Quotes about arrival
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Heinrich Himmler photo
Thomas Paine photo

“Tis surprising to see how rapidly a panic will sometimes run through a country. All nations and ages have been subject to them. Britain has trembled like an ague at the report of a French fleet of flat-bottomed boats; and in the fourteenth [sic (actually the fifteenth)] century the whole English army, after ravaging the kingdom of France, was driven back like men petrified with fear; and this brave exploit was performed by a few broken forces collected and headed by a woman, Joan of Arc. Would that heaven might inspire some Jersey maid to spirit up her countrymen, and save her fair fellow sufferers from ravage and ravishment! Yet panics, in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind soon grows through them, and acquires a firmer habit than before. But their peculiar advantage is, that they are the touchstones of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, which might otherwise have lain forever undiscovered. In fact, they have the same effect on secret traitors, which an imaginary apparition would have upon a private murderer. They sift out the hidden thoughts of man, and hold them up in public to the world. Many a disguised Tory has lately shown his head, that shall penitentially solemnize with curses the day on which Howe arrived upon the Delaware.”

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

The Crisis No. I.
1770s, The American Crisis (1776–1783)

Friedrich Nietzsche photo
José Saramago photo
Barack Obama photo

“And at some point, I know that one of my daughters will ask, perhaps my youngest, will ask, "Daddy, why is this monument here? What did this man do?" How might I answer them? Unlike the others commemorated in this place, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was not a president of the United States — at no time in his life did he hold public office. He was not a hero of foreign wars. He never had much money, and while he lived he was reviled at least as much as he was celebrated. By his own accounts, he was a man frequently racked with doubt, a man not without flaws, a man who, like Moses before him, more than once questioned why he had been chosen for so arduous a task — the task of leading a people to freedom, the task of healing the festering wounds of a nation's original sin. And yet lead a nation he did. Through words he gave voice to the voiceless. Through deeds he gave courage to the faint of heart. By dint of vision, and determination, and most of all faith in the redeeming power of love, he endured the humiliation of arrest, the loneliness of a prison cell, the constant threats to his life, until he finally inspired a nation to transform itself, and begin to live up to the meaning of its creed.
Like Moses before him, he would never live to see the Promised Land. But from the mountain top, he pointed the way for us — a land no longer torn asunder with racial hatred and ethnic strife, a land that measured itself by how it treats the least of these, a land in which strength is defined not simply by the capacity to wage war but by the determination to forge peace — a land in which all of God's children might come together in a spirit of brotherhood.
We have not yet arrived at this longed for place. For all the progress we have made, there are times when the land of our dreams recedes from us — when we are lost, wandering spirits, content with our suspicions and our angers, our long-held grudges and petty disputes, our frantic diversions and tribal allegiances. And yet, by erecting this monument, we are reminded that this different, better place beckons us, and that we will find it not across distant hills or within some hidden valley, but rather we will find it somewhere in our hearts.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Groundbreaking Ceremony (13 November 2006)
2006

Bertrand Russell photo
Oscar Wilde photo

“However, it is always nice to be expected, and not to arrive.”

Lord Goring, Act III
An Ideal Husband (1895)

Fernando Pessoa photo
Joseph Stalin photo
Bertrand Russell photo
Thomas Paine photo
Mikhail Baryshnikov photo
Frances Burney photo
Hugo Chávez photo
Bertrand Russell photo
Laozi photo

“A good traveler has no fixed plans
and is not intent upon arriving.
A good artist lets his intuition
lead him wherever it wants.
A good scientist has freed himself of concepts
and keeps his mind open to what is. Thus the Master is available to all people
and doesn't reject anyone.
He is ready to use all situations
and doesn't waste anything.
This is called embodying the light.”

Variants:
A good traveller has no fixed plan and is not intent on arriving.
As quoted in In Search of King Solomon's Mines‎ (2003) by Tahir Shah, p. 217
A true traveller has no fixed plan, and is not intent on arriving.
Source: Tao Te Ching, Ch. 27, as interpreted by Stephen Mitchell (1992)

Eckhart Tolle photo
Jerry Coyne photo
Jean Jacques Rousseau photo

“At first our pupil had merely sensations, now he has ideas; he could only feel, now he reasons. For from the comparison of many successive or simultaneous sensations and the judgment arrived at with regard to them, there springs a sort of mixed or complex sensation which I call an idea. The way in which ideas are formed gives a character to the human mind. The mind which derives its ideas from real relations is thorough; the mind which relies on apparent relations is superficial. He who sees relations as they are has an exact mind; he who fails to estimate them aright has an inaccurate mind; he who concocts imaginary relations, which have no real existence, is a madman; he who does not perceive any relation at all is an imbecile. Clever men are distinguished from others by their greater or less aptitude for the comparison of ideas and the discovery of relations between them. Simple ideas consist merely of sensations compared one with another. Simple sensations involve judgments, as do the complex sensations which I call simple ideas. In the sensation the judgment is purely passive; it affirms that I feel what I feel. In the percept or idea the judgment is active; it connects, compares, it discriminates between relations not perceived by the senses. That is the whole difference; but it is a great difference. Nature never deceives us; we deceive ourselves.”

