Quotes about block

A collection of quotes on the topic of block, doing, use, likeness.

Quotes about block

“When anything is blocking my head or there's worry in my life, I just go sit on Mars or something and look back here at Earth. All you can see is this tiny speck. You don't see the fear. You don't see the pain. You don't see thought. It's just one solid speck. Then nothing really matters. It just doesn't.”

Heath Ledger (1979–2008) Australian actor

As quoted in an interview in Vanity Fair (August 2000).

Life, Pain, Fear

“Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it”

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet

“If I had to tell you how humans made their way to Earth, it would go like this: In the beginning, there was nothing at all but the moon and the sun. And the moon wanted to come out during the day, but there was something so much brighter that seemed to fill up all those hours. The moon grew hungry, thinner and thinner, until she was just a slice of herself, and her tips were as sharp as a knife. By accident, because that is the way most things happen, she poked a hole in the night and out spilled a million stars, like a fountain of tears.

Horrified, the moon tried to swallow them up. And sometimes this worked, because she got fatter and rounder.. But mostly it didn't, because there were just so many. The stars kept coming, until they made the sky so bright that the sun got jealous. He invited the stars to his side of the world, where it was always bright. What he didn't tell them, though, was that in the daytime, they'd never be seen. So the stupid ones leaped from the sky to the ground, and they froze under the weight of their own foolishness.

The moon did her best. She carved each of these blocks of sorrow into a man or a woman. She spent the rest of her time watching out so that her other stars wouldn't fall. She spent the rest of her time holding onto whatever scraps she had left.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Stupidity, World, Way, Star

“I see every director as a different brand. That way, it’s easy for me to compartmentalise my work. So I can easily switch from one film to the other and refresh myself when I hit a mental block. I don’t want my music to sound like a pastiche of other works. So I stop listening to my songs once the audio for a film is released. When I unwind, it’s usually with jazz.”

Yuvan Shankar Raja (1979) Indian musician

Yuvan Unplugged (2009)

Music, Way

“Instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling block in the way of action, we think it an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all.”

Pericles (-494–-429 BC) Greek statesman, orator, and general of Athens

As translated by Richard Crawley (1951)
History of the Peloponnesian War

Way, Thinking

“I walked around the block twice, passed 200 people and failed to see a human being.”

Charles Bukowski book Tales of Ordinary Madness

Source: Tales of Ordinary Madness

People

“The bible and the church have been the greatest stumbling block in the way of women's emancipation.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) Suffragist and Women's Rights activist

Women, Way

“Omnipotence and foreknowledge of God, I repeat, utterly destroy the doctrine of 'free-will' … doubtless it gives the greatest possible offense to common sense or natural reason, that God, Who is proclaimed as being full of mercy and goodness, and so on, should of His own mere will abandon, harden and damn men, as though He delighted in the sins and great eternal torments of such poor wretches. It seems an iniquitous, cruel, intolerable thought to think of God; and it is this that has been such a stumbling block to so many great men down through the ages. And who would not stumble at it? I have stumbled at it myself more than once, down to the deepest pit of despair, so that I wished I had never been made a man. (That was before I knew how health-giving that despair was, and how close to grace”

Martin Luther book On the Bondage of the Will

Source: On the Bondage of the Will (1525), p. 217

Men, God, Health, Age

“Archie's been living off the fat of the land.
I'm here to give him his pension plan.
When you come to the fight don't block the door.
'Cause you'll all go home after round four.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

Before his fight with Archie Moore (1962), as quoted in "Muhammad Ali was also great for civil rights" by Mark Wiedmer, in Times Free Press (17 January 2012) http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2012/jan/17/muhammad-ali-also-great-for-civil-rights/?print

Home, Fight

“The idea that an advanced civilization need not rest on slavery is a relatively new idea, for instance; it is a good deal younger than the Christian religion. But even if Chesterton's dictum were true, it would only be true in the sense that a statue is contained in every block of stone. Ideas may not change, but emphasis shifts constantly. It could be claimed, for example, that the most important part of Marx's theory is contained in the saying: ‘Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.’ But before Marx developed it, what force had that saying had? Who had paid any attention to it? Who had inferred from it — what it certainly implies — that laws, religions and moral codes are all a superstructure built over existing property relations? It was Christ, according to the Gospel, who uttered the text, but it was Marx who brought it to life. And ever since he did so the motives of politicians, priests, judges, moralists and millionaires have been under the deepest suspicion — which, of course, is why they hate him so much.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

