Stronger than pain quotes (page 164) | Quotes of famous people

“Proposition 9. The diameter of the sun is greater than 18 times, but less than 20 times, the diameter of the moon.”

Aristarchus of Samos ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician

p, 125
On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and the Moon (c. 250 BC)
Variant: Proposition 7. The distance of the sun from the earth is greater than eighteen times, but less than twenty times, the distance of the moon from the earth.

“There is no greater challenge than to have someone relying upon you; no greater satisfaction than to vindicate his expectation.”

Kingman Brewster, Jr. (1919–1988) American diplomat

Baccalaureate address as President of Yale (12 June 1966)

“Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Source: Democracy in America

“We are always more afraid than we wish to be, but we can always be braver than we expect.”

Robert Jordan Lord of Chaos

Sorilea
(15 October 1994)
Source: Lord of Chaos

“Don't ever promise more than you can deliver, but always deliver more than you promise.”

Lou Holtz (1937) American college football coach, professional football coach, television sports announcer

“That cold white candent voice which was more caustic than silver nitrate and more thrilling than a scream.”

Frederick Rolfe book Hadrian the Seventh

Source: Hadrian the Seventh (1904), Ch. 22, p. 335

“In life, in true life, there can be nothing better than what is. Wanting something different than what is, is blasphemy.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: Path of Life (1909), p. 209

“Less than the dust beneath thy chariot wheel,
Less than the rust that never stained thy sword”

Laurence Hope India's Love Lyrics

Less Than the Dust
Indian Love Lyrics (aka Garden of Kama) (1901)

“Hitler did a better job than Stalin of accomplishing Lenin’s totalitarian promises—better, too, than Mussolini,…”

François Furet (1927–1997) French historian

Source: The Passing of an Illusion, The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century (1999), p. 205

“It might be more difficult to be a President than it ever had before. Nothing less than greatness would do.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

Superman Comes to the Supermarket http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a3858/superman-supermarket/ (November 1960)
Superman Comes to the Supermarket (1960)

“A man cannot have a better guide than himself, nor any physic better than a regular life.”

Luigi Cornaro (1484–1566) Italian philosopher

Discourses on the Sober Life

“Our best theories are not only truer than common sense, they make more sense than common sense…”

David Deutsch book The Fabric of Reality

The Fabric of Reality (1997)

“We have more than we can know. We know more than we can say.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Life Is A Miracle : An Essay Against Modern Superstition (2000)
Context: We are alive within mystery, by miracle. "Life," wrote Erwin Chargaff, "is the continual intervention of the inexplicable." We have more than we can know. We know more than we can say. The constructions of language (which is to say the constructions of thought) are formed within experience, not the other way around. Finally we live beyond words, as also we live beyond computation and beyond theory. There is no reason whatever to assume that the languages of science are less limited than other languages.

“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth – more than ruin, more even than death.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1910s, Why Men Fight https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Why_Men_Fight (1917), pp. 178-179
Context: Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth – more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. It sees man, a feeble speck, surrounded by unfathomable depths of silence; yet it bears itself proudly, as unmoved as if it were lord of the universe. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.

“I think I think harder, think more than other people do, than other scientists.”

Linus Pauling (1901–1994) American scientist

Interview at Big Sur, California http://web.archive.org/web/20101212203431/http://achievement.org/autodoc/page/pau0int-3 (11 November 1990).
1990s
Context: I've been asked from time to time, "How does it happen that you have made so many discoveries? Are you smarter than other scientists?" And my answer has been that I am sure that I am not smarter than other scientists. I don't have any precise evaluation of my IQ, but to the extent that psychologists have said that my IQ is about 160, I recognize that there are one hundred thousand or more people in the United States that have IQs higher than that. So I have said that I think I think harder, think more than other people do, than other scientists. That is, for years, almost all of my thinking was about science and scientific problems that I was interested in.

“Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread;”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

I, This section is also known as "Bread and Music"
Discordants (1916)
Context: Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread;
Now that I am without you, all is desolate;
All that was once so beautiful is dead.