Quotes about closing
page 17

“Remind yourself of your vision, keep your hopes close yo your heart, be passionate about them and always, always always be true to them”

Michael Elmore-Meegan (1959) British humanitarian

All Will be Well (2004)

Hope, Passion, Heart

“It takes a little more time to get into the role, but not very much more. In making a record you don't have the sense of projection over a distance as in an opera house. We have this microphone and this magnifies all details of a performance, all exaggerations. In the theater, you can get away with a very large, very grand phrase. For the microphone, you have to tone it down. It's the same as making a film, your gestures will be seen in close-up, so they cannot be exaggerated as they would be in a theater.”

Maria Callas (1923–1977) American-born Greek operatic soprano

On making studio recordings
Callas : The Art and the Life (1974)

Sense, Time, Housing

“Like many Turkish citizens, the Hizmet movement’s participants supported Mr. Erdogan’s early efforts to democratize Turkey and fulfill the requirements for membership in the European Union. But we were not silent as he turned from democracy to despotism. Even before these new purges, Mr. Erdogan in recent years has arbitrarily closed newspapers; removed thousands of judges, prosecutors, police officers and civil servants from their positions; and taken especially harsh measures against Kurdish communities. He has declared his detractors enemies of the state.”

Fethullah Gülen (1941) Turkish preacher, former imam, writer, and political figure

"Fethullah Gulen: I Condemn All Threats to Turkey’s Democracy", 2016

Democracy, Communication, Support, Effort

“[ Lawyers are clear. On the one hand, they are important and deserve] special consideration [because they] are always found at the right hand of the administrator whose actions must be legally defensible. A lawyer, therefore, sits close to the seat of administrative authority… Policy may have to yield to constitutionality, and the lawyers prescribe. On the other hand, it must be said that the training of the lawyer, based on precedent, and looking backward rather than forward for guidance, is not a training which is suited to make an ideal administrator.”

Leonard D. White (1891–1958) American historian

Leonard D. White (1935), Government Career Service, p. 46, as cited in: Moynihan (2009)

Training

“The parts of science that rule out theism are firmly fixed. Finally, it's not just probable that God doesn't exist. For scientism, it's as close to a sure thing as science can get.”

Alexander Rosenberg (1946) American philosopher

The Atheist's Guide to Reality (2011)

God, Science, Parting

“I am convinced that sooner or later the Armenian-Turkish relations will be normalized since closed borders between States is a non-sense in the 21st century, and rulers can find themselves in an unenviable position if they fail to keep up with the global developments. Political authorities should lead the way and not lag behind.”

Tigran Sargsyan (1960) Economist, politician

Statement by the Prime Minister delivered at the conference on the topic of Armenia-Turkey relations and cross-border regionalism (12 February 2010) http://www.gov.am/en/speeches/1/item/2989/ 2010

Way, Sense

“It was not knowing that was the seed of madness, loneliness, fear. But there were ways to solve all this. Clarity had made her knowable to the world, and had made her better, had brought her close, she hoped, to perfection. Now the world would follow. Full transparency would bring full access, and there would be no more not-knowing. Mae smiled, thinking about how simple it all was, how pure. Bailey shared her smile.”

Dave Eggers book The Circle

Source: The Circle (2013), p. 470

World, Fear, Smile, Hope

“In 1945 a Mississippi sergeant, Jake Lindsey, was honored by an unusual joint session of the Congress. I close therefore, with this appeal to the students of the University, the people who are most concerned. You have a great tradition to uphold, a tradition of honor and courage won on the field of battle and on the gridiron as well as the University campus. You have a new opportunity to show that you are men of patriotism and integrity. For the most effective means of upholding the law is not the State policeman or the marshals or the National Guard. It is you. It lies in your courage to accept those laws with which you disagree as well as those with which you agree.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Radio and Television Report to the Nation on the Situation at the University of Mississippi (30 September 1962)
1962

Men, People, Law, Courage

“Many university departments—especially the traditional resource disciplines such as fisheries, wildlife, range management, and forestry—are closely tied to industry or hook‐and‐bullet recreation and treat conservation biology with anxiety or disdain.”