As I Please (25 February 1944) http://orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/eaip_01 <br class="br">"As I Please" (1943–1947)

Life, Hate, Religion, Law

“My mom and I lived at Hollywood and Western, a drug-dealer and prostitute corner. It was pretty terrifying. I got beat up a lot. I saw people have sex in the alleys. I remember I was five years old, and this guy with a trench coat, needles and crack cornered me. Early on, seeing the devastation on my block, seeing heroin addicts, made me think twice about ever getting involved in drugs. It's evil. Once you take that step and experiment, drugs can take over your life. You are not yourself anymore. That's something I never wanted. I didn't have a lot of friends growing up. It was kind of just me and my parents. But because of them, the neighborhood did not have a bad effect on me. My dad introduced me to artists, and every few months we'd go to some hippie doo-dah parade as Mudmen in our underwear, carrying sticks and covered in mud. My mother did everything to get me into the best schools she could find.”

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer

http://www.popmonk.com/actors/leonardo-dicaprio/quotes-leonardo-dicaprio.htm

Life, People, School, Sex

“There shall be no transaction between East and West Pakistan. All communications, telegraph and telephone, will be confined within Bangladesh. The people of this land are facing elimination. If need be, we will bring everything to a total standstill. Collect your salaries on time. If the salaries are held up, if a single bullet is fired upon us henceforth, if the murder of my people does not cease, I call upon you to turn every home into a fortress against their onslaught. Use whatever you can put your hands on to confront this enemy. Every last road must be blocked.”

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (1920–1975) Bengali revolutionary, founder ("father") of Bangladesh

Quote, This time the struggle is for our freedom (1971)

People, Home, Communication, Time

“Looking round that filthy room, with raw meat lying among the refuse on the floor, and cold, clotted saucepans sprawling everywhere, and the sink blocked and coated with grease, I used to wonder whether there could be a restaurant in the world as bad as ours. But the other three all said they had been in dirtier places.”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 21; on the state of the kitchen at the newly opened Auberge.

World, Lying

“By "nationalism" I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled "good" or "bad."”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"Notes on Nationalism" (1945)
Context: By "nationalism" I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled "good" or "bad." But secondly — and this is much more important — I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests. Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By "patriotism" I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.

People, Confidence

“Humans block their progress. This starts from judging things blindly or without proves and evidences.”

Idegu Ojonugwa Shadrach (1995)

“Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

Source: The Real Frank Zappa Book (1989), p. 239; this may be derived from a similar observation by Harlan Ellison which is sometimes misattributed to Zappa: "The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity."

Stupidity, Universe

“They told me to take a streetcar named Desire and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at - Elysian Fields!”

Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire

Source: A Streetcar Named Desire

“One should, when overwhelmed by the shadow of a giant, move aside and see if the colossal shadow isn't merely that of a pygmy blocking out the sun.”

Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer

Sun

“Caring about someone isn't complicated. It isn't easy. But it isn't complicated, either. Kinda like lifting the engine block out of a car.”

Jim Butcher book Small Favor

Source: Small Favor

Cars

“There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

People

“Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“Writer's block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they can have an excuse to drink alcohol.”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer

Alcohol, Drink

“You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!”

William Shakespeare Julius Caesar

Source: Julius Caesar

“Somebody said once or wrote, once: 'We're all of us children in a vast kindergarten trying to spell God's name with the wrong alphabet blocks!”

Tennessee Williams Suddenly Last Summer

Source: Suddenly Last Summer

God, Children

“There will always be rocks in the road ahead of us. They will be stumbling blocks or stepping stones; it all depends on how you use them.”

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

Dependency

“A stumbling block to the pessimist is a stepping-stone to the optimist.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

“Immortality is like trying to carve your initials in a block of ice in the middle of July.”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

“We spend over a trillion dollars, and pass countless laws, and devote entire agencies to preventing terrorist attacks on our soil, and rightfully so. And yet, we have a Congress that explicitly blocks us from even collecting data on how we could potentially reduce gun deaths. How can that be?
This is a political choice that we make to allow this to happen every few months in America. We collectively are answerable to those families who lose their loved ones because of our inaction.”

