Quotes about apprehension (158 quotes, page 2)

“We are apprehensive that an ear turned to our inwardness will detect at most only meaningless murmurings, that a resort to the inner self will be a dizzying tumble into a bottomless pit. Fearing this, we anchor ourselves upon external things, we cast our lot with the fortunes of objects and events that appear to be untainted by the disease of selfhood.”

David L. Norton (1930–1995) American philosopher

Source: Personal Destinies: A Philosophy of Ethical Individualism (1976), p. 4

Fear , Disease , Appearance

“Optimism is the parent of despair, while pessimism allows the mind to accustom itself to the inevitable disappointments of human existence by degrees, just as some drugs induce a state of tolerance. Pessimists, moreover, have the better sense of humour, for they have a livelier apprehension of pretension and absurdity. In a meritocracy, furthermore, those who fail must either indulge in elaborate mental contortions to disguise reality from themselves or sink into a deep melancholy.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

British Medical Journal Views and Reviews: Desperate house calls (BMJ 2009;338:b212).

Disappointment , Optimism , Reality , Parent

“As to Bonaparte, you know what my apprehensions always were, and I can not help thinking they are in a great degree verified. For though he may, and I hope he will, trounce the Austrians…yet it is impossible to deny that he has lost, or at least risqued the losing of an opportunity. Every man has his weak side, and I have always thought Bonaparte's was the thinking Austria more inclined to peace and more to be depended upon than She is. I hope to God he will not suffer from his errour.”

Charles James Fox (1749–1806) British Whig statesman

Letter to R. Fitzpatrick (10 September 1800), quoted in L. G. Mitchell, Charles James Fox (London: Penguin, 1997), p. 168.
1800s

God , Peace , Hope , Thinking

“The tragic situation of the modern liberalised Christian mind is just that. Having accepted with fervour the moral ideal as the Divine ideal, it still remains in bondage to the old mechanical conception of the great Divine operations called Regeneration and Creation. These it still thinks, at bottom, under the category of efficient causality. It takes their names literally, in accordance with the etymology, and thus the names themselves help the evil cause of prolonging conceptions that are hostile to the dearest insights of the moral spirit quickened in the school of Christ. Eminently is this true in the case of creation, into the current conception of which, so far as I can see, there as yet enters no gleam of the change that must be made if our relations to God in the basis of existence are to be stated consistently with the independence we must have of him in the moral world. This lack of a moral apprehension of creation is as characteristic, too, of historic philosophy as it is of historic theology, or even of ordinary opinion.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Harmony of Determinism and Freedom, p.342-3

God , Hostility , World , School

“The apostle Paul … was conscious of the new in his apprehension of the gospel over against the primitive Jewish-Christian Church, and based the right of his apostolic preaching not upon human tradition, but upon the revelation of the Spirit of Christ in his heart. … The “Christ according to the Spirit,” as Paul preached him, was certainly not identical with the “Christ according to the flesh,” as he lived in the recollection of the Primitive Church. For Paul had stripped off the Jewish in this individual phenomenon, in order to bring forth and exalt as an object of faith to gentiles and Jews alike the universal religious principle alone. His Christ is the ideal Son of God, i. e. the personification of the religious idea as it lived in the soul of Jesus, of the love of God and men as it had been the impelling principle of his life-work.”

Otto Pfleiderer (1839–1908) German Protestant theologian

Source: Evolution and Theology (1900), p. 21-22.

Love , Life , Men , God

“It frequently happens that an element of the standard of living which set out with being primarily wasteful, ends with becoming, in the apprehension of the consumer, a necessary of life.”

Thorstein Veblen book The Theory of the Leisure Class

Source: The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), p. 99

Life

“One can become overwhelmed on vacation—I have become so—by thinking thoughts that are too large. There is a condition identified in psychology textbooks as the Stendhal syndrome, also called, or related to, the Jerusalem syndrome, that describes a tourist’s overwhelmed response to great works of art or to a sudden apprehension of scale, antiquity, multitude, death—the accompanying fear is of one’s insignificance, but also of squandered opportunity.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography (2013)

Death , Fear , Art , Thinking

“When one recalls the lessons of 1814, 1870 and 1914-18 it is not to be wondered at that those who dwell within daily sight of the scars due to the tearing wounds inflicted by Teutonic hands on their living land should have a natural apprehension lest the same calamities should befall again. Stripped of some of its richest provinces, Germany has still a population 50 per cent above that of France. The German is industrious, intelligent and resourceful, and although he is poor to-day such qualities soon make riches. He will therefore, so Frenchmen realise, once more become a formidable menace. The Teuton is on the French nerves. This accounts for the anxiety to keep him chained by Treaties, impoverished by levies, and overawed by armaments.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The Truth about Reparations and War-Debts (London: William Heinemann Ltd, 1932), p. 68.
Later life

Intelligence , Nature , Tear

“Do you think I take any pleasure in this dog's life, in seeing and causing death in people unknown to me, in losing friends and acquaintances daily, in seeing my reputation ceaselessly exposed to the caprices of fortune, in spending the whole year with uneasiness and apprehension, in continually risking my life and my fortune? I certainly know the value of tranquility, the charms of society, the pleasures of life, and I like to be happy as much as anybody. Although I desire all these good things, I will not buy them with baseness and infamy. Philosophy teaches us to do our duty, to serve our country faithfully at the expense of our blood and of our repose, to commit our whole being to it.”

