Quotes about attachment
page 3

“The 'taking love' leads to feelings of attachment, jealousy, anger, and childish self-absorption, while the 'giving love,' intrinsic in the tenets of Buddhism, encompasses the whole enjoyable realm of love, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity.”

Lama Ole Nydahl (1941) Danish lama

Buddha & Love: Timeless Wisdom for Modern Relationships (2012)

Love, Jealousy, Feeling, Joy

“Unless disputants understand the meaning attached by each other to the terms of a controversy, they may worry along indefinitely without making an inch of progress. The contending parties may think they agree on the proposition, when, as a matter of fact, their apparent agreement is due to ambiguity in the use of the terms. On the other hand, the contending parties may work themselves into a quarrel over imaginary disagreements concerning ideas, when in fact they are merely confused as to the meaning of words. Disputes which seem interminable are sometimes ended abruptly and happily upon the accidental discovery that the parties in dispute agreed all the time as to the real questions at issue, while neither side understood what the other side meant.”

William Trufant Foster (1879–1950) American economist

Source: Argumentation and debating, 1908, p. 24 ; as cited in: Branham (2013, p. 38)

Idea, Understanding, Question, Thinking

“The fact is that Christian art failed at a deeper level. It failed not in execution but in conception and vision, and this failure was at bottom failure of Christian theology in which mysticism is rudimentary and peripheral. Christian theology has no concept of transcendence, non-attachment, recollectedness, equality (samatâ), liberation (moksha), the vast (bhûmâ) and the infinite (ananta), compassion (kurunâ), of cosmic action emanating from restfulness at the centre; therefore, it felt no call to try to convey them in its art-forms. A deeper iconography needed the support of a deeper theology and vision. This explains why Christian art has no equivalents of Far Eastern Buddhas and Bodhisattvas as Huxley notices. The Eastern tradition was shaped by Hindu religious thinking and sensibility. Hindu art tried to portray the inner man: the Man behind the man, the Eye behind the eye, the Seeing behind the seeing, man's inner prânika or life-currents, the nodal points in his subtle body where the individual meets the cosmic. It portrayed man's inner physiognomy. …. But they portrayed the external man; there was no portrayal of the inner man, the luminous man, the transcendental man.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

On Hinduism (2000)

Life, Art, Failure, Support

“We must not attach knowledge to the mind, we have to incorporate it there.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book I, Ch. 25
Essais (1595), Book I

Knowledge

“Few political authors employ the term New Age anymore; however, … many use equivalents or near-equivalents such as communitarian, evolutionary, green, holistic, integral, post-socialist, radical centrist, spiritual, transformational, and transpartisan, and that's OK. Perhaps the new generation, not being ego-attached to any of these, will finally come up with a term we can all say "Aha!"”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

to.
Page 180.
New Age Politics: Our Only Real Alternative (2015)

Age

“Things. Cosas. Things attach themselves like leeches to the human soul, then they bleed out the sweetness and the music and the primordial joy of being unencumbered upon the land.”

Tom Robbins Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates

Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates (2000)

Music, Soul, Joy

“By unessential things in reference to religion I mean first of all, the miracles, to which nevertheless such particular importance is attached by the Christian religion. No one can affirm that miracles of themselves establish a single article of faith. If we granted that articles of faith carried with them conviction and inherent credibility, how should we dare to require miracles in order to believe them? If we granted that the resurrection had been proved to be true by the most undoubted and unanimous witnesses, as in all fairness it ought to be, we could surely believe it without any assistant miracle. If we granted that Christ really did return in the clouds of Heaven, as according to promise he ought to have done, we should certainly want no miracles to prove it.”

Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) German philosopher

Source: Fragments from Reimarus: Consisting of Brief Critical Remarks on the Object of Jesus and His Disciples as Seen in the New Testament, p. 69

Faith, Religion, Christ

“The Sultan then departed from the environs of the city, in which was a temple of the Hindus. The name of this place was Maharatu-l Hind. He saw there a building of exquisite structure, which the inhabitants said had been built, not by men, but by Genii, and there he witnessed practices contrary to the nature of man, and which could not be believed but from evidence of actual sight. The wall of the city was constructed of hard stone, and two gates opened upon the river flowing under the city, which were erected upon strong and lofty foundations to protect them against the floods of the river and rains. On both sides of the city there were a thousand houses, to which idol temples were attached, all strengthened from top to bottom by rivets of iron, and all made of masonry work; and opposite to them were other buildings, supported on broad wooden pillars, to give them strength.
In the middle of the city there was a temple larger and firmer than the rest, which can neither be described nor painted. The Sultan thus wrote respecting it: - "If any should wish to construct a building equal to this, he would not be able to do it without expending an hundred thousand, thousand red dinars, and it would occupy two hundred years even though the most experienced and able workmen were employed."…
The Sultan gave orders that all the temples should be burnt with naptha and fire, and levelled with the ground.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

About the capture of Mathura. Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 44-45 Also quoted (in part) in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.
Quotes from Tarikh Yamini (Kitabu-l Yamini) by Al Utbi

Men, Support, Nature, Strong

“If they will abandon the habit of mutilating, murdering, robbing, and of preventing honest persons who are attached to England from earning their livelihood, they may be sure there will be no demand for coercion. Well, you will be told you have no alternative policy. My alternative policy is that Parliament should enable the Government of England to govern Ireland. Apply that recipe honestly, consistently, and resolutely for 20 years, and at the end of that time you will find that Ireland will be fit to accept any gifts in the way of local government or repeal of coercion laws that you may wish to give her. What she wants is government—government that does not flinch, that does not vary—government that she cannot hope to beat down by agitations at Westminster—government that does not alter in its resolutions or its temperature by the party changes which take place at Westminster.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Speech to the National Union of Conservative and Constitutional Associations in St. James's Hall, London (15 May 1886), quoted in The Times (17 May 1886), p. 6. The Liberal MP John Morley responded https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1886/jun/03/tenth-night#S3V0306P0_18860603_HOC_120 by claiming that Salisbury was in favour of "20 years of coercion" for Ireland, which Salisbury contested https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1886/jun/04/personal-explanation#S3V0306P0_18860604_HOL_10. 1880s

Law, Hope, Way, Change

“There are no set forms of high treason in history; whoever provokes one power in the state to conflict with another is certainly a revolutionist, but he may at the same time be a sagacious and praiseworthy statesman. ]]*He Sertorius regarded his army as a Roman one, and filled the officers' posts, without exception, with Romans. With reference to the Spaniards he was the governor, who by virtue of his office levied troops and other support from them; but he was a governor who, instead of exercising the usual despotic sway, endeavoured to attach the provincials to Rome and to himself personally. His chivarlrous character rendered it easy for him to enter into Spanish habits, and excited in the Spanish nobility the most ardent enthusiasm for the wonderful foreigner who had a spirit so kindred with their own.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 4, Part 1. Pg.20. Translated by W.P Dickson
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 1

Exercises, History, Support, Time

“It appears that soon after the introduction of bowling-alleys they were productive of very evil consequences; for they became not only exceedingly numerous, but were often attached to places of public resort, which rendered them the receptacles of idle and dissolute persons; and were the means of promoting a pernicious spirit of gambling among the younger and most unwary part of the community. The little room required for making these bowling-alleys was no small cause of their multiplication, particularly in great towns and cities. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries these nurseries of vice were universally decried, and especially such of them as were established within the city and suburbs of London, where the ill effects arising from them were most extensive.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 269
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Bowling alleys

Communication, Universe, Appearance, Evil

“Jesus promised the resurrection of the body, not an afterlife as a disembodied consciousness. Despite this, the followers of Jesus have always disparaged the flesh. Their belief that humans are marked off from the rest of creation by having an immortal soul has led them to disown the fate they share with other animals. They cannot reconcile their attachment to the body with their hope of immortality. When the two come into conflict it is always the flesh that is left behind.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Unsaved: Gnosticism and the cybernauts
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

