“I would like somebody to be hated more than I am.”
Clive Foss, The Tyrants: 2500 Years of Absolute Power and Corruption, London: Quercus Publishing, 2006, ISBN 1905204965, p. 11
“I would like somebody to be hated more than I am.”
Clive Foss, The Tyrants: 2500 Years of Absolute Power and Corruption, London: Quercus Publishing, 2006, ISBN 1905204965, p. 11
“Courage is in the air in bracing whiffs
Better than all the stalemate an's and ifs.”
For John F. Kennedy His Inauguration also known as Dedictation (1960)
1960s, Dedication (1960)
“Ideas, and even the detection of errors, require more than care and caution.”
Source: Words and Things (1959), p. 94
“I think animation can tell more than live action.”
Interviewed on Complex http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2016/10/your-name-makoto-shinkai-interview/2
About Your Name
“The truest way to be deceived is to think oneself more knowing than others.”
Le vrai moyen d'être trompé, c'est de se croire plus fin que les autres.
Maxim 127.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)
“No aspect of a poem is more singular, more unique, than its rhythm.”
'The Sounds of Poetry' Farrar,Strauss & Giroux 1998
The Sounds of Poetry 1998
“Better the absence of greatness than the establishing of a false greatness by assumed humility.”
Meher Baba’s Call (1954)
Context: Better the absence of greatness than the establishing of a false greatness by assumed humility. Not only do these efforts at humility on man's part not express strength, they are, on the contrary, expressions of modesty born of weakness, which springs from a lack of knowledge of the truth of Reality.
Beware of modesty. Modesty, under the cloak of humility, invariably leads one into the clutches of self-deception. Modesty breeds egoism, and man eventually succumbs to pride through assumed humility.
The greatest greatness and the greatest humility go hand in hand naturally and without effort.
“The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide”
"Renascence" (1912), st. 20, Renascence and Other Poems (1917)
Context: The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky, —
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That can not keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat — the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.
“There is nothing that adds more lustre to a prince than having efficient officers.”
De' Magistrati, p. 117.
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 380.
“A real "wasteland" is much more terrible than any imaginary one.”
The Captive Mind (1953)
Context: Whoever saw, as many did, a whole city reduced to rubble — kilometers of streets on which there remained no trace of life, not even a cat, not even a homeless dog — emerged with a rather ironic attitude toward descriptions of the hell of the big city by contemporary poets, descriptions of the hell in their own souls. A real "wasteland" is much more terrible than any imaginary one. Whoever has not dwelt in the midst of horror and dread cannot know how strongly a witness and participant protests against himself, against his own neglect and egoism. Destruction and suffering are the school of social thought.
“Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.”
"Politics and the English Language" (1946)
Context: Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Never use a long word where a short one will do. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. Never use the passive voice where you can use the active. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
“Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end.”
Source: American Gods (2001), Ch. 3
Context: Gods die. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered. Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end.
“Do you esteem men by their number rather than by their valour and prowess?”
Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Gargantua (1534), Chapter 43.
Context: Being come down from thence towards Seville, they were heard by Gargantua, who said then unto those that were with him, Comrades and fellow-soldiers, we have here met with an encounter, and they are ten times in number more than we. Shall we charge them or no? What a devil, said the monk, shall we do else? Do you esteem men by their number rather than by their valour and prowess? With this he cried out, Charge, devils, charge! Which when the enemies heard, they thought certainly that they had been very devils, and therefore even then began all of them to run away as hard as they could drive, Drawforth only excepted, who immediately settled his lance on its rest, and therewith hit the monk with all his force on the very middle of his breast, but, coming against his horrific frock, the point of the iron being with the blow either broke off or blunted, it was in matter of execution as if you had struck against an anvil with a little wax-candle.
“It's better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out.”
Playboy interview (1980)
Context: It's better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out. I don't appreciate worship of dead Sid Vicious or of dead James Dean or of dead John Wayne. It's the same thing. Making Sid Vicious a hero, Jim Morrison — it's garbage to me. I worship the people who survive. Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo.
“Strength is not energy. Some writers have more muscles than talent.”
“There are times when men's passions are much more trustworthy than their principles”
Source: The Way of Zen (1957), p. 29
Context: It was a basic Confucian principle that "it is man who makes truth great, not truth which makes man great." For this reason, "humanness" or "human-heartedness" (jen) was always felt to be superior to "righteousness" (i), since man himself is greater than any idea which he may invent. There are times when men's passions are much more trustworthy than their principles.
“The certainty of punishment, even more than its severity, is the preventive of crime.”
Source: A Dictionary of Thoughts, 1891, p. 456.
“There cannot be a greater rudeness, than to interrupt another in the current of his discourse”
Sec. 145
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)
Context: There cannot be a greater rudeness, than to interrupt another in the current of his discourse... To which, if there be added, as is usual, a correcting of any mistake, or a contradiction of what has been said, it is a mark of yet greater pride and self-conceitedness, when we thus intrude our selves for teachers, and take upon us either to set another right in his story, or shew the mistakes of his judgement.
“For maturity is marked by the preference to be defeated rather than have a subjective success.”
Source: The Meaning of God in Human Experience (1912), Ch. XII : The Will as a Maker of Truth, p. 140.
Context: For maturity is marked by the preference to be defeated rather than have a subjective success. We as mature persons can worship only that which we are compelled to worship. If we are offered a man-made God and a self-answering prayer, we will rather have no God and no prayer. There can be no valid worship except that in which man is involuntarily bent by the presence of the Most Real, beyond his will.
“Or are you more aware of the Qur’an than my father and my cousin?”
Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.29, p. 216 ; al-Tabarsi, al-Ihtijāj, vol.1, p. 132-141.
Context: Oh Muslims! Is my inheritance usurped? Oh son of Abu Quhafa (Abu Bakr), is it in the Book of Allah that you inherit your father and I do not inherit my father? Surely you have done a strange thing! Did you intendedly desert the Book of Allah and turned your back on it? Allah said: "And Solomon was David's heir." (27:16); and said about John son of Zechariah: "Grant me from Thyself an heir, who should inherit me and inherit from the children of Jacob." (19:5-6) and said: "And the possessors of relationships are nearer to each other in the ordinance of Allah." (8:75), and He said: "Allah enjoins you concerning your children: The male shall have the equal of the portion of two females." (4:11), and He said: "Bequest is prescribed for you when death approaches one of you, if he leaves behind wealth for parents and near relatives." (2:180). You claimed that I have no position, and no inheritance from my father, and there is no kinship between us. So did Allah distinguish you with a verse, from which He excluded my father? Or do you say: people of two religions do not inherit each other? Am I and my father not of one religion? Or are you more aware of the Qur’an than my father and my cousin? So, here it is before you! Take it with its noseband and saddle! It shall dispute with you on the Day of Punishment; what a fair judge Allah is, the master (of the inheritance) is Muhammad, and the appointment is the Day of Resurrection. At the time of the Hour the wrongdoers shall lose, and it shall not benefit you to regret then! For every Message, there is a time limit, and ye shall know to whom a punishment that will confound him comes, and upon whom a lasting doom will fall.