Quotes about beyond
page 2

“The adaptation of spirituality is the only solution to the problems of the world. We must go beyond corporeal desires.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

World, Problem

“The first rule of learning philosophy is to ban the hypothesis of knowing anything. You must go beyond your own opinions.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Learning

“I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavouring to make our fellow creatures happy.”

Thomas Paine book The Age of Reason

1790s, The Age of Reason, Part I (1794)

Love, Life, God, Happiness

“Each generation goes further than the generation preceding it because it stands on the shoulders of that generation. You will have opportunities beyond anything we've ever known.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

“Things are not as easily understood nor as expressible as people usually would like us to believe. Most happenings are beyond expression; they exist where a word has never intruded.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

People

“All the things that truly matter - beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace - arise from beyond the mind.”

Eckhart Tolle book A New Earth

A New Earth (2005)
Variant: All the things that truly matter - beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace - arise from beyond the mind.

Love, Peace, Beauty, Joy

“Aim high, aim at the highest, and all lower aims are thereby achieved. It is looking below on the stormy sea of differences that makes you sink. Look up, beyond these and see the One Glorious Real, and you are saved.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

Sea

“You may live to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

“Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

As cited in The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World (2007), Alan Greenspan, Penguin Press, Chapter 4 (Private Citizen), p. 87 : ISBN 15942 01315
1980s

“There is within each one of us a potential for goodness beyond our imagining; for giving which seeks no reward; for listening without judgment; for loving unconditionally.”

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926–2004) American psychiatrist

Love, Imagination

“He pulls me around and kisses me. "You're Mac," he says. "And I'm Jericho. And nothing else matters. Never will. You exist in a place that is beyond all rules for me. Do you understand that?"
I do.
Jericho Barrons just told me he loves me.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Shadowfever

Love, Understanding, Kiss

“The wise man will be as happy as circumstances permit, and if he finds the contemplation of the universe painful beyond a point, he will contemplate something else instead.”

Bertrand Russell book The Conquest of Happiness

Source: The Conquest of Happiness

Pain, Happiness, Universe

“Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.”

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

Source: A Room of One's Own (1929), Ch. 3, p. 58

Men, Literature

“You are old beyond your years Zoeybird. Believe in yourself and you will find a way. But remember darkness does not always equate to evil just like light does not always bring good.”

P. C. Cast book Marked

Source: Marked

Way, Light, Evil

“Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.”

Jhumpa Lahiri book Interpreter of Maladies

Source: Interpreter of Maladies

Travel, Imagination, Appearance, Time

“There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

As quoted in The Art of Expressing the Human Body (1998) edited by John R. Little, p. 23
Context: There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level.

Powerful, Back To Work

“Whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever

“Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth…. Through words and concepts we shall never reach beyond the wall off relations, to some sort of fabulous primal ground of things.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks

Source: Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks

Truth

“Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.”

Laurens van der Post (1906–1996) South African writer

“Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.”

Viktor E. Frankl (1905–1997) Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor

Freedom

“Some things were beyond understanding.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Choice

Source: The Choice

Understanding

“I have one life and one chance to make it count for something… I'm free to choose what that something is, and the something I've chosen is my faith. Now, my faith goes beyond theology and religion and requires considerable work and effort. My faith demands -- this is not optional -- my faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Life, Faith, Religion, Effort

“Your time on this earth is a gift to be used wisely. Don't squander your words or your thoughts. Consider that even the simplest actions you take for your lives matter beyond measure… and they matter forever.”

Andy Andrews (1959) author and corporate speaker

Source: The Noticer: Sometimes, All a Person Needs Is a Little Perspective

Time

“The deepest of level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless… beyond speech… beyond concept.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Communication

“Only Evil and Greater Evil exist and beyond them, in the shadows, lurks True Evil. True Evil, Geralt, is something you can barely imagine, even if you believe nothing can still surprise you. And sometimes True Evil seizes you by the throat and demands that you choose between it and another, slightly lesser, Evil.”

Andrzej Sapkowski book The Last Wish

Source: The Last Wish

Imagination, Evil

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Source: A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles" (1992), Ch. 7 : Work, §3 : Personal Power, p. 190 (p. 165 in some editions). This famous passage from her book is often erroneously attributed to Nelson Mandela. About the mis-attribution Williamson said, "Several years ago, this paragraph from A Return to Love began popping up everywhere, attributed to Nelson Mandela's 1994 inaugural address. As honored as I would be had President Mandela quoted my words, indeed he did not. I have no idea where that story came from, but I am gratified that the paragraph has come to mean so much to so many people."
Variant which appears in the film Coach Carter (2005): "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. It's not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
Variant which appears in the film Akeelah and the Bee (2006), displayed in a picture frame on the wall, attributing it to Mandela: "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same."
Context: Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Fear

“Every spirit builds itself a house; and beyond its house, a world; and beyond its world a heaven. Know then, that the world exists for you: build, therefore, your own world.”

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

World, Housing

“Somewhere beyond the sink-hole, past the magnolia, under the live oaks, a boy and a yearling ran side by side, and were gone forever.”

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1896–1953) American novelist

Boy, Past

“To you I belong. My heart beats only for you. No other will tempt me, from this day and beyond. To you I belong.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Heart of the Dragon

Heart

“I didn't expect to recover from my second operation but since I did, I consider that I'm living on borrowed time. Every day that dawns is a gift to me and I take it in that way. I accept it gratefully without looking beyond it. I completely forget my physical suffering and all the unpleasantness of my present condition and I think only of the joy of seeing the sun rise once more and of being able to work a little bit, even under difficult conditions.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

Way, Thinking, Suffering, Time

“I love him who seeks to create over and beyond himself and thus perishes.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Love

“To recognize untruth as a condition of life--that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Beyond Good and Evil

Source: Beyond Good and Evil

Life, Way, Feeling, Evil

“To see evil and call it good, mocks God. Worse, it makes goodness meaningless. A word without meaning is an abomination, for when the word passes beyond understanding the very thing the word stands for passes out of the world and cannot be recalled.”