Frederick II of Prussia (1712–1786) king of Prussia

Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano's, 1927), trans. Richard Aldington, letter 141 from Frederick to Voltaire (1759-07-02)

Life , Death , People , Pleasure

“In point of material wealth and resources, we are greatly in advance of them. The taxable property of the Confederate States cannot be less than twenty-two hundred millions of dollars! This, I think I venture but little in saying, may be considered as five times more than the colonies possessed at the time they achieved their independence. Georgia, alone, possessed last year, according to the report of our comptroller-general, six hundred and seventy-two millions of taxable property. The debts of the seven confederate States sum up in the aggregate less than eighteen millions, while the existing debts of the other of the late United States sum up in the aggregate the enormous amount of one hundred and seventy-four millions of dollars. This is without taking into account the heavy city debts, corporation debts, and railroad debts, which press, and will continue to press, as a heavy incubus upon the resources of those States. These debts, added to others, make a sum total not much under five hundred millions of dollars. With such an area of territory as we have-with such an amount of population-with a climate and soil unsurpassed by any on the face of the earth-with such resources already at our command-with productions which control the commerce of the world-who can entertain any apprehensions as to our ability to succeed, whether others join us or not?”

Alexander H. Stephens (1812–1883) Vice President of the Confederate States (in office from 1861 to 1865)

The Cornerstone Speech (1861)

World , Thinking , Time , Wealth

“He deliberately rejects the classic beauty of the form for the sake of fragility, transience or simply greater sensitivity to what is present. His work has a mockery and ironic character. He looks critically and with great apprehension at Poland, he does it from the perspective of an emigrant, from culturally and socially different Netherlands, which became a new homeland for him.”

Tomasz Vetulani (1965) Polish artist

Fred Gijbels, Curatorial text accompanying exhibition Multi-Kulti http://dom-norymberski.com/multi-kulti-wystawa/, 2018

Beauty

“Hitherto our principal difficulty has arose from a want of proper supplies of money, and from the inefficacy of that which we obtained; but now there appears a scene opening which will introduce new embarrassments. The Congress have recommended to the different States to take upon themselves the furnishing certain species of supplies for our department. The recommendation falls far short of the general detail of the business, the difficulty of ad justing which, between the different agents as well as the different authorities from which they derive their appointments, I am very apprehensive will introduce some jarring interests, many improper disputes, as well as dangerous delays. Few persons, who have not a competent knowledge of this employment, can form any tolerable idea of the arrangements necessary to give despatch and success in discharging the duties of the office, or see the necessity for certain relations and dependencies. The great exertions which are frequently necessary to be made, require the whole machine to be moved by one common interest, and directed to one general end. How far the present measures, recommended to the different States, are calculated to promote these desirable purposes, I cannot pretend to say; but there appears to me such a maze, from the mixed modes adopted by some States, and about to be adopted by others, that I cannot see the channels, through which the business may be conducted, free from disorder and confusion.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (January 1780)

Money , Idea , Business , Knowledge

“If this apprehension of the facts be correct, and the documentary evidence would appear to verify it, then certain conclusions are bound to follow. A spring will cease to flow if its source be dried up; a tree will wither if its roots be destroyed. In its main features the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man — these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and their roots in the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world. Unless the faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish. We can not continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

People , World , Faith , Spring

“I have the principles of an Englishman, and I utter them without apprehension or reserve… this is not the language of faction; let it be tried by that criterion, by which alone we can distinguish what is factious, from what is not— by the principles of the English constitution. I have been bred up in these principles, and I know that when the liberty of the subject is invaded, and all redress denied him, resistance is justifiable… the constitution has its political Bible, by which if it be fairly consulted, every political question may, and ought to be determined. Magna Charta, the Petition of Rights and the Bill of Rights, form that code which I call the Bible of the English constitution. Had some of his Majesty's unhappy predecessors trusted less to the commentary of their Ministers, and been better read in the text itself, the glorious Revolution might have remained only possible in theory, and their fate would not now have stood upon record, a formidable example to all their successors.”

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (1708–1778) British politician

Speech in the House of Lords (22 January 1770), quoted in William Pitt, The Speeches of the Right Honourable the Earl of Chatham in the Houses of Lords and Commons: With a Biographical Memoir and Introductions and Explanatory Notes to the Speeches (London: Aylott & Jones, 1848), p. 98.