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

2015, Remarks after the Umpqua Community College shooting (October 2015)

Love, Death, Family, Law

“Each pursues his private interest and only his private interest; and thereby serves the private interests of all, the general interest, without willing it or knowing it. The real point is not that each individual's pursuit of his private interest promotes the totality of private interests, the general interest. One could just as well deduce from this abstract phrase that each individual reciprocally blocks the assertion of the others' interests, so that, instead of a general affirmation, this war of all against all produces a general negation.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Grundrisse (1857-1858)
Source: Notebook I, The Chapter on Money, p. 76.

War

“But since, if the usefulness of the legislation, and the sequence and beauty of the history, were universally evident of itself, we should not believe that any other thing could be understood in the Scriptures save what was obvious, the word of God has arranged that certain stumbling-blocks, as it were, and offences, and impossibilities, should be introduced into the midst of the law and the history, in order that we may not, through being drawn away in all directions by the merely attractive nature of the language, either altogether fall away from the (true) doctrines, as learning nothing worthy of God, or, by not departing from the letter, come to the knowledge of nothing more divine.”

Origen (185–254) Christian scholar in Alexandria

On First Principles, Bk. 4, ch. 2, par. 15
On First Principles

God, Law, Beauty, History

“If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals — if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is. Now, I can’t say that I will agree with all the things that the present group who call themselves Libertarians in the sense of a party say, because I think that like in any political movement there are shades, and there are libertarians who are almost over at the point of wanting no government at all or anarchy. I believe there are legitimate government functions. There is a legitimate need in an orderly society for some government to maintain freedom or we will have tyranny by individuals. The strongest man on the block will run the neighborhood. We have government to ensure that we don’t each one of us have to carry a club to defend ourselves. But again, I stand on my statement that I think that libertarianism and conservatism are traveling the same path.”

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

Interview published in Reason (1 July 1975)
1970s

Travel, Soul, Thinking, Sense

“Some German words are so long that they have a perspective. Observe these examples:

Freundschaftsbezeigungen.
Dilletantenaufdringlichkeiten.
Stadtverordnetenversammlungen.
These things are not words, they are alphabetical processions. And they are not rare; one can open a German newspaper any time and see them marching majestically across the page,—and if he has any imagination he can see the banners and hear the music, too. They impart a martial thrill to the meekest subject. I take a great interest in these curiosities. "Whenever I come across a good one, I stuff it and put it in my museum. In this way I have made quite a valuable collection. When I get duplicates, I exchange with other collectors, and thus increase the variety of my stock. Here are some specimens which I lately bought at an auction sale of the effects of a bankrupt bric-a-brac hunter:

Generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen.
Alterthumswissenschaften.
Kinderbewahrungsanstalten.
Unabhaengigkeitserklaerungen.
Wiederherstellungsbestrebungen.
Waffenstillstandsunterhandlungen.
Of course when one of these grand mountain ranges goes stretching across the printed page, it adorns and ennobles that literary landscape,—but at the same time it is a great distress to the new student, for it blocks up his way; he cannot crawl under it, or climb over it or tunnel through it. So he resorts to the dictionary for help; but there is no help there. The dictionary must draw the line somewhere,—so it leaves this sort of words out. And it is right, because these long things are hardly legitimate words, but are rather combinations of words, and the inventor of them ought to have been killed.”

Mark Twain book A Tramp Abroad

A Tramp Abroad (1880)

Music, Way, Imagination, Mountain

“Because I'm a person who always has to do something. If I cannot do anything, I'm in a very bad way. But really I'm always working on something. And I always want to work, too. Well, the few artists I know really well, they are all so... It's a really bad block when you think, right, now I've got to do art. It really is very important to learn that that is not the most important thing.”

Isa Genzken (1948) German sculptor

2001 - 2010, Isa Genzken in conversation with Wolfgang Tillmans' (2003)

Art, Way, Thinking, Learning

“Saudi rulers, who have obstructed the path of Allah and Masjid ul-Haraam this year and who have blocked the proud and faithful Iranian pilgrims’ path to the Beloved’s House, are disgraced and misguided people who think their survival on the throne of oppression is dependent on defending the arrogant powers of the world, on alliances with Zionism and the U. S. and on fulfilling their demands. And on this path, they do not shy away from any treason.”