Stephen R. Lawhead book Arthur

Source: Arthur

God, World, Understanding, Evil

“…I was born lazy. I am no lazier now than I was forty years ago, but that is because I reached the limit forty years ago. You can't go beyond possibility.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2 (2013), p. 115

“No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience.”

John Locke book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Book II, Ch. 1, sec. 19
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)

Knowledge

“… whenever there is inspiration… and enthusiasm… there is a creative empowerment that goes far beyond what a mere person is capable of.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Personality

“That which is done out of love is always beyond good and evil.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Love, Evil

“The American way of life is not sustainable. It doesn’t acknowledge that there is a world beyond America.”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

Life, World, Way

“Human beings have neither kindness, nor faith, nor charity beyond what serves to increase the pleasure of the moment.”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

Pleasure, Faith

“Searching for truth is itself a big illusion because whatever we term the truth is always and everywhere. We don't have to search for it; we don't have to seek it; it always is. Now the only problem is your inability to experience life beyond what you call mind; or right now your capability to experience life only through the limited dimension that we call mind. That is the only problem.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Source: Himalayan Lust

Life, Truth, Search, Problem

“She followed slowly, taking a long time,
As though there were some obstacles in the way;
And yet: as though, once it was overcome,
She would be beyond all walking, and would fly.”

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

Way, Time, Flying

“Even when God seemed to have abandoned me, he was watching. Even when he seemed indifferent to my suffering, he was watching. And when I was beyond all hope of saving, he gave me rest. Then he gave me a sign to continue my journey.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

God, Hope, Suffering, Indifference

“The moment of betrayal is the worst, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you've been betrayed: that some other human being has wished you that much evil”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Evil, Betrayal

“To experience the ultimate you have to be willing to obliterate the self-created boundaries of individuality, you have to be willing to dissolve. That state of unbounded freedom is a state of oneness with Shiva – an unconditioned state beyond physical experience, beyond imaginative speculation, beyond all conceptual understanding.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Source: Adiyogi: The Source of Yoga

Imagination, Understanding, Freedom

“It kills the pain. You go back until at last you are beyond its reach. Only the past when you were happy is real.”

Eugene O'Neill Long Day's Journey into Night

Page 107 (Act 3)
Long Day's Journey into Night (1955)

Pain, Happiness, Past

“I think that if there were a God, there would be less evil on this earth. I believe that if evil exists here below, then either it was willed by God or it was beyond His powers to prevent it. Now I cannot bring myself to fear a God who is either spiteful or weak. I defy Him without fear and care not a fig for his thunderbolts.”

Marquis de Sade (1740–1814) French novelist and philosopher

Justine or The Misfortunes of Virtue (1787)

God, Fear, Thinking, Evil

“John is very sweet. He always mentions me in all his interviews; saying that he’s really fond of me. He says that he thinks of me as one of his favourite actors- its very nice. I’ve seen John’s growth from his first film to Baabul and beyond. I think he’s grown as an actor and of course he has become one of the most sought after stars today. I see girl fans who’re crazy about him. I feel good about that and I always believe that good people get good things in life - John is one of them Rani quotes.”

Rani Mukerji (1978) Indian film actress

http://ranimukherji.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=interviews&action=display&thread=407.
Rani On Celebrities

Life, People, Feeling, Quotes

“When a man acts in ways that annoy us we wish to think him wicked, and we refuse to face the fact that his annoying behaviour is a result of antecedent causes which, if you follow them long enough, will take you beyond the moment of his birth and therefore to events for which he cannot be held responsible by any stretch of imagination.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

"The Doctrine of Free Will"
1930s, Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization? (1930)

Way, Imagination, Birth, Thinking

“Instinctively we divide mankind into friends and foes - friends, towards whom we have the morality of co-operation; foes, towards whom we have that of competition. But this division is constantly changing; at one moment a man hates his business competitor, at another, when both are threatened by Socialism or by an external enemy, he suddenly begins to view him as a brother. Always when we pass beyond the limits of the family it is the external enemy which supplies the cohesive force. In times of safety we can afford to hate our neighbour, but in times of danger we must love him.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Authority and the Individual (1949)
1940s

Love, Hate, Family, Business

“In the face of violence that seems intractable and suffering that is so senseless, it is easy to grow cynical, and I think tempting to give in to the notion that peace and security may be beyond our grasp. But I say to all of you here today, especially the young people, do not give into that cynicism. Do not lose the idealism and optimism that is the root of all great change. Don’t ever lose the faith that says, if we want it, if we are willing to work for it, if we stand together, the future can be different; tomorrow can be better.”

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

2014, Remarks to the People of Estonia (September 2014)

People, Peace, Faith, Optimism

“Our senses enable us to perceive only a minute portion of the outside world. Our hearing extends to a small distance. Our sight is impeded by intervening bodies and shadows. To know each other we must reach beyond the sphere of our sense perceptions. We must transmit our intelligence, travel, transport the materials and transfer the energies necessary for our existence. Following this thought we now realize, forcibly enough to dispense with argument, that of all other conquests of man, without exception, that which is most desirable, which would be most helpful in the establishment of universal peaceful relations is — the complete ANNIHILATION OF DISTANCE.
To achieve this wonder, electricity is the one and only means. Inestimable good has already been done by the use of this all powerful agent, the nature of which is still a mystery. Our astonishment at what has been accomplished would be uncontrollable were it not held in check by the expectation of greater miracles to come. That one, the greatest of all, can be viewed in three aspects: Dissemination of intelligence, transportation, and transmission of power.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

A Means for Furthering Peace (1905)

World, Peace, Travel, Intelligence

“My dear Sir: Herewith is a little sketch, as you requested. There is not much of it, for the reason, I suppose, that there is not much of me. If anything be made out of it, I wish it to be modest, and not to go beyond the material. If it were thought necessary to incorporate anything from any of my speeches, I suppose there would be no objection. Of course it must not appear to have been written by myself.”

