Quotes

John Ruysbroeck photo

“God is more interior to us than we are to ourselves.
His acting in us is nearer and more inward than our own actions.
God works in us from inside outwards;
creatures work on us from the outside.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

John of Ruysbroeck Spiritual Espousals, complete works, Mechelen 1934, vol. 1, p. 148. English version New York 1953.

Charles Babbage photo

“The triumph of the industrial arts will advance the cause of civilization more rapidly than its warmest advocates could have hoped, and contribute to the permanent prosperity and strength of the country far more than the most splendid victories of successful war.”

Charles Babbage (1791–1871) mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable c…

Source: The Exposition of 1851: Views Of The Industry, The Science, and the Government Of England, 1851, p. xii-xiii; Cited in: Samuel Smiles Industrial biography; iron-workers and tool-makers http://books.google.com/books?id=5trBcaXuazgC&pg=PA104, (1864) p. 104

“The police case was very simple, because the robbers had been caught in the act of shifting the bullion; and as gold bars are more valuable than human lives, the robbers were given longer sentences than if they had been murderers.”

Arthur Calder-Marshall (1908–1992) English novelist, essayist, critic, memoirist and biographer

Mascott, R. D. (pseud. Arthur Calder-Marshall). The Adventures of James Bond Junior 003½. London: Jonathan Cape. 1967.

Paulo Freire photo
Francis Bacon photo
A.E. Housman photo
Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo

“If you want to influence him at all, you must do more than merely talk to him; you must fashion him, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than you wish him to will.”

Addresses to the German Nation (1807), Second Address : "The General Nature of the New Education". Chicago and London, The Open Court Publishing Company, 1922, p. 21
Paraphrased variant: The schools must fashion the person, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than what you wish him to will.

“…I have discovered that plays are easier to write than novels if the writer has a certain verbal facility, a certain capacity for the colloquial, an ear for the secret cadences of the spoken word. A play can be written with more ease than a novel…”

Luis Rafael Sánchez (1936) Puerto Rican playwright and novelist

On plays versus novels in “Luis Rafael Sánchez: Counterpoints" https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00096005/00024/14j (Sargasso, 1984)

George Eliot photo

“Jubal had a frame
Fashioned to finer senses, which became
A yearning for some hidden soul of things”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

The Legend of Jubal (1869)
Context: Jubal had a frame
Fashioned to finer senses, which became
A yearning for some hidden soul of things,
Some outward touch complete on inner springs
That vaguely moving bred a lonely pain,
A want that did but stronger grow with gain
Of all good else, as spirits might be sad
For lack of speech to tell us they are glad.

Edna St. Vincent Millay photo
William James photo

“Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Source: 1890s, The Principles of Psychology (1890), Ch. 19
Source: The Writings of William James

Sherrilyn Kenyon photo

“I’d rather be short, fat, and ugly than take after that man. (Nick)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infinity

Rafik Schami photo

“why do our enemies shape us more than our friends?”

Rafik Schami (1946) German writer

Source: The Dark Side of Love

Albert Einstein photo

“However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
George Eliot photo

“He distrusted her affection; and what loneliness is more lonely than distrust.”

Variant: What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?
Source: Middlemarch (1871)

Thomas Sowell photo

“Competition does a much more effective job than government at protecting consumers.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

Bogeyman Economics
1980s–1990s, Compassion Versus Guilt and Other Essays (1987)
Source: Compassion Versus Guilt, and Other Essays: And Other Essays

Elie Wiesel photo

“Indifference is the sign of sickness, a sickness of the soul more contagious than any other.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

Source: The Judges

Martin Luther photo