Quotes about abundance

A collection of quotes on the topic of abundance, life, use, other.

Quotes about abundance

“For abundant freedom will be achieved only when the body is destroyed, and the soul is placed first before everything else.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Soul, Freedom

“Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

Heart Touching, For Mother, Life

“One defends when his strength is inadequate; he attacks when it is abundant.”

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

Source: The Art of War, Chapter IV · Disposition of the Army

“Caution in handling generally accepted opinions that claim to explain whole trends of history is especially important for the historian of modern times, because the last century has produced an abundance of ideologies that pretend to be keys to history but are actually nothing but desperate efforts to escape responsibility.”

Hannah Arendt book The Origins of Totalitarianism

Source: The Origins of Totalitarianism

History, Effort, Time

“Love begets courage, moderation creates abundance and humility generates power.”

B.K.S. Iyengar book Light on Yoga

Source: Light on Yoga

Love, Courage

“It is the great beauty of our science, chemistry, that advancement in it, whether in a degree great or small, instead of exhausting the subjects of research, opens the doors to further and more abundant knowledge, overflowing with beauty and utility.”

Michael Faraday (1791–1867) English scientist

Experimental Researches in Electricity, Vol. 2 (1834) p. 257 http://books.google.com/books?id=XuITAAAAQAAJ&vq=257&pg=PA257

Beauty, Knowledge, Science

“This first stage of the life of the whole race is savagery, raw nature:… a condition in which man enjoys the most exquisite goods, equality and freedom, in full abundance, and would also enjoy them forever, if he would follow the hint of nature and understand the art of not abusing his powers and preventing the outbreak of his excessive passions.”

Adam Weishaupt (1748–1830) German philosopher and founder of the Order of Illuminati

Die neuesten Arbeiten des Spartacus und Philo in dem Illuminaten-Orden (1794) pp. 20-21.

Life, Art, Understanding, Nature

“Healing hurts. But what hurts more is the refusal of the call. The true pain of living is the abandonment of self, the mind-body split that makes us fear life. Our ache may be heavy and our souls tired today, but resistance makes it all feel a thousand times worse. Rejection of where we are amplifies suffering. Until we cannot take it anymore. Until there is no way out but in. Diving into the blackness, we discover not death but more abundant life. This is the great paradox of healing, which all great artists and poets and seers have known. We die into our trauma and discover our courage. The fiercest warriors are the ones who have let life break and remake them a thousand times over. The gods of healing are calling through your pain today. Healing hurts, yes, but the hurt itself may eventually heal you.”

Jeff Foster (1980) Spiritual teacher

Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/B-16fjMHi5o/

“Trust allows you to give. Giving is abundant. As you give so it shall be given to you. If you give with judgment, limitation and stinginess, that is what you will create in your life - judgment, limitation, and stinginess.”

Gary Zukav (1942) American writer and revivalist

Life

“When you reach out to hurting people, that’s when God is going to make sure your needs are supplied. When you focus on being a blessing, God makes sure that you are always blessed in abundance.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

God, People, Hurt

“Jesus insisted that the greatest ritual service is the service of human need. It is an odd thing to think that, with the possible exception of that day in the synagogue at Nazareth, we have no evidence that Jesus ever conducted a ‘church’ service in all his life on earth, but we have abundant evidence that he fed the hungry and comforted the sad and cared for the sick. Christian service is not the service of any liturgy or ritual; it is the service of human need. Christian service is not monastic retreat; it is involvement in all the tragedies and problems and demands of the human situation.”

William Barclay (1907–1978) Church of Scotland minister and academic

Source: The Gospel of Matthew: Vol. 2, Chapters 11-28

Life, Sadness, Problem, Thinking

“Chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organized.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: Interesting Times: The Play

“Unfortunately, the balance of nature decrees that a super-abundance of dreams is paid for by a growing potential for nightmares.”

Peter Ustinov (1921–2004) English actor, writer, and dramatist

As quoted in The Independent (25 February 1989)

Dreams, Nature

“Huck was always willing to take a hand in any enterprise that offered entertainment and required no capital, for he had a troublesome super-abundance of that sort of time which ismoney.”

Mark Twain book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Source: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Time

“The one who is pleased with himself (his own state & condition), those displeased and angry with him shall get abundant in number.”

Ali al-Hadi (829–868) imam

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.78, p. 368.
General

“An additional reason for caution in dealing with corporations is to be found in the international commercial conditions of to-day. The same business conditions which have produced the great aggregations of corporate and individual wealth have made them very potent factors in international Commercial competition. Business concerns which have the largest means at their disposal and are managed by the ablest men are naturally those which take the lead in the strife for commercial supremacy among the nations of the world. America has only just begun to assume that commanding position in the international business world which we believe will more and more be hers. It is of the utmost importance that this position be not jeoparded, especially at a time when the overflowing abundance of our own natural resources and the skill, business energy, and mechanical aptitude of our people make foreign markets essential. Under such conditions it would be most unwise to cramp or to fetter the youthful strength of our Nation. Moreover, it cannot too often be pointed out that to strike with ignorant violence at the interests of one set of men almost inevitably endangers the interests of all. The fundamental rule in our national life —the rule which underlies all others—is that, on the whole, and in the long run, we shall go up or down together.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, First Annual Message to Congress (1901)

Life, Men, People, Youth

“Clouds return and once again, it rains,
Lighting's flash from all sides, and with them,
Some go to Istanbul others turn to the west,
Some shine bright over China and others take care of,
Samarqand, some wandered to Rome, to
Kabul and Kandahar, some lie on Delhi,
Deccan thundering over…
My beloved Allah, may you always make Sindh a land of abundance,
My beloved Allah, may you make prosperous the whole universe.”

Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai book Shah Jo Risalo

Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai, Shah Jo Risalo
Shah Jo Risalo

Lie, Light, Universe

“He who hopes for spring with upturned eye never sees so small a thing as Draba. He who despairs of spring with downcast eye steps on it, unknowingly. He who searches for spring with his knees in the mud finds it, in abundance.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“April: Draba”, p. 26.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "April: Come High Water," "April: Draba," "April: Bur Oak," & "April:Sky Dance"

Hope, Search, Spring, Despair

“These unhappy agents found what had already been found in abundance on Earth—a nightmare of meaningless without end. The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death.
Outwardness lost, at last, its imagined attractions.
Only inwardness remained to be explored.
Only the human soul remained terra incognita.
This was the beginning of goodness and wisdom.”

Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan

Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 1 “Between Timid and Timbuktu” (p. 8)

Death, Wisdom, Soul, Imagination

“All ancient philosophers, poets, and moralists agree that love is a striving, an aspiration of the “lower” toward the “higher,” the “unformed” toward the “formed,” … “appearance” towards “essence,” “ignorance” towards “knowledge,” a “mean between fullness and privation,” as Plato says in the Symposium. … The universe is a great chain of dynamic spiritual entities, of forms of being ranging from the “prima materia” up to man—a chain in which the lower always strives for and is attracted by the higher, which never turns back but aspires upward in its turn. This process continues up to the deity, which itself does not love, but represents the eternally unmoving and unifying goal of all these aspirations of love. Too little attention has been given to the peculiar relation between this idea of love and the principle of the “agon,” the ambitious contest for the goal, which dominated Greek life in all its aspects—from the Gymnasium and the games to dialectics and the political life of the Greek city states. Even the objects try to surpass each other in a race for victory, in a cosmic “agon” for the deity. Here the prize that will crown the victor is extreme: it is a participation in the essence, knowledge, and abundance of “being.” Love is only the dynamic principle, immanent in the universe, which sets in motion this great “agon” of all things for the deity.
Let us compare this with the Christian conception. In that conception there takes place what might be called a reversal in the movement of love. The Christian view boldly denies the Greek axiom that love is an aspiration of the lower towards the higher. On the contrary, now the criterion of love is that the nobler stoops to the vulgar, the healthy to the sick, the rich to the poor, the handsome to the ugly, the good and saintly to the bad and common, the Messiah to the sinners and publicans. The Christian is not afraid, like the ancient, that he might lose something by doing so, that he might impair his own nobility. He acts in the peculiarly pious conviction that through this “condescension,” through this self-abasement and “self-renunciation” he gains the highest good and becomes equal to God. …
There is no longer any “highest good” independent of and beyond the act and movement of love! Love itself is the highest of all goods! The summum bonum is no longer the value of a thing, but of an act, the value of love itself as love—not for its results and achievements. …
Thus the picture has shifted immensely. This is no longer a band of men and things that surpass each other in striving up to the deity. It is a band in which every member looks back toward those who are further removed from God and comes to resemble the deity by helping and serving them.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1961), pp. 85-88

Love, Life, Men, God

“Most English-speaking people … will admit that cellar door is "beautiful," especially if dissociated from its sense (and from its spelling). More beautiful than, say, sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful…Well then, in Welsh, for me cellar doors are extraordinarily frequent, and moving to the higher dimension, the words in which there is pleasure in the contemplation of the association of form and sense are abundant.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) British philologist and author, creator of classic fantasy works

English and Welsh (1955)

People, Pleasure, Beauty, Sense

“We know today that nothing will restore the pre-machine condition of reasonably universal employment save an artificial allocation of working hours involving the use of more men than formerly to perform a given task.... The primary function of society, in spite of all the sophistries spurred of selfishness, is to give men better conditions than they could get without it; and the basic need today is jobs for all—not for "property" for a few of the luck and the acquisitive.... In view of the urgent need for change, there is something almost obscene in the chatter of the selfish about various psychological evils allegedly inherent in a New Deal promising decent economic security and humane leisure for all instead of for a few.... What is worth answering is the kindred outcry about "regimentation", "collective slavery", "violation of Anglo-Saxon freedom", "destruction of the right of the individual to make his own way" and so on; with liberal references to Stalin, Hitler, Mustapha Kemal, and other extremist dictators who have sought to control men's personal, intellectual, and artistic lives, and traditional habits and folkways, as well as their economic fortunes. Naturally the Anglo-Saxon balks at any programme calculated to limit his freedom as a man and a thinker or to disturb his inherited perspectives and daily customs—and need we say that no plan ever proposed in an Anglo-Saxon country would conceivably seek to limit such freedom or disturb such perspectives and customs? Here we have a deliberate smoke-screen—conscious and malicious confusion of terms. A decent planned society would indeed vary to some extent the existing regulations (for there are such) governing commercial and economic life. Yet who save a self-confessed Philistine or Marxist (the plutocrat can cite "Das Kapital" for his purpose!) would claim that the details and conditions of our merely economic activities form more than a trivial fraction of our whole lives and personalities? That which is essential and distinctive about a man is not the routine of material struggle he follows in his office; but the civilised way he lives, outside his office, the life whose maintenance is the object of his struggle. So long as his office work gains him a decently abundant and undisputedly free life, it matters little what that work is—what the ownership of the enterprise, and what and how distributed its profits, if profits there be. We have seen that no system proposes to deny skill and diligence an adequate remuneration. What more may skill and diligence legitimately ask? Nor is any lessening in the pride of achievement contemplated. Man will thrill just as much at the overcoming of vast obstacles, and the construction of great works, whether his deeds be performed for service or for profit. As it is, the greatest human achievements have never been for profit. Would Keats or Newton or Lucretius or Einstein or Santayana flourish less under a rationally planned society? Any intimation that a man's life is wholly his industrial life, and that a planned economic order means a suppression of his personality, is really both a piece of crass ignorance and an insult to human nature. Incidentally, it is curious that no one has yet pointed to the drastically regulated economic life of the early Mass. Bay colony as something "American!"”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Unpublished (and probably unsent) letter to the Providence Journal (13 April 1934), quoted in Collected Essays, Volume 5: Philosophy, edited by J. T. Joshi, pp. 115-116
Non-Fiction, Letters