Fate, Hope, Soul, Animals

“The more I think about colour, the more convinced I become that this reflected half-tint is the principle that must predominate, because it is this that gives the true tone, the tone that constitutes the value, the thing that matters in giving life and character to the object. Light, to which the schools teach us to attach equal importance and which they place on the canvas at the same time as the half-tint and shadow, is really only an accident. Without grasping this principle, one cannot understand true colour, I mean the colour that gives the feeling of thickness and depth and of that essential difference that distinguishes one object from another.”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

29 April 1854 (p. 228)
1831 - 1863, Delacroix' 'Journal' (1847 – 1863)

Life, School, Feeling, Understanding

“But how does it come about, step by step, that some complex Systems actually function? This question, to which we as students of General Systemantics attach the highest importance, has not yet yielded to intensive modern methods of investigation and analysis. As of this writing, only a limited and partial breakthrough can be reported, as follows: A COMPLEX SYSTEM THAT WORKS IS INVARIABLY FOUND TO HAVE EVOLVED FROM A SIMPLE SYSTEM THAT WORKED”

John Gall (1925–2014) American physician

Source: Systemantics: the underground text of systems lore, 1986, p. 65 cited in "Quotes from Systemantics – Funny, But Scary Too" Posted on agileadvice.com March 3, 2006 by Mishkin Berteig. This quote was mentioned in General systemantics (1975, p. 71)

Question

“I was in my teens when our family faced a medical crisis. My grandfather, with whom I was very close, had a stroke and landed in the hospital. Sitting anxiously at his bedside, I watched nurses come and go, checking his vitals and looking at the monitors attached to his body. I remember sitting there wondering what could I do to make him feel better—to bring back the warm, thoughtful man I knew.”

Sanjay Gupta (1969) journalist, medical correspondent, neurosurgeon

Finding My Path in Life (2011)

Family, Feeling

“The moment that the topic of the pre-European African past is raised, many individuals are concerned for various reasons to know about the existence of African “civilizations.” Mainly, this stems from a desire to make comparisons with European “civilizations.” This is not the context in which to evaluate the so-called civilizations of Europe. It is enough to note the behavior of European capitalists from the epoch of slavery through colonialism, fascism, and genocidal wars in Asia and Africa. Such barbarism causes suspicion to attach to the use of the word “civilization” to describe Western Europe and North America.”

Walter Rodney book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 53.

War, Behavior, Past

“The words "routine analyses" are used to denote the analyses performed by laboratories, frequently attached to industrial plants, and distinguished by the following characteristics: (1) All the analyses or measurements of the same kind, for example, are designed to measure the sugar content in beets or to determine the coordinates of a star. (2) The analyses are carried out day after day using the same methods and the same instruments. (3) While all the analyses are of the same kind, the quantity n varies from time to time, where n represents some small number, 2, 3, 4, 5.”

Jerzy Neyman (1894–1981) Polish statistician

p. 46 of "On a statistical problem arising in routine analyses and in sampling inspections of mass production." http://www.jstor.org/stable/2235624 The Annals of Mathematical Statistics 12, no. 1 (1941): 46–76.

Star, Time

“I thought only of one thing, to account to myself for the laws of light and perspective. I did not attach any importance to what they found original, new and romantic in me, I sought the picture.”

Théodore Rousseau (1812–1867) French painter (1812-1867)

as quoted in Barbizon days, Millet-Corot-Rousseau-Barye by Charles Sprague Smith, A. Wessels Company, New York, July 1902, p. 141
Th. Roussseau took little part in the French art-discussions of the day between Classicists and Romanticists, in the 1830's
undated quotes

Law, Light

“Since I was a child, I’ve used my imagination to escape from life. At the same time, my imagination has plagued me with both reality-based anxieties as well as anxieties based entirely in the imagination, such as the fear of Hell I was taught to have by the Catholic Church. Paired with a talent for literary composition, a talent that it took me over ten years to refine, I became a writer of horror stories. To my mind, writing is the most important form of human expression, not only artistic writing but also philosophical writing, critical writing, etc. Art as such, especially programmatic music such as operas, seems trivial to me by comparison, however much pleasure we may get from it. Writing is the most effective way to express and confront the full range of the realities of life. I can honestly say that the primary stature I attach to writing is not self-serving. I’ve been captivated to some degree by all forms of creativity and expression—the visual arts, film, design of any sort, and especially music. In college I veered from literature to music for a few years, which is the main reason it took me six years to get an undergraduate degree in liberal arts. I’ve loved music for as long as I can remember. Since my instrument is the guitar, I know every form and style in its history and have written the classical, acoustic, and electric forms of this instrument. I think because I have had such a love and understanding of music do I realize, to my grief, its limitations. Writing is less limited in the consolations it offers to those who have lost a great deal in their lives. And it continues to console until practically everything in a person’s life has been lost. Words and what they express have the best chance of returning the baneful stare of life.”

Thomas Ligotti (1953) American horror author

Wonderbook Interview with Thomas Ligotti http://wonderbooknow.com/interviews/thomas-ligotti/

Love, Life, Pleasure, Fear

“At the same time the Sultãn thought that though ‘Sultãn Sikandar had led several expeditions for conquering the fort of Gwãlior and the country attached to it but met with no success.’ Consequently he sent ‘Ãzam Humãyûn, the governor of Karã, with 300,000 horsemen and 300 elephants for the conquest of Gwãlior… After some time the royal army laid a mine, filled it with gunpowder, and set fire to it. He entered the fort and took possession of it after the wall of the fort was breached. He saw there a bull made of brass, which the Hindûs had worshipped for years. In keeping with a royal order, the bull was brought to Delhî and placed at the Baghdãd Gate. It was still there till the reign of Akbar. The writer of this history saw it himself.”

Nizamuddin Ahmad (1551–1594) historian

Sultãn Ibrãhîm Lodî (AD 1517-1526) Gwalior (Madhya Pradesh)
Tabqãt-i-Akharî

History, Time, Success, Country

“The charge of "sentimentalism" is frequently brought against those who plead for animals' rights. Now "sentimentalism," if any meaning at all can be attached to the word, must signify an inequality, an ill balance of sentiment, an inconsistency which leads men into attacking one abuse, while they ignore or condone another where a reform is equally desirable. That this weakness is often observable among "philanthropists" on the one hand, and "friends of animals" on the other, and most of all among those acute "men of the world," whose regard is only for themselves, I am not concerned to deny; what I wish to point out is, that the only real safeguard against sentimentality is to take up a consistent position towards the rights of men and of the lower animals alike, and to cultivate a broad sense of universal justice (not "mercy") for all living things. Herein, and herein alone, is to be sought the true sanity of temperament.”

Henry Stephens Salt (1851–1939) British activist

Source: Animals' Rights, Chapter 1

Men, World, Justice, Sense

“To organize work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence.”

E. F. Schumacher book A Guide for the Perplexed

A Guide for the Perplexed

People, Soul, Evil

“In the next episode you’ll see two people draw a picture of an angel and notice when they do that they draw the angel from a particularly secular perspective. And I’m certainly not one to begin to criticise the religio-artistic viewpoint of my two charming volunteers but it does make you stop and think what spiritually vacuous times we live in when two young people instinctively draw an angel with a halo attached to the back of its head with a stick.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Other TV and web appearances, E4 Mind Control Night

People, Angels, Thinking, Time

“It is hardly possible to over-calculate the evils accruing to individuals and to society in general from this custom, gradually increasing, of late and ultra-prudent marriages. Parents bring up their daughters in luxurious homes, expecting and exacting that the home to which they transfer them should be of almost equal ease; forgetting how next to impossible it is for such a home to be offered by any young man of the present generation, who has to work his way like his father before him. Daughters, accustomed to a life of ease and laziness, are early taught to check every tendency towards "a romantic attachment" — the insane folly of loving a man for what he is, rather than for what he has got; of being content to fight the worldly battle hand-in-hand — with a hand that is worth clasping, rather than settle down in comfortable sloth, protected and provided for in all external things. Young men … But words fail to trace the lot of enforced bachelorhood, hardest when its hardship ceases to be consciously felt.”