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

p, 125
1850s, Autobiographical Sketch Written for Jesse W. Fell (1859)

Appearance

“That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom. Meanwhile the cult, by appropriate rites, must keep alive the memory of those ancient ways and shadow forth the prophecy of their return.”

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

Fiction, The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

Men, Secret, Law, Way

“All the rays which convey the images of objects through the air are straight lines. Hence, if the images of very large bodies have to pass through very small holes, and beyond these holes recover their large size, the lines must necessarily intersect.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), II Linear Perspective

“My first near-death experience was an accident, a botched anesthesia during a triple bypass. I had listened to several people on TV talk shows who had gone down the blue tunnel to the Pearly Gates, and even beyond the Pearly Gates, or so they said, and then come back to life again. But I certainly wouldn't have set out on such a risky expedition on purpose, without first having survived one …
To go through the Pearly Gates, no matter how tempting the interviewee on the other side, as I myself discovered the hard way, is to run the risk that crotchety Saint Peter, depending on his mood, may never let you out again. Think of how heartbroken your friends and relatives would be if, by going through the Pearly Gates to talk to Napoleon, say, you in effect committed suicide.”

Kurt Vonnegut book God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian

God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999)

Life, Death, People, Way

“There is always someone above you: beyond God Himself rises Nothingness.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Anathemas and Admirations (1987)

God

“Academic training in beauty is a sham. We have been deceived… The beauties of the Parthenon, Venuses, Nymphs, Narcissuses are so many lies. Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

1930s, "Conversations avec Picasso," 1934–35
Source: Herschel Browning Chip (1968, p. 271), quoted in Chipp (1978, 266); As cited in: Constance Milbrath (1998), Patterns of Artistic Development in Children, p. 257.

Beauty, Art, Training

“There is then no analogy whatever between the operations of the Chess-Player, and those of the calculating machine of Mr. Babbage, and if we choose to call the former a pure machine we must be prepared to admit that it is, beyond all comparison, the most wonderful of the inventions of mankind.”

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic

Poe stating his arguments that Maelzel's Chess-Player was a hoax. Maelzel's Chess-Player http://www.eapoe.org/works/essays/maelzel.htm, Southern Literary Journal (April 1836).

“Is it not proven beyond all dispute that there is no limit to the enormities which men will commit when they are once persuaded that they are keepers of other men's consciences? To spread religion by any means, and to crush heresy by all means is the practical inference from the doctrine that one man may control another's religion. Given the duty of a state to foster some one form of faith, and by the sure inductions of our nature slowly but certainly persecution will occur. To prevent for ever the possibility of Papists roasting Protestants, Anglicans hanging Romish priests, and Puritans flogging Quakers, let every form of state-churchism be utterly abolished, and the remembrance of the long curse which it has cast upon the world be blotted out for ever.”

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

The Inquisition, 1868 The Sword and the Trowel http://www.spurgeon.org/s_and_t/inq.htm

Men, World, Faith, Religion

“There are good people who, being discontented with present-day conditions, think that these conditions can be cured by a return to what they call the “principles of the fathers.” […] But to go back to the governmental theories of a hundred years ago would accomplish nothing whatever; for it was under the conditions of unrestricted individualism and freedom from Government interference, countenanced by those theories, that the trusts grew up, and private fortunes, enormous far beyond the deserts of the accumulators were gathered. […] It may be that, in the past development of our country, complete freedom from all restrictions, and the consequent unlimited encouragement and reward given to the most successful industrial leaders, played a part in which the beneﬁts outweighed the disadvantages. But nowadays such is not the case.”

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

1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)

People, Thinking, Freedom, Success

“It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years. And contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidate - particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.
But I have asserted a firm conviction - a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people - that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice. We have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.”

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

2008, A More Perfect Union (March 2008)

God, People, Faith, Perfection

“Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness; and this truth is in itself so excellent that, even when it dwells on humble and lowly matters, it is still infinitely above uncertainty and lies, disguised in high and lofty discourses; because in our minds, even if lying should be their fifth element, this does not prevent that the truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects, though not of wandering wits. But you who live in dreams are better pleased by the sophistical reasons and frauds of wits in great and uncertain things, than by those reasons which are certain and natural and not so far above us.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

Truth, Dreams, Lying, Fraud

“The object of my worship lies beyond perception's reach;
For men who see, the Ka'aba is a compass, nothing more.”

Ghalib (1797–1869) Urdu-Persian poet

Men

“The perpetual tendency of the race of man to increase beyond the means of subsistence is one of the general laws of animated nature, which we can have no reason to expect to change.”

Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) British political economist

Essay on the Principle of Population (1798; rev. through 1826)

Law, Nature, Change, Animals

“Today, the Princess Royal has been canonized as a secular saint, for her truly admirable international work on behalf of the Save the Children Fund. Her dedication and concern are beyond doubt, but she didn't catch them like measles.”

Anne, Princess Royal (1950) daughter of Elizabeth II

Bernard Levin, "Uneasy Lies the Head", The Times, 23 January 1989.
About

Children, Princess

“Germany appeared in my eyes a very tiny portion of the earth. I had emerged from abstract Mysticism, and I learnt a love for Matter. Beauty of material and brilliancy of wit were lordly things to me: as regards my beloved music, I found them both among the Frenchmen and Italians. I forswore my model, Beethoven; his last Symphony I deemed the keystone of a whole great epoch of art, beyond whose limits no man could hope to press, and within which no man could attain to independence.”