Fate , Question , Reading

“In the larger view the major forces of the depression now lie outside of the United States, and our recuperation has been retarded by the unwarranted degree of fear and apprehension created by these outside forces.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

Herbert Hoover, 1874-1964 (1971)

Lie , Fear

“To ruminate upon evils, to make critical notes upon injuries, and be too acute in their apprehensions, is to add unto our own tortures, to feather the arrows of our enemies, to lash ourselves with the scorpions of our foes, and to resolve to sleep no more.”

Thomas Browne book Christian Morals

Part III, Section XII
Christian Morals (first pub. post. 1716)

Sleep , Evil

“We have all the essential elements of a high national career. The idea has been given out at the North, and even in the border States, that we are too small and too weak to maintain a separate nationality. This is a great mistake. In extent of territory we embrace five hundred and sixty-four thousand square miles and upward. This is upward of two hundred thousand square miles more than was included within the limits of the original thirteen States. It is an area of country more than double the territory of France or the Austrian empire. France, in round numbers, has but two hundred and twelve thousand square miles. Austria, in round numbers, has two hundred and forty-eight thousand square miles. Ours is greater than both combined. It is greater than all France, Spain, Portugal, and Great Britain, including England, Ireland, and Scotland, together. In population we have upward of five millions, according to the census of 1860; this includes white and black. The entire population, including white and black, of the original thirteen States, was less than four millions in 1790, and still less in 76, when the independence of our fathers was achieved. If they, with a less population, dared maintain their independence against the greatest power on earth, shall we have any apprehension of maintaining ours now?”

Alexander H. Stephens (1812–1883) Vice President of the Confederate States (in office from 1861 to 1865)

The Cornerstone Speech (1861)

Idea , Country

“I stand at the window and see a house, trees, sky.
Theoretically I might say there were 327 brightnesses and nuances of colour. Do I have "327"? No. I have sky, house, and trees. It is impossible to achieve "327 " as such. And yet even though such droll calculation were possible and implied, say, for the house 120, the trees 90, the sky 117 -- I should at least have this arrangement and division of the total, and not, say, 127 and 100 and 100; or 150 and 177.
The concrete division which I see is not determined by some arbitrary mode of organization lying solely within my own pleasure; instead I see the arrangement and division which is given there before me. And what a remarkable process it is when some other mode of apprehension does succeed! I gaze for a long time from my window, adopt after some effort the most unreal attitude possible. And I discover that part of a window sash and part of a bare branch together compose an N.”

Max Wertheimer (1880–1943) Co-founder of Gestalt psychology

Max Wertheimer (1923). "Laws of organization in perceptual forms." Translation published in W. D. Ellis (Ed.), A source book of Gestalt psychology, pp. 71–94. London, England: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1938. (Original title: Untersuchungen zur Lehre von der Gestalt II); Online http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Wertheimer/Forms/forms.htm at psychclassics.yorku.ca, accessed 03.2017.

Pleasure , Lying , Effort , Tree

“Tho none ought to conclude that their day or season of grace is quite expired, yet they ought to deeply apprehend the danger, lest it should expire before their necessary work be done and their peace made. For tho it can be of no use for them to know the former, and therefore they have no means appointed them by which to know it, 'tis of great use to apprehend the latter; and they have sufficient ground for the apprehension.”

John Howe (1630–1705) English Puritan theologian

The Redeemer's Tears Wept Over Lost Souls (1684)

Peace , Season

“His mind resembled the vast ampitheatre, the Colisæum at Rome. In the centre stood his judgement, which like a mighty gladiator, combated those apprehensions that, like the wild beasts of the Arena, were all around in cells, ready to be let out upon him. After a conflict, he drives them back into their dens; but not killing them, they were still assailing him.”

James Boswell book The Life of Samuel Johnson

Referring to Johnson (26 October 1769)
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791)

“Should the enemy make any considerable detachments from New York, a larger covering party may be necessary for the State of Connecticut, as I should have more apprehensions of their committing depredations, if they detach, than if they do not; for then they will have nothing left but to play the small game.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (November 1779)

