Quotes about closing

A collection of quotes on the topic of close, closing, use, likeness.

Quotes about closing

“I just wanna lay my head on your chest,
so I'm as close as it gets to your heart
We can fall apart, start over again”

Lil Peep (1996–2017) American rapper

Song We Think Too Much, Album: Hellboy

““I love you”, “I love you”, “I love you”, they said it for every moment in which they swore eternity and something more, to the point that it was annoying for those of us who were close, because, in reality, who loves each other so much? nowadays.”

José Baroja book El curioso caso de la sombra que murió como un recuerdo y otros cuentos

Reality, Love

We consider the quote as suspicious, we have no evidence supporting authorship

“You can close your eyes to the things you don't want to see, but you can't close your heart to the things you don't want to feel.”

Chester Bennington (1976–2017) American singer-songwriter

Also attributed to Johnny Depp.

Heart, Feeling

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

Source: On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe

People, Democracy, Soul, Heart

“Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”

Sun Tzu (-543–-495 BC) ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher from the Zhou Dynasty

This has often been attributed to Sun Tzu and sometimes to Petrarch. It comes most directly from a line spoken by Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part II (1974), written by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola:
My father taught me many things here. He taught me in this room. He taught me: keep your friends close but your enemies closer.
Niccolò Machiavelli, who is also sometimes credited, wrote on the subject in The Prince:
It is easier for the prince to make friends of those men who were contented under the former government, and are therefore his enemies, than of those who, being discontented with it, were favourable to him and encouraged him to seize it.
Misattributed

Christmas

“Watch for phonies, keep your enemies close nigga watch your homies”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

We consider the quote as suspicious, we have no evidence supporting authorship

“You can close your eyes to the things you don't want to see, but you can't close your heart to the things you don't want to feel.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

Also attributed to Chester Bennington (singer of Linkin Park)

Sad, Heart, Feeling

“You say you love rain, but you use an umbrella to walk under it. You say you love sun, but you seek shelter when it is shining. You say you love wind, but when it comes you close your windows. So that's why I'm scared when you say you love me.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

Love, Sun

“You can close your eyes if you want. Some things are less scary.”

Tyler Joseph (1988) American singer-songwriter and record producer

“Part of me is afraid to get close to people because I'm afraid that they're going to leave.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

Source: Marilyn Manson Talking

People, Parting

“When the Missionaries arrived, the Africans had the land and the Missionaries had the Bible. They taught how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible.”

Jomo Kenyatta (1893–1978) First prime minister and first president of Kenya

This has also been attributed to anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu; e.g. in Seeds of Conflict in a Haven of Peace: From Religious Studies to Interreligious Studies in Africa (2007), by Frans Jozef Servaas Wijsen.

“When one door is closed, many more is open.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

Coming in from the Cold, from the album Confrontation
Song lyrics

“I'm nobody. I'm a tramp, a bum, a hobo. I'm a boxcar and a jug of wine, and a straight razor if you get too close to me.”

Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician

Interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqrqaPThCmI

Wine

“Close your eyes and I'll kiss you, Tomorrow I'll miss you.”

Paul McCartney (1942) English singer-songwriter and composer

Kiss

“Living is Easy with Eyes Closed.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

"Strawberry Fields Forever" (1967)
Lyrics
Variant: Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.
Context: Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.
It's getting hard to be someone but it all works out.
It doesn't matter much to me. Let me take you down, 'cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields.
Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about.
Strawberry Fields forever.

“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

We Bereaved (1929)

Motivational, Inspirational, Attitude, Success

“The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them - words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller, but for want of an understanding ear.”

Stephen King book The Body

Different Seasons (1982), The Body

Love, People, Lie, Secret

“Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527) Italian politician, Writer and Author

Machiavelli commented on the relative ease of gaining favor from friends and enemies in Chapter 20 of The Prince, quoted above. However, this particular wording comes from a line spoken by Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part II (1974), written by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola:
My father taught me many things here. He taught me in this room. He taught me: keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.
Misattributed

Christmas

“Look closely and you will find that people are happy because they are grateful. The opposite of gratefulness is just taking everything for granted.”