Ali Khamenei (1939) Iranian Shiite faqih, Marja' and official independent islamic leader

2016, Hajj hijacked by oppressors, Muslims should reconsider management of Hajj (September 2015)

People, World, Faith, Thinking

“Trout trudged onward, a stranger in a strange land. His pilgrimage was rewarded with new wisdom, which would never have been his had he remained in his basement in Cohoes. He learned the answer to a question many human beings were asking themselves so frantically: "What's blocking the traffic on the westbound barrel of the Midland City stretch of the Interstate?"”

Kurt Vonnegut book Breakfast of Champions

Breakfast of Champions (1973)

Wisdom, Question, Learning

““I am pleading for my people, a poor downtrodden race
Who dwell in freedom’s boasted land with no abiding place
I am pleading that my people may have their rights restored,
For they have long been toiling, and yet had no reward
They are forced the crops to culture, but not for them they yield,
Although both late and early, they labor in the field.
While I bear upon my body, the scores of many a gash,
I’m pleading for my people who groan beneath the lash.
I’m pleading for the mothers who gaze in wild despair
Upon the hated auction block, and see their children there.
I feel for those in bondage—well may I feel for them.
I know how fiendish hearts can be that sell their fellow men.
Yet those oppressors steeped in guilt—I still would have them live;
For I have learned of Jesus, to suffer and forgive!
I want no carnal weapons, no machinery of death.
For I love to not hear the sound of war’s tempestuous breath.
I do not ask you to engage in death and bloody strife.
I do not dare insult my God by asking for their life.
But while your kindest sympathies to foreign lands do roam,
I ask you to remember your own oppressed at home.
I plead with you to sympathize with signs and groans and scars,
And note how base the tyranny beneath the stripes and stars.”

Sojourner Truth (1797–1883) African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist

Olive Gilbert & Sojourner Truth (1878), Narrative of Sojourner Truth, a Bondswoman of Olden Time, page 303.

Love, Life, Death, Men

“Although Rahu attempts to attack both the sun and the Moon, they are protected by Lord Visnu. Being very afraid of Lord Visnu’s cakra, Rahu cannot stay in front of the sun or Moon for more than a muhurta (forty-eight minutes). The phenomenon that occurs when Rahu blocks the light of the sun or Moon is called an eclipse. The attempt of the scientists of this earth to go to the Moon is as demoniac as Rahu’s attack. Of course, their attempts will be failures because no one can enter the Moon or sun so easily. Like the attack of Rahu, such attempts will certainly be failures.”

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977) Indian guru

Srimad Bhagavatam, Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1999. Canto 5, Chapter 24, verse 3, purport. Vedabase http://www.vedabase.com/en/sb/5/24/3 <br class="br">Quotes from Books: Loving God, Quotes from Books: Regression of Science

Failure, Light, Sun

“The man changed position, turned his back on the wardrobe blocking the door and let his right arm slide down toward the side on which the dog is lying. A minute later, he was awake. He was thirsty. He turned on his bedside light, got up, shuffled his feet into the slippers which were, as always, providing a pillow for the dog's head, and went into the kitchen. Death followed him. The man filled a glass with water and drank it. At this point, the dog appeared, slaked his thirst in the water-dish next to the back door and then looked up at his master. I suppose you want to go out, said the cellist. He opened the door and waited until the animal came back. A little water remained in his glass. Death looked at it and made an effort to imagine what it must be like to feel thirsty, but failed. She would have been equally incapable of imagining it when she'd had to make people die of thirst in the desert, but at the time she hadn't even tried. The dog returned, wagging his tail. Let's go back to sleep, said the man. They went into the bedroom again, the dog turned around twice, then curled up into a ball. The man drew the sheet up to his neck, coughed twice and soon afterward was asleep again. Sitting in her corner, death was watching. Much later, the dog got up from the carpet and jumped onto the sofa. For the first time in her life, death knew what it felt like to have a dog on her lap.”

José Saramago book Death with Interruptions

Source: Death with Interruptions (2005), p. 172

Life, Death, People, Dogs

“Block the passages, shut the doors,
And till the end your strength shall not fail.
Open up the passages, increase your doings,
And till your last day no help shall come to you.”