Game

“Nearby, where the main road forked, stood an iron cross on a stone base. As the English couple watched, a mason was cutting in half a dozen fresh names. On the far side of the street, in the deep shadow of a doorway, a youngish woman in black was also watching. She was so pale they assumed at first she had some sort of wasting disease. She remained perfectly still, with one hand holding an edge of her headscarf so that it obscured her mouth. The mason seemed embarrassed and kept his back to her while he worked. After a quarter of an hour an old man in blue workman's clothes came shuffling along in carpet slippers and took her hand without a word and led her away. When the propriétaire came out he nodded at the other side of the street, at the empty space and murmured, 'Trois. Mari et deux frères,' as he set down their salads.This sombre incident remained with them as they struggled up the hill in the heat, heavy with lunch, towards the Bergerie de Tédenat. They stopped half way up in the shade of a stand of pines before a long stretch of open ground. Bernard was to remember this moment for the rest of his life. As they drank from their water bottles he was struck by the recently concluded war not as a historical, geopolitical fact but as a multiplicity, a near-infinity of private sorrows, as a boundless grief minutely subdivided without diminishment among individuals who covered the continent like dust, like spores whose separate identities would remain unknown, and whose totality showed more sadness than anyone could ever begin to comprehend; a weight borne in silence by hundreds of thousands, millions, like the woman in black for a husband and two brothers, each grief a particular, intricate, keening love story that might have been otherwise. It seemed as though he had never thought about the war before, not about its cost. He had been so busy with the details of his work, of doing it well, and his widest view had been of war aims, of winning, of statistical deaths, statistical destruction, and of post-war reconstruction. For the first time he sensed the scale of the catastrophe in terms of feeling; all those unique and solitary deaths, all that consequent sorrow, unique and solitary too, which had no place in conferences, headlines, history, and which had quietly retired to houses, kitchens, unshared beds, and anguished memories. This came upon Bernard by a pine tree in the Languedoc in 1946 not as an observation he could share with June but as a deep apprehension, a recognition of a truth that dismayed him into silence and, later, a question: what possible good could come of a Europe covered in this dust, these spores, when forgetting would be inhuman and dangerous, and remembering a constant torture?”

Ian McEwan book Black Dogs

Page 164-165.
Black Dogs (1992)

Love , Life , Death , War

“The attentive synthesis of any particular letter or figure takes an appreciable time, of the order of 100ms…If a whole row of letters is to be identified, they must be synthesized one at a time… To "identify" generally means to name, and hence to synthesize not only a visual object but a linguistic-auditory one… Hence the span of apprehension is limited to what can be synthesized, and then verbally stored.”

Ulric Neisser (1928–2012) American psychologist

Source: Cognitive Psychology, 1967, p. 103; As cited in: A.H.C. Van der Heijden (1996)

Time

“An American has a stronger sympathy with this country than any other observer, and nourished as he is in the very bosom of liberty, he cannot but be deeply afflicted to see that in almost every event, this struggle must terminate in despotism. Yet such is the melancholy spectacle, which presents itself to my mind, and with which it has long been occupied. I eanestly wish and pray, that events may prove all my reasonings to have been fallacious, and all my apprehensions vain. I am, &c.”

Gouverneur Morris (1752–1816) American politician

1790s, First Letter to Thomas Pinckney (1792)

Affliction , Country

“We were huddled in the prow of our assault craft. German shells landed in the water, but you didn't hear any noise -- just white geysers of water going up alongside. Other small ships were swamped, and several of the tanks that accompanied us foundered. There were quite a few helmets floating around in the water nearby, which increased our apprehension. The Germans were firing from the ridge. I saw the first Americans killed by rifle fire crossing the inundated area. We knew Americans could get wounded, but we didn't know that they could actually expire. We thought that was only going to happen to the enemy. It was rather a sobering sight.”

Larry LeSueur (1909–2003) American journalist

Adam Bernstein. (2003, February 7). Newsman Larry LeSueur Dies: [FINAL Edition]. The Washington Post, p. B.06. Retrieved June 21, 2011, from ProQuest National Newspapers Premier. (Document ID: 284067491), as told by LeSueur to the Washington Post in 1984.

Water

“The spider-men came first, and presented her Majesty with a table full of mathematical points, lines and figures of all sorts of squares, circles, triangles, and the like; which the Empress, notwithstanding that she had a very ready wit, and quick apprehension, could not understand; but the more she endeavoured to learn, the more was she confounded”

Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673) English aristocrat, a prolific writer, and a scientist

Description of a New World, Called The Blazing World (1666)

Men , Mathematics , Understanding , Learning

“That freedom can never be attained by a nation without suffering and sacrifice has been amply borne out by the recent tragic happenings in this subcontinent. We are in the midst of unparalleled difficulties and untold sufferings; we have been through dark days of apprehension and anguish; but I can say with confidence that with courage and self-reliance and by the Grace of God we shall emerge triumphant.”

Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876–1948) Founder and 1st Governor General of Pakistan

Speech at a rally at the University Stadium, Lahore (30 October 1947)

God , Confidence , Courage , Freedom

“Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Confidence

“True repentance has as its constituent elements not only grief and hatred of sin, but also an apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ. It hates the sin, and not simply the penalty; and it hates the sin most of all because it has discovered God's love.”

William Mackergo Taylor (1829–1895) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 506.

Love , God , Hate , Penalty

“There are three types of actions: purposeful, habitual, and gratuitous. Characters, to be immediate and apprehensible, must be presented by all three.”