Dinah Craik (1826–1887) English novelist and poet

Source: A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858), Ch. 10

Love, Life, Men, Marriage

“I think what I meant, particularly as a young actor, is that you really struggle with the sense of being undeserving of the attention. And you're right. It happens all the time, there's some new young actor who people are gonna put on the cover of magazines and will talk about, and all you did is say 15 lines in a movie. You know, it's not like you started Greenpeace or something. They don't even put the guys who started Greenpeace on the cover of a magazine… So you understand the sense of fraudulence, and it's attached to yourself, you know? And that's what I was struggling with.”

Ethan Hawke (1970) American actor and writer

The Observer http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2002/sep/08/fiction.features (2002-09-08) 2000&ndash;2004

People, Guy, Understanding, Thinking

“Only when we let go of attachment can we let go of the self. Free ourselves from worries. If we are constantly troubled by worries, it must be that we think too highly of ourselves.”

Jun Hong Lu (1959) Australian Buddhist leader

Quotes from Word of Wisdoms Vol.3

Thinking

“There’s a part of you that insists reality follow the same parameters it always has, even here. That attachment to the way things work in the living world precludes this kind of manipulation. I, on the other hand, had the privilege of spending a good portion of time, when I was alive, in the paroxysms of my own insanity. Rather liberating, in its own way.”

Lawrence M. Schoen (1959) American writer and klingonist

Source: Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard (2015), Chapter 8, “Venue and Vision” (p. 98)

World, Way, Reality, Time

“There was a time when philosophy might have been defined as the science of human activity, so all-comprehensive was it. The ambitious Greek who would attach his name to a philosophical system must include in his scheme all that could be known, done, and speculated about God, the world, and man. In the course of time and the specialization of the sciences this view of philosophy fell away, and was replaced by the more exact and narrower conception of modern times.”

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

" The Progress of Psychical Research http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_29/August_1886/The_Progress_of_Psychical_Research", in Popular Science Monthly (August, 1886) Vol. 29.

God, World, Science, Time

“Always, Sir, set a high value on spontaneous kindness. He whose inclination prompts him to cultivate your friendship of his own accord, will love you more than one whom you have been at pains to attach to you.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

1781, p. 479
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV

Love, Pain, Friendship

“An examination of our terms, such as competition, rivalry, emulation, etc., reveals that the traditional perspective remains inscribed in the language. Competitors are fundamentally those who run or walk together, rivals who dwell on opposite banks of the same river, etc…The modern view of competition and conflict is the unusual and exceptional view, and our incomprehension is perhaps more problematic than the phenomenon of primitive prohibition. Primitive societies have never shared our conception of violence. For us, violence has a conceptual autonomy, a specificity that is utterly unknown to primitive societies. We tend to focus on the individual act, whereas primitive societies attach only limited importance to it and have essentially pragmatic reasons for refusing to isolate such an act from its context. This context is one of violence. What permits us to conceive abstractly of an act of violence and view it as an isolated crime is the power of a judicial institution that transcends all antagonists. If the transcendence of the judicial institution is no longer there, if the institution loses its efficacy or becomes incapable of commanding respect, the imitative and repetitious character of violence becomes manifest once more; the imitative character of violence is in fact most manifest in explicit violence, where it acquires a formal perfection it had not previously possessed. At the level of the blood feud, in fact, there is always only one act, murder, which is performed in the same way for the same reasons in vengeful imitation of the preceding murder. And this imitation propagates itself by degrees. It becomes a duty for distant relatives who had nothing to do with the original act, if in fact an original act can be identified; it surpasses limits in space and time and leaves destruction everywhere in its wake; it moves from generation to generation. In such cases, in its perfection and paroxysm mimesis becomes a chain reaction of vengeance, in which human beings are constrained to the monotonous repetition of homicide. Vengeance turns them into doubles.”

René Girard book Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World

Source: Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (1978), p. 11-12.

Way, Distant, Time, Perfection

“Love is the only freedom from attachment. When you love everything, you are attached to nothing.”

Mikha'il Na'ima book The Book of Mirdad

The Book of Mirdad (1948)

Love, Freedom

“It’s six months since I did the interview with Jeremy Paxman that inspired this book, and British media today is awash with halfhearted condemnations of my observation that voting is pointless and my admission that I have never voted. My assertion that other people oughtn’t vote either was born of the same instinctive rejection of the mantle of appointed social prefect that prevents me from telling teenagers to “Just Say No” to drugs. I cannot confine my patronage to the circuitry of their minuscule wisdom. “People died so you’d have the right to vote.” No, they did not; they died for freedom. In the case where freedom was explicitly attached to the symbol of democratic rights, like female suffrage, I don’t imagine they’d’ve been so willing if they’d known how tokenistic voting was to become. Note too these martyrs did not achieve their ends by participating in a hollow, predefined ritual, the infertile dry hump of gestural democracy; they did it by direct action. Emily Davison, the hero of women’s suffrage, hurled herself in front of the king’s horses; she defied the tyranny that oppressed her and broke the boundaries that contained her. I imagine too that this woman would have had the rebellious perspicacity to understand that the system she was opposing would adjust to incorporate the female vote and deftly render it irrelevant. This woman, who left her job as a teacher to dedicate her life to activism, was imprisoned nine times. She used methods as severe and diverse as arson and hunger-striking to protest and at the time of her death would have been regarded as a terrorist.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

Life, Death, Wisdom, Women

“The only American woman deserving a place on U. S. paper currency is, of course, Anne Hutchinson, a devout 17th century Protestant New Englander who was a fearless champion of religious liberty, family, free speech, and equality — not preference — for women in religious affairs. Perhaps a new piece of currency could be created, one to which the attachment of her portrait would do honor. Ms. Hutchinson, however, is out of contention in the Democrats’ virulent anti-Southern currency crusade because her character traits – and the fifteen children she had with one husband — just do not jive with being Modern Democratic Party Women, those who glory in, and seek legal, economic, and political preference for their talents in whining, vamping, aborting, as well as recognition for their indispensable and eagerly given help in making the United States one of the world’s industrial-scale producers of both pornography and the dismembered corpses of infants. There may be something that can be done, however. The portrait of another Democratic icon named Woodrow Wilson now adorns the $100,000 bill, which appears to be to be used mainly in transactions.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

As quoted in Michael Scheuer's Non-Intervention http://non-intervention.com/1689/democrats-scourge-the-south-after-the-battle-flag-it%e2%80%99s-on-to-old-hickory/ (9 July 2015), by M. Scheuer. 2010s

Women, Children, World, Family

“I noticed long ago that Amin has the tendency to concentrate power in his own hands but I did not attach any particular significance to this. However, recently this tendency has become dangerous.”

Nur Muhammad Taraki (1917–1979) Prime Minister of Afghanistan

As quoted in Rodric Braithwaite (2010) Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979-89, page 65.

“The sentiment of reality can indeed attach itself so strongly to our object of belief that our whole life is polarized through and through, so to speak, by its sense of the existence of the thing believed in, and yet that thing, for the purpose of definite description, can hardly be said to be present to our mind at all.”

