Stronger than pain quotes (page 178) | Quotes of famous people

“Fools, art is a heavy task, more heavy than gold crowns;
it's far more difficult to match firm words than armies”

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) Greek writer

Pharaoh, Book X, line 688
The Odyssey : A Modern Sequel (1938)
Context: Fools, art is a heavy task, more heavy than gold crowns;
it's far more difficult to match firm words than armies,
they're disciplined troops, unconquered, to be placed in rhythm,
the mind's most mighty foe, and not disperse in air.
I'd give, believe me, a whole land for one good song,
for I know well that only words, that words alone,
like the high mountains, have no fear of age or death.

“Give them this: they were tough. Tougher than the Scyths and Getai, for all their savage valor, and tougher than the Amazons, despite their dash and dazzle.”

Steven Pressfield book Last of the Amazons

Damon p. 308
Last of the Amazons (2002)
Context: The foe fell back. Our companies pushed through. For the time it takes to count to five hundred, I thought we might even conquer. For now the mulishness of the Athenian Soldier-farmer, the pigheaded refusal to yield which had at first been scorned by his betters-now this shone to the fore. By the gods, these clodkickers had learned how to fight! [... ] They no longer fell apart at the apparition of cowardice among their comrades or themselves, but had come to understand that the same man may play the craven in the morning and the hero in the afternoon. Give them this: they were tough. Tougher than the Scyths and Getai, for all their savage valor, and tougher than the Amazons, despite their dash and dazzle.

“Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet —
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) British poet laureate

"The Higher Pantheism", st. 6 (1869)

“Gone deeper than all plummets sound. {cf. Shak.: I'll seek him deeper than e'er plummet sounded… (The Tempest)}”

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic

Félise.
Undated

“Our country will be the better, and you will be the happier, because nothing brings greater happiness in life than to serve a cause greater than yourself.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

2000s, 2008, (2008)

“But of all motives, none is better adapted to secure influence and hold it fast than love; nothing is more foreign to that end than fear.”
Omnium autem rerum nec aptius est quicquam ad opes tuendas ac tenendas quam diligi nec alienius quam timeri.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Book II, section 7; translation by Walter Miller
De Officiis – On Duties (44 BC)

“The crisis takes a much longer time coming than you think, and then it happens much faster than you would have thought.”

Rudiger Dornbusch (1942–2002) German economist

Quotes in: United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Budget (2012). Concurrent Resolution on the Budget Fiscal Year 2013. p. 95

“It is better to lose health like a spendthrift than to waste it like a miser. It is better to live and be done with it, than to die daily in the sick-room.”

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer

315.
Aes Triplex (1878)

“Paradox is thus a much deeper and universal concept than the ancients would have dreamed. Rather than an oddity, it is a mainstay of the philosophy of science.”

William Poundstone (1955) American writer

Source: Labyrinths of Reason (1988), Chapter 1: "Paradox", p. 23

“Petty souls are more susceptible to ambition than great ones, just as straw or thatched cottages burn more easily than palaces.”

Nicolas Chamfort (1741–1794) French writer

L'ambition prend aux petites âmes plus facilement qu'aux grandes, comme le feu prend plus aisément à la paille, aux chaumières qu'aux palais.
Maximes et Pensées, #68
Reflections