Samuel R. Delany book Nova

Source: Nova (1968), Chapter 6 (p. 166)

“Beauty … is a relation, and the apprehension of it a comparison.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

"On the Origin of Beauty: A Platonic Dialogue"
Letters, etc

Beauty

“This is his [Marcus Aurelius Antoninus'] conclusion (II. 17): "What then is that which is able to conduct a man? One thing and only one, Philosophy. But this consists in keeping the divinity within a man free from violence and unharmed, superior to pains and pleasures, doing nothing without a purpose nor yet falsely and with hypocrisy, not feeling the need of another man's doing or not doing anything; and besides, accepting all that happens and all that is allotted, as coming from thence, wherever it is, from whence he himself came; and, finally, waiting for death with a cheerful mind as being nothing else than a dissolution of the elements of which every living being is compounded. But if there is no harm to the elements themselves in each continually changing into another, why should a man have any apprehension about the change and dissolution of all the elements [himself]? for it is according to nature; and nothing is evil that is according to nature."”

George Long (1800–1879) English classical scholar

The Philosophy of Antoninus

Death , Pain , Pleasure , Feeling

“There was a plea from honourable Members relating to the need for formal Gross National Product figures. Such figures are very inexact even in the most sophisticated countries I think they do not have a great deal of meaning, even as a basis of comparison between economies. That other countries make use of them is not, I think, necessarily a good reason to suppose that we need them. But, although I am not entirely clear what practical purpose they would serve in Hong Kong, I am sure they would be of interest. I suspect myself, however, that the need arises in other countries because high taxation and more or less detailed Government intervention in the economy have made it essential to be able to judge (or to hope to be able to judge) the effect of policies, and of changes in policies, on the economy. One of the honourable Members who spoke on this subject, said outright, as a confirmed planner, that he thought that they were desirable for the planning of our future economic policy. But we are in the happy position, happier at least for the Financial Secretary where the leverage exercised by Government on the economy is so small that it is not necessary, nor even of any particular value, to have these figures available for the formulation of policy. We might indeed be right to be apprehensive lest the availability of such figures might lead, by a reversal of cause and effect, to policies designed to have a direct effect on the economy. I would myself deplore this.”

John James Cowperthwaite (1915–2006) British colonial administrator

March 25, 1970, page 495.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

Hope , Exercises , Thinking , Change

“In this connection I take this occasion to state, that I was not without grave and serious apprehensions, that if the worst came to the worst, and cutting loose from the old government should be the only remedy for our safety and security, it would be attended with much more serious ills than it has been as yet. Thus far we have seen none of those incidents which usually attend revolutions. No such material as such convulsions usually throw up has been seen. Wisdom, prudence, and patriotism, have marked every step of our progress thus far. This augurs well for the future, and it is a matter of sincere gratification to me, that I am enabled to make the declaration. Of the men I met in the Congress at Montgomery, I may be pardoned for saying this, an abler, wiser, a more conservative, deliberate, determined, resolute, and patriotic body of men, I never met in my life. Their works speak for them; the provisional government speaks for them; the constitution of the permanent government will be a lasting monument of their worth, merit, and statesmanship.”

Alexander H. Stephens (1812–1883) Vice President of the Confederate States (in office from 1861 to 1865)

The Cornerstone Speech (1861)

Life , Wisdom , Men , Future

“In the rare cases where it occurs, a failure to increase one's visible consumption when the means for an increase are at hand is felt in popular apprehension to call for explanation, and unworthy motives of miserliness are imputed.”

Thorstein Veblen book The Theory of the Leisure Class

Source: The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), p. 103

Motivation , Failure

“Superstitions, and especially the early cultivation of religion, with its “fear of the Lord” and of unknown mysterious agencies, are especially potent in the development of the instinct of fear. Even the early cultivation of morality and conscientiousness, with their fears of right and wrong, often causes psychoneurotic states in later life. Religious, social, and moral taboos and superstitions, associated with apprehension of threatening impending evil, based on the fear instinct, form the germs of psychopathic affections.”

Boris Sidis (1867–1923) American psychiatrist

Source: The Causation and Treatment of Psychopathic Diseases (1916), p. 37

Life , Fear , Religion , Evil

“Thus the theme of Personal Idealism — of an eternal world of many rational beings, all self-active, all arbiters of their own destiny and so alike morally responsible, yet, in the vast round of their combinative being, all harmonised by their coexistence with God and their native attracting apprehension of God's nature — grows from one to another of the ascending evidences for it, as the book advances from the first essay to the last.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Appendix A: The Essays in their Systematic Connexion, p.387-8

God , Books , World , Nature

“You think it impossible the Convention could have a thought of war with Great Britain, and the conquest of Canada. In this point I differ from you very widely. The conduct of Great Britain, and the conduct of our States, too, was such as to keep up very serious apprehensions between the two powers. The treaty of peace was not fulfilled on either side.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Letter to Josiah Quincy (9 February 1811), Quincy. http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/adams-the-works-of-john-adams-vol-9-letters-and-state-papers-1799-1811
1810s

War , Peace , Thinking

“Truth can never suffer from argument and inquiry; but may be essentally injured by the tyrannous interference of her pretended advocates. Impede her energies by the pains and penalties of law, and, like the Fame of Virgil, she will creep along the ground, diminutive in stature, and shrunk with apprehension: give free scope to all her tendencies, and she will soon collect her might, dilate herself to the fullness of her dimensions, and reach the stars.”