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

Lecture III, "The Reality of the Unseen"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)

Life, Reality, Sense

“I met him [Arshile Gorky] in 1929. Of course I met a lot of artists, but then I met Gorky. Well I had some training in Holland, quite a training, you know, The Academy. And then I met Gorky [in New York], who didn't have that at all, he became from no place [Tiflis, Armenia]... And for some mysterious reason, he knew lots more about painting, and art, he just knew it by nature - things I was supposed to know and feel and understand - he really did it better. He had an extraordinary gift for hitting the nail on the head, very remarkable, so I immediately attached myself to him and we became very good friends.”

Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) Dutch painter

In an interview (March 1960) with David Sylvester, edited for broadcasting by the BBC first published in 'Location', Spring 1963; as quoted in Interviews with American Artists, by David Sylvester; Chatto & Windus, London 2001, p. 47
1960's

Art, Feeling, Understanding, Nature

“Without attachment to anything beyond its own abysmal exuberance, capitalism identifies itself with desire to a degree that cannot imaginably be exceeded (…)”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

"Critique of Transcendental Miserablism" (2007), in Fanged Noumena, pp. 624–5

Imagination

“In our libertarian society, where individual choice is all, ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive’ have come to mean something very different. Liberals took for granted that freedom depended upon self-discipline. Libertarians decided that all such restraint was repressive. The individual had to be free from all attachments to family, culture, nation, institutions and traditions that might fetter freedom of choice. Since every individual was equally entitled to such free choices, the distinctions that were the basis of morality became eroded.”

Melanie Phillips (1951) British journalist

http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles/archives/2000_01.html

Family, Freedom, Dependency

“Humanity-attached-to-the-task-of-changing-the-world, which is only a single and fragmentary aspect of humanity, will itself be changed in humanity-as-entirety.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: On Nietzsche (1945), p. xxviii

World, Change

“In all well-conducted concerns the law of "selection of the fittest" sooner or later comes into happy action, when a loyal and attached set of men work together harmoniously for their own advantage as well as for that of their employers.”

James Nasmyth (1808–1890) Scottish mechanical engineer and inventor

Source: James Nasmyth engineer, 1883, p. 218 (p. 181 in 2010 edition)

Men, Law, Happiness

“So, can demonic spirits attach themselves to inanimate objects? The answer is yes. But I don't think every sweater you get from Goodwill has demons in it. But, in a sense, you're mother's just being super cautious, so hey, it isn't going to hurt you to rebuke any spirits that happen to have attached themselves to those clothes.”

Pat Robertson (1930) American media mogul, executive chairman, and a former Southern Baptist minister

2013-02-25
Pat Robertson
The 700 Club
Television, quoted in * 2013-02-28
Colbert Report Consumer Alert - Demonic Goodwill Items
The Colbert Report
Television
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/424278/february-28-2013/colbert-report-consumer-alert---demonic-goodwill-items
Responding to letter asking "I buy a lot of clothes and other items at Goodwill and other second-hand shops. Recently my mom told me that I need to pray over the items, bind familiar spirits, and bless the items before I bring them into the house. Is my mother correct? Can demons attach themselves to material items?"

Thinking, Sense, Hurt, Clothes

“I do not attach too much importance to what astrologers say. In my case, they have never been right. Perhaps, my birth date is inaccurate. Nobody predicted I would be prime minister. Why prime minister? Nobody even predicted I would be chief minister.”

P. V. Narasimha Rao (1921–2004) Indian politician

On his purported deep interest in astrological predictions.
While nobody was opening their mouths in other parties, mouths were wide open in the Congress

Birth

“What distinct meaning can attach to saying that an idea in the past in any way affects an idea in the future, from which it is completely detached?”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

The Law of Mind (1892)

Way, Idea, Past, Future

“It is useful to have a short expression for denoting the whole of the probabilities attached to the different attributes in a collective. We shall use for this purpose the word distribution.”

Richard von Mises (1883–1953) Austrian physicist and mathematician

Second Lecture, The Elements of the Theory of Probability, p. 35 (See also: probability space)
Probability, Statistics And Truth - Second Revised English Edition - (1957)

“A bully is nothing more than a bunch of bull with a Y attached to its rear.”

Lorin Morgan-Richards (1975) American poet, cartoonist, and children's writer

Excerpt from the book The Goodbye Family Unveiled (2017) by Lorin Morgan-Richards.

“Close relation in a place like London is a personal mystery as profound as chemical affinity. Thousands pass, and one separates himself from the mass to attach himself to another, and so make, little by little, a group.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Personality

“A prize with money attached to it has a lot of prestige.”

Kevin Barry (1902–1920) 18 year old medical student and Irish republican, executed by Britain.

Kevin Barry shortlisted for the International Impac Dublin Literary Award http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/kevin-barry-shortlisted-for-the-international-impac-dublin-literary-award-1.1353167, The Irish Times (9 April 2013)

Money

“I continued for some time longer to ramble with Strauss and other school-fellows, to visit coffee-houses and billiard-rooms, but had a great antipathy to other debaucheries. The company of comedians of Mr. Seiler came just now to Celle, performing comedies and tragedies. This was a new life for me; I became acquainted with each individual of this company; they all were fond of me; the beautiful Madame Koch gave me lessons in dancing, and I suddenly deserted all my former companions, neglecting them to such a degree, that one Mackphail, considering my conduct as an insult to the whole school, sent me a challenge, which ended in ray wounding him in the hand. My father loved me dearly, but did not much inquire into my conduct; he allowed me a great deal of money, but owing to my attachment to Ferry, whose salary was but small, I provided him with money, and having myself an extravagant taste for dress, I was often in great difficulties to pay my bills, of which my father was ignorant, till my creditors became troublesome, and my good father immediately discharged them, after giving me some kind admonition.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Love, Life, Money, School

“The vehicle of actions begin to ripen into fruit when the afflictions exist; not when the afflictions have been rooted out. As the rice in the paddy has the power to grow only so long as the chaff remains attached thereto and their seed power is not burnt up, not when the chaff has been removed, so also does the vehicle of actions grow into ripeness, when the afflictions are attached to it, and when is seed-power not has not been burnt up by intellection; not when the afflictions have been removed.”

Vyasa central and revered figure in most Hindu traditions

In p. 110.
Sources, The Yoga Darsana Of Patanjali With The Sankhya Pravacana Commentary Of Vyasa