Life, Men, Way, Nature

“I have never believed that the securing of material resources ought to form the central interest of human life—but have instead maintained that personality is an independent flowering of the intellect and emotions wholly apart from the struggle for existence. Formerly I accepted the archaic dictum that only a few can be relieved of the engulfing waste of the material struggle in its bitterest form—a dictum which is, of course, true in an agricultural age having scanty resources. Therefore I adopted an aristocratic attitude; regretfully arguing that life, in any degree of fulness, is only for the fortunate few whose ancestors' prowess has given them economic security and leisure. But I did not take the bourgeois position of praising struggle for its own sake. While recognising certain worthy qualities brought out by it, I was too much impressed by its stultifying attributes to regard it as other than a necessary evil. In my opinion, only the leisured aristocrat really had a chance at adequate life—nor did I despise him because he was not forced to struggle. Instead, I was sorry that so few could share his good fortune. Too much human energy was wasted in the mere scramble for food and shelter. The condition was tolerable only because inevitable in yesterday's world of scanty resources. Millions of men must go to waste in order that a few might really live. Still—if those few were not upheld, no high culture would ever be built up. I never had any use for the American pioneer's worship of work and self-reliance for their own sakes. These things are necessary in their place, but not ends in themselves—and any attempt to make them ends in themselves is essentially uncivilised. Thus I have no fundamental meeting-ground with the rugged Yankee individualist. I represent rather the mood of the agrarian feudalism which preceded the pioneering and capitalistic phases. My ideal of life is nothing material or quantitative, but simply the security and leisure necessary for the maximum flowering of the human spirit.... Well—so much for the past. Now we live in an age of easy abundance which makes possible the fulfilment of all moderate human wants through a relatively slight amount of labour. What shall be the result? Shall we still make resources prohibitively hard to get when there is really a plethora of them? Shall we allow antique notions of allocation—"property," etc.—to interfere with the rational distribution of this abundant stock of resources among all those who require them? Shall we value hardship and anxiety and uncertainty so fatuously as to impose these evils artificially on people who do not need to bear them, through the perpetuation of a set of now irrelevant and inapplicable rules of allocation? What reasonable objection is there to an intelligent centralised control of resources whose primary object shall be the elimination of want in every quarter—a thing possible without removing comfortable living from any one now enjoying it? To call the allocation of resources something "uncontrollable" by man—and in an age when virtually all natural forces are harnessed and utilised—is simply infantile. It is simply that those who now have the lion's share don't want any fresh or rational allocation. It is needless to say that no sober thinker envisages a workless equalitarian paradise. Much work remains, and human capacities differ. High-grade service must still receive greater rewards than low-grade service. But amidst the present abundance of goods and minimisation of possible work, there must be a fair and all-inclusive allocation of the chances to perform work and secure rewards. When society can't give a man work, it must keep him comfortable without it; but it must give him work if it can, and must compel him to perform it when it is needed. This does not involve interference with personal life and habits (contrary to what some reactionaries say), nor is the absence of insecurity anything to deplore.... But of course the real need of change comes not from the mere fact of abundant resources, but from the growth of conditions making it impossible for millions to have any chance of getting any resources under the present outworn set of artificial rules. This development is no myth. Machines had displaced 900,000 men in the U. S. before the crash of '29, and no conceivable regime of "prosperity" (where by a few people will have abundant and flexible resources and successfully exchange them among one another) will ever make it possible to avoid the permanent presence of millions of unemployed, so long as old-fashioned laissez-faire capitalism is adhered to.... And so I have readjusted my ideas. … I have gone almost reluctantly—step by step, as pressed by facts too insistent to deny—and am still quite as remote from Belknap's naive Marxism as I am from the equally naive Republican orthodoxy I have left behind. I am as set as ever against any cultural upheaval—and believe that nothing of the kind is necessary in order to achieve a new and feasible economic equilibrium. The best of culture has always been non-economic.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Hitherto it has grown out of the secure, non-struggling life of the aristocrat. In future it may be expected to grow out of the secure and not-so-struggling life of whatever citizens are personally able to develop it. There need be no attempt to drag culture down to the level of crude minds. That, indeed, would be something to fight tooth and nail! With economic opportunities artificially regulated, we may well let other interests follow a natural course. Inherent differences in people and in tastes will create different social-cultural classes as in the past—although the relation of these classes to the holding of material resources will be less fixed than in the capitalistic age now closing. All this, of course, is directly contrary to Belknap's rampant Stalinism—but I'm telling you I'm no bolshevik! I am for the preservation of all values worth preserving—and for the maintenance of complete cultural continuity with the Western-European mainstream. Don't fancy that the dethronement of certain purely economic concepts means an abrupt break in that stream. Rather does it mean a return to art impulses typically aristocratic (that is, disinterested, leisurely, non-ulterior) rather than bourgeois.
Letter to Clark Ashton Smith (28 October 1934), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 60-64
Non-Fiction, Letters

Life, Men, People, Age

“In the abundance of water a fool is thirsty.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

Rat Race, from the album Rastaman Vibration
Song lyrics

Fools, Water

“Earth is abundant with plentiful resources. Our practice of rationing resources through monetary control is irrelevant and counter-productive to our survival.”

Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) American futurist and self-described social engineer

Source: The Best That Money Can't Buy: Beyond Politics, Poverty, & War (2002), p. 158.

“CEOs need keep an open mind so they can adapt to a rapidly changing world and need to bring an abundant dose of emotional intelligence to the job.”

Indra Nooyi (1955) Indian-born, naturalized American, business executive

CEOs need to change: Indra Nooyi

World, Intelligence, Change

“Wanting is—what?
Summer redundant,
Blueness abundant,
Where is the blot?”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

Wanting—is what?
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Summer

“Every holy Mass, heard with devotion, produces in our souls marvelous effects, abundant spiritual and material graces which we, ourselves, do not know. It is easier for the earth to exist without the sun than without the holy Sacrifice of the Mass.”

Padre Pio (1887–1968) Italian saint, priest, stigmatist and mystic

Gerardo Di Flumeri, The Mystery of the Cross in Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, National Centre for Padre Pio, Barto, PA. p. 16.

Soul, Sun

“A natural talent is required; for, when Nature opposes, everything else is in vain; but when Nature leads the way to what is most excellent, instruction in the art takes place, which the student must try to appropriate to himself by reflection, becoming an early pupil in a place well adapted for instruction. He must also bring to the task a love of labor and perseverance, so that the instruction taking root may bring forth proper and abundant fruits.”

Hippocrates (-460–-370 BC) ancient Greek physician

2.
The Law

Love, Art, Way, Nature

“From abundance springs satiety.”

Livy (-59–17 BC) Roman historian

Book III, sec. 1
History of Rome

Spring

“Contemplating the universe, the whole system of creation, in this point of light, we shall discover, that all that which is called natural philosophy is properly a divine study— It is the study of God through his works — It is the best study, by which we can arrive at a knowledge of the existence, and the only one by which we can gain a glimpse of his perfection.
Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of the Creation. Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible Whole is governed. Do we want to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with which he fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful. In fine, do we want to know what God is? Search not written or printed books, but the Scripture called the Creation.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1790s, Discourse to the Theophilanthropists (1798)

Wisdom, God, Books, Search

“The important thing is not the amount of welfare, it is that there should be a maximum of love among men. The act of helping is the direct and adequate expression of love, not its meaning or “purpose.” Its meaning lies in itself, in its illumination of the soul, in the nobility of the loving soul in the act of love. Therefore nothing can be further removed from this genuine concept of Christian love than all kinds of “socialism,” “social feeling,” “altruism,” and other subaltern modern things. When the rich youth is told to divest himself of his riches and give them to the poor, it is really not in order to help the “poor” and to effect a better distribution of property in the interest of general welfare. Nor is it because poverty as such is supposed to be better than wealth. The order is given because the act of giving away, and the spiritual freedom and abundance of love which manifest themselves in this act, ennoble the youth and make him even “richer” than he is.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1961), p. 93

Love, Men, Youth, Feeling

“There are a few of us who could scarcely do more than we are doing of our own regular order of work, but there may yet be spare moments for little extra efforts of another sort which in the aggregate, in the run of a year, might produce a great total of real practical result. We must, like goldsmiths, carefully sweep our shops, and gather up the filings of the gold which God has given us in the shape of time. Select a large box and place in it as many cannon-balls as it will hold, it is after a fashion full, but it will hold more if smaller matters be found. Bring a quantity of marbles, very many of these may be packed in the spaces between the larger globes; the box is full now, but only full in a sense, it will contain more yet. There are interstices in abundance into which you may shake a considerable quantity of small shot, and now the chest is filled beyond all question, but yet there is room. You cannot put in another shot or marble, much less another cannon-ball, but you will find that several pounds of sand will slide down between the larger materials, and even then between the granules of sand, if you empty pondering there will be space for all the water, and for the same quantity several times repeated. When there is no space for the great there may be room for the little; where the little cannot enter the less can make its way; and where the less is shut out, the least of all may find ample room and verge enough.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