Laozi book Tao Te Ching

Source: Tao Te Ching, Ch. 52 as translated by Arthur Waley (1934)

Help

“Are you going to offer yourselves here to the weapons of the enemy, undefended, unavenged? Why is it then you have arms? And why have you undertaken an offensive war? You who are ever turbulent in peace, and laggard in war. What hopes have you in standing here? Do you expect that some god will protect you and bear you hence? A way is to be made with the sword. Come you, who wish to behold your homes, your parents, your wives, and your children; follow me in the way in which you shall see me lead you on. It is not a wall or rampart that blocks your path, but armed men like yourselves. Their equals in courage, you are their superiors by force of necessity, which is the last and greatest weapon.”
Vos telis hostium estis indefensi, inulti? quid igitur arma habetis, aut quid ultro bellum intulistis, in otio tumultuosi, in bello segnes? quid hic stantibus spei est? an deum aliquem protecturum uos rapturumque hinc putatis? ferro via facienda est. hac qua me praegressum uideritis, agite, qui uisuri domos parentes coniuges liberos estis, ite mecum. non murus nec uallum sed armati armatis obstant. virtute pares, necessitate, quae ultimum ac maximum telum est, superiores estis'.

Livy (-59–17 BC) Roman historian

Book IV, sec. 28
History of Rome

Men, God, War, Children

“Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it … Success is shy — it won't come out while you're watching.”

Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) American playwright

No known citation to Williams. Attributed in Quote Unquote (A Handbook of Quotations), 2005, MP Singh, Lotus Press.
The full quote is captured in a letter Tennessee wrote to Donald Windham and can be found on pages 57 and 58 of Tennessee WIlliams' Letters to Donald Windham. The quote is not misattributed.
Misattributed

Success, Success

“Whenever you make a figure of a man or of some graceful animal remember to avoid making it seem wooden; that is it should move with counterpoise and balance in such a way as not to seem a block of wood.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XXIX Precepts of the Painter

Way, Animals

“Since the dawn of history the negro has owned the continent of Africa - rich beyond the dream of poet's fancy, crunching acres of diamonds beneath his bare black feet. Yet he never picked one up from the dust until a white man showed to him its glittering light. His land swarmed with powerful and docile animals, yet he never dreamed a harness, cart, or sled. A hunter by necessity, he never made an axe, spear, or arrowhead worth preserving beyond the moment of its use. He lived as an ox, content to graze for an hour. In a land of stone and timber he never sawed a foot of lumber, carved a block, or built a house save of broken sticks and mud. With league on league of ocean strand and miles of inland seas, for four thousand years he watched their surface ripple under the wind, heard the thunder of the surf on his beach, the howl of the storm over his head, gazed on the dim blue horizon calling him to worlds that lie beyond, and yet he never dreamed a sail!”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

Falsely attributed to Darwin, but actually from The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan (1905) by Thomas Dixon, page 134 http://www.freefictionbooks.org/books/c/11773-the-clansman-by-thomas-dixon?start=133. <br class="br">Misattributed

Lie, World, Dreams, History

“A few months ago, in response to too many tragedies -- including the shootings of a United States Congresswoman, Gabby Giffords, who's here today, and the murder of 20 innocent schoolchildren and their teachers -- this country took up the cause of protecting more of our people from gun violence. Families that know unspeakable grief summoned the courage to petition their elected leaders -- not just to honor the memory of their children, but to protect the lives of all our children. And a few minutes ago, a minority in the United States Senate decided it wasn't worth it. They blocked common-sense gun reforms even while these families looked on from the Senate gallery.”

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

Senate Votes to Block Expanded Background Checks for Gun Sales (17 April 2013) http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/04/17/senate-votes-block-expanded-background-checks-gun-sales <br class="br">2013

Children, People, Family, Courage

“The state of craving for anything blocks all deeper experience. Nothing of value can happen to a mind which knows exactly what it wants. For nothing the mind can visualize and want is of much value.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Desire and fear
Source: "I am That." P.49.

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

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

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

Love, Life, Death, People

“But still less should the gold of rich men lazily sleep its heavy sleep in the urns and gloom of treasuries. This so weighty metal, when it becomes the associate of a fancy, assumes the most active virtues of the mind. It has her restless nature. Its essence is to vanish. It changes into all things, without being itself changed. It raises blocks of stone, pierces mountains, diverts rivers, opens the gates of fortresses and the most secret hearts; it enchains men; it dresses, it undresses women with an almost miraculous promptitude. It is truly the most abstract agent that exists, next to thought. But thought exchanges and envelops images only, whereas gold incites and promotes the transmutations of all real things into one another; itself remaining incorruptible, and passing untainted through all hands.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Socrates, pp. 147–8
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)

Women, Men, Secret, Mountain

“Some people learn from mistakes and don't repeat them, Others try to block the memories and just delete them”

Immortal Technique (1978) American rapper and activist

Mistakes
Albums, The 3rd World (2008)

People, Learning, Memory

“A man isn’t a block that remains stationary though the psychologists treat him so — and most take an insane pride in believing it.”