Emile, or On Education (1762), Book III

Mark Twain photo
Howard Cosell photo
Bertrand Russell photo
Aurelius Augustinus photo

“The lust for power, which of all human vices was found in its most concentrated form in the Roman people as a whole, first established its victory in a few powerful individuals, and then crushed the rest of an exhausted country beneath the yoke of slavery.

For when can that lust for power in arrogant hearts come to rest until, after passing from one office to another, it arrives at sovereignty? Now there would be no occasion for this continuous progress if ambition were not all-powerful; and the essential context for ambition is a people corrupted by greed and sensuality.”

<p>Ipsa libido dominandi, quae inter alia uitia generis humani meracior inerat uniuerso populo Romano, postea quam in paucis potentioribus uicit, obtritos fatigatosque ceteros etiam iugo seruitutis oppressit.</p><p>Nam quando illa quiesceret in superbissimis mentibus, donec continuatis honoribus ad potestatem regiam perueniret? Honorum porro continuandorum facultas non esset, nisi ambitio praeualeret. Minime autem praeualeret ambitio, nisi in populo auaritia luxuriaque corrupto.</p>

as translated by H. Bettenson (1972), Book 1, Chapter 31, p. 42
The City of God (early 400s)

Jeremy Clarkson photo
Pliny the Younger photo

“As it is far better to excel in any single art, than to arrive only at a mediocrity in several; so on the other hand, a moderate skill in several is to be preferred, where one cannot attain to excellency in any.”
Ut satius unum aliquid insigniter facere quam plura mediocriter, ita plurima mediocriter, si non possis unum aliquid insigniter.

Pliny the Younger (61–113) Roman writer

Letter 29, 1.
Letters, Book IX

Isaac Newton photo

“Through algebra you easily arrive at equations, but always to pass therefrom to the elegant constructions and demonstrations which usually result by means of the method of porisms is not so easy, nor is one's ingenuity and power of invention so greatly exercised and refined in this analysis.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

The Mathematical Papers of Isaac Newton (edited by Whiteside), Volume 7; Volumes 1691-1695 / pg. 261. http://books.google.com.br/books?id=YDEP1XgmknEC&printsec=frontcover
Geometriae (Treatise on Geometry)

Mark Twain photo

“No accident ever comes late; it always arrives precisely on time.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2 (2013), p. 239

The Mother photo

“It seems to me that I am being born into a new life and that all the methods and habits of the past can no longer be of any use. It seems to me that what was once a result is now only a preparation … It is as if I was stripped of all my past, of my errors as well as my conquests, as if all that had disappeared to give place to one new-born whose whole existence has yet to take shape … An immense gratitude rises from my heart. I seem to have at last arrived at the threshold which I have long sought.”

The Mother (1878–1973) spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo

How she felt when she sat down at the feet of Sri Aurobindo, quoted in "Diary notes and Meeting with Sri Aurobindo" and also in The Mother (of Sri Aurobindo Ashram) Prema Nandakumar of National Book Trust, India, (1977) http://books.google.co.in/books?id=R1sqAAAAYAAJ, p. 23

Tom Selleck photo

“I was planning to go into architecture. But when I arrived [to sign up for courses], architecture was filled up. Acting was right next to it. So I signed up for acting instead.”

Tom Selleck (1945) American actor

Televised interview broadcast the day before Laguna Heat was shown on cable TV.

Bede photo

“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.

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)

Salvador Allende photo

“Cuba came from a dictatorship, and I arrived at the presidency after being senator for 25 years.”

Salvador Allende (1908–1973) Chilean physician and politician

Interview with Saul Landau (1971)
Context: I have been to Cuba many times. I have spoken many times with Fidel Castro and got to know Commander Ernesto Guevara well enough. I know Cuba's leaders and their struggle. It has been difficult to overcome the blockade. But the reality in Cuba is very different from that in Chile. Cuba came from a dictatorship, and I arrived at the presidency after being senator for 25 years.

Arthur James Balfour photo

“Everything that happened, good or bad, would subtract something from the lessening store of useful energy, till a time arrived when nothing could happen any more, and the universe, frozen into eternal repose, would for ever be as if it were not.”

Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930) British Conservative politician and statesman

Theism and humanism
Context: Everything that happened, good or bad, would subtract something from the lessening store of useful energy, till a time arrived when nothing could happen any more, and the universe, frozen into eternal repose, would for ever be as if it were not. /.../ The physical course of nature does not merely fail to indicate design, it seems loudly to proclaim its absence.

Desiderius Erasmus photo

“I have turned my entire attention to Greek. The first thing I shall do, as soon as the money arrives, is to buy some Greek authors; after that, I shall buy clothes.”
Ad Graecas literas totum animum applicui; statimque ut pecuniam accepero, Graecos primum autores, deinde vestes emam.

Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, and theologian

Letter to Jacob Batt (12 April 1500); Collected Works of Erasmus Vol 1 (1974)
Variant translation: When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.

Wilhelm Von Humboldt photo

“It is only through extremes that men can arrive at the middle path of wisdom and virtue.”

Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835) German (Prussian) philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the University of Berlin

Source: The Limits of State Action (1792), Ch. 8
Context: Setting aside the fact that coercion and guidance can never succeed in producing virtue, they manifestly tend to weaken power; and what are tranquil order and outward morality without true moral strength and virtue? Moreover, however great an evil immorality may be, we must not forget that it is not without its beneficial consequences. It is only through extremes that men can arrive at the middle path of wisdom and virtue.

Hermann Hesse photo

“Desire to sleep has vanished now,
Spring has arrived in the night
In the wake of a storm.”

Source: Gertrude (1910), p. 164
Context: The south winds roars at night,
Curlews hasten in their flight,
The air is damp and warm.
Desire to sleep has vanished now,
Spring has arrived in the night
In the wake of a storm.

Rainer Maria Rilke photo

“You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start,
I don't even know what songs
would please you.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

You Who Never Arrived (as translated by Stephen Mitchell) (1913-1914)
Context: You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start,
I don't even know what songs
would please you. I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of the next
moment.

Horace Mann photo

“Every school boy and school girl who has arrived at the age of reflection ought to know something about the history of the art of printing”

Horace Mann (1796–1859) American politician

"Printing and Paper Making" in The Common School Journal Vol. V, No. 3 (1 February 1843)
Context: Every school boy and school girl who has arrived at the age of reflection ought to know something about the history of the art of printing, papermaking, and so forth. … All children will work better if pleased with their tools; and there are no tools more ingeniously wrought, or more potent than those which belong to the art of the printer. Dynasties and governments used to be attacked and defended by arms; now the attack and the defence are mainly carried on by types. To sustain any scheme of state policy, to uphold one administration or to demolish another, types, not soldiers, are brought into line. Hostile parties, and sometimes hostile nations, instead of fitting out martial or naval expeditions, establish printing presses, and discharge pamphlets or octavoes at each other, instead of cannon balls. The poniard and the stiletto were once the resource of a murderous spirit; now the vengeance, which formerly would assassinate in the dark, libels character, in the light of day, through the medium of the press.
But through this instrumentality good can be wrought as well as evil. Knowledge can be acquired, diffused, perpetuated. An invisible, inaudible, intangible thought in the silent chambers of the mind, breaks away from its confinement, becomes imbodied in a sign, is multiplied by myriads, traverses the earth, and goes resounding down to the latest posterity.

Catherine the Great photo

“The Grand Duke appeared to rejoice at the arrival of my mother and myself. I was in my fifteenth year. During the first ten days he paid me much attention. Even then and in that short time, I saw and understood that he did not care much for the nation that he was destined to rule, and that he clung to Lutheranism, did not like his entourage, and was very childish.”

Catherine the Great (1729–1796) Empress of Russia

Memoirs
Context: The Grand Duke appeared to rejoice at the arrival of my mother and myself. I was in my fifteenth year. During the first ten days he paid me much attention. Even then and in that short time, I saw and understood that he did not care much for the nation that he was destined to rule, and that he clung to Lutheranism, did not like his entourage, and was very childish. I remained silent and listened, and this gained me his trust. I remember him telling me that among other things, what pleased him most about me was that I was his second cousin, and that because I was related to him, he could speak to me with an open heart. Then he told me that he was in love with one of the Empress’s maids of honor, who had been dismissed from court because of the misfortune of her mother, one Madame Lopukhina, who had been exiled to Siberia, that he would have liked to marry her, but that he was resigned to marry me because his aunt desired it. I listened with a blush to these family confidences, thanking him for his ready trust, but deep in my heart I was astonished by his imprudence and lack of judgment in many matters.