"A Spur for a Free Horse" in The Sword and the Trowel (February, 1866) http://www.spurgeon.org/s_and_t/spur.htm

God, Way, Fashion, Question

“But what changes come upon the weary desert of our culture, so darkly described, when it is touched by the magic of Dionysus! A storm seizes everything decrepit, rotten, broken, stunted; shrouds it in a whirling red cloud of dust and carries it into the air like a vulture. In vain confusion we seek for all that has vanished; for what we see has risen as if from beneath he earth into the gold light, so full and green, so luxuriantly alive, immeasurable and filled with yearning. Tragedy sits in sublime rapture amidst this abundance of life, suffering and delight, listening to a far-off, melancholy song which tells of the Mothers of Being, whose names are Delusion, Will, Woe. -
Yes, my friends, join me in my faith in this Dionysiac life and the rebirth of tragedy. The age of Socratic man is past: crown yourselves with ivy, grasp the thyrsus and do not be amazed if tigers and panthers lie down fawning at your feet. Now dare to be tragic men, for you will be redeemed. You shall join the Dionysiac procession from India to Greece! Gird yourselves for a hard battle, but have faith in the miracles of your god!”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Birth of Tragedy

Aber wie verändert sich plötzlich jene eben so düster geschilderte Wildniss unserer ermüdeten Cultur, wenn sie der dionysische Zauber berührt! Ein Sturmwind packt alles Abgelebte, Morsche, Zerbrochne, Verkümmerte, hüllt es wirbelnd in eine rothe Staubwolke und trägt es wie ein Geier in die Lüfte. Verwirrt suchen unsere Blicke nach dem Entschwundenen: denn was sie sehen, ist wie aus einer Versenkung an's goldne Licht gestiegen, so voll und grün, so üppig lebendig, so sehnsuchtsvoll unermesslich. Die Tragödie sitzt inmitten dieses Ueberflusses an Leben, Leid und Lust, in erhabener Entzückung, sie horcht einem fernen schwermüthigen Gesange - er erzählt von den Müttern des Seins, deren Namen lauten: Wahn, Wille, Wehe.
Ja, meine Freunde, glaubt mit mir an das dionysische Leben und an die Wiedergeburt der Tragödie. Die Zeit des sokratischen Menschen ist vorüber: kränzt euch mit Epheu, nehmt den Thyrsusstab zur Hand und wundert euch nicht, wenn Tiger und Panther sich schmeichelnd zu euren Knien niederlegen. Jetzt wagt es nur, tragische Menschen zu sein: denn ihr sollt erlöst werden. Ihr sollt den dionysischen Festzug von Indien nach Griechenland geleiten! Rüstet euch zu hartem Streite, aber glaubt an die Wunder eures Gottes!
Source: The Birth of Tragedy (1872), p. 98

Life, Men, God, Lie

“When you find yourself in need of spiritual nourishment, it is in the opportunities to serve others that you will find the abundance you seek.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 73

Graduation

“There is a completely different way of stooping to the small, the lowly, and the common, even though it may seem almost the same. Here love does not spring from an abundance of vital power, from firmness and security. Here it is only a euphemism for escape, for the inability to “remain at home” with oneself (chez soi). Turning toward others is but the secondary consequence of this urge to flee from oneself. … Modern philosophical jargon has found a revealing term for this phenomenon, one of the many modern substitutes for love: “altruism.” This love is not directed at a previously discovered positive value, nor does any such value flash up in the act of loving: there is nothing but the urge to turn away from oneself and to lose oneself in other people’s business. We all know a certain type of man frequently found among socialists, suffragettes, and all people with an ever-ready “social conscience”—the kind of person whose social activity is quite clearly prompted by inability to keep his attention focused on himself, on his own tasks and problems.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1961), pp. 95-96

Love, People, Way, Home

“Saint Francis of Assisi… felt called to care for all that exists. His disciple Saint Bonaventure tells us that, “from a reflection on the primary source of all things, filled with even more abundant piety, he would call creatures, no matter how small, by the name of ‘brother’ or ‘sister’”. Such a conviction cannot be written off as naive romanticism, for it affects the choices which determine our behaviour. If we approach nature and the environment without this openness to awe and wonder, if we no longer speak the language of fraternity and beauty in our relationship with the world, our attitude will be that of masters, consumers, ruthless exploiters, unable to set limits on their immediate needs. By contrast, if we feel intimately united with all that exists, then sobriety and care will well up spontaneously. The poverty and austerity of Saint Francis were no mere veneer of asceticism, but something much more radical: a refusal to turn reality into an object simply to be used and controlled.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

§ 11
2010s, 2015, Laudato si' : Care for Our Common Home

World, Beauty, Feeling, Nature

“There are two fundamentally different ways for the strong to bend down to the weak, for the rich to help the poor, for the more perfect life to help the “less perfect.” This action can be motivated by a powerful feeling of security, strength, and inner salvation, of the invincible fullness of one’s own life and existence. All this unites into the clear awareness that one is rich enough to share one’s being and possessions. Love, sacrifice, help, the descent to the small and the weak, here spring from a spontaneous overflow of force, accompanied by bliss and deep inner calm. Compared to this natural readiness for love and sacrifice, all specific “egoism,” the concern for oneself and one’s interest, and even the instinct of “self-preservation” are signs of a blocked and weakened life. Life is essentially expansion, development, growth in plenitude, and not “self-preservation,” as a false doctrine has it. Development, expansion, and growth are not epiphenomena of mere preservative forces and cannot be reduced to the preservation of the “better adapted.” … There is a form of sacrifice which is a free renunciation of one’s own vital abundance, a beautiful and natural overflow of one’s forces. Every living being has a natural instinct of sympathy for other living beings, which increases with their proximity and similarity to himself. Thus we sacrifice ourselves for beings with whom we feel united and solidary, in contrast to everything “dead.” This sacrificial impulse is by no means a later acquisition of life, derived from originally egoistic urges. It is an original component of life and precedes all those particular “aims” and “goals” which calculation, intelligence, and reflection impose upon it later. We have an urge to sacrifice before we ever know why, for what, and for whom! Jesus’ view of nature and life, which sometimes shines through his speeches and parables in fragments and hidden allusions, shows quite clearly that he understood this fact. When he tells us not to worry about eating and drinking, it is not because he is indifferent to life and its preservation, but because he sees also a vital weakness in all “worrying” about the next day, in all concentration on one’s own physical well-being. … all voluntary concentration on one’s own bodily wellbeing, all worry and anxiety, hampers rather than furthers the creative force which instinctively and beneficently governs all life. … This kind of indifference to the external means of life (food, clothing, etc.) is not a sign of indifference to life and its value, but rather of a profound and secret confidence in life’s own vigor and of an inner security from the mechanical accidents which may befall it. A gay, light, bold, knightly indifference to external circumstances, drawn from the depth of life itself—that is the feeling which inspires these words! Egoism and fear of death are signs of a declining, sick, and broken life. …
This attitude is completely different from that of recent modern realism in art and literature, the exposure of social misery, the description of little people, the wallowing in the morbid—a typical ressentiment phenomenon. Those people saw something bug-like in everything that lives, whereas Francis sees the holiness of “life” even in a bug.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1961), pp. 88-92