Richard Wagner (1813–1883) German composer, conductor

Autobiographical Sketch (1843)

Love, Beauty, Hope, Art

“It's been by turns frustrating and fascinating and wonderful beyond imagination. If what I suspect is true, it's one of the most important milestones in human history to acknowledge that we are not alone in the universe.”

Steven M. Greer (1955) American ufologist

Greer describes his campaign for disclosure.
Undated

Imagination, History, Universe

“There is a great directing head of people and things — a Supreme Being who looks after the destinies of the world.
I am convinced that the body is made up of entities that are intelligent and are directed by this Higher Power. When one cuts his finger, I believe it is the intelligence of these entities which heals the wound. When one is sick, it is the intelligence of these entities which brings convalescence. You know that there are living cells in the body so tiny that the microscope cannot find them at all. The entities that give life and soul to the human body are finer still and lie infinitely beyond the reach of our finest scientific instruments. When these entities leave the body, the body is like a ship without a rudder — deserted, motionless and dead.”

Thomas Edison (1847–1931) American inventor and businessman

As quoted in The Romance and Drama of the Rubber Industry (1936) by Harvey Samuel Firestone
1930s

Life, People, Lie, World

“As all regions below are replenished with living creatures… so may the heavens above be replenished with beings whose nature we do not understand. He that shall well consider the strange and wonderful nature of life and the frame of the Animals, will think nothing beyond the possibility of nature, nothing too hard for the omnipotent power of God. And as the Planets remain in their orbs, so may any other bodies subsist at any distance from the earth, and much more may beings, who have sufficient power of self motion, move whether they will, and continue in any regions of the heavens whatever, there to enjoy the society of one another, and by their messengers or Angels to rule the earth and convers with the remotest regions. Thus may the whole heavens or any part thereof whatever be the habitation of the Blessed, and at the same time the earth be subject to their dominion. And to have thus the liberty and dominion of the whole heavens and the choice of the happiest places for abode seems a greater happiness than to be confined to any one place whatever.”

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

As quoted by Frank Edward Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton (1977)

Life, God, Happiness, Angels

“I do differ from you radically in respect to familiar things & scenes; for I always demand close correlation with the landscape & historic stream to which I belong, & would feel completely lost in infinity without a system of reference-points based on known & accustomed objects. I take complete relativity so much for granted, that I cannot conceive of anything as existing in itself in any recognisable form. What gives things an aspect & quasi-significance to us is the fact that we view things consistently from a certain artificial & fortuitous angle. Without the preservation of that angle, coherent consciousness & entity itself becomes inconceivable. Thus my wish for freedom is not so much a wish to put all terrestrial things behind me & plunge forever into abysses beyond light, matter, & energy. That, indeed, would mean annihilation as a personality rather than liberation. My wish is perhaps best defined as a wish for infinite visioning & voyaging power, yet without loss of the familiar background which gives all things significance. I want to know what stretches Outside, & be able to visit all the gulfs & dimensions beyond Space & Time. I want, too, to juggle the calendar at will; bringing things from the immemorial past down into the present, & making long journeys into the forgotten years. But I want the familiar Old Providence of my childhood as a perpetual base for these necromancies & excursions—& in a good part of these necromancies & excursions I want certain transmuted features of Old Providence to form part of the alien voids I visit or conjure up. I am as geographic-minded as a cat—places are everything to me. Long observation has shewn me that no other objective experience can give me even a quarter of the kick I can extract from the sight of a fresh landscape or urban vista whose antiquity & historic linkages are such as to correspond with certain fixed childhood dream-patterns of mine. Of course my twilight cosmos of half-familiar, fleetingly remembered marvels is just as unattainable as your Ultimate Abysses—this being the real secret of its fascination. Nothing really known can continue to be acutely fascinating—the charm of many familiar things being mainly resident in their power to symbolise or suggest unknown extensions & overtones.”

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

Letter to Clark Ashton Smith (7 November 1930), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 214
Non-Fiction, Letters

Secret, Dreams, Feeling, Cats

“Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions. After looking at the Alps, I felt that my mind had been stretched beyond the limits of its elasticity, and fitted so loosely on my old ideas of space that I had to spread these to fit it.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

Idea

“Before he died, Guru Govind Singh had commissioned Banda Bairagi, a Rajput from Jammu to go to the Punjab and punish the wrong-doers. Banda more than fulfilled his mission. He was joined by fresh formations of the Khalsa and the Hindus at large gave him succour and support. He roamed all over the Punjab, defeating one Muslim army after another in frontal fights as well as in guerilla warfare. Sirhind, where Guru Govind Singh's younger sons had been walled up, was stormed and sacked. The bullies of Islam who had walked with immense swagger till only the other day had to run for cover. Large parts of the Punjab were liberated from Muslim despotism after a spell of nearly seven centuries. The Mughal empire, however, was still a mighty edifice which could mobilize a military force far beyond Banda's capacity to match. Gradually, he had to yield ground and accept defeat as his own following thinned down in battle after battle. He was captured, carried to Delhi in an iron cage and tortured to death in 1716 A. D. Many other members of the Khalsa met the same fate in Delhi and elsewhere. The Muslim governor of the Punjab had placed a prize on every Khalsa head. The ranks of the Khalsa had perforce to suffer a steep decline and go into hiding.”