David Steindl-Rast (1926) American theologian

Source: Music of Silence: A Sacred Journey Through the Hours of the Day

People, Happiness

“two people can sleep in the same bed and still be alone when they close their eyes”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

People, Sleep

“Close friends are truly life's treasures. Sometimes they know us better than we know ourselves. With gentle honesty, they are there to guide and support us, to share our laughter and our tears. Their presence reminds us that we are never really alone.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Friendship, For Friend, For Bestfriend, Life

“Books should be closed each year, especially in partnership because frequent accounting makes for long friendship.”

Luca Pacioli book Summa de arithmetica

Summa de arithmetica, geometria. Proportioni et proportionalita (Venice 1494)

Friendship, Books, Partnership

“Should you seek might, power, false honor, excess — seek that we would work for you to provide your temporal advantages — we will bring you as close to the throne as you wish, and then turn you over to the consequences of your folly, but our inner sanctuary remains closed to such. But should you want to learn wisdom — want to learn to make mankind more clever, better, free and happy — then be thrice welcomed by us.”

Adam Weishaupt (1748–1830) German philosopher and founder of the Order of Illuminati

Die neuesten Arbeiten des Spartacus und Philo in dem Illuminaten-Orden (1794) pp. 9-10.

Wisdom, Learning, Falseness, Happiness

“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002), Chapter One

Death, Fate, Imagination, Sense

“The entire universe is God's cosmic motion picture, and that individuals are merely actors in the divine play who change roles through reincarnation; mankind's deep suffering is rooted in identifying too closely with one's current role, rather than with the movie's director, or God.”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

God, Suffering, Universe, Change

“I wore black because I liked it. I still do, and wearing it still means something to me. It's still my symbol of rebellion -- against a stagnant status quo, against our hypocritical houses of God, against people whose minds are closed to others' ideas.”

Johnny Cash (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter

God, People, Idea, Housing

“Punk is musical freedom. It’s saying, doing and playing what you want. In Webster’s terms, ‘nirvana’ means freedom from pain, suffering and the external world, and that’s pretty close to my definition of Punk Rock.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

Pain, World, Music, Freedom

“You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don't try to forget the mistakes, but you don't dwell on it. You don't let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.”

Johnny Cash (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter

Variant: You build on failure. You use it as a stepping sone. Close the door on the past. You don't try to forget the mistakes, but you don't dwell on it. You don't let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.

Wise, Deep, Inspirational, Life

“In the dark you can feel really close to a person. You can say whatever you want.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: The Summer I Turned Pretty

Feeling, Personality

“Go up close to your friend but do not go over to him! We should respect the enemy that is in our friend”

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

“The exalted moment of love is always full of promise: it is not closed in on itself, but open; we see its natural fruitfulness revealed in the child, even if its spiritual fruitfulness remains hidden.”

Hans Urs Von Balthasar (1905–1988) Swedish Catholic theologian

Love Alone Is Credible (1963)

Love, Nature

“Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States!”

Porfirio Díaz (1830–1915) President of Mexico

As quoted in The Quote Verifier: Who Said What, Where, and When https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0312340044 (2006), by Ralph Keyes, New York City: St. Martin's Griffin, p. 387

God

“On the day Billy was born, it was like walking through a mirror and everything was Technicolor. My life had been very work-orientated, and all in close-up. Once I had the family it went into sudden widescreen.”

Helena Bonham Carter (1966) British actress

Guardian interview 3 Nov 2006 http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2006/nov/03/1

Life, Family

“Being an atheist must be like living in a closed cell with no windows. I’d hate to live like that, wouldn’t you? We see them, mind you, on television today, many brilliant people who are professional atheists who say they know for a fact that it’s insanity to have a God or to believe in religion. Well, OK, God bless them for feeling that way and I hope they’re happy. But I couldn’t live with that certainty, and I wonder about some of them: why are they protesting so much? How are they so sure of what is out there? And who am I to refute the beliefs of so many great philosophers and martyrs all the way down the years?”

