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“In one year I learned as much about anti-Semitism as would be enough for three mens' lifetimes. For you cannot wound the sacred convictions of a people, what their heart loves and respects, without causing deep pain and shedding the heart's blood. It was 17 years ago, and my heart bleeds yet.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Jewish Problem

“O pitiable minds of men, O blind intelligences! In what gloom of life, in how great perils is passed all your poor span of time! not to see that all nature barks for is this, that pain be removed away out of the body, and that the mind, kept away from care and fear, enjoy a feeling of delight!”
O miseras hominum mentes, o pectora caeca! qualibus in tenebris vitae quantisque periclis degitur hoc aevi quod cumquest! nonne videre nihil aliud sibi naturam latrare, nisi ut qui corpore seiunctus dolor absit, mente fruatur iucundo sensu cura semota metuque?

Lucretius (-94–-55 BC) Roman poet and philosopher

Book II, lines 14–19 (tr. Rouse)
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)

“The Barbarian hopes — and that is the very mark of him — that he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilisation has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort but he will not be at pains to replace such goods nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

Ch. XXXII : The Barbarians , p. 282 https://books.google.com/books?id=EyrQAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA282 <br class="br">This and That and the Other (1912) <br class="br">Context: The Barbarian hopes — and that is the very mark of him — that he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilisation has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort but he will not be at pains to replace such goods nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being. Discipline seems to him irrational, on which account he is for ever marvelling that civilisation should have offended him with priests and soldiers.

“Summer was gone and now Indian summer. The grass was cold and there was no mist and no dew. After he left she would go in and light the gas and close the shatters, and he would go down the path and on to the village. To these two life had come quickly and gone, leaving not bitterness, but pity; not disillusion, but only pain.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

"The Lees of Happiness"
Quoted, Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)

“He sees himself in his lover as if in a mirror, not knowing whom he sees, And when they are together, he too is released from pain, and when apart, he longs as he himself is longed for; for reflected in his heart is love's image, which is love's answer. But he calls it, and believes it, not love but friendship…”

Mary Renault book The Charioteer

Phaedrus as translated in the novel, p. 104
The Charioteer (1953)

“When people ask me why I don’t eat meat or any other animal products, I say because they are unhealthy and they are the product of a violent and inhumane industry. Chickens, cows, and pigs in factory farms spend their whole lives in filthy, cramped conditions only to die a prolonged and painful death.”

Casey Affleck (1975) American actor

From a PETA video (6 February 2013) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSuLrvwLoLA, reported in "Casey Affleck’s ‘Go Vegan’ PSA", in peta2.com http://www.peta2.com/heroes/casey-afflecks-go-vegan-psa/.

“The fact that most of the time human beings put the truth about the nature and risks of the nuclear war out of their minds because it is too painful and therefore not "acceptable", does not alter the nature and risks of such war. The device of "rejection" may temporarily cover up anxiety, but it does not bestow peace of mind and emotional security.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, The Quest for Peace and Justice (1964)

“In the evening you hear the scream of bats,
Two black horses jump in the meadow,
The red maple rustles.
To the traveller the small inn appears by the wayside.
Wonderful the taste of young wine and nuts,
Wonderful: stumbling drunk into darkening wood.
Through black branches painful bells sound,
On the face dew drips.”

Georg Trakl (1887–1914) austrian poet

"Towards Evening My Heart," Poems (1913)
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/2014/10/29/wild-heart-turning-white-georg-trakl-and-cocaine/

“Our patients are the ones who express and live out the subconscious and unconscious tendencies in the culture. The neurotic, or person suffering from what we now call character disorder, is characterized by the fact that the usual defenses of the culture do not work for him — a generally painful situation of which he is more or less aware…”

Rollo May book Love and Will

Source: Love and Will (1969), Ch. 1 : Introduction : Our Schizoid World, p. 20

“The end is near," Moridin said. "The Wheel has groaned its final rotation, the clock has lost its spring, the serpent heaves its final gasps. He must know pain of heart. He must know frustration, and he must know anguish. Bring these to him. And you will be rewarded.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Moridin, Nae'blis, speaking to the Forsaken Graendal
The Gathering Storm (27 October 2009)

“Be your own artist, and always be confident in what you're doing. “A musician should only sound like what they do, and no two musicians sound the same. “I believe musicians have a duty, a responsibility to reach out, to share your love or pain with others.” “The true beauty of music is that it connects people.”