Affliction

“The military forces of a free country may be considered under three general descriptions — 1. The militia. 2. the navy — and 3. the regular troops — and the whole ought ever to be, and understood to be, in strict subordination to the civil authority; and that regular troops, and select corps, ought not to be kept up without evident necessity. Stipulations in the constitution to this effect, are perhaps, too general to be of much service, except merely to impress on the minds of the people and soldiery, that the military ought ever to be subject to the civil authority, &c. But particular attention, and many more definite stipulations, are highly necessary to render the military safe, and yet useful in a free government; and in a federal republic, where the people meet in distinct assemblies, many stipulations are necessary to keep a part from transgressing, which would be unnecessary checks against the whole met in one legislature, in one entire government. — A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves, and render regular troops in a great measure unnecessary. The powers to form and arm the militia, to appoint their officers, and to command their services, are very important; nor ought they in a confederated republic to be lodged, solely, in any one member of the government. First, the constitution ought to secure a genuine and guard against a select militia, by providing that the militia shall always be kept well organized, armed, and disciplined, and include, according to the past and general usuage of the states, all men capable of bearing arms; and that all regulations tending to render this general militia useless and defenceless, by establishing select corps of militia, or distinct bodies of military men, not having permanent interests and attachments in the community to be avoided. I am persuaded, I need not multiply words to convince you of the value and solidity of this principle, as it respects general liberty, and the duration of a free and mild government: having this principle well fixed by the constitution, then the federal head may prescribe a general uniform plan, on which the respective states shall form and train the militia, appoint their officers and solely manage them, except when called into the service of the union, and when called into that service, they may be commanded and governed by the union. This arrangement combines energy and safety in it; it places the sword in the hands of the solid interest of the community, and not in the hands of men destitute of property, of principle, or of attachment to the society and government, who often form the select corps of peace or ordinary establishments: by it, the militia are the people, immediately under the management of the state governments, but on a uniform federal plan, and called into the service, command, and government of the union, when necessary for the common defence and general tranquility. But, say gentlemen, the general militia are for the most part employed at home in their private concerns, cannot well be called out, or be depended upon; that we must have a select militia; that is, as I understand it, particular corps or bodies of young men, and of men who have but little to do at home, particularly armed and disciplined in some measure, at the public expence, and always ready to take the field. These corps, not much unlike regular troops, will ever produce an inattention to the general militia; and the consequence has ever been, and always must be, that the substantial men, having families and property, will generally be without arms, without knowing the use of them, and defenceless; whereas, to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them; nor does it follow from this, that all promiscuously must go into actual service on every occasion. The mind that aims at a select militia, must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle; and when we see many men disposed to practice upon it, whenever they can prevail, no wonder true republicans are for carefully guarding against it. As a farther check, it may be proper to add, that the militia of any state shall not remain in the service of the union, beyond a given period, without the express consent of the state legislature.”

Richard Henry Lee (1732–1794) American statesman

Additional Letters From The Federal Farmer, 169 (1788)

Men, People, Family, Peace

“I am still much attached to them, but now since I am unable to go, it pains me to think of them. So I just stay busy with this work.”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

2014, "GhoshanaPatra with Narendra Modi", 2014

Pain, Business, Thinking

“Question: Does a detached person remain unoccupied all the time, or what does he or she do?
Answer: The activity of really detached people lies in their becoming detached, and their achievement is to remain unoccupied because they remain calm in action and unconcerned about their achievements.
Question: What is their conduct toward their fellow human beings?
Answer: They enjoy the companionship of people, but without being compromised by them. They love them without attachment, and they show them sympathy without anxious concern - all in true freedom.
Question: Is such a person required to go to confession?
Answer: The confession that is motivated by love is nobler than one motivated by necessity.
Question: What is such people’s prayer like? Are they supposed to pray, too?
Answer: Their prayer is effective because they forestall the influence of the senses. God is spirit and knows whether this person has put an obstacle in the way or whether he or she has acted from selfish impulses. And then a light is enkindled in their highest power, which makes clear that God is the being, life and activity within them and that they are merely instruments.
Question: What are such a person's eating, drinking and sleeping like?
Answer: Externally, and in keeping with their sensuous nature, the outward person eats. Internally, however, they are as if not eating; otherwise, One does not arrive at the goal by asking questions. It is rather through detachment that one comes to this hidden truth they would be enjoying food and rest like an animal. This is also the case in other things pertaining to human existence.”

Henry Suso (1295–1366) Dominican friar and mystic

The Exemplar, The Little Book of Truth

Love, Life, God, People

“Did Romeo and Juliet have a … “relationship”? The term “relationship” … betokens a chaste egalitarianism leveling different ranks and degrees of attachment.”

Allan Bloom (1930–1992) American philosopher, classicist, and academician

Source: Love and Friendship (1993), p. 14.

“The best way to address the firepower concern is therefore not to try to outlaw or license many millions of older and perfectly legitimate firearms (which would be a licensing effort of staggering proportions) but to prohibit the possession of high capacity magazines. By a simple, complete and unequivocal ban on large capacity magazines, all the difficulty of defining 'assault rifle' and 'semi-automatic rifles' is eliminated. The large capacity magazine itself, separate or attached to the firearm, becomes the prohibited item. A single amendment to Federal firearms laws could effectively implement these objectives.”

William B. Ruger (1916–2002) American inventor

March 30, 1989 letter sent to every member of the United States Congress ([An Open Letter, William B. Ruger, 18, American Handgunner, 5, 12, 1992]).

Law, Way, Effort

“The substance of the teaching of the "Gita" is contained in Chapter XI Ver. 55, which translated reads: "
He who does work for me, he who
looks upon Me as his goal,
he who worships me, free from
attachment, he who is free
from enmity to all creatures, he goes to me."”

Peter de Noronha (1897–1970) Indian businessman

The Pageant of Life (1964), On The Gita

Reading

“Nationalism is fraught with dangers, of course, but so is the blind refusal to recognize that attachment to one’s own culture, traditions, and history is a creative, normal, and healthy part of human experience.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

How PC Boosts Le Pen http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon_4_25_02td.html (April 25, 2002). City Journal (1998 - 2008)

History, Parting

“Respect for his ancestors excites, in the breast of man, interest in their history, attachment to their characters, concern for their errors, involuntary pride in their virtues. Love for his posterity spurs him to exertion for their support, stimulates him to virtue for their example, and fills him with the tenderest solicitude for their welfare. Man, therefore, was not made for himself alone. No; he was made for his country, by the obligations of the social compact: he was made for his species, by the Christian duties of universal charity: he was made for all ages past, by the sentiment of reverence for his forefathers; and he was made for all future times, by the impulse of affection for his progeny. Under the influence of these principles, "Existence sees him spurn her bounded reign." They redeem his nature from the subjection of time and space: he is no longer a "puny insect shivering at a breeze;" he is the glory of creation, formed to occupy all time and all extent: bounded, during his residence upon earth, only by the boundaries of the world, and destined to life and immortality in brighter regions, when the fabric of nature itself shall dissolve and perish.”

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)

He here quotes statements made about William Shakespeare by Samuel Johnson, and then one made in reference to Timon by Alexander Pope in Moral Essays.
Oration at Plymouth (1802)

Love, Life, Age, World

“Therefore we well observe that the title of perfect cadence is attached only to a dominant that progresses to the main tone, because this dominant, which is naturally contained within the harmony of the main tone, seems, when it progresses to it, to return as if to its source.”

Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764) French composer and music theorist of the Baroque era

Jean-Philippe Rameau (1726). Nouveau système de musique théorique, p. 59. Paris.

Nature, Perfection

“I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams. It is because man, when he ceases to sleep, is above all the plaything of his memory, and in its normal state memory takes pleasure in weakly retracing for him the circumstances of the dream, in stripping it of any real importance, and in dismissing the only determinant from the point where he thinks he has left it a few hours before: this firm hope, this concern. He is under the impression of continuing something that is worthwhile. Thus the dream finds itself reduced to a mere parenthesis, as is the night. And, like the night, dreams generally contribute little to furthering our understanding. This curious state of affairs seems to me to call for certain reflections.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

Le Manifeste du Surréalisme, Andre Breton (Manifesto of Surrealism; 1924)

Pleasure, Dreams, Hope, Way

“There is no European nation which, within the course of half a century, or little more, has undergone so complete a change as this kingdom of Scotland. The effects of the insurrection of the 1745 — the destruction of the patriarchal power of the Highland chiefs — the abolition of the heritable jurisdictions of the Lowland nobility and barons — the total eradication of the Jacobite party […]. […] This race has now almost entirely vanished from the land, and with it, doubtless, much absurd political prejudice — but also many living examples of singular ad disinterested attachment to the principles of loyalty which they received from their fathers, and of old Scottish faith, hospitality, worth, and honour. […] for the purpose of preserving some idea of the ancient manners of which I have witnessed the almost total extinction, I have embodied in imaginary scenes […].”