Anthony Hopkins (1937) Welsh stage and television actor

"Sir Anthony Hopkins: I couldn't be an atheist". https://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2011/02/11/sir-anthony-hopkins-i-couldnt-be-an-atheist/ (February 11, 2011)

God, Hate, People, Religion

“People hunger for love, and clowning is a trick to get love close.”

Patch Adams (1945) Physician, activist, diplomat, author

As quoted in "Patch Adams and clowns spreading laughter at hospital" (2 March 2016) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gtw5nzgYpA Context: You know, it's always the same. I've clowned in 81 countries. People hunger for love, and clowning is a trick to get love close. As a clown I can do things that people are too frightened of Love to allow you to do.

Love, Hunger, People

“Words are life. Words are light. Words are power. Words are energy. Words are truth. Words can enliven and words can also kill. Words can give hope, or plunge us into despair. People use words to build peace, and use words to make war. Words can create walls between cultures, religions, and nations. And words can also build bridges. The existence of an individual, a family, a community, a country, and our planet is being led to good or to evil through the power of the words we speak. The words we speak are responsible for everything that happens in this world. We, therefore, must be responsible for the words we speak. On behalf of future generations, I hope that each of us will do all we can to speak only bright, light-filled words, so that one day, our descendants will be born into a world filled with light. There is no time to lose. Starting at this very moment, I hope all of us will take a close look at the words we have been using and make constant efforts to fill them with brightness.”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14108295.alexis_karpouzos

Despair, Family, Peace, Religion

“Music is so important to us. We hear music from the moment we are born, often via lullabies, and through many of the most important occasions in our lives, from graduations to weddings to funerals. There is something about music that seems to bring us closer to each other and help us come together as a community.
Humans are wired for music. Researchers recently discovered that we have a dedicated part of our brain for processing music, supporting the theory that it has a special, important function in our lives.
Listening to music and singing together has been shown in several studies to directly impact neuro-chemicals in the brain, many of which play a role in closeness and connection. Now new research suggests that playing music or singing together may be particularly potent in bringing about social closeness through the release of endorphins.
Through singing, drumming, and dancing—all resulted in participants having higher pain thresholds (a proxy measure for increased endorphin release in the brain) in comparison to listening to music alone. In addition, the performance of music resulted in greater positive emotion, suggesting one pathway through which people feel closer to one another when playing music together is through endorphin release.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Pain, People, Music, Feeling

“Truly great people in history never wanted to be great for themselves. All they wanted was the chance to do good for others and be close to God.”

Muhammad Ali book The Soul of a Butterfly

Source: The Soul of a Butterfly: Reflections on Life's Journey

God, People, History, Chance

“Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.”

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American architect (1867-1959)

As quoted in The Wright Style (1992) by Carla Lind, p. 3

Beauty, Peaceful, Love, Nature

“I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 2

World, Heart

“The bourgeoisie are today evading taxation by bribery and through their connections; we must close all loopholes.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Collected Works, Vol. 27, pp. 383–387.
Collected Works
Source: Revolution!: Sayings of Vladimir Lenin

“The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in the House of Commons, November 12, 1936 "Debate on the Address" http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1936/nov/12/debate-on-the-address#column_1117 Cited in Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth This speech is also commonly known by the name "The Locust Years" http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/Locusts.html. The 1930s

“For a man filled with a great, true and unselfish love, even if it be on one side only, there open horizons and possibilities and paths which are closed and unknown to so many clever, ambitious and selfish men.”

Ivo Andrič book The Bridge on the Drina

Source: The Bridge on the Drina (1945), Ch. 21

Love, Men, Selfishness

“I stood close to the materialist conception of history, since in early womanhood I had inclined towards the realistic school.”

Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) Soviet diplomat

The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)

School, History

“I ask Congressmen why they have such close relations with Armenia, and they say that the Armenian Diaspora gives them a lot of money. Is that corruption or not?”

Heydar Aliyev (1923–2003) Soviet and Azerbaijani politician

Answering the question of Jeffrey Goldberg "What sort of corruption do you see in America?" October 4, 1998, The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/04/magazine/the-crude-face-of-global-capitalism.html?pagewanted=all.

Money

“Take a close look at the part that "love" plays in your life. Make an inventory of love: people, things, ideas, experiences. Try to live your gratitude.”