Gilbert Wakefield (1756–1801) English scholar

A Letter to Sir John Scott https://books.google.com/books?id=L8NbAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA24&dq=%22Truth+can+never%22 (21 July 1798), page 24. Cf. Aeneid 4.174–177.

Pain , Truth , Law , Penalty

“For some years now the activity of the artist in our society has been trending more toward the function of the ecologist: one who deals with environmental relationships. Ecology is defined as the totality or pattern of relations between organisms and their environment. Thus the act of creation for the new artist is not so much the invention of new objects as the revelation of previously unrecognized relation- ships between existing phenomena, both physical and metaphysical. So we find that ecology is art in the most fundamental and pragmatic sense, expanding our apprehension of reality.”

Gene Youngblood book Expanded Cinema

Source: Expanded Cinema, 1970, p. 346; The Artist as Ecologist http://www.screeningthepast.com/2011/11/the-artist-as-ecologist/; Partly cited in: Derek Owens. Composition and Sustainability: Teaching for a Threatened Generation. National Council of Teachers of English, 1 jan. 2001

Art , Reality , Sense , Relation ships

“This 'wisdom' he defined as the knowledge, or science, of the truth in real things, conceiving 'science' to be a steadfast and firm apprehension of the underlying substance. and 'real things' to be those which continue uniformly and the same in the universe and never depart even briefly from their existence; these real things would be things immaterial”

Nicomachus (60–120) Ancient Greek mathematician

Commentary (p.92): Nichomacus is an idealist. He states his position in a way that recalls Plato's distinction between "that which ever exists, having no becoming" and "that which is ever becoming, never existent,"... On the one hand there are "the real things... which exist forever changeless and in the same way in the cosmos, never departing from their existence even for a brief moment," and on the other "the original eternal matter and substance" which was entirely "subject to deviation and change."
Nicomachus of Gerasa: Introduction to Arithmetic (1926)
Context: The ancients, who under the leadership of Pythagoras first made science systematic, defined philosophy as the love of wisdom... [Οἱ παλαιοὶ καὶ πρώτοι μεθοδεύσαντες ἐπιστήμην κατάρξαντος Πυθαγόρου ὡρίζοντο φιλοσοφίαν εἶναι φιλίαν σοφίας... ] This 'wisdom' he defined as the knowledge, or science, of the truth in real things, conceiving 'science' to be a steadfast and firm apprehension of the underlying substance. and 'real things' to be those which continue uniformly and the same in the universe and never depart even briefly from their existence; these real things would be things immaterial...<!--p.181

Wisdom , Truth , Knowledge , Universe

“I hadn't heard of either disco or Meco. When I was asked to listen to Meco's now-famous recording, I was a little apprehensive, wondering how a pop record could be made from "The March from Star Wars" and what it would be like. I immediately liked what I heard and sensed that a genuine communication was taking place. Meco took things forward another step by bringing Star Wars to a vast audience who otherwise would not have heard it in its original symphonic setting. I am most grateful to Meco for all of this and I am delighted that 'disco' and 'Meco' are now household words.”

John Williams (1932) American composer, conductor and pianist

John Williams, quoted in Jones, Alan and Kantonen, Jussi (1999). Saturday Night Forever: The Story of Disco, p.74. Chicago, Illinois: A Cappella Books. ISBN 1556524110.
See: Disco.

War , Star , Communication , Sense

“I have no apprehension whatsoever. I've been through this so many times.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

September 2007 interview, promoting Cassandra's Dreams http://www.film.com/play/cassandrasdreamwoodyalleninterview/16265462.
Context: I have no apprehension whatsoever. I've been through this so many times. And I found that one way or the other, your life doesn't change at all. Which is sad, in a way. Because the people love your film... nothing great happens. And people hate your film... nothing terrible happens. Many years ago, I would... I would... a film of mine would open, and it would get great reviews, and I would go down and look at the movie theater. There'd be a line around the block. And when a film is reviled, you open a film and people say "Oh, it's the stupidest thing, it's the worst movie." You think: oh, nobody's going to ever speak to you again. But, it doesn't happen. Nobody cares. You know, they read it and they say "Oh, they hated your film." You care, at the time. But they don't. Nobody else cares. They're not interested. They've got their own lives, and their own problems, and their own shadows on their lungs, and their x-rays. And, you know, they've got their own stuff they're dealing with.... So, I'm just never nervous about it.

