Search

Topics

Quotes

“This strengthens a belief which I have long cherished, that in a few centuries women will be the larger, stronger sex, admired for their biceps and superfluous hair, and that men will be their toys and domestic comforters, exciting tenderness in the female breast by their small feet, pretty soft hands, and general helplessness. I do not think I have a heart, for I have never been able to locate my pulse, or any other symptom of a circulatory system, but I am willing to share any of the benefits of male delicacy.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Samuel Marchbanks' Almanack (1967)

“A guy, a fighter is going to tell you that, ooh, he's not nervous, that he believes in himself 100%. I think he's a liar, or I think he's just not all there. Before [you] fight, you always have some little doubt about yourself, and I think that's what keeps you sharper. So yes, I was confident, but at the same time I was worried. I think that little feeling makes me sharper and makes me stronger.”

Georges St. Pierre (1981) Canadian mixed martial artist

UFC 65 post fight press conference.
MMA

“New diseases like syphilis seemed to call for new and "stronger" medicines; and this became one of the stock arguments for resort to the Paracelsian chemical pharmacopeia and mystical medical philosophy. With every fundamental of medicine thus called into question, the only logical recourse was to observe results of cures administered in accordance with the old Galenic as against the new Paracelsian theories, and then to choose whichever worked better. The swift development of European medical practice to levels of skill exceeding all other civilized traditions resulted.”

William H. McNeill (1917–2016) Canadian historian

Source: Plagues and Peoples (1976), Ch.6.

“When your techniques are rough it means you are forcing against the principles; proof that you are still immature. You will not be able to stand up to a stronger opponent — you must try to follow the principles. Your character comes out in your techniques. So do the habits of your mind. By correcting the techniques, you can correct the bad habits of your mind. If you constantly collide with others in your practice, your mind will develop a habit of clashing with other people.”

Koichi Tohei (1920–2011) Japanese aikidoka

49
Ki Sayings (2003)

“I believe they point to a fundamental truth about our economy. It can seem like a zero sum, when you are competing for a job, a promotion, or a contract if someone wins and someone loses, but that is not the full picture. If you step back, you’ll see we’re all in this together. If we can grow together, we can all rise together. Because, you know what I like to say, we are stronger together, and that’s why the fourth question is key.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Speech in Warren, Michigan (August 11, 2016)

“A musician once said: In art, truth and reality begin when one no longer understands what one is doing or what one knows, and when there remains an energy that is all the stronger for being constrained, controlled and compressed. It is therefore necessary to present oneself with the greatest humility: white, pure and candid with a mind as if empty, in a spiritual state analogous to that of a communicant approaching the Lord's Table. Obviously it is necessary to have all of one's experience behind one, but to preserve the freshness of one's instincts.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

Un musicien a dit: en art la vérité, le réel commence quand on ne comprend plus rien à ce qu'on fait, à ce q'uon sait, et qu'il reste en vous une énergie d'autant plus forte qu'elle est contrariée, compressée, comprimée. Il faut alors se présenter avec la plus grande humilité, tout-blanc, tout pur, candide, le cerveau semblant-vide, dans un état d'esprit analogue à celui du communiant approchant la Sainte Table. Il faut évidemment avoir tout son acquis derrière soi et avoir su garder la fraîcheur de l'Instinct.
1940s, Jazz (1947)

“In those days, a man at least as boring as I, Pierre Reverdy, was writing: 'The image is a pure creation of the mind. It cannot be born from a comparison but from a juxtaposition of two more or less distant realities. The more the relationship between the two juxtaposed realities is distant and true, the stronger the image will be – the greater its emotional power and poetic reality..' (in the 'Nord-Sud', March 1918). These words, however sibylline for the uninitiated, were extremely revealing, and I pondered them for a long time.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

Le Manifeste du Surréalisme, Andre Breton (Manifesto of Surrealism; 1924)

“More high-reaching, subtle, many-sided, curious and profound than the Greek, more noble and humane than the Roman, more large and spiritual than the old Egyptian, more vast and original than any other Asiatic civilization, more intellectual than the European prior to the 18th century, possessing all that these had and more, it was the most powerful, self-possessed, stimulating and wide in influence of all past human cultures.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

The Foundations of Indian Culture (1953), p. 31

“A lone walker is both present and detached, more than an audience but less than a participant. Walking assuages or legitimizes this alienation.”

Rebecca Solnit (1961) Author and essayist from United States

Source: Wanderlust: A History of Walking

“Everyone calls himself a friend, but only a fool relies on it; nothing is commoner than the name, nothing rarer than the thing.”

Jean De La Fontaine book Parole de Socrate

"Parole de Socrate", as quoted in The Wordsworth Book of Humorous Quotations (1998), edited by C. Robertson

“The sunset you see is always better than the one you don’t. More stars are always better than less.”

Karen Joy Fowler book We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Source: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

“Human minds are more full of mysteries than any written book and more changeable than the cloud shapes in the air.”

Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) American novelist

Source: The Abbot's Ghost: A Christmas Story

“It is this belief in a power larger than myself and other than myself which allows me to venture into the unknown and even the unknowable.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

“The world is much larger than I once dreamed, or perhaps my place in it is smaller than I once realized.”

Raymond E. Feist book Krondor: The Betrayal

Source: Krondor: The Betrayal

“I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“Better than chocolate, being with you last night. Silly me, I thought that nothing was better than chocolate.”

E. Lockhart book We Were Liars

Source: We Were Liars

“Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Review of A Coat of Many Colours: Occasional Essays by Herbert Read, Poetry Quarterly (Winter 1945)
Context: Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it. This is an illusion, and one should recognise it as such, but one ought also to stick to one's own world-view, even at the price of seeming old-fashioned: for that world-view springs out of experiences that the younger generation has not had, and to abandon it is to kill one's intellectual roots.

“The noble title of "dissident" must be earned rather than claimed; it connotes sacrifice and risk rather than mere disagreement.”

Christopher Hitchens Letters to a Young Contrarian

Source: Letters to a Young Contrarian

“I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to to dance better than myself.”

Mikhail Baryshnikov (1948) Soviet-American dancer, choreographer, and actor born in Letonia, Soviet Union

“[This] science is the work of the human mind, which is destined rather to study than to know, to seek the truth rather than to find it.”

Évariste Galois (1811–1832) French mathematician, founder of group theory

Of mathematics — as quoted in Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty (1980) by Morris Kline, p. 99.