Patch Adams (1945) Physician, activist, diplomat, author

Source: House Calls: How we can all heal the world one visit at a time (1998), p. 10

Love, Life, People, Idea

“Diego is Diego and for me he is the greatest player of all time. Even after a million years I am not even going to be close to Maradona. I have no intention of comparing myself with Maradona - I want to make my own history for something I have achieved.”

Lionel Messi (1987) Argentine association football player

Response to the Maradona comparisons, 2010 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/players/lionel-messi/7527633/Barcelonas-Lionel-Messi-says-he-will-never-be-as-good-as-Diego-Maradona.html

History, Time

“I can better understand the inert blindness & defiant ignorance of the reactionaries from having been one of them. I know how smugly ignorant I was—wrapped up in the arts, the natural (not social) sciences, the externals of history & antiquarianism, the abstract academic phases of philosophy, & so on—all the one-sided standard lore to which, according to the traditions of the dying order, a liberal education was limited. God! the things that were left out—the inside facts of history, the rational interpretation of periodic social crises, the foundations of economics & sociology, the actual state of the world today … & above all, the habit of applying disinterested reason to problems hitherto approached only with traditional genuflections, flag-waving, & callous shoulder-shrugs! All this comes up with humiliating force through an incident of a few days ago—when young Conover, having established contact with Henneberger, the ex-owner of WT, obtained from the latter a long epistle which I wrote Edwin Baird on Feby. 3, 1924, in response to a request for biographical & personal data. Little Willis asked permission to publish the text in his combined SFC-Fantasy, & I began looking the thing over to see what it was like—for I had not the least recollection of ever having penned it. Well …. I managed to get through, after about 10 closely typed pages of egotistical reminiscences & showing-off & expressions of opinion about mankind & the universe. I did not faint—but I looked around for a 1924 photograph of myself to burn, spit on, or stick pins in! Holy Hades—was I that much of a dub at 33 … only 13 years ago? There was no getting out of it—I really had thrown all that haughty, complacent, snobbish, self-centred, intolerant bull, & at a mature age when anybody but a perfect damned fool would have known better! That earlier illness had kept me in seclusion, limited my knowledge of the world, & given me something of the fatuous effusiveness of a belated adolescent when I finally was able to get around more in 1920, is hardly much of an excuse. Well—there was nothing to be done … except to rush a note back to Conover & tell him I'd dismember him & run the fragments through a sausage-grinder if he ever thought of printing such a thing! The only consolation lay in the reflection that I had matured a bit since '24. It's hard to have done all one's growing up since 33—but that's a damn sight better than not growing up at all.”

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

Letter to Catherine L. Moore (7 February 1937), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 407-408
Non-Fiction, Letters

God, Age, World, Education

“The close relationship between politics and economics is neither neutral nor coincidental. Large governments evolve through history in order to protect large accumulations of property and wealth.”

Michael Parenti (1933) American academic

Source: Democracy for the Few (2010 [1974]), sixth edition, Chapter 1, p. 4

History, Wealth

“A childish feeling, I admit, but, when we retire from the conventions of society and draw close to nature, we involuntarily become children: each attribute acquired by experience falls away from the soul, which becomes anew such as it was once and will surely be again.”

Mikhail Lermontov book A Hero of Our Time

A Hero of Our Time (1840; rev. 1841)

Children, Feeling, Soul, Nature

“Of all those in the army close to the commander none is more intimate than the secret agent; of all rewards none more liberal than those given to secret agents; of all matters none is more confidential than those relating to secret operations.”

Sun Tzu (-543–-495 BC) ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher from the Zhou Dynasty

Source: The Art of War, Chapter XIII · Intelligence and Espionage

Secret

“Each moment of my life I was dreaming of how great I could be, and continued working hard. Each time I closed my eyes I could see me shining bright like a sun.”

Kobe Bryant (1978–2020) American basketball player

Sun, Life, Dreams, Time

“You can't think of the global and close your eyes to the details.”