Banda Singh Bahadur (1670–1716) Sikh military commander

Swarup, Ram, & Goel, S. R. (1985). Hindu-Sikh relationship. (Introduction by S.R. Goel)

Death, Fate, Support, Suffering

“Schumpeter’s approach has an important implication for political behavior. If the constellation of economic interests regularly changes because of innovation and entry, politicians face a fundamentally different world than those in a natural state: open access orders cannot manipulate interests in the same way as natural states do. Too much behavior and formation of interests take place beyond the state’s control. Politicians in both natural states and open access orders want to create rents. Rent-creation at once rewards their supporters and binds their constituents to support them. Because, however, open access orders enable any citizen to form an organization for a wide variety of purposes, rents created by either the political process or economic innovation attract competitors in the form of new organizations. In Schumpeterian terms, political entrepreneurs put together new organizations to compete for the rents and, in so doing, reduce existing rents and struggle to create new ones. As a result, creative destruction reigns in open access politics just as it does in open access economies. Much of the creation of new interests is beyond the control of the state. The creation of new interests and the generation of new sources of rents occur continuously in open access orders.”

Douglass C. North (1920–2015) American Economist

Source: Violence and Social Orders (2009), Ch. 1 : The Conceptual Framework

World, Way, Behavior, Support

“If it were not my purpose to combine barbarian things with things Hellenic, to traverse and civilize every continent, to search out the uttermost parts of land and sea, to push the bounds of Macedonia to the farthest Ocean, and to disseminate and shower the blessings of the Hellenic justice and peace over every nation, I should not be content to sit quietly in the luxury of idle power, but I should emulate the frugality of Diogenes. But as things are, forgive me Diogenes, that I imitate Herakles, and emulate Perseus, and follow in the footsteps of Dionysos, the divine author and progenitor of my family, and desire that victorious Hellenes should dance again in India and revive the memory of the Bacchic revels among the savage mountain tribes beyond the Kaukasos…”

Alexander the Great (-356–-323 BC) King of Macedon

As quoted in "On the Fortune of Alexander" by Plutarch, 332 a-b

Family, Peace, Justice, Search

“In infancy I was afraid of the dark, which I peopled with all sorts of things; but my grandfather cured me of that by daring me to walk through certain dark parts of the house when I was 3 or 4 years old. After that, dark places held a certain fascination for me. But it is in dreams that I have known the real clutch of stark, hideous, maddening, paralysing fear. My infant nightmares were classics, & in them there is not an abyss of agonising cosmic horror that I have not explored. I don't have such dreams now—but the memory of them will never leave me. It is undoubtedly from them that the darkest & most gruesome side of my fictional imagination is derived. At the ages of 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, & 8 I have been whirled through formless abysses of infinite night and adumbrated horrors as black & as seethingly sinister as any of our friend Fafhrd's [a nickname Lovecraft used for Fritz Leiber] "splatter-stencil" triumphs. That's why I appreciate such triumphs so keenly, I have seen these things! Many a time I have awaked in shrieks of panic, & have fought desperately to keep from sinking back into sleep & its unutterable horrors. At the age of six my dreams became peopled with a race of lean, faceless, rubbery, winged things to which I applied the home-made name of night-gaunts. Night after night they would appear in exactly the same form—& the terror they brought was beyond any verbal description. Long decades later I embodied them in one of my Fungi from Yuggoth pseudo-sonnets, which you may have read. Well—after I was 8 all these things abated, perhaps because of the scientific habit of mind which I was acquiring (or trying to acquire). I ceased to believe in religion or any other form of the supernatural, & the new logic gradually reached my subconscious imagination. Still, occasional nightmares brought recurrent touches of the ancient fear—& as late as 1919 I had some that I could use in fiction without much change. The Statement of Randolph Carter is a literal dream transcript. Now, in the sere & yellow leaf (I shall be 47 in August), I seem to be rather deserted by stark horror. I have nightmares only 2 or 3 times a year, & of these none even approaches those of my youth in soul-shattering, phobic monstrousness. It is fully a decade & more since I have known fear in its most stupefying & hideous form. And yet, so strong is the impress of the past, I shall never cease to be fascinated by fear as a subject for aesthetic treatment. Along with the element of cosmic mystery & outsideness, it will always interest me more than anything else. It is, in a way, amusing that one of my chief interests should be an emotion whose poignant extremes I have never known in waking life!”

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

Letter to Harry O. Fischer (late February 1937), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 416-417
Non-Fiction, Letters

Life, People, Youth, Age

“There is a point of complexity beyond which a business is no longer manageable.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 3, p. 681

Business

“(On Ainsley Harriott) I must admit, I tend to think - with Ainsley - if you're that happy, you haven't really understood the world. You see, I think that cheeriness is all very well. Beyond a certain point it becomes quite offensive. And how many versions of what is, basically, your dinner can Ainsley do? There must be executives stalking the corridors of White City, thinking 'We need a new idea for Ainsley. He's so jolly. What can we have? We've had him doing Can't Cook, Won't Cook, Ready Steady Cook, Barbecues. We need something new, different, edgy. How about this? We like this. Ainsley's Death-Row Dinners.' Yes, the jolly chef tours the condemned man with a last supper to remember. We can have the recipes in the Radio Times - Ainsley's Humanely Fried Chicken, with a lethal injection of butter!”

Linda Smith (1958–2006) comedian

guaranteed to make the governor say 'Pardon'. (Wrap Up Warm tour, May 2004)
Stand-up

Death, Happiness, World, Idea

“I know lots of people who are educated far beyond their intelligence.”

Lewis Grizzard (1946–1994) American journalist

Source: cited in Living Positive with Imperfection: A Memoir, September 15, 2017 https://books.google.com/books?id=hxU6CwAAQBAJ&lpg=PT231&ots=0nMTnr_TtC&dq=I%20know%20lots%20of%20people%20who%20are%20educated%20far%20beyond%20their%20intelligence.&pg=PT231#v=onepage&q=I%20know%20lots%20of%20people%20who%20are%20educated%20far%20beyond%20their%20intelligence.&f=false,

People, Education, Intelligence

“(…) Pain and suffering are only the body and the mind screaming for attention. To go beyond the body you must be healthy; to go beyond the mind, you must have your mind in perfect order. (…).”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Suffering
Source: I am That, P.130.