William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) American poet

Introduction
The Wedge (1944)
Context: A man isn’t a block that remains stationary though the psychologists treat him so — and most take an insane pride in believing it. Consistency! He varies; Hamlet today, Caesar tomorrow; here, there, somewhere — if he is to retain his sanity, and why not?
The arts have a complex relation to society. The poet isn’t a fixed phenomenon, no more is his work.

“There is a really deep well inside me. And in it dwells God. Sometimes I am there, too. But more often stones and grit block the well, and God is buried beneath. Then He must be dug out again.”

Etty Hillesum (1914–1943) Jewish diarist

26 August 1941, p. 91
Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943

God

“You don’t have much time. If you think too long or too much, sometimes that is wrong. If you have one idea and know it from the first minute, do it. Shoot. I had so little space in the box. Think too much, the defender comes to block you.”

Robert Lewandowski (1988) Polish association football player

Time, Idea, Box, Thinking

“If our youths can try to dedicate more time for fruitful things, it will block spirit of goallessness. Wasting time replying and reposting useless things help kill potentials. It is better to sleep than to stay awake to use your consciousness to kill your potential.”

Idegu Ojonugwa Shadrach (1995)

Youth, Time, Help, Sleep

“One the next corner stood a cinder block restaurant with a hand-painted sign that read CHICKEN & WAFFLES. There was a queue of twenty people outside.
“You Americans have the strangest taste. What planet is this?”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

People, Reading, Painting

“The Last Supper is supposed to be thirteen men. Who is this woman?

"Everyone misses it, our preconceived notions of this scene are so powerful that our mind blocks out the incongruity and overrides our eyes.”

Dan Brown book The Da Vinci Code

Source: The Da Vinci Code

Men

“The sculptor produces the beautiful statue by chipping away such parts of the marble block as are not needed - it is a process of elimination.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Beauty, Parting

“Do not let your assumptions about a culture block your ability to perceive the individual, or you will fail.”

Brandon Sanderson book Words of Radiance

Source: Words of Radiance

“Cure for writer's block: blow something up(in the story)”

Scott Westerfeld (1963) American science fiction writer

“There are a million things one might do with a block of wood. But what do you think might happen if someone, just once, believed in it?”

Suzanne Weyn book Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

Source: Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

Thinking

“Why do you lie" I ask her.
"To block the truth."
Fair enough.
Naomi goes on. "Where did we get it in our heads that we need truth all the time? Sometimes lies are nice, you know? You don't have to know the truth all the time. It's too exhausting.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

Truth, Lie, Time

“writing about a writer's block is better than not writing at all”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: The Last Night of the Earth Poems

“a person is a fluid process, not a fixed and static entity; a flowing river of change, not a block of solid material; a continually changing constellation of potentialities, not a fixed quantity of traits.”

Carl R. Rogers (1902–1987) American psychologist

Source: On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy

Change, Personality

“I don't trust society to protect us, I have no intention of placing my fate in the hands of men whose only qualification is that they managed to con a block of people to vote for them.”

Mario Puzo The Godfather

Source: The Godfather

Men, Fate, People

“The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak becomes a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Strong

“Beauty breeds beauty, truth triggers truth. The cure for writer's block is therefore to read.”

Matt Haig (1975) British writer

Source: The Humans

Truth, Beauty, Reading

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost.”

Martha Graham (1894–1991) American dancer and choreographer

As quoted in The Life and Work of Martha Graham (1991) by Agnes de Mille, p. 264, 
Context: There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.... No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

Motivational, Success, Inspirational, Life

“MS. THOMPSON, it said in heavy block letters, PLEASE KEEP YOUR FELINE OFF MY PROPERTY. IF I SEE IT AGAIN, I WILL EAT IT.”

Patricia Briggs book Moon Called

Source: Moon Called