Dc Themmie

“I learn with deep pain that his Excellency Mr. McKinley has succumbed to the deplorable attempt on his life. I sympathize with you with all my heart in this calamity which thus strikes at your dearest affections and which bereaves the great American nation of a President so justly respected and loved.”

William McKinley (1843–1901) American politician, 25th president of the United States (in office from 1897 to 1901)

President of France Émile Loubet telegraph to Mrs. McKinley. The Authentic Life of President McKinley, page 398.

“I'm possessed by love — but isn't everybody? Most of my songs are love ballads and things to do with sadness and torture and pain.
In terms of love, you're not in control and I hate that feeling. I seem to write a lot of sad songs because I'm a very tragic person. But there's always an element of humour at the end.”

Freddie Mercury (1946–1991) British singer, songwriter and record producer

As quoted in "I am the Champion" by Nick Ferrari in The Sun (19 July 1985) http://www.queenarchives.com/index.php?title=Freddie_Mercury_-_07-19-1985_-_The_Sun.

“We also have a fundamental right to not carry a pain that we did not choose. Whether you’re born black or gay or a woman or Jewish, you didn’t choose it. You have to be the person in charge of it saying your story, again and again. When it is something you are forced to recount, there’s something violent about it…”

Édouard Louis (1992) French writer

On being able to control your own story in “AUTHOR ÉDOUARD LOUIS SAYS THE UNSAYABLE” https://www.interviewmagazine.com/culture/edouard-louis-bam-st-annes-warehouse-the-end-of-eddy-a-history-of-violence in Interview Magazine (2019 Nov 13)

“Could you fall in love with her if she wasn't smarter than you? I mean, she may not be smarter than you. But isn't it important for you to think she is smarter than you in order to fall in love? Think now.”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

“Haven't people learned yet that the time of superficial intellectual games is over, that agony is infinitely more important than syllogism, that a cry of despair is more revealing than the most subtle thought, and that tears always have deeper roots than smiles?”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

On the Heights of Despair (1934)

“Do we want to put pedagogy into the hands of the philosophers? Nothing less than that! They would behave themselves awkwardly enough. It shall be entrusted only to those who are more than philosophers, who are in that respect more even than humanists or realists.”

Max Stirner book The False Principle of our Education

Wollen wir etwa die Pädagogik den Philosophen in die Hände spielen? Nichts weniger als das! Sie würden sich ungeschickt genug benehmen. Denen allein werde sie anvertraut, die mehr sind als Philosophen, darum aber auch unendlich mehr als Humanisten oder Realisten.
Source: The False Principle of our Education (1842), p. 19

“It is easier to declaim like an orator against a thousand sins in others than to mortify one sin in ourselves; to be more industrious in our pulpits than in our closets; to preach twenty sermons to our people than one to our own hearts.”

John Flavel (1627–1691) English Presbyterian clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 476.

“The communications challenge faced by reform movements the world over and illustrated by this incident is this: in the modern communications business, particularly in the case of television, negative is more newsworthy than positive; short term is more newsworthy than long term; disagreement is more newsworthy than agreement; emotion-laden critiques are more newsworthy than well reasoned proposals for constructive change; discord, threats to order, and bad government are much more newsworthy than peace, order, and good government.”

Preston Manning book The New Canada

Source: The New Canada (1992), Chapter Seven, The Vancouver Assembly, p. 137

“Of all those in the army close to the commander none is more intimate than the secret agent; of all rewards none more liberal than those given to secret agents; of all matters none is more confidential than those relating to secret operations.”

Sun Tzu (-543–-495 BC) ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher from the Zhou Dynasty

Source: The Art of War, Chapter XIII · Intelligence and Espionage