Pain, Suffering, Perfection

“If I take the wages of everyone here, individually it means nothing, but collectively all of the earning power or wages that you earned in one week would make me wealthy. And if I could collect it for a year, I'd be rich beyond dreams. Now, when you see this, and then you stop and consider the wages that were kept back from millions of Black people, not for one year but for 310 years, you'll see how this country got so rich so fast. And what made the economy as strong as it is today. And all that slave labor that was amassed in unpaid wages, is due someone today. And you're not giving us anything when we say that it's time to collect.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

"Twenty million black people in prison," in Malcolm X: The Last Speeches, p. 51

People, Dreams, Strong, Time

“We believe our campaign isn’t just about the Games in our city in 2024. We believe this bid is about ensuring that the Games are sustainable and relevant in every year beyond 2024 as well. This bid isn’t only about L. A.’s future — it’s about our collective future. We are planning a great Games in Los Angeles — make no mistake — but we’re also laying the ground work along with you for future Games.”

Eric Garcetti (1971) American politician

2016, Los Angeles 2024 Summer Olympics bid

Angels, Game, Future

“Socialism sounds great. It has always sounded great. And it will probably always continue to sound great. It is only when you go beyond rhetoric, and start looking at hard facts, that socialism turns out to be a big disappointment, if not a disaster.”

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

"Socialism for the Uninformed" http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2016/05/31/socialism-for-the-uninformed-n2171042, 31 May 2016 <br class="br">2010s

Disappointment

“He who is himself crossed in love is able from time to time to master his passion, for he is not the creature but the creator of his own misery; and if a lover is unable to control his passion, he at least knows that he is himself to blame for his sufferings. But he who is loved without reciprocating that love is lost beyond redemption, for it is not in his power to set a limit to that other's passion, to keep it within bounds, and the strongest will is reduced to impotence in the face of another's desire. Perhaps only a man can realize to the full the tragedy of such an undesired relationships; for him alone the necessity to resist t is at once martyrdom and guilt. For when a woman resists an unwelcome passion, she is obeying to the full the law of her sex; the initial gesture of refusal is, so to speak, a primordial instinct in every female, and even if she rejects the most ardent passion she cannot be called inhuman. But how disastrous it is when fate upsets the balance, when a woman so far overcomes her natural modesty as to disclose her passion to a man, when, without the certainty of its being reciprocated, she offers her love, and he, the wooed, remains cold and on the defensive! An insoluble tangle this, always; for not to return a woman's love is to shatter her pride, to violate her modesty. The man who rejects a woman's advances is bound to wound her in her noblest feelings. In vain, then, all the tenderness with which he extricates himself, useless all his polite, evasive phrases, insulting all his offers of mere friendship, once she has revealed her weakness! His resistance inevitably becomes cruelty, and in rejecting a woman's love he takes a load of guild upon his conscience, guiltless though he may be. Abominable fetters that can never be cast off! Only a moment ago you felt free, you belonged to yourself and were in debt to no one, and now suddenly you find yourself pursued, hemmed in, prey and object of the unwelcome desires of another. Shaken to the depths of your soul, you know that day and night someone is waiting for you, thinking of you, longing and sighing for you - a woman, a stranger. She wants, she demands, she desires you with every fibre of her being, with her body, with her blood. She wants your hands, your hair, your lips, your manhood, your night and your day, your emotions, your senses, and all your thought and dreams. She wants to share everything with you, to take everything from you, and to draw it in with her breath. Henceforth, day and night, whether you are awake or asleep, there is somewhere in the world a being who is feverish and wakeful and who waits for you, and you are the centre of her waking and her dreaming. It is in vain that you try not to think of her, of her who thinks always of you, in vain that you seek to escape, for you no longer dwell in yourself, but in her. Of a sudden a stranger bears your image within her as though she were a moving mirror - no, not a mirror, for that merely drinks in your image when you offer yourself willingly to it, whereas she, the woman, this stranger who loves you, she has absorbed you into her very blood. She carries you always within her, carries you about with her, no mater whither you may flee. Always you are imprisoned, held prisoner, somewhere else, in some other person, no longer yourself, no longer free and lighthearted and guiltless, but always hunted, always under an obligation, always conscious of this "thinking-of-you" as if it were a steady devouring flame. Full of hate, full of fear, you have to endure this yearning on the part of another, who suffers on your account; and I now know that it is the most senseless, the most inescapable, affliction that can befall a man to be loved against his will - torment of torments, and a burden of guilt where there is no guilt.”

Stefan Zweig book Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

Love, Hate, Friendship, Fate

“Experience shows us that the air must have darkness beyond it and yet it appears blue. If you produce a small quantity of smoke from dry wood and the rays of the sun fall on this smoke, and if you then place behind the smoke a piece of black velvet on which the sun does not shine, you will see that all the smoke which is between the eye and the black stuff will appear of a beautiful blue colour. And if instead of the velvet you place a white cloth smoke, that is too thick smoke, hinders, and too thin smoke does not produce, the perfection of this blue colour. Hence a moderate amount of smoke produces the finest blue.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), VII On the Proportions and on the Movements of the Human Figure

Beauty, Appearance, Sun, Perfection

“The sky is full of birds, the purple lupins stand up so regally and peacefully, two little old women have sat down on the box for a chat, the sun is shining on my face — and right before our eyes, mass murder. The whole thing is simply beyond comprehension.”

Etty Hillesum (1914–1943) Jewish diarist

8 June 1943, p. 602
Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943

Women, Bird, Sun, Box

“I am not yet born; forgive me
For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words
When they speak me, my thoughts when they think me,
My treason engendered by traitors beyond me,
My life when they murder by means of my
Hands, my death when they live me.”

Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) poet

"Prayer Before Birth", line 11

Life, Death, World, Forgiveness

“Where the glacier meets the sky, the land ceases to be earthly, and the earth becomes one with the heavens; no sorrows live there anymore, and therefore joy is not necessary; beauty alone reigns there, beyond all demands.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Four: The Beauty of the Heavens

Beauty, Joy

“For it still seemed to me “that it is not we who sin, but some other nature sinned in us.” And it gratified my pride to be beyond blame, and when I did anything wrong not to have to confess that I had done wrong. … I loved to excuse my soul and to accuse something else inside me (I knew not what) but which was not I. But, assuredly, it was I, and it was my impiety that had divided me against myself. That sin then was all the more incurable because I did not deem myself a sinner.”

Aurelius Augustinus book Confessions

A. Outler, trans. (Dover: 2002), Book 5, Chapter 10, p. 77
Confessions (c. 397)

Love, Soul, Nature

“I present you with a Key : I have not heard of the like yet framed, since it pleased God to bring that mighty continent of America to light. Others of my countrymen have often, and excellently, and lately, written of the country, and none that I know beyond the goodness and worth of it.
This Key respects the native language of it, and happily may unlock some rarities concerning the natives themselves, not yet discovered.”

Roger Williams (theologian) (1603–1684) English Protestant theologian and founder of the colony of Providence Plantation

Preface
A Key into the Language of America (1643)

God, Light, Country

“Beyond this vale of tears
There is a life above,
Unmeasured by the flight of years;
And all that life is love.”

James Montgomery (1771–1854) British editor, hymn writer, and poet

The Issues of Life and Death.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Love, Life, Tear

“There is, therefore, no difficulty in answering such questions as these. What cause was there why the Universe was placed in such a part of Space? and, Why was the Universe created at such a Time? for, if there be no Space beyond the Universe, it was impossible that it should be created in another place; and if there was no Time before, it was impossible it should be created at another time.”

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

The Mind (begun in September 1723; not completed).

Question, Universe, Time, Parting

“Remember that time is money. He that can earn ten shillings a day by his labor, and goes abroad, or sits idle, one half of that day, though he spends but sixpence during his diversion or idleness, ought not to reckon that the only expense; he has really spent, rather thrown away, five shillings, besides.
“Remember, that credit is money. If a man lets his money lie in my hands after it is due, he gives me interest, or so much as I can make of it during that time. This amounts to a considerable sum where a man has good and large credit, and makes good use of it.
“Remember, that money is of the prolific, generating nature. Money can beget money, and its offspring can beget more, and so on. Five shillings turned is six, turned again it is seven and three pence, and so on, till it becomes a hundred pounds. The more there is of it, the more it produces every turning, so that the profits rise quicker and quicker. He that kills a breeding sow, destroys all her offspring to the thousandth generation. He that murders a crown, destroys all that it might have produced, even scores of pounds.”
“Remember this saying, The good paymaster is lord of another man’s purse. He that is known to pay punctually and exactly to the time he promises, may at any time, and on any occasion, raise all the money his friends can spare. This is sometimes of great use. After industry and frugality, nothing contributes more to the raising of a young man in the world than punctuality and justice in all his dealings; therefore never keep borrowed money an hour beyond the time you promised, lest a disappointment shut up your friend’s purse for ever.
“The most trifling actions that affect a man’s credit are to be regarded. The sound of your hammer at five in the morning, or eight at night, heard by a creditor, makes him easy six months longer; but if he sees you at a billiard table, or hears your voice at a tavern, when you should be at work, he sends for his money the next day; demands it, before he can receive it, in a lump. ‘It shows, besides, that you are mindful of what you owe; it makes you appear a careful as well as an honest man, and that still increases your credit.’
“Beware of thinking all your own that you possess, and of living accordingly. It is a mistake that many people who have credit fall into. To prevent this, keep an exact account for some time both of your expenses and your income. If you take the pains at first to mention particulars, it will have this good effect: you will discover how wonderfully small, trifling expenses mount up to large sums, and will discern what might have been, and may for the future be saved, without occasioning any great inconvenience.
“For six pounds a year you may have the use of one hundred pounds, provided you are a man of known prudence and honesty.
“He that spends a groat a day idly, spends idly above six pounds a year, which is the price for the use of one hundred pounds.
“He that wastes idly a groat’s worth of his time per day, one day with another, wastes the privilege of using one hundred pounds each day.
“He that idly loses five shillings’ worth of time, loses five shillings, and might as prudently throw five shillings into the sea.
“He that loses five shillings, not only loses that sum, but all the advantage that might be made by turning it in dealing, which by the time that a young man becomes old, will amount to a considerable sum of money.””

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

Money, Pain, People, Lie

“Moreover, humour is itself but a superficial view of that which is in truth both tragic and terrible—the contrast between human pretence and cosmic mechanical reality. Humour is but the faint terrestrial echo of the hideous laughter of the blind mad gods that squat leeringly and sardonically in caverns beyond the Milky Way. It is a hollow thing, sweet on the outside, but filled with the pathos of fruitless aspiration. All great humorists are sad—Mark Twain was a cynic and agnostic, and wrote "The Mysterious Stranger" and "What Is Man?" When I was younger I wrote humorous matter—satire and light verse—and was known to many as a jester and parodist. … But I cannot help seeing beyond the tinsel of humour, and recognising the pitiful basis of jest—the world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.”

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

"The Defence Remains Open!" (April 1921), published in Collected Essays, Volume 5: Philosophy edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 54
Non-Fiction

God, Truth, World, Sadness

“She could just pack up and leave, but she does not visualize what's beyond ahead.”