Walter Scott book Waverley

Source: Waverley (1814), Chapter LXXII, A postscript, which should have been a preface

Faith, Idea, Change, Loyalty

“Christians are beginning to lose the spirit of intolerance which animated them: experience has shown the error of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, and of the persecution of those Christians in France whose belief differed a little from that of the king. They have realized that zeal for the advancement of religion is different from a due attachment to it; and that in order to love it and fulfill its behests, it is not necessary to hate and persecute those who are opposed to it.”

Montesquieu (1689–1755) French social commentator and political thinker

No. 60. (Usbek writing to Ibben)
Lettres Persanes (Persian Letters, 1721)

Love, Hate, Religion, Error

“Our communion with Christ is not on a level of our common humanity, but we rise in it; we scale the heavens where He sitteth at the right hand of God; we send our longings up and ask to have attachments knit to Him; to be set in deepest, holiest, and most practical affinity with Him; and so to live a life that is hid with Christ in God. In such a life, we become partakers of His holiness, and, in the separating grace of that, partakers also of His power.”

Horace Bushnell (1802–1876) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 609.

Life, God, Christ

“With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice, that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country, to one united people; a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established their general Liberty and Independence.”

John Jay Federalist Papers

1780s, The Federalist Papers, Federalist No. 2 (1787)

War, People, Pleasure, Religion

“A bell was rung. All the passengers came on deck. Never shall I forget the scene we then witnessed. It was ten o'clock in the morning. The sky was overspread with thick dark clouds. It looked like a vast temple at night, as the fitful, lurid sun cast a yellowish tinge resembling the pale light of the tapers near a catafalque. The foaming waves opened like immense tombs that seemed avid to swallow their first victim. When all was ready a porthole was opened, and a plank painted black, six feet long and three broad, was suspended over the deep. The body of a child, wrapped in a winding sheet, was placed upon it, with a large stone attached to the feet. For a minute or two the captain read -- I do not know what prayer. Profound silence reigned. The father scarcely shed a tear. The mother seemed quite unmoved. At a word spoken by the captain, the plank was raised in the air, and the next instant the light corpse glided into the waters. I made the Sign of the Cross over it, but alas, I do not know whether the child was even baptized. The passengers withdrew, apparently untouched by the scene, and some even smiled. How impiety deadens the heart!”

Théodore Guérin (1798–1856) Catholic saint and nun from France

Third Journal of Travel (1844-1845)

Smile, Tear, Light, Silence

“…He was firmly attached to the Mahomedan religion, and made a point of destroying all Hindoo temples. In the city of Mutra he caused musjids and bazars to be built opposite the bathing-stairs leading to the river and ordered that no Hindoos should be allowed to bathe there. He forbade the barbers to shave the beards and beads of the inhabitants, in order to prevent the Hindoos following their usual practices at such pilgrimages…”

Firishta (1560–1620) Indian historian

Sultãn Sikandar Lodî (AD 1489-1517) Mathura (Uttar Pradesh)
Tãrîkh-i-Firishta

Religion

“I imagine there will be great interest made for the eastern troops to be posted on the east side of the North River, to favor their recruiting. These reasons have something plausible in them, but I have my doubts with respect to their truth and reality. Men, when they are near home, are much more influenced by domestic attachments than they are when they are at a great distance. The friends and relations of the soldiers very seldom use their influence to engage them in the service. On the contrary, they commonly make use of every argument to dissuade them from it. I am of opinion, therefore, the further the troops are removed from home, the more favorable it will be to the recruiting service in camp.”

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

Letter to George Washington (November 1779)

Men, Truth, Home, Imagination

“Attachment is blinding; it lends an imaginary halo of attractiveness to the object of desire.”

Yukteswar Giri (1855–1936) Indian yogi and guru

Autobiography of a Yogi (1946)

“I have a "Task": To foster all mankind and ensure for all of them lives full of ananda (bliss). I have a "Vow": To lead all who stray away from the straight path again into goodness and save them. I am attached to a "work" that I love: To remove the sufferings of the poor and grant them what they lack. I have a "reason to be proud", for I rescue all who worship and adore me, aright. I have my definition of the "devotion" I expect: Those devoted to me have to treat joy and grief, gain and loss, with equal fortitude. This means that I will never give up those who attach themselves to me.”

Sathya Sai Baba (1926–2011) Indian guru

Letter that he wrote to his older brother Seshama Raju (1947) [Better dating and sourcing of any publication would be useful here]

Love, Suffering, Loss, Joy

“When the late king, Ibrahim Kootb Shah, had settled the countries of the Hindoos on his southern frontier, and despatched his commander, Ameer Shah Meer, to oppose the armies of his Mahomedan neighbours, he vested the management of the affairs of his government in the hands of one Moorhary Row, a Marratta bramin, to whom was attached a body of ten thousand infantry, under the command of Mahomedan officers of rank, with permission to beat the nobut. Moorhary Row was in every respect the second person in the state, not even excepting the princes of the blood-royal. In the latter end of the late king’s reign, this unprincipled infidel proceeded with a force towards a famous temple near Adony, where he attacked the inhabitants, laid waste the country, and sacked it of its idols, made of gold and silver, and studded with rubies. He levied also four lacks of hoons (160,000l.) from the inhabitants. At sight of the idols the King was taken seriously ill, and never recovered. He died on Thursday the 21st of Rubbeeoos-Sany, AH 988 (AD June 2, 1580) AD…”

Firishta (1560–1620) Indian historian

Sultãn Ibrãhîm Qutb Shãh of Golconda (AD 1550-1580) Adoni (Karnataka)
Tãrîkh-i-Firishta

Personality, Country

“You poor suckers [mammals]: you've got all this horrible stuff to get through somehow so obviously there's got to be an incentive, or at least some kind of fix for you to get addicted to. That's love: possibly the sneakiest trick ever played on any variety of life form by a notoriously conniving Universe. You do all these dismal, soul-destroying things because you get attached to each other.”

Tom Holt (1961) British writer

the spokesclone, p. 322
Falling Sideways (2002)

Love, Life, Soul, Universe

“I sent an email to my loved one, just the other day, it’s sad communication has evolved this way. We use so many words but have so little to relay, as angels scribble down every letter that we say. All the viral attachments sent and passionate insults we vent, it’s easy to be arrogant behind user passwords we invent. But on the day the scrolls are laid, with every word and deed displayed, when we read our accounts, I know, for one, I’ll be afraid.”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

"Afraid To Read"
The Prophet's Hands (2003)

Love, Sadness, Angels, Way

“In my own country, and perhaps in some others, the workers for the League of Nations are sometimes reproached with attaching too much importance to collective security and the forcible prevention of war. That only shows how short people's memories are in political affairs. As a matter of fact, during the first ten years of the League very little was said about these subjects. We dwelt on the social and humanitarian sides of the League. We urged disarmament and treaty revision. Great reliance — particularly in England — was placed not upon forcible action but upon public opinion. We preached — and, I am glad to say, preached successfully — the enormous importance of publicity in the actions of the League, so that the world might know not only what was being done but why it was being done at Geneva. We attached perhaps even too great importance to the conception that no nation would be so rash or so wicked as to set itself against the public opinion of the world.”

Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood (1864–1958) lawyer, politician and diplomat in the United Kingdom

The Future of Civilization (1938)

War, People, World, Memory

“If we except the great name of Newton (and the exception is one that the great Gauss himself would have been delighted to make) it is probable that no mathematician of any age or country has ever surpassed Gauss in the combination of an abundant fertility of invention with an absolute vigorousness in demonstration, which the ancient Greeks themselves might have envied. It may be admitted, without any disparagement to the eminence of such great mathematicians as Euler and Cauchy that they were so overwhelmed with the exuberant wealth of their own creations, and so fascinated by the interest attaching to the results at which they arrived, that they did not greatly care to expend their time in arranging their ideas in a strictly logical order, or even in establishing by irrefragable proof propositions which they instinctively felt, and could almost see to be true. With Gauss the case was otherwise. It may seem paradoxical, but it is probably nevertheless true that it is precisely the effort after a logical perfection of form which has rendered the writings of Gauss open to the charge of obscurity and unnecessary difficulty. The fact is that there is neither obscurity nor difficulty in his writings, as long as we read them in the submissive spirit in which an intelligent schoolboy is made to read his Euclid. Every assertion that is made is fully proved, and the assertions succeed one another in a perfectly just analogical order… But when we have finished the perusal, we soon begin to feel that our work is but begun, that we are still standing on the threshold of the temple, and that there is a secret which lies behind the veil and is as yet concealed from us. No vestige appears of the process by which the result itself was obtained, perhaps not even a trace of the considerations which suggested the successive steps of the demonstration. Gauss says more than once that for brevity, he gives only the synthesis, and suppresses the analysis of his propositions. Pauca sed matura—few but well matured… If, on the other hand, we turn to a memoir of Euler's, there is a sort of free and luxuriant gracefulness about the whole performance, which tells of the quiet pleasure which Euler must have taken in each step of his work; but we are conscious nevertheless that we are at an immense distance from the severe grandeur of design which is characteristic of all Gauss's greater efforts.”

Henry John Stephen Smith (1826–1883) mathematician

As quoted by Alexander Macfarlane, Lectures on Ten British Physicists of the Nineteenth Century (1916) p. 95, https://books.google.com/books?id=43SBAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA95 "Henry John Stephen Smith (1826-1883) A Lecture delivered March 15, 1902"

Pleasure, Secret, Age, Feeling

“She wondered how people would remember her. She had not made enough to spread her wealth around like Carnegie, to erase any sins that had attached to her name, she had failed, she had not reached the golden bough. The liberals would cheer her to death. They would light marijuana cigarettes and drive to their sushi restaurants and eat fresh food that had traveled eight thousand miles. They would spend all of supper complaining about people like her, and when they got home their houses would be cold and they’d press a button on a wall to get warm. The whole time complaining about big oil.”

Philipp Meyer (1974) American writer

Source: The Son (2013), p. 82

Death, People, Food, Travel

“[R]eformers seeking to speed China's modernization by modernizing the writing system through a policy of digraphia have to contend not only with the natural attachment of Chinese to their familiar script but also with chauvinistic and mindless claims for its superiority.”

John DeFrancis (1911–2009) American linguist

Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems (1989, p. 120) http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/visible/index.html Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems (1989)

Nature, Speed

“It is true, as Mr. Folkard put to us, as the Judges of old felt, there are instances in which discretionary power might be grievously abused, and was abused in times such as I trust this country will never see again. At the same time, men are open to the infirmities which unfortunately attach to human nature. There may be dishonest and corrupt Judges among us, though I trust to God that will never happen. I agree you are to frame your rules so as to keep the administration of justice as far as you can beyond the possibility of corruption. On the other hand, if a rule is essential for the convenient administration of justice, you must trust to the honesty of those to whom you commit that most important department of the State. You must trust to the means you have of punishing corruption and dishonesty if you find it operating on the minds of those judicial officers.”

Sir Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet (1802–1880) Lord Chief Justice

Reg. v. Charlotte Winsor (1866), 10 Cox. C. C. 313.

Men, God, Justice, Nature

“True transformation occurs only when we can look at ourselves squarely and face our attachments and inner demons, free from the buzz of commercial distraction and false social realities. We have to retreat into our own cocoons and come face-to-face with who we are. We have to turn toward our own inner darkness. For only by abandoning its attachments and facing the darkness does the caterpillar's body begin to spread out and its light, beautiful wings begin to form.”

Julia Butterfly Hill book The Legacy of Luna

Source: The Legacy of Luna (2000), Ch. 8

Beauty, Reality, Light, Falseness

“There are problems to whose solution I would attach an infinitely greater importance than to those of mathematics, for example touching ethics, or our relation to God, or concerning our destiny and our future; but their solution lies wholly beyond us and completely outside the province of science.”

Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) German mathematician and physical scientist

As quoted in The World of Mathematics (1956) Edited by J. R. Newman

God, Mathematics, Problem, Science

“Know you all that if I am the Highest of the High my role demands that I strip you of your possessions and wants, consume all your desires and make you desireless rather than satisfy your desires. Sadhus, saints, yogis and walis can give you what you want; but I take away your wants and free you from attachments and liberate you from the bondage of ignorance. I am the one to take, not the one to give, what you want as you want.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

The Highest of the High (1953)

“Cicero bent Greek ideas to his vision of the idealized Roman Republic, and his understanding of the mores—the morality and social attachments—of the gentlemanly statesmen who would hold power in a just republic. Readers familiar with Machiavelli’s Prince will hear curious echoes of that work in Cicero’s advice; curious because the pieties of Cicero’s advice to the would-be statesman were satirized by Machiavelli sixteen hundred years later. If his philosophy was Greek and eclectic, Cicero owed his constitutional theory to Polybius; he was born soon after Polybius died, and read his history. And Cicero greatly admired Polybius’s friend and employer Scipio the Younger. There are obvious differences of tone. Polybius celebrated Rome’s achievement of equipoise, while Cicero lamented the ruin of the republic. Cicero’s account of republican politics veers between a “constitutional” emphasis on the way that good institutions allow a state to function by recruiting men of good but not superhuman character, and a “heroic” emphasis on the role of truly great men in reconstituting the state when it has come to ruin. Cicero’s vanity was so notorious that everyone knew he had himself in mind as this hero—had he not saved the republic before when he quelled the conspiracy of Catiline?”

Alan Ryan (1940) British philosopher

On Politics: A History of Political Thought: From Herodotus to the Present (2012), Ch. 4 : Roman Insights: Polybius and Cicero

Men, Way, History, Idea

“The aversion of the first Christians to the images, inspired by the Pagan simulachres, made room, during the centuries which followed the period of the persecutions, to a feeling of an entirely different kind, and the images gradually gained their favour. Reappearing at the end of the fourth and during the course of the fifth centuries, simply as emblems, they soon became images, in the true acceptation of this word; and the respect which was entertained by the Christians for the persons and ideas represented by those images, was afterwards converted into a real worship. Representations of the sufferings which the Christians had endured for the sake of their religion, were at first exhibited to the people in order to stimulate by such a sight the faith of the masses, always lukewarm and indifferent. With regard to the images of divine persons of entirely immaterial beings, it must be remarked, that they did not originate from the most spiritualised and pure doctrines of the Christian society, but were rejected by the severe orthodoxy of the primitive church. These simulachres appear to have been spread at first by the Gnostics,—i. e., by those Christian sects which adopted the most of the beliefs of Persia and India. Thus it was a Christianity which was not purified by its contact with the school of Plato,—a Christianity which entirely rejected the Mosaic tradition, in order to attach itself to the most strange and attractive myths of Persia and India,—that gave birth to the images.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Source: A Treatise of Relics (1549), p. 13

People, School, Faith, Religion

“One who is not perturbed by misfortune, who is beyond comfort, attachment and fear, who considers gold as dust. He neither speaks ill of others nor feels elated by praise and shuns greed, attachments and arrogance. He is indifferent to ecstasy and tragedy, is not affected by honors or humiliations. He renounces expectations, greed. He is neither attached to the worldliness, nor lets senses and anger affect him. In such a person resides God.”