Love, Life, Death, People

“It is reported, that some merchants, having just arrived at Rome on a certain day, exposed many things for sale in the marketplace, and abundance of people resorted thither to buy: Gregory himself went with the rest, and, among other things, some boys were set to sale, their bodies white, their countenances beautiful, and their hair very fine. Having viewed them, he asked, as is said, from what country or nation they were brought? and was told, from the island of Britain, whose inhabitants were of such personal appearance.”
Dicunt quia die quadam cum, advenientibus nuper mercatoribus, multa venalia in forum fuissent conlata, multi ad emendum confluixissent, et ipsum Gregorium inter alios advenisse, ad vidisse inter alia pueros venales positos candidi corporis ac venusti vultus, capillorum quoque forma egregia. Quos cum adspiceret interrogavit, ut aiunt, de qua regione vel terra essent adlati. Dictumque est quia de Britannia insula, cuius incolae talis essent aspectus.

Bede book Ecclesiastical History of the English People

Book II, chapter 1
Bede's source for this story is an anonymous Life of Gregory the Great, written by a monk of Whitby Abbey.
Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People)

People, Beauty, Boy, Appearance

“I would like the angels of Heaven to be among us.
I would like an abundance of peace.”

Brigit of Kildare (451–525) Irish abbess and saint

Prayer traditionally attributed to St. Brigit, as quoted in Prayers of the Saints: An Inspired Collection of Holy Wisdom (1996), by Woodeene Koenig-Bricker, p. 77
Context: I would like the angels of Heaven to be among us.
I would like an abundance of peace.
I would like full vessels of charity.
I would like rich treasures of mercy.
I would like cheerfulness to preside over all.
I would like Jesus to be present.
I would like the three Marys of illustrious renown to be with us.
I would like the friends of Heaven to be gathered around us from all parts.
I would like myself to be a rent payer to the Lord; that I should suffer distress, that he would bestow a good blessing upon me.
I would like a great lake of beer for the King of Kings.
I would like to be watching Heaven's family drinking it through all eternity.

Peace, Angels

“We have abundant reason to rejoice, that, in this land, the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition, and that every person may here worship God according to the dictates of his own heart.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Letter to the members http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=mgw2&fileName=gwpage039.db&recNum=111 of The New Church in Baltimore (22 January 1793), published in The Writings Of George Washington (1835) by Jared Sparks, p. 201 1790s Context: We have abundant reason to rejoice, that, in this land, the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition, and that every person may here worship God according to the dictates of his own heart. In this enlightened age, & in this land of equal liberty, it is our boast, that a man's religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the laws, nor deprive him of the right of attaining & holding the highest offices that are known in the United States. Your prayers for my present and future felicity are received with gratitude; and I sincerely wish, Gentlemen, that you may in your social and individual capacities taste those blessings, which a gracious God bestows upon the righteous.

God, Truth, Light, Heart

“It is a pity that you students aren't fully aware of the luxury and abundance in which you live.”

Hermann Hesse book The Glass Bead Game

The Glass Bead Game (1943)
Context: It is a pity that you students aren't fully aware of the luxury and abundance in which you live. But I was exactly the same when I was still a student. We study and work, don't waste much time, and think we may rightly call ourselves industrious — but we are scarcely conscious of all we could do, all that we might make of our freedom. Then we suddenly receive a call from the hierarchy, we are needed, are given a teaching assignment, a mission, a post, and from then on move up to a higher one, and unexpectedly find ourselves caught in a network of duties that tightens the more we try to move inside it. All the tasks are in themselves small, but each one has to be carried out at its proper hour, and the day has far more tasks than hours. That is well; one would not want it to be different. But if we ever think, between classroom, archives, secretariat, consulting room, meetings, and official journeys — if we ever think of the freedom we possessed and have lost, the freedom for self-chosen tasks, for unlimited, far-flung studies, we may well feel the greatest yearning for those days, and imagine that if we ever had such freedom again we would fully enjoy its pleasures and potentialities.

“Repeal the Missouri Compromise — repeal all compromises — repeal the Declaration of Independence — repeal all past history, you still can not repeal human nature. It still will be the abundance of man's heart, that slavery extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1850s, Speech at Peoria, Illinois (1854)
Context: Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature — opposition to it, in his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely, as slavery extension brings them, shocks, and throes, and convulsions must ceaselessly follow. Repeal the Missouri Compromise — repeal all compromises — repeal the Declaration of Independence — repeal all past history, you still can not repeal human nature. It still will be the abundance of man's heart, that slavery extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak.

History, Nature, Past, Heart

“A collectivist-totalitarian economic system, which in the final analysis serves only to glorify and increase the power of the state, can achieve great success in the easily controllable field of the basic industries but it will always remain incapable of serving man, in other words of providing the rich abundance of goods which gives the individual consumer a free choice and which enriches and beautifies his life.”

Ludwig Erhard (1897–1977) German politician

The Economics of Success (D. van Nostrand & Co., 1963), p. 281

Life, Success

“As we enhance the lives of others, protect our environment, and work toward abundance, all our lives can become richer and more secure. If these values were put into practice, it would enable all of us to achieve a much higher standard of living within a relatively short period of time; a standard of living that would be continuously improved.”

Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) American futurist and self-described social engineer

Designing the Future (2007)

Time

“I would like the angels of Heaven to be among us.
I would like an abundance of peace.
I would like full vessels of charity.
I would like rich treasures of mercy.
I would like cheerfulness to preside over all.
I would like Jesus to be present.
I would like the three Marys of illustrious renown to be with us.
I would like the friends of Heaven to be gathered around us from all parts.
I would like myself to be a rent payer to the Lord; that I should suffer distress, that he would bestow a good blessing upon me.
I would like a great lake of beer for the King of Kings.
I would like to be watching Heaven's family drinking it through all eternity.”