Núria Añó (1973) Catalan writer novelist

Presage

“There was a night when winds from unknown spaces whirled us irresistibly into limitless vacum beyond all thought and entity. Perceptions of the most maddeningly untransmissible sort thronged upon us; perceptions of infinity which at the time convulsed us with joy, yet which are now partly lost to my memory and partly incapable of presentation to others.”

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

Fiction, Hypnos (1922)

Memory, Time, Joy, Night

“So long as I was in your sight
I was your heart, your soul, your treasure;
And evermore you sobb'd and sigh'd
Burning in flames beyond all measure:
--Three days endured your love to me,
And it was lost in other three!”

William Byrd (1543–1623) British composer

Poem: The Faithless Shepherdess http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-faithless-shepherdess/

Love, Soul, Heart

“It now remains that we find the amount of time of descent through the channel. This we shall obtain from the marvelous property of the pendulum, which is that it makes all its vibrations, large or small, in equal times. This requires, once and for all, that two or three or four patient and curious friends, having noted a fixed star that stands against some fixed marker, taking a pendulum of any length, shall go counting its vibrations during the whole time of return of the fixed star to its original point, and this will be the number of vibrations in 24 hours. From the number of these we can find the number of vibrations of any other pendulums, longer or shorter, at will, so that if for example those counted by us in 24 hours were 234,567, then taking another shorter pendulum with which one counts 800 vibrations while another counts 150 of the longer pendulum, we already have, by the golden rule, the number of vibrations for the whole time of 24 hours; and if we want to know the time of descent through the channel, we can easily find not only the minutes, seconds, and sixtieths of seconds, but beyond that as we please. It is true that we can pass a more exact measure by having observed the flow of water through a thin passage, for by collecting this and having weighed what passes in one minute, for example, then by weighing what passes in the time of descent through the channel we can find the most exact measure and quantity of this time, especially by making use of a balance so precise as to weigh one sixtieth of a grain.”

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer

Letter to Giovanni Battista Baliani (1639)

Star, Water, Time

“There are regions beyond the most nebulous outskirts of matter; but no regions beyond the Divine goodness. We may conceive of tracts where there are no worlds, but not of any where there us no God of mercy.”

James Waddel Alexander (1804–1859) American Presbyterian minister and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 274.

God, World

“It is just as ridiculous to get excited & hysterical over a coming cultural change as to get excited & hysterical over one's physical aging... There is legitimate pathos about both processes; but blame & rebellion are essentially cheap, because inappropriate, emotions... It is wholly appropriate to feel a deep sadness at the coming of unknown things & the departure of those around which all our symbolic associations are entwined. All life is fundamentally & inextricably sad, with the perpetual snatching away of all the chance combinations of image & vista & mood that we become attached to, & the perpetual encroachment of the shadow of decay upon illusions of expansion & liberation which buoyed us up & spurred us on in youth. That is why I consider all jauntiness, & many forms of carelessly generalised humour, as essentially cheap & mocking, & occasionally ghastly & corpselike. Jauntiness & non-ironic humour in this world of basic & inescapable sadness are like the hysterical dances that a madman might execute on the grave of all his hopes. But if, at one extreme, intellectual poses of spurious happiness be cheap & disgusting; so at the other extreme are all gestures & fist-clenchings of rebellion equally silly & inappropriate—if not quite so overtly repulsive. All these things are ridiculous & contemptible because they are not legitimately applicable... The sole sensible way to face the cosmos & its essential sadness (an adumbration of true tragedy which no destruction of values can touch) is with manly resignation—eyes open to the real facts of perpetual frustration, & mind & sense alert to catch what little pleasure there is to be caught during one's brief instant of existence. Once we know, as a matter of course, how nature inescapably sets our freedom-adventure-expansion desires, & our symbol-&-experience-affections, definitely beyond all zones of possible fulfilment, we are in a sense fortified in advance, & able to endure the ordeal of consciousness with considerable equanimity... Life, if well filled with distracting images & activities favourable to the ego's sense of expansion, freedom, & adventurous expectancy, can be very far from gloomy—& the best way to achieve this condition is to get rid of the unnatural conceptions which make conscious evils out of impersonal and inevitable limitations... get rid of these, & of those false & unattainable standards which breed misery & mockery through their beckoning emptiness.”

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

Letter to Frank Belknap Long (27 February 1931), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 291
Non-Fiction, Letters, to Frank Belknap Long

Life, Happiness, Pleasure, Youth

“I endorse all that you say of the superior intelligence of the felidae. Never have I been able to associate the docile servility and satellitism of the canidae with mental power. Zoölogists seem to consider the cerebration of cats and dogs about 50-50—but my respect always goes to the cool, sure, impersonal, delicately poised feline who minds his business and never slobbers—the aristocratic, epicurean philosopher who knows what he wants and tells interlopers to go to hell. There is no credit in having a dog attached to one—for a dog can be conditioned to become anybody's slave and property. But a cat is nobody's slave. You do not own a cat. If one lives in your home, it is because he regards your way of life favourably, and accepts you as a friend, as one gentleman accepts another. He takes no kicks or insolence from anyone. If you are not worthy to associate with him, he will depart to seek an environment more suited to a gentleman's taste. Therefore he who retains the respect and companionship of a feline has proven himself to be essentially a superior citizen. For a human being, membership in the Kappa Alpha Tau forms a badge of distinction. Many are the eminent names on that member ship list—Mahomet himself, Richelieu, Poe, Baudelaire... one could catalogue them endlessly. Certainly, I ask no greater honour than to be accounted a citizen of Ulthar beyond the River Skai!”

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

Letter to E. Hoffmann Price (29 July 1936), published in Selected Letters Vol. V, p. 290
Non-Fiction, Letters, to E. Hoffmann Price

Life, Dogs, Way, Home

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Quotes about beyond
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