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“It's actually in simplifying life that you get the greatest strength.”
Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 159
“Enough work to do, and strength enough to do the work.”
A Doctor's Work, an address at Middlesex Hospital (October 1908).
Other works
“Nothing has more strength than dire necessity.”
Helen (412 BC), as translated by Richmond Lattimore
“Then empty rumour to well-grounded fear gave strength.”
Vana quoque ad veros accessit fama timores.
Book I, line 469 (tr. E. Ridley).
Pharsalia
“You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge.”
– Dr. Dre, introducing N.W.A's 1988 album Straight Outta Compton.
“We must help to the limits of our strength. And we will.”
Report on the Potsdam Conference (1945)
Context: Any man who sees Europe now must realize that victory in a great war is not something you win once and for all, like victory in a ball game. Victory in a great war is something that must be won and kept won. It can be lost after you have won it — if you are careless or negligent or indifferent.
Europe today is hungry. I am not talking about Germans. I am talking about the people of the countries which were overrun and devastated by the Germans, and particularly about the people of Western Europe. Many of them lack clothes and fuel and tools and shelter and raw materials. They lack the means to restore their cities and their factories.
As the winter comes on, the distress will increase. Unless we do what we can to help, we may lose next winter what we won at such terrible cost last spring. Desperate men are liable to destroy the structure of their society to find in the wreckage some substitute for hope. If we let Europe go cold and hungry, we may lose some of the foundations of order on which the hope for worldwide peace must rest.
We must help to the limits of our strength. And we will.
“We must in strength and humility meet hate with love.”
1950s, Loving Your Enemies (Christmas 1957)
Context: The darkness of racial injustice will be dispelled only by the light of forgiving love. For more that three centuries American Negroes have been frustrated by day and bewilderment by night by unbearable injustice, and burdened with the ugly weight of discrimination. Forced to live with these shameful conditions, we are tempted to become bitter and retaliate with a corresponding hate. But if this happens, the new order we seek will be little more than a duplicate of the old order. We must in strength and humility meet hate with love.
“Unite your total strength, to be devoted to construction for the future.”
Gyokuon-hōsō (1945)
Context: Unite your total strength, to be devoted to construction for the future. Cultivate the ways of rectitude, foster nobility of spirit, and work with resolution — so that you may enhance the innate glory of the Imperial State and keep pace with the progress of the world.
“Shaw's emotional development was one with his intellectual strength.”
Source: Bernard Shaw in Twilight (1943), II
Context: Shaw's emotional development was one with his intellectual strength. His path led him into the thick of the scrimmage, where more spontaneous natures defend themselves with the usual weapons of malice, humility, bad temper or conceit. But Shaw used the death ray of imperturbability. His feelings were never hurt, his envy never aroused, his conceit was a transparent fiction, he never quarreled.
“One should be in harmony with, not in opposition to, the strength and force of the opposition.”
Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 20
Context: One should be in harmony with, not in opposition to, the strength and force of the opposition. This means that one should do nothing that is not natural or spontaneous; the important thing is not to strain in any way.
“The humiliation brings me more strength and passion for life. ”
Vietbao. Van Hoa page http://vietbao.vn/Van-hoa/Linh-Nga-Su-si-nhuc-giup-toi-truong-thanh/10867145/181/ 2003
“Thus all below is strength, and all above is grace.”
Epistle to Congreve (1693), line 19.
“In one-act pieces there should be only rubbish—that is their strength.”
Letter to A.S. Suvorin (January 6, 1889)
Letters
“When a Man's exhausted, wine will build his strength.”
VI. 261 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)
“Such subjects are the very strength of kings,
And are thus above the law.”
De pareils serviteurs sont les forces des rois,
Et de pareils aussi sont au-dessus des lois.
Tulle, act V, scene iii
King Tullus forgives the hero, Horace, who has saved the state but killed his sister.
Horace (1639)
“Easily seen is the strength that is given from Zeus to mortals.”
XV. 490 (tr. R. Lattimore).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)