Brigit of Kildare (451–525) Irish abbess and saint

Prayer traditionally attributed to St. Brigit, as quoted in Prayers of the Saints: An Inspired Collection of Holy Wisdom (1996), by Woodeene Koenig-Bricker, p. 77

Family, Peace, Angels, Drink

“I found abundant “mental sunshine,” which bathed all the gray world suddenly in the clear light of reason and understanding. Word after word, sentence after sentence stabbed into the darkness like thunderclaps and lightningbolts of revelation, tearing and ripping away the cobwebs of more than thirty years of darkness, brilliantly illuminating the mysteries of the heretofore impenetrable murk in a world gone mad.”

George Lincoln Rockwell (1918–1967) American politician, founder of the American Nazi Party

As quoted by George P. Thayer in The Further Shores of Politics: The American Political Fringe Today, 2d ed. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968), p. 27.
undated

World, Understanding, Light, Madness

“When you walk though a forest that has not been tamed and interfered with by man, you will see not only abundant life around you, but you will also encounter fallen trees and decaying trunks, rotting leaves and decomposing matter at every step.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: Stillness Speaks (2003), Ch 9

Tree, Life

“If there was an abundance of misery in the world, there was also sufficient joy, yes - as long as one knew where to look for it.”

Rohinton Mistry A Fine Balance

Source: A Fine Balance

World, Joy

“And life goes on, which seems kind of strange and cruel when you're watching someone die. But there's a joy and an abundance of everything, like information and laughter and summer weather and so many stories.”

Melina Marchetta book On the Jellicoe Road

Source: On the Jellicoe Road

Life, Laughter, Joy, Summer

“We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness.
We are monkeys with money and guns.”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

Interview All Songs Considered, NPR, May 20, 2008

Money, Happiness, Wealth, Knowledge

“And the gentleness that comes,
not from the absence of violence, but despite
the abundance of it.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Source: Crush

“Now, 75 years [after], in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books.

[Open Letter,, July 2006]”

Harper Lee (1926–2016) American author

People, Books

“Doing what you love is the cornerstone of having abundance in your life.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

Love, Life

“Frey was the god of spring and summer! read the caption. He was the god of wealth, abundance, and fertility. His twin sister, Freya, the goddess of love, was very pretty! She had cats!”

Rick Riordan book The Sword of Summer

Source: The Sword of Summer

Love, God, Spring, Cats

“At the most difficult moments of my life, when it seemed that every door was closed to me, the taste of those apricots comes back to comfort me with the notion that abundance is always within reach, if only one knows how to find it.”

Isabel Allende book Paula

Source: Paula

Life

“When you are grateful, fear disappears and abundance appears.”

Anthony Robbins (1960) Author, actor, professional speaker

Fear, Appearance

“… he had long decided that abundant laughter should be the embellishment of the remainder of his days.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

Laughter

“Instead of focusing on the world's problems, give your attention and energy to trust, love, abundance, education and peace.”

Rhonda Byrne book The Secret

Source: The Secret

Love, World, Education, Peace

“In this abundant earth no doubt
Is little room for things worn out:
Disdain them, break them, throw them by!
And if before the days grew rough
We once were lov'd, us'd -- well enough,
I think, we've far'd, my heart and I.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) English poet, author

Thinking, Heart

“Whatever you focus upon, increases…… When you focus on the things you need, you'll find those needs increasing…… A grateful perspective brings happiness and abundance into a person's life.”

Andy Andrews (1959) author and corporate speaker

Life, Personality, Happiness

“We have advantages. We have a cushion to fall back on. This is abundance. A luxury of place and time. Something rare and wonderful. It's almost historically unprecedented. We must do extraordinary things. We have to. It would be absurd not to.”

Dave Eggers book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Source: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Time

“I dreamt a limitless book,
A book unbound,
Its leaves scattered in fantastic abundance
On every line there was a new horizon drawn,
New heavens supposed;
New states, new souls.”

Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist

Books, Soul

“We have not touched the stars,
nor are we forgiven, which brings us back
to the hero’s shoulders and the gentleness that comes,
not from the absence of violence, but despite
the abundance of it.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Source: Crush

Star

“If it’s not meeting a need, turn it into a seed. Remember, we will reap what we sow. When you do good for other people, that’s when God is going to make sure that His abundant blessings overtake you.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

God, People

“The good news is that the moment you decide that what you know is more important than what you have been taught to believe, you will have shifted gears in your quest for abundance. Success comes from within, not from without.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Success, Success

“Let us remember that animals are not mere resources for human consumption. They are splendid beings in their own right, who have evolved alongside us as co-inheritors of all the beauty and abundance of life on this planet”

Marc Bekoff (1945) American biologist

Source: Animals Matter: A Biologist Explains Why We Should Treat Animals with Compassion and Respect

Life, Beauty, Animals

“As the Creator and Preserver of men, Thou art gloriously manifest; butO! how much more gloriously art Thou revealed as reconciling ungrateful enemies to Thyself by the blood of Thy eternal Son. Here Thy beneficence displays its brightest splendor; here Thou dost fully display Thy most magnificent titles; THE LORD, THE LORD GOD, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness. How unsearchable are Thy ways, and Thy paths past finding out!”

Elizabeth Rowe (1674–1737) poet and writer

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 272.

Men, God, Art, Way

“The apostle Paul is abundant in teaching, that 'we are justified by faith alone, without the works of the law!' There is no one doctrine that he insists so much upon, and that he handles with so much distinctness, explaining, giving reasons, and answering objections.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

Justification By Faith Alone (1738)

Faith, Law

“Fools make researches and wise men exploit them—that is our earthly way of dealing with the question, and we thank Heaven for an assumed abundance of financially impotent and sufficiently ingenious fools.”

H. G. Wells book A Modern Utopia

Source: A Modern Utopia (1905), Ch. 2, sect. 5

Men, Fools, Way, Question

“True and constant vigour of body is the effect of health, which is much better preserved with watery, herbaceous, frugal, and tender food, than with vinous, abundant, hard, and gross flesh. And in a sound body, a clear intelligence, and desire to suppress the mischievous inclinations, and to conquer the irrational passions, produces true worth.”

Antonio Cocchi (1695–1758) Italian physician and naturalist

The Pythagorean Diet: for the Use of the Medical Faculty

Health, Food, Intelligence, Passion

“For those who labor, I propose to improve unemployment insurance, to expand minimum wage benefits, and by the repeal of section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act to make the labor laws in all our states equal to the laws of the 31 states which do not have tonight right-to-work measures. And I also intend to ask the Congress to consider measures which, without improperly invading state and local authority, will enable us effectively to deal with strikes which threaten irreparable damage to the national interest. The third path is the path of liberation. It is to use our success for the fulfillment of our lives. A great nation is one which breeds a great people. A great people flower not from wealth and power, but from a society which spurs them to the fullness of their genius. That alone is a Great Society. Yet, slowly, painfully, on the edge of victory, has come the knowledge that shared prosperity is not enough. In the midst of abundance modern man walks oppressed by forces which menace and confine the quality of his life, and which individual abundance alone will not overcome. We can subdue and we can master these forces—bring increased meaning to our lives—if all of us, government and citizens, are bold enough to change old ways, daring enough to assault new dangers, and if the dream is dear enough to call forth the limitless capacities of this great people.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Life, People, Law, Dreams

“For the first time, we saw everything they could bring to the battle. And it was… nothing. Not even a fizzle. All they can say is "thief, we have our rights, we want our rights, nothing must change, we want more money, thief, thief, thief". And shove some poor artists in front of them to deliver the message. Whereas we are talking about scarcity vs. abundance, monopolies, the nature of property, 500-year historical perspectives on culture and knowledge, incentive structures, economic theory, disruptive technologies, etc. The difference in intellectual levels between the sides is astounding.”