Volodymyr Zelensky (1978) 6th President of Ukraine

Zelensky’s speech at the UN General Assembly https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/vistup-prezidenta-ukrayini-volodimira-zelenskogo-na-zagalnih-57477 (25 September 2019)

Thinking

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Pain, People, Music, Feeling

“Voodoo girl

But she knows she has a curse on her,
a curse she cannot win.
For if someone gets too close to her,
the pins stick farther in.”

Tim Burton (1958) American filmmaker

Variant: But she knows she has a curse on her,
a curse she cannot win.
For if someone gets too close to her,

the pins stick further in.
Source: The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories

Girl

“It is dangerous to build systemic reforms on a close association with one particular government. Systemic reforms need broad public participation and support. That is what makes them irreversible.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Support

“She was beautiful, but she was beautiful in the way a forest fire was beautiful: something to be admired from a distance, not up close.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

Beauty, Way

“Why is the truth, it would seem, revealed to some and not to others? Is there a special organ for receiving revelation from God? Yes, though usually we close it and do not let it open up: God’s revelation is given to something called a loving heart.”

Seraphim Rose (1934–1982) American Orthodox writer and saint

Source: God's Revelation to the Human Heart

Love, God, Truth, Heart

“A map says to you.
Read me carefully, follow me closely, doubt me not…
I am the earth in the palm of your hand.”

Beryl Markham (1902–1986) British writer, aviator, adventurer, racehorse trainer

Reading

“To draw, you must close your eyes and sing”

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

Singing, Drawing

“Happiness means being close to the one you love, that's all. (Taking immediate possession is not necessary.)”

Orhan Pamuk book The Museum of Innocence

Source: The Museum of Innocence

Love, Happiness

“I don't know whether I believe in God or not. I think, really, I'm some kind of a Buddhist. But the essential thing is to put oneself in a frame of mind which is close to that of prayer.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

God, Thinking

“I'm not close to people, I am close to myself. I spend a lot of time inside.”

Henry Rollins book Black Coffee Blues

Source: Black Coffee Blues

People, Time

“A thousand years ago five minutes were
Equal to forty ounces of fine sand.
Outstare the stars. Infinite foretime and
Infinite aftertime: above your head
They close like giant wings, and you are dead.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Pale Fire

Source: Pale Fire

Star, Dead

“This was my first lesson about gambling: if you see somebody winning all the time, he isn't gambling, he's cheating. Later on in life, if I were continuously losing in any gambling situation, I would watch very closely.”

Malcolm X book The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Source: The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Life, Time, Cheating

“It got so that when he closed his eyes, letters and words danced in his mind. He thought of little else during that time.”

Christopher Paolini book Eragon

Source: Eragon

Time, Dance

“Look at every path closely and deliberately, then ask ourselves this crucial question: Does this path have a heart? If it does, then the path is good. If it doesn't then it is of no use to us.”

Carlos Castaneda (1925–1998) Peruvian-American author

Question, Heart

“Things were somehow so good that they were in danger of becoming very bad because what is fully mature is very close to rotting”

Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) Brazilian writer

Source: A Hora Da Estrela

“It is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

Source: The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

Stupidity, Courage

“Nothing resembles selfishness more closely than self-respect”

George Sand Indiana

Source: Indiana

Selfishness

“Happiness is having a loving, close knit family in another city.”

George Burns (1896–1996) American comedian, actor, and writer

As quoted in The Mammoth Book of Zingers, Quips, and One-Liners (2004) by Geoff Tibballs, p. 251

Happy, Family, Relationship, Cute

“They were so close to each other that they preferred death to separation.”

Gabriel García Márquez book One Hundred Years of Solitude

Source: One Hundred Years of Solitude

Death

“If your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough.”

Robert Capa (1913–1954) American photographer

Randy Kennedy, "The Capa Cache" http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/arts/design/27kenn.html?_r=1&ref=arts&oref=slogin, New York Times, Jan. 27, 2008.

“Sex is more than an act of pleasure, it’s the ability to be able to feel so close to a person, so connected, so comfortable that it’s almost breathtaking to the point you feel you can’t take it. And at this moment you’re a part of them.”