Time

“Should the engine, to the apprehension of some, seem intricate and difficult to be worked, after all the description I have given of it in this book, yet I can, and do assure them, that the attending and working the engine is so far from being so, that it is familiar and easy to be learned by those of the meanest capacity, in a very little time; insomuch that I have boys of thirteen or fourteen years of age, who now attend and work it to perfection, and were taught to do it in a few days; and I have known some learn to work the engine in half an hour.”

Thomas Savery (1650–1715) British steam engineer

Source: The Miner's Friend; or, An Engine to Raise Water by Fire, 1702, pp. 10-11
Context: Should the engine, to the apprehension of some, seem intricate and difficult to be worked, after all the description I have given of it in this book, yet I can, and do assure them, that the attending and working the engine is so far from being so, that it is familiar and easy to be learned by those of the meanest capacity, in a very little time; insomuch that I have boys of thirteen or fourteen years of age, who now attend and work it to perfection, and were taught to do it in a few days; and I have known some learn to work the engine in half an hour. We have a proverb, that interest never lies; and I am assured that you gentlemen of the mines and collieries, when you have once made this engine familiar in your works, and to yourselves and servants; not only the profit, but abundance of other advantages and conveniences which you will find to attend your works in the use thereof, will create in you a favourable opinion of the labours of
Your real Friend and humble Servant,
THOMAS SAVERY

Books , Age , Boy , Learning

“The apprehensive faculty must be scrutinised in action.”

James Joyce book Stephen Hero

Stephen Hero (1944)
Context: Imagine my glimpses at that clock as the gropings of a spiritual eye which seeks to adjust its vision to an exact focus. The moment the focus is reached the object is epiphanised. It is just in this epiphany that I find the third, the supreme quality of beauty. … No esthetic theory, pursued Stephen relentlessly, is of any value which investigates with the aid of the lantern of tradition. What we symbolise in black the Chinaman may symbolise in yellow: each has his own tradition. Greek beauty laughs at Coptic beauty and the American Indian derides them both. It is almost impossible to reconcile all tradition whereas it is by no means impossible to find the justification of every form of beauty which has ever been adored on the earth by an examination into the mechanism of esthetic apprehension whether it be dressed in red, white, yellow or black. We have no reason for thinking that the Chinaman has a different system of digestion from that which we have though our diets are quite dissimilar. The apprehensive faculty must be scrutinised in action.

“I was on the whole much pleased, and from what I then saw, have conceived a higher opinion of the natural capacities of the black race, than I had ever before entertained. Their apprehension seems as quick, their memory as strong, and their docility in every respect equal to that of white children.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Letter to Waring (17 December 1783), after visiting a school, as quoted in [//web.archive.org/web/20131118045451/http://www.home.nas.com/lopresti/bf.htm The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin] (March 2002), by H.W. Brands, p. 355.
Context: They appeared all to have made considerable progress in reading for the time they had respectively been in the school, and most of them answered readily and well the questions of the catechism. They behaved very orderly, and showed a proper respect and ready obedience to the mistress, and seemed very attentive to, and a good deal affected by, a serious exhoration with which Mister Sturgeon concluded our visit. I was on the whole much pleased, and from what I then saw, have conceived a higher opinion of the natural capacities of the black race, than I had ever before entertained. Their apprehension seems as quick, their memory as strong, and their docility in every respect equal to that of white children.

Children , Nature , Strong , Memory

“A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.”

Aristotle book Politics

Book V,1314b.39
Politics

God , Fear , Religion , Appearance

“As I grow older I grow calm. If I feel what are perhaps an old man's apprehensions, that competition from new races will cut deeper than working men's disputes and will test whether we can hang together or can fight.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841–1935) United States Supreme Court justice

1910s, "Law and the Court" (1913)

Men , Feeling , Fight

“The restraints they may be willing to place upon themselves will always be subject to such conditions as will leave them able to afford self-protection by force, and in this freedom there is abundant room for strife sought to be justified by deep-seated convictions of national interests, by long-standing grievances by the apprehension of aggression to be forestalled.”