Rickard Falkvinge (1972) former head of the Swedish Pirate Party

P2P Consortium Interview http://www.p2pconsortium.com/index.php?showtopic=15274 (January 12, 2008)

Money, Nature, Knowledge, Change

“Americans cleave to the things of this world as if assured that they will never die,… They clutch everything but hold nothing fast, and so lose grip as they hurry after some new delight. An American will build a house in which to pass his old age and sell it before the roof is on; he will plant a garden and rent it just as the trees are coming into bearing; he will clear a field and leave others to reap the harvest; he will take up a profession and leave it, settle in one place and soon go off elsewhere with his changing desires. If his private business allows him a moment’s relaxation, he will plunge at once into the whirlpool of politics. Then, if at the end of a year crammed with work he has a little spare leisure, his restless curiosity goes with him traveling up and down the vast territories of the United States. Thus he will travel five hundred miles in a few days as a distraction from his happiness. Death steps in in the end and stops him before he has grown tired of this futile pursuit of that complete felicity which always escapes him. At first sight there is something astonishing in this spectacle of so many lucky men restless in the midst of abundance. But it is a spectacle as old as the world; all that is new is to see a whole people performing in it.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Book Two, Chapter XIII.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Two

Death, Men, People, Age

“Religious values tend to be especially deeply held and hence frequent cause of disastrous behaviour. […] The modern world provides us with abundant secular examples of admirable values to which we cling under conditions where those values no longer make sense […] It appears to me that much of the rigid opposition to environmental concerns in the First World nowadays involves values acquired early in life and never again reexamined […].”

Jared Diamond book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Source: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005), Chapter "Why do some societies make disastrous decisions", section "Disastrous values" (Penguin Books, 2011, pages 432-433, ISBN 978-0-241-95868-1.

Life, World, Sense, Appearance

“A common habit of thought… is the idea that space is [a] simple receptacle in which bodies move around, with no two bodies present at the same point. …In modern quantum physics generally, and in the standard model of fundamental physics in particular, physical space appears as a far more flexible framework. Many kinds of particles can be present at the same point in space at the same time. Indeed, the primary ingredients of the standard model are not particles at all, but an abundance of quantum fields, each a complex object in itself, and all omnipresent.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

"Multiversality" (2013)

Idea, Appearance, Time

“We live in a time when automation is ushering in a second industrial revolution, and the powers of the atom are about to be harnessed for ever greater production. We live at a time when even the ancient spectre of hunger is vanishing. This is the age of abundance! Never in history has there been such an opportunity to show what we can do to improve the quality of living now that the old, terrible, grinding anxieties of daily bread, of shelter and raiment are disappearing.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Statement at the Democratic National Convention, as quoted in Best Quotes of '54, '55, '56 (1957) edited by James Beasley Simpson, p. 58; later published in The New America (1957), p. 7

Hunger, Age, History, Time

“To the sane and free it will hardly seem necessary to cross the continent in search of wild beauty, however easy the way, for they find it in abundance wherever they chance to be.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Source: 1900s, Our National Parks (1901), chapter 1: The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West

Beauty, Way, Search, Chance

“Why should inspiration be limited to one past age? If Truth came to Paul 1900 years ago it can come to you today. After all, Heaven is as near to-day, God is as loving and as kind to-day, and truth as abundant to-day, as in the ages when men are said to have possessed inspiration.”

Benjamin Fish Austin (1850–1933) Nineteenth-century Canadian educator/Methodist Minister/Spiritualist

Sermon (1899)

Love, Men, God, Truth

“Money is a singular thing. It ranks with love as man's greatest source of joy. And with death as his greatest source of anxiety. Over all history it has oppressed nearly all people in one of two ways: either it has been abundant and very unreliable, or reliable and very scarce.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

Source: The Age of Uncertainty (1977), Chapter 6, p. 161

Love, Death, Money, People

“.. and the first thing for he artists [of Die Brücke ] was free drawing from the free human figure in the freedom of nature... We drew and we painted. Hundreds of paintings a day, with talk and fooling in between, the artists joining the models before the easel and vice versa. All the encounters of everyday life were incorporated in our memories in this way. The studio became the home of the people who were being drawn; they learned from the artists and the painters from them. The picture [ made] took on immediate and abundant life.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

Quote from Kirchner's Diary, 1923; as cited in Expressionism, de:Wolf-Dieter Dube; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 28-29
1920's

Life, People, Fools, Way

“Broadly, the Long Tail is about abundance. Abundant shelf space, abundant distribution, abundant choice.”

Chris Anderson book The Long Tail

Source: The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More (2006), Ch. 8, p. 143

“I now have an abundance of models. Every woman I address on the street understands me pretty well. I never experienced anything like that, otherwise they always called me names. It is horrible that I don't have anyone [in Amsterdam] like you, because the only good I have heard about my works came from you. So visit me often.”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

translation from the original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner's brief, in het Nederlands:) Ik heb tegenwoordig een zee van modellen. Iedere vrouw die ik op straat aanspreek, vat het nogal goed op. Ik heb nog nooit zoo iets bijgewoond, anders schelden ze me altijd uit ‘t is toch naar dat ik niemand heb, eigenlijk zooals jij, want het enige goed dat ik gehoord heb, over mijn werken is van jou geweest. Kom dus maar dikwijls over. quote of Breitner in a letter to his friend Herman van der Weele, Amsterdam, 14 June 1893, original text in RKD-Archive, The Hague https://rkd.nl/explore/excerpts/54 1890 - 1900

Understanding

“Worship is not the abundance of prayer and fasting; rather it is the abundance of reflecting on the affairs of God, the Great and Almighty.”

Ali al-Rida (770–818) eighth of the Twelve Imams

Tabatabaei, Al-Mīzān, vol.8, p. 369 ; Muhammad al-Hur al-Aamili, Wasā'il al-Shī‘ah vol.11, p. 16.
Religious Wisdom

God

“In regard to creeds and faiths, the condition is no better, and no worse. Differences both as to race and to religion are evidently more likely to increase than to diminish. We stand between the populous shores of two great oceans. Our land is capable of supporting one-fifth of all the globe. Here, labor is abundant and better renumerated than any where else. All moral, social and geographical causes conspire to bring to us the peoples of all other over populated countries.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

People, Faith, Religion, Support

“The number of compound nebulæ… being so considerable, it will follow, that if they owe their origin to the breaking up of some former extensive nebulosities of the same nature with those which have been shewn to exist at present, we might expect that the number of separate nebulæ should far exceed the former, and that moreover these scattered nebulas should be found not only in great abundance, but also in proximity or continuity with each other… Now this is exactly what by observation, we find to be the state of the heavens.”

