night in a Tower by the River" (trans. Stephen Owen)

“p>Time's right-hand man, the sea
Laughs as in joy
From his millions of wrinkles:
Laughs that his destiny,
Great with the greatness
Of triumphing order,
Shows as a dwarf
By the strength of his heart
And the might of his hands.Master of masters,
O maker of heroes,
Thunder the brave,
Irresistible message: —
'Life is worth Living
Through every grain of it,
From the foundations
To the last edge
Of the cornerstone, death.”

William Ernest Henley (1849–1903) English poet, critic and editor

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Source: Poems (1898), Rhymes And Rhythms, XIV

“The act of the soul, in surrendering itself into the hands of Christ, forms a connecting bond between Him as the Vine and the soul as the branches, which communicates life, strength, nourishment, and beauty. In a word, with a just view of the character, and a supreme attachment to the person of Christ, the believer yields himself into His hands as a full and complete Saviour. Him he receives; upon Him he rests, and rests for time and eternity.”

Gardiner Spring (1785–1873) American clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 226.

“He [Alfred de Musset] puts you into a fever, it is true; but he can do nothing more for you. He has undoubted charms, but his taste is capricious and poisoned. All he can do is to disenchant and corrupt you, and at the end leave you in despair. The fever passes, and you are left without strength - like a convalescent who is in need of fresh air, of the sunshine, and of the stars.”

Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) French painter

a remark to his friend Louis Marolle in Paris c. 1839; as quoted by Julia Cartwright in Jean Francois Millet, his Life and Letters https://archive.org/stream/jeanfrancoismill00cart#page/n5/mode/2up, Swan Sonnenschein en Co, Lim. London / The Macmillian Company, New York; second edition, September 1902, p. 60
Millet had little sympathy with the French poet Alfred de Musset and criticized the tendencies of his poetry severely.
1835 - 1850

“As we look upon that agony and those tearful prayers, let us not only look with thankfulness; but lot that kneeling Saviour teach us that in prayer alone can we be forearmed against our lesser sorrows; that strength to bear flows into the heart that is opened in supplication; and that a sorrow which we are made able to endure is more truly cohijuered than a sorrow which we avoid.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 71.

“If I shall have sufficient strength to improve and amplify what was written and published by me up to now about motion by adding some little speculations, and in particular those relating to the force of percussion, in the investigation of which I have consumed hundreds and thousands of hours, and finally reduced this to very easy explanation, so that people can understand it in less than half an hour of time.”

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer

Letter to Giovanni Battista Baliani (1639)

“Nor, on the other hand, are there any masculine charms [in Gabriele Münter's work] either: no 'sinewy brushwork', no heaps of paint, 'hurled on to the canvas'. The pictures are painted throughout with a delicately and correctly sensed measure of external strength, with not a trace of feminine or masculine coquetry in the 'making'. We could almost say that they are painted modestly; i. e. that they were inspired, not by a desire for outward display, but by a purely inward compulsion.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Quote of Kandinsky, 1913; in the introduction of an exhibition-catalog 'Neue Künstlervereinigung', Munich; as cited by , in Expressionism; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 120
1910 - 1915

“Freedom exalts power; and, as is always the collateral effect of increasing strength, tends to induce a spirit of liberality. Coercion stifles power, and engenders all selfish desires, and all the mean artifices of weakness. Coercion may prevent many transgressions; but it robs even actions which are legal of a portion of their beauty. Freedom may lead to many transgressions, but it lends even to vices a less ignoble form.”

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

Source: The Limits of State Action (1792), Ch. 8

“This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women; and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God. Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights or keep them. Our strength is our unity of purpose.
To that high concept there can be no end save victory.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

1940s, State of the Union Address — The Four Freedoms (1941)

“The general seeking to break an enemy defense line and destroy his forces must decide just when and how to strike and precisely to what extent he dare weaken one sector of his front in order to mass overpowering strength at the main point of attack. He, too, must take a chance, although, in the stilted phraseology of military communiqués, he calls it a "calculated risk".”

Mark W. Clark (1896–1984) American general

Source: Calculated Risk (1950), p. 1
Context: A soldier's life in combat is an endless series of decisions that mean success or failure, and perhaps life or death for himself or his comrades. The rifleman crawling through the rubble of a bombed-out street must decide on the best moment to escape enemy fire as he dodges from one doorway to the next. He must take a chance. The general seeking to break an enemy defense line and destroy his forces must decide just when and how to strike and precisely to what extent he dare weaken one sector of his front in order to mass overpowering strength at the main point of attack. He, too, must take a chance, although, in the stilted phraseology of military communiqués, he calls it a "calculated risk".

“Strange is the vigour in a brave man's soul. The strength of his spirit and his irresistible power, the greatness of his heart and the height of his condition, his mighty confidence and contempt of danger, his true security and repose in himself, his liberty to dare and do what he pleaseth, his alacrity in the midst of fears, his invincible temper, are advantages which make him master of fortune.”

Thomas Traherne (1636–1674) English poet

Christian Ethicks (1675); cited from Bertram Dobell (ed.) The Poetical Works of Thomas Traherne, B.D. (London: Bertram Dobell, 1903) p. lvii.

“Sentiment de Napoléon sur la divinité de Jésus-Christ (1841), p. 59. Translated: "From first day to the last, he is the same, always the same, majestic and simple, extremely severe and extremely mild in the business of public life, so to speak, Jesus does not hold to any criticism, his prudent manner so delighted admiration by a mixture of strength and gentleness."”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Depuis le premier jour jusqu'au dernier, il est le même, toujours le même, majestueux et simple , infiniment sévère et infiniment doux ; dans un commerce de vie pour ainsi dire public, Jésus ne donne jamais de prise à la moindre critique; sa conduite si prudente ravit l'admiration par un mélange de force et de douceur.

“The Black Artist's role in America is to aid in the destruction of America as he knows it. His role is to report and reflect so precisely the nature of the society, and of himself, in that society, that other men will be moved by the exactness of his rendering, and if they are black men, grow strong through this moving, having seen their own strength, and weakness, and if they are white men, tremble, curse, and go mad, because they will be drenched with the filth of their evil.”

Amiri Baraka (1934–2014) African-American writer

Negro Digest, vol. 14, no. 6 (April 1965), p. 65

“p>Romanticism is no sign of powerful instincts, but, on the contrary, of a weak, self-detesting intellect. They are all infantile, these Romantics; men who remain children too long (or for ever), without the strength to criticize themselves, but with perpetual inhibitions arising from the obscure awareness of their own personal weakness; who are impelled by the morbid idea of reforming society, which is to them too masculine, too healthy, too sober.”

Oswald Spengler (1880–1936) German historian and philosopher

...</p>
<p>And these same everlasting "Youths" are with us again today, immature, destitute of the slightest experience or even real desire for experience, but writing and talking away about politics, fired by uniforms and badges, and clinging fantastically to some theory or other. There is a social Romanticism of sentimental Communists, a political Romanticism which regards election figures and the intoxication of mass-meeting oratory as deeds, and an economic Romanticism which trickles out from behind the gold theories of sick minds that know nothing of the inner forms of modern economics. They can only feel in the mass, where they can deaden the dull sense of their weakness by multiplying themselves. And this they call the Overcoming of Individualism.</p>
The Hour of Decision (1933)

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