Guru Tegh Bahadur (1621–1675) The ninth Guru of Sikhism

Guru Tegh Bahadur, Sorath 633 (Translated by Gopal Singh), Tegh Bahadur (Translated by Gopal Singh) (2005). Mahalla nawan: compositions of Guru Tegh Bahādur-the ninth guru (from Sri Guru Granth Sahib): Bāṇī Gurū Tega Bahādara. Allied Publishers. pp. xxviii–xxxiii, 15–27. ISBN 978-81-7764-897-3.

God, Fear, Feeling, Sense

“Being attached to the problems of yesterday or the insecurities of tomorrow will destroy your today.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 89

Problem

“During the last quarter of a century all the authority associated with the function of spiritual guidance … has seeped down into the lowest publications. … Between a poem by Valéry and an advertisement for a beauty cream promising a rich marriage to anyone who used it there was at no point a breach of continuity. So as a result of literature’s spiritual usurpation a beauty cream advertisement possessed, in the eyes of little village girls, the authority that was formerly attached to the words of priests.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

“Morality and literature,” p. 164
On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God (1968)

Marriage, Beauty, Girl, Literature

“I know the British press is very attached to the lobby system. It lets the journalists and the politicians feel proud of their traditional freedoms while giving the reader as much of the truth as they think is good for him.”

Tom Stoppard Night and Day

Mageeba, Act II
Night and Day (1978)

Truth, Feeling, Thinking, Freedom

“What we call objective reality is, in the last analysis, what is common to many thinking beings, and could be common to all; this common part, we shall see, can only be the harmony expressed by mathematical laws. It is this harmony then which is the sole objective reality, the only truth we can attain; and when I add that the universal harmony of the world is the source of all beauty, it will be understood what price we should attach to the slow and difficult progress which little by little enables us to know it better.”

Henri Poincaré book The Value of Science

Introduction, p. 14
The Value of Science (1905)

Truth, World, Law, Beauty

“What does an instinctively popular poet do in contemporary America, where serious poetry is no longer a popular art? The public whose values and sensibility he celebrates is unaware of his existence. Indeed, even if they were aware of his poetry, they would feel no need to approach it. Cut off from his proper audience, this poet feels little sympathy with the specialized minority readership that now sustains poetry either as a highly sophisticated verbal game or secular religion. His sensibility shows little similarity to theirs except for the common interest in poetry. And so the popular poet usually leads a marginal existence in literary life. His fellow poets look on him as an anomaly or an anachronism. Reviewers find him eminently unnewsworthy. Publishers see little prestige attached to printing his work. Critics, who have been trained to celebrate complexity, consider him an amiable simpleton.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

"The Anonymity of the Regional Poet: Ted Kooser" http://www.danagioia.net/essays/ekooser.htm, from Can Poetry Matter? Essays on Poetry and American Culture (1992) Essays

Life, Religion, Art, Feeling

“He said that while one would like to say that God will punish those who do such things and that people often speak in just this way it was his experience that God could not be spoken for and that men with wicked histories often enjoyed lives of comfort and that they died in peace and were buried with honor. He said that it was a mistake to expect too much of justice in this world. He said that the notion that evil is seldom rewarded was greatly overspoken for if there were no advantage to it then men would shun it and how could virtue then be attached to its repudiation?”

Cormac McCarthy book The Crossing

The Crossing (1994)

Men, God, People, World

“Wealth, for the purposes of economic study, is confined to those values attaching to material objects through the action of man, which values can be exchanged /or other values.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

Source: Economics for Helen (1924), Ch. 1 : What is Wealth?

Study, Wealth

“He realized now that to be afraid of this death he was staring at with animal terror meant to be afraid of life. Fear of dying justified a limitless attachment to what is alive in man. And all those who had not made the gestures necessary to live their lives, all those who feared and exalted impotence — they were afraid of death because of the sanction it gave to a life in which they had not been involved. They had not lived enough, never having lived at all.”

Albert Camus book A Happy Death

A Happy Death (1971)

Life, Death, Fear, Animals

“To institutionalize is to infuse with value beyond the technical requirements of the task at hand. The prizing of social machinery beyond its technical role is largely a reflection of the unique way in which it fulfills personal or group needs. Whenever individuals become attached to an organization or a way of doing things as persons rather than as technicians, the result is a prizing of the device for its own sake. From the standpoint of the committed person, the organization is changed from an expendable tool into a valued source of personal satisfaction.”

Philip Selznick (1919–2010) American sociologist

Source: Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation, 1957, p. 17

Way, Change, Personality

“In one point, and that too of more importance than is generally attached to it, the puritans of the two epochs bear a critical resemblance, namely, their hostility to rural and athletic sports: to those sports, which string the nerves and strengthen the frame, which excite an emulation in deeds of hardihood and valour, and which imperceptibly instill honour, generosity, and a love of glory, into the mind of the clown. Men thus formed are pupils unfit for the puritanical school; therefore it is, that the sect are incessantly labouring to eradicate, fibre by fibre, the last poor remains of English manners. And, sorry I am to tell you, that they meet with but too many abettors, where they ought to meet with resolute foes. Their pretexts are plausible: gentleness and humanity are the cant of the day. Weak men are imposed on, and wise men want the courage to resist. Instead of preserving those assemblages and those sports, in which the nobleman mixed with his peasants, which made the poor man proud of his inferiority, and created in his breast a personal affection for his lord, too many of the rulers of this land are now hunting the common people from every scene of diversion, and driving them to a club or a conventicle, at the former of which they suck in the delicious rudiments of earthly equality, and, at the latter, the no less delicious doctrine, that there is no lawful king but King Jesus.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

Political Register (27 February 1802).

Love, Men, Hostility, People

“As a little skiff attached to a great ship, when the storm blows high, takes in her small share of the raging waters and tosses in the same south wind.”
Immensae veluti conexa carinae cumba minor, cum saevit hiems, pro parte furentis parva receptat aquas et eodem volvitur austro.

Statius Silvae

iv, line 120
Silvae, Book I

Water, Rage

“Human beings are largely motivated by their emotional repertoire, manifested through their need for attachment, physical security, a sense of belonging and a positive personal and collective identity.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Source: Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009), p. 186

Motivation, Sense, Personality

“Opinion is steadily inclining towards making the division of labor an imperative rule of conduct, to present it as a duty. Those who shun it are not punished precise penalty fixed by law, it is true; but they are blamed. The time has passed when the perfect man was he who appeared interested in everything without attaching himself exclusively to anything, capable of tasting and understanding everything finding means to unite and condense in himself all that was most exquisite in civilization. … We want activity, instead of spreading itself over a large area, to concentrate and gain in intensity what it loses in extent. We distrust those excessively mobile talents that lend themselves equally to all uses, refusing to choose a special role and keep to it. We disapprove of those men whose unique care is to organize and develop all their faculties, but without making any definite use of them, and without sacrificing any of them, as if each man were sufficient unto himself, and constituted an independent world. It seems to us that this state of detachment and indetermination has something anti-social about it. The praiseworthy man of former times is only a dilettante to us, and we refuse to give dilettantism any moral value; we rather see perfection in the man seeking, not to be complete, but to produce; who has a restricted task, and devotes himself to it; who does his duty, accomplishes his work. “To perfect oneself,” said Secrétan, “is to learn one's role, to become capable of fulfilling one's function... The measure of our perfection is no longer found in our complacence with ourselves, in the applause of a crowd, or in the approving smile of an affected dilettantism, but in the sum of given services and in our capacity to give more.””

Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) French sociologist (1858-1917)

[Le principe de la morale, p. 189] … We no longer think that the exclusive duty of man is to realize in himself the qualities of man in general; but we believe he must have those pertaining to his function. … The categorical imperative of the moral conscience is assuming the following form: Make yourself usefully fulfill a determinate function.
Source: The Division of Labor in Society (1893), pp. 42-43.

Men, World, Law, Penalty