Thom Yorke (1968) English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter

Pleasure, Sex, Feeling, Parting

“A mind of moderate capacity which closely pursues one study must infallibly arrive at great proficiency in that study.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

Study

“I didn't know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of the throat and I'd cry for a week.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Tear, Cry, Flying

“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

“As we know, the goal of every struggle is victory. But if the proletariat is to achieve victory, all the workers, irrespective of nationality, must be united. Clearly, the demolition of national barriers and close unity between the Russian, Georgian, Armenian, Polish, Jewish and other proletarians is a necessary condition for the victory of the proletariat of all Russia.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

from "The Social-Democratic View of the National Question", 1904 (aged 26) http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1904/09/01.htm Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

Victory

“The more troops they send to Vietnam, the happier we will be, for we feel that we shall have them in our power, we can have their blood. So if you want to help the Vietnamese you should encourage the Americans to throw more and more soldiers into Vietnam. We want them there. They will be close to China. And they will be in our grasp. They will be so close to us, they will be our hostages. … We are planting the best kind of opium especially for the American soldiers in Vietnam.”

Zhou Enlai (1898–1976) 1st Premier of the People's Republic of China

Reported in Christian Crusade Weekly (March 3, 1974) as having been said be Zhou to Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1965; reported as a likely misattribution in Paul F. Boller, Jr., and John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions (1989), p. 133.
Disputed

Feeling, Help

“To start with, we want to take up what we consider to be its most important contribution, namely, the unravelling of two behaviour patterns - Muslim and National - which collaborated closely for years and precipitated Partition in the final round. The Muslim behaviour pattern was characterized by acrimony, accusations, complaints, demands, denunciations, and street riots. The National behaviour pattern, on the other hand, was characterized by acquiescence, assent, cajolery, concessions, cowardice, self-reproach, and surrender.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Muslim Separatism – Causes and Consequences (1987)

“You are only a disciple because your eyes are closed. The day you open them you will see there is nothing you can learn from me or anyone."
"What then is a Master for?"
"To make you see the uselessness of having one.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Blindness
One Minute Wisdom (1989)

Learning

“To run 100 miles and more is to bring the body to the point of breaking, to bring the mind to the point of destruction, to arrive at that place where you can alter your consciousness. It was to see more clearly. As my yoga teacher would say, “Injuries are our best teachers.” I'm convinced that a lot of people run ultramarathons for the same reason they take mood-altering drugs. I don't mean to minimize the gifts of friendship, achievement, and closeness to nature that I've received in my running career. But the longer and farther I ran, the more I realized that what I was often chasing was a state of mind — a place where worries that seemed monumental melted away, where the beauty and timelessness of the universe, of the present moment, came into sharp focus.”

Scott Jurek (1973) American ultramarthon runner

Source: Eat and Run (2012), Ch. 18, p. 181

Friendship, People, Beauty, Mood

“If you try, everything you strive for will come close to you, and you will reap the benefit. May God give you that help, that grace, that wisdom, and His qualities. May He do what is good. If you believe in Him, He will never let go of you. If you intend Him, He will come looking for you. If you call Him, He will call you. If you love Him, He will love you. If you search for Him, He will search for you. Know this. Amin. Amin.”

Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (1900–1986) Sri Lankan Sufi leader

Love, Wisdom, God, Search

“Humans have a 3 percent human error, and a lot of companies can't afford to be wrong 3 percent of the time anymore, so we close that 3 percent gap with some of the technologies. The AI we've developed doesn't make mistakes.”

Walter O'Brien (1975) Irish businessman, founder of Scorpion Computer Services

Scorpion's Origin

Error, Time

“What is life? Life is like a big obstacle, put in front of your optical to slow you down, and every time you think you gotten past it, it's gonna come back around and tackle you to the damn ground. What are friends? Friends are people that you think are your friends, but they're really your enemies with secret identities and disguises to hide their true colors, so just when you're close enough to be brothers, they wanna come back and cut your throat when you ain't looking. What is money? Money is what makes a man act funny. Money is the root of all evil. Money'll make them same friends come back around swearing that they was always down. What is life? I'm tired of life!”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"'If I Had" (Track 6).
1990s, The Slim Shady LP (1999)

Life, Money, People, Secret

“To strive for the common prosperity and happiness of all nations as well as the security and well-being of Our subjects is the solemn obligation which has been handed down by Our Imperial Ancestors and which lies close to Our heart.”