William Herschel (1738–1822) German-born British astronomer, technical expert, and composer

p, 125
Astronomical Observations relating to the Construction of the Heavens... (1811)

Nature

“Learn to live in harmony with each other and nature. Living a thoroughly loving joyous abundant life is your god given right. Nature is abundant. Live according to the universal law, universal principles such as Brother/Sisterly Love, Universal Peace, Individual Freedom and Prosperity for all.”

James Gilliland (1952) American academic and author

Source: Mayan Majix, Comment on Recent Extra Terrestrial Activity http://www.mayanmajix.com/art4538.html

Love, Life, God, Peace

“A people under the menace of war and of invasion is very easy to govern. It does not claim social reforms, it does not cavil over armaments or military equipment. It pays without haggling, it ruins itself at it, and that is excellent for the syndicates, the financiers, and the heads of industry to whom patriotic terrors open an abundant source of gain.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

[1914-01-22, Anatole France on Education. Speech at the Inauguration of the Education Part of the Socialist "Maison de Peuple," at Brussels, Translated for "The New Age" by Leonard J. Simons, The New Age (Volume 14, Number 12), 363, http://www.modjourn.org/render.php?id=1165338028234375&view=mjp_object, Modernist Journals Project, 2017-01-04]

War, People

“Returning to the moon is an important step for our space program. Establishing an extended human presence on the moon could vastly reduce the costs of further space exploration, making possible ever more ambitious missions. Lifting heavy spacecraft and fuel out of the Earth's gravity is expensive. Spacecraft assembled and provisioned on the moon could escape its far lower gravity using far less energy, and thus, far less cost. Also, the moon is home to abundant resources. Its soil contains raw materials that might be harvested and processed into rocket fuel or breathable air. We can use our time on the moon to develop and test new approaches and technologies and systems that will allow us to function in other, more challenging environments. The moon is a logical step toward further progress and achievement.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Speech on new space exploration initiatives http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2004/01/20040114-3.html (January 14, 2004) 2000s, 2004

Home, Time

“"There is more joy in giving than in receiving." Never doubt the truth of our Lord's promise that whatever we give him of our creativity, our resources, our persons, will come back to us in abundance.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

2008, Closing Mass (19 July 2008)

Truth, Joy, Personality

“The Saviour who flitted before the patriarchs through the fog of the old dispensation, and who spake in time past to the fathers by the prophets, articulate but unseen, is the same Saviour who, on the open heights of the gospel, and in the abundant daylight of this New Testament, speaks to us. Still all along it is the same Jesus, and that Bible is from beginning to end, all of it, the word of Christ.”

James Hamilton (1814–1867) Scottish minister and a prolific author of religious tracts

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 32.

Time, Past, Christ

““One should know,” he wrote, “that jihad is an advantageous and beneficial institution. Mankind derives benefits from its advantages in various ways, just like rain, the advantages of which are imparted upon both plants, animals and men.” Barelvi promised that if Muslims waged jihad, they would receive “the blessings of heaven,” including “timely downpour of rain, abundant vegetation, growth of profits and trade, absence of calamities and pestilences, growth of wealth and presence of men of learning and perfection.””

Syed Ahmad Barelvi (1786–1831) Muslim activist

Rudolph Peters, Islam and Colonialism: The Doctrine of Jihad in Modern History (Mouton Publishers, 1979) 47, Quoted from Spencer, Robert (2018). The history of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS.

Men, Way, Learning, Time

“It is a major defect of our present organized system and the economy of abundance that, without providing great goals, it has taken away some of the important real necessities, leaving people with nothing to do.
The void is soon filled. Behavior like going into debt on the installment plan, gives an artificial but then real necessity, something to do, paying up. This is the Rat Race, but I doubt that it would be run if people did not need its justifying necessity, for the commodities themselves are not that attractive.”

Paul Goodman book Growing Up Absurd

Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), p. 154.

People, Behavior

“Progress toward a more abundant material life does not come like manna from heaven, however. My message certainly is not one of complacency. The ultimate resource is people — especially skilled, spirited, and hopeful young people endowed with liberty — who will exert their wills and imaginations for their own benefit and inevitably benefit the rest of us as well.”

Julian Simon (1932–1998) American economist

"The State of Humanity: Steadily Improving," Cato Institute Policy Report, September/October 1995 http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/pr-so-js.html

Life, People, Hope, Imagination

“In my view, the best way is to go back to the basics: the values, principles, and approaches of primary health care. Abundant evidence, over decades of experience, supports this view. Countries at similar levels of socioeconomic development achieve better health outcomes for the money when services are organized according to the principles of primary health care.”

Margaret Chan (1947) Director-General of the World Health Organization

"Exclusive Interview with WHO's Dr. Margaret Chan" http://www.usaid.gov/news-information/frontlines/global-healthiraq/exclusive-interview-whos-dr-margaret-chan, April-May 2011.

Money, Health, Way, Support

“…I made the statement off and on for 10-11 years that the abundance of knowledge, the abundance of information, will not lead to certainty; it will lead to pervasive skepticism. And, folks, that's exactly what has happened. It's like this. How do you really know, there is so much out there… This abundance has led to skepticism. And then the Internet has leveled the playing field.”

Josh McDowell (1939) American writer

[Apologist Josh McDowell: Internet the Greatest Threat to Christians, Christian Post, 2011-07-16, Anugrah, Kumar, http://www.christianpost.com/news/apologist-josh-mcdowell-internet-the-greatest-threat-to-christians-52382/, 2011-10-21]

Knowledge

“Our production system takes abundant grain, which hungry people can't afford, and shrinks it into meat, which better-off people will pay for. But … our production system not only reduces abundance but actually mines the very resources on which our future food security rests.”

Frances Moore Lappé book Diet for a Small Planet

Source: Diet for a Small Planet, p. 65

People, Food, Future

“A woman is, occasionally, quite a serviceable substitute for masturbation. It takes an abundance of imagination, to be sure.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

Imagination

“Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

Life, Art, Way

“We must all begin to question the experts. They have not really been right. No abundance of material goods can compensate for the death of individuality and personal creativity.”

Coretta Scott King (1927–2006) American author, activist, and civil rights leader. Wife of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Harvard class day address (1968); published in the July 1, 1968, issue of Harvard Alumni Bulletin http://harvardmagazine.com/2011/05/coretta-scott-king-urges-students-to-speak-out-with-righteous-indignation As quoted in International Education Vol. 1, p. 26

Death, Question, Personality