Charles Evans Hughes (1862–1948) American judge

The Pathway of Peace (1923)
Context: It is not surprising that many should be captivated by the proposal, with its delusive simplicity and adequacey, for the outlawry of war. War should be made a crime, and those who instigate it should be punished as criminals. The suggestion, however futile in itself, has at least the merit of bringing us to the core of the problem. Even among its sponsors appear at once the qualifications which reflect the old distinction, so elaborately argued by Grotius, between just and unjust wars. "The grounds of war," said he, " are as numerous as those of judicial actions. For where the power of law ceases, there war begins." He found the justifiable causes generally assigned for war to be three — defense, indemnity, and punishment. War is self-help, and the right to make war has been recognized as the corollary of independence, the permitted means by which injured nations protect their territory and maintain their rights. International law leaves aggrieved states who cannot obtain redress for their wrongs by peaceful means to exact it by force. If war is outlawed, other means of redress of injuries must be provided. Moreover, few, if any, intend to outlaw self-defense, a right still accorded to individuals under all systems of law. To meet this difficulty, the usual formula is limited to wars of aggression. But justification for war, as recently demonstrated, is ready at hand for those who desire to make war, and there is rarely a case of admitted aggression, or where on each side the cause is not believed to be just by the peoples who support the war.
There is a further difficulty that lies deeper. There is no lawgiver for independent States. There is no legislature to impose its will by majority vote, no executive to give effect even to accepted rules. The outlawry of war necessarily implies a self-imposed restraint, and free peoples, jealous of their national safety, of their freedom of opportunity, of the rights and privileges they deem essential to their well-being, will not forego the only sanction at their command in extreme exigencies. The restraints they may be willing to place upon themselves will always be subject to such conditions as will leave them able to afford self-protection by force, and in this freedom there is abundant room for strife sought to be justified by deep-seated convictions of national interests, by long-standing grievances by the apprehension of aggression to be forestalled. The outlawry of war, by appropriate rule of law making war a crime, requires the common accord needed to establish and maintain a rule of international law, the common consent to abandon war; and the suggested remedy thus implies a state of mind in which no cure is needed. As the restraint is self-imposed it will prove to be of avail only while there is a will to peace.

Freedom

“I leave undecided the question whether complete mutual freedom of international commerce, such as is contemplated by the theory of Free Trade, would not serve the interests of Germany. But as long as most of the countries with which our trade is carried on surround themselves with customs barriers…it does not seem to me justifiable, or to the economic interest of the nation, that we should allow ourselves to be restricted in the satisfaction of our financial wants by the apprehension that German products will thereby be slightly preferred to foreign ones. … The minority of the population, which does not produce at all, but exclusively consumes, will apparently be injured by a customs system favouring the entire national production. Yet if by means of such a system the aggregate sum of the values produced in the country increase, and thus the national wealth be on the whole enhanced, the non-producing parts of the population…will eventually be benefited.”

Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898) German statesman, Chancellor of Germany

Letter to the Bundesrath committee on tariff revision (15 December 1878), quoted in Percy Ashley, Modern Tariff History: Germany–United States–France (1970), pp. 45–46
1870s

Question , Country , Freedom , Wealth

“As one of the wealthy, with a large stake in the existing order of things, I naturally shared the apprehensions of my class. The particular grievance I had against the working classes at the time of which I write, on account of the effect of their strikes in postponing my wedded bliss, no doubt lent a special animosity to my feeling toward them.”

Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) American author and socialist

Source: Looking Backward, 2000-1887 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25439 (1888), Ch. 1.

Feeling , Time , Wedding , Nature

“When apprehensions abroad threatened the success of the Nazi regime for conquest, it was the duplicitous Ribbentrop, the salesman of deception, who was detailed to pour wine on the troubled waters of suspicion by preaching the gospel of limited and peaceful intentions.”

Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946) German general

Robert H. Jackson

Water , Peace , Wine , Success

“In the ages to come man may be able to predict, perhaps even to control, the wayward courses of the winds and the clouds, but hardly will his puny hands have strength to speed afresh our slackening planet in its orbit or rekindle the dying fire of the sun. Yet the philosopher who trembles at the idea of such distant catastrophes may console himself by reflecting that these gloomy apprehensions, like the earth and the sun themselves, are only parts of that unsubstantial world which thought has conjured up out of the void, and that the phantoms which the subtle enchantress has evoked to-day she may ban to-morrow. They too, like so much that to the common eye seems solid, may melt into air, into thin air.”

James Frazer book The Golden Bough

Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 69, Farewell to Nemi

Sun , Speed , Distant , Age

“I have the principles of an Englishman, and I utter them without apprehension or reserve…this is not the language of faction; let it be tried by that criterion, by which alone we can distinguish what is factious, from what is not—by the principles of the English constitution. I have been bred up in these principles, and I know that when the liberty of the subject is invaded, and all redress denied him, resistance is justifiable…the constitution has its political Bible, by which if it be fairly consulted, every political question may, and ought to be determined. Magna Charta, the Petition of Rights and the Bill of Rights, form that code which I call the Bible of the English constitution.”

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (1708–1778) British politician

Had some of his Majesty's unhappy predecessors trusted less to the commentary of their Ministers, and been better read in the text itself, the glorious Revolution might have remained only possible in theory, and their fate would not now have stood upon record, a formidable example to all their successors.
Speech in the House of Lords (22 January 1770), quoted in William Pitt, The Speeches of the Right Honourable the Earl of Chatham in the Houses of Lords and Commons: With a Biographical Memoir and Introductions and Explanatory Notes to the Speeches (London: Aylott & Jones, 1848), p. 98.

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