John C. Maxwell photo
Barack Obama photo
Peter Dutton photo
Jawaharlal Nehru photo

“The conflict between capitalism and democracy is inherent and continuous; it is often hidden by misleading propaganda and by the outward forms of democracy, such as parliaments, and the sops that the owning classes throw to the other classes to keep them more or less contented. A time comes when there are no more sops left to be thrown, and then the conflict between the two groups comes to a head, for now the struggle is for the real thing, economic power in the State. When that stage comes, all the supporters of capitalism, who had so far played with different parties, band themselves together to face the danger to their vested interests. Liberals and such-like groups disappear, and the forms of democracy are put aside. This stage bas now arrived in Europe and America, and fascism, which is dominant in some form or other in mast countries, represents that stage. Labour is everywhere on the defensive, not strong enough to face this new and powerful consolidation of the forces of capitalism. And yet, strangely enough, the capitalist system itself totters and cannot adjust itself to the new world. It seems certain that even if it succeeds in surviving, it will be but another stage in the long conflict. For modern industry and modern life itself, under any form of capitalism, are battlefields where armies are continually clashing against each other.”

Glimpses of World History (1949)

Indíra Gándhí photo
Bertrand Russell photo
Karl Marx photo
Eckhart Tolle photo
Antonio Llidó photo
James I of England photo
Stanisław Lem photo
Marquis de Sade photo
Novalis photo

“Someone arrived there — who lifted the veil of the goddess, at Sais.”

Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer

But what did he see? He saw — wonder of wonders — himself.
Novalis here alludes to Plutarch's account of the shrine of the goddess Minerva, identified with Isis, at Sais, which he reports had the inscription "I am all that hath been, and is, and shall be; and my veil no mortal has hitherto raised."
Pupils at Sais (1799)

Markéta Irglová photo
Markus Zusak photo

“Trust me, though, the words were on their way, and when they arrived, Liesel would hold them in her hands like the clouds, and she would wring them out, like the rain. (p. 85)”

Variant: The words were on their way, and when they arrived, she would hold them in her hands like the clouds, and she would wring them out like the rain.
Source: The Book Thief

Eric Jerome Dickey photo
Douglas Adams photo
Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“It's a bizarre but wonderful feeling, to arrive dead center of a target you didn't even know you were aiming for.”

Lois McMaster Bujold (1949) Science Fiction and fantasy author from the USA

Cordelia's Honor (1996), "Author's Afterword"

Octavio Paz photo

“Beyond myself, somewhere,
I wait for my arrival.”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

Source: The Collected Poems, 1957-1987

Brandon Mull photo

“Try as we might to postpone them, days of reckoning inevitably arrive.”

Brandon Mull (1974) American fiction writer

Source: Keys to the Demon Prison

Gillian Flynn photo
Rick Riordan photo
Yunus Emre photo
Italo Calvino photo
Milan Kundera photo

“Forgive me," he went on. "For a long time I have had the peculiar habit of not arriving but appearing.”

Milan Kundera (1929–2023) Czech author of Czech and French literature

Source: Farewell Waltz

John Grisham photo
Marjane Satrapi photo

“Once again, I arrived at my usual conclusion: one must educate oneself.”

Marjane Satrapi (1969) Artist

Source: Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood

Suzanne Collins photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Bob Dylan photo
Karen Joy Fowler photo
Ram Dass photo
Khaled Hosseini photo
Charles Bukowski photo
Nicole Krauss photo
Haruki Murakami photo
Guy Gavriel Kay photo
Diana Gabaldon photo
Henry Miller photo
Richelle Mead photo
Paulo Coelho photo

“Sometimes, certain of God's blessings arrive by shattering all the windows. (Brida)”

Variant: Sometimes the best of gods gift's arrive by the shattering of all the window panes.
Source: Brida

Edna St. Vincent Millay photo
Augusten Burroughs photo

“Do not wait for the healing to arrive. It will never come. The holes will never leave or be filled with anything at all.

But holes are interesting things.”

Augusten Burroughs (1965) American writer

Source: This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike.

Maya Angelou photo
Cassandra Clare photo
James Baldwin photo
Anaïs Nin photo

“We all arrive on Earth with a round-trip ticket.”

Richard Paul Evans (1962) American writer

Source: The Gift

Brandon Sanderson photo

“That's the funny thing about arriving somewhere, Vin. Once you're there, the only thing you can really do is leave again”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Kelsier, Chapter 13
Source: Mistborn: The Final Empire (2006)

Thich Nhat Hanh photo

“Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow because even today I still arrive.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: Being Peace

Philip Larkin photo
T.S. Eliot photo

“And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time”

Variant: We must not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.
Source: Four Quartets

Firoozeh Dumas photo

“Ever since we had arrived in the United States, my classmates kept asking me about magic carpets.
- They don't exist-I always said. I was wrong. Magic carpets do exist. But they are called library cards.”

Firoozeh Dumas (1965) Iranian-American memoirist

Source: Laughing Without an Accent: Adventures of an Iranian American, at Home and Abroad

Pat Conroy photo