Hirohito Jewel Voice Broadcast

Gyokuon-hōsō (1945)

Heart, Happiness

“I made a change from a common thief, to up-close and personal with Robin Leach, and I'm far from cheap. I smoke skunk with my peeps all day, spread love it's the Brooklyn way. The moet and alize keeps me pissy. Girls used to diss me, now they write letters cuz they miss me. I never thought it could happen this rapping stuff. I was too used to packing gats and stuff. Now honeys play me close like butter played toast, from the Mississippi down to the East Coast. Condos in queens, indoor for weeks. sold out seats to hear Biggy Smalls speak. Living life without fear, putting 5 carats in my baby girls ears. Lunchies, brunchies. Interviews by the pool, considered a fool 'cause I dropped out of high school. Stereotypes of a black male misunderstood and it's still all good.”

The Notorious B.I.G. (1972–1997) American rapper

Song lyrics, Ready to Die (1994), "Juicy"

Love, Life, Fear, School

“Yeah, I think James Brown is a genius you know, when he's with the Famous Flames, unbelievable. I used to watch him on television and I used to get angry at the cameraman because whenever he would really start to dance they would be on a close-up so I couldn't see his feet. I'd shout "show him show him," so I could watch and learn.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

On watching James Brown as a young child.
Televised Interview with Oprah Winfrey (1993)

Thinking, Learning, Dance

“Our failings sometimes bind us to one another as closely as could virtue itself.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

As quoted in Queers in History : The Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Historical Gays (2009), by Keith Stern, p. 465.

“Just before twenty-first March, 1953, seven days before, I stopped working on myself. A moment comes when you see the whole futility of effort. You have done all that you can do and nothing is happening. You have done all that is humanly possible. Then what else can you do? In sheer helplessness one drops all search. And the day the search stopped, the day I was not seeking for something, the day I was not expecting something to happen, it started happening. A new energy arose — out of nowhere. It was not coming from any source. It was coming from nowhere and everywhere. It was in the trees and in the rocks and the sky and the sun and the air — it was everywhere. And I was seeking so hard, and I was thinking it is very far away. And it was so near and so close.”

Rajneesh (1931–1990) Godman and leader of the Rajneesh movement

The Discipline Of Transcendence (1978)

Search, Thinking, Effort, Tree

“I’m a good person but a shitty writer. You’re a shitty person but a good writer. We’d make a good team. I don’t want to ask you any favors, but if you have time – and from what I saw, you have plenty – I was wondering if you could write a eulogy for Hazel. I’ve got notes and everything, but if you could just make it into a coherent whole or whatever? Or even just tell me what I should say differently. Here’s the thing about Hazel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That’s what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease. I want to leave a mark. But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, “They’ll remember me now,” but (a) they don’t remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion. (Okay, maybe I’m not such a shitty writer. But I can’t pull my ideas together, Van Houten. My thoughts are stars I can’t fathom into constellations.) We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can’t stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it’s silly and useless – epically useless in my current state – but I am an animal like any other. Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either. People will say it’s sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it’s not sad, Van Houten. It’s triumphant. It’s heroic. Isn’t that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm. The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn’t actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn’t get smallpox. After my PET scan lit up, I snuck into the ICU and saw her while she was unconscious. I just walked in behind a nurse with a badge and I got to sit next to her for like ten minutes before I got caught. I really thought she was going to die, too. It was brutal: the incessant mechanized haranguing of intensive care. She had this dark cancer water dripping out of her chest. Eyes closed. Intubated. But her hand was still her hand, still warm and the nails painted this almost black dark almost blue color, and I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar. A nurse guy came in and told me I had to leave, that visitors weren’t allowed, and I asked if she was doing okay, and the guy said, “She’s still taking on water.””

John Green book The Fault in Our Stars

A desert blessing, an ocean curse. What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers."
Augustus "Gus" Waters, p. 310-313
The Fault in Our Stars (2012)

Love, Death, War, People