Reed Noss (1952)

[The failure of universities to produce conservation biologists, Conservation Biology, 11, 6, December 1997, 1267–1269, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1046/j.1523-1739.1997.97ed05.x] (quote from p. 1267)

Universe

“Should any of my readers have failed to get useful cloud negatives, and are close upon giving up in despair, as I have known many to be, I would recommend them to forthwith take a slow plate, insert F 45 stop in the lens, and make a quick shutter exposure on some wellmarked sun -lit clouds. Then develop with a slightly diluted developer, and see what comes of it. Probably, if the clouds be heavy, they will be a little under-exposed. Then, from this as a basis it should not be difficult to get on the right road.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Clouds. Their use, and practical instructions as to how to photography them, p. 93

Sun, Despair

“I won the contract for our company to install new ramps and equipment at Beefland. Building a "Stairway to Heaven" for the animals was more than just constructing a steel ramp-way into a concrete room. All of the workers, myself included, invested ourselves in he project. Sometimes tempers flared, but when the job was completed, we were better friends. As the "stairway" began to take shape, many thoughts crowded in on me. I became aware of how precious life was. I thought about death and I felt close to God. He had given us dominion over the animals so we could make use of them, but I realized now, more than ever, that the animals were His creation too, and, thus, they should be treated with respect. One day my blind roommate visited the plant. She reached over the side of the chute and touched the cattle. She wrote the following prayer after her visit: "The Stairway to Heaven" is dedicated to persons who desire to learn the meaning of life and not to fear death. You, through respect for these animals, can come to respect your fellow man as well. Touch, Listen and Remember."”

Temple Grandin (1947) USA-american doctor of animal science, author, and autism activist

Pages 134-135 of Emergence: Labeled Autistic by Temple Grandin and Margaret M. Scariano

Life, Death, God, Fear

“[On the question: 'What was your main stylistic influence up to this time']: The Renaissance chiefly - Piero, Mantegna, Uccello - but I was attracted also by the modern idioms - Léger, Picasso - and was close to the abstract painters on the project such as Stuart Davis, Burgoyne Diller, Arshile Gorky, Balcomb Greene, etc. At the time I did the Queens project, there was already a marked change in my work - it was becoming more concerned with cubist concepts of treating space.”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

n.p.
1961 - 1980, Oral history interview with Philip Guston, 1965 January 29

Question, Change, Time

“We find amongst animals, as amongst men, power of feeling pleasure, power of feeling pain; we see them moved by love and by hate; we see them feeling terror and attraction; we recognize in them powers of sensation closely akin to our own, and while we transcend them immensely in intellect, yet, in mere passional characteristics our natures and the animals' are closely allied. We know that when they feel terror, that terror means suffering. We know that when a wound is inflicted, that wound means pain to them. We know that threats bring to them suffering; they have a feeling of shrinking, of fear, of absence of friendly relations, and at once we begin to see that in our relations to the animal kingdom a duty arises which all thoughtful and compassionate minds should recognize - the duty that because we are stronger in mind than the animals, we are or ought to be their guardians and helpers, not their tyrants and oppressors, and we have no right to cause them suffering and terror merely for the gratification of the palate, merely for an added luxury to our own lives.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

A speech given at Manchester UK (18 October 1897) https://ivu.org/history/besant/text.html

Love, Men, Pain, Hate

“Every artist works within a tradition. I am a native of Russia. My Russian soul has always been close to the art of old Russia, the Russian icons, Byzantine art, the mosaics in Ravenna, Venice, Rome, and to Romanesque art. All these artworks produced a religious vibration in my soul, as I sensed in them a deep spiritual language. This art was my tradition.”

Alexej von Jawlensky (1864–1941) Russian painter

quote from his letter to the National Socialist State Cultural administration, 1939; Jawlensky asked permission to exhibit his painting art, which was turned down by the Nazi regime
Source: 1936 - 1941, Life Memories' (1938), p. 24

Art, Soul, Sense

“I don't want them on our soil. I want them on Guantanamo, where they don't get the access to lawyers they get when they're on our soil. I don't want them in our prisons, I want them there. Some people have said we ought to close Guantanamo. My view is we ought to double Guantanamo.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

Fox News GOP debate, , quoted in * 2007-05-16
Romney: ‘We Ought To Double Guantanamo’
Think Progress
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2007/05/16/12919/romney-guantanamo/
2007 campaign for Republican nomination for United States President

People

“.. the only certainty is that he [written by Kirchner himself] creates from the forms of the visible world, however close or far from them he desires to or must come.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

Quote from 'Ein neuer Naturalismus? Eine Rundfrage des Kunstblatts', in 'Das Kunstblatt' 9, 1922; p. 375
1920's

World

“I was workin' part-time in a 5-and-dime.
My boss was Mr. McGee, huh.
He told me several… times
That he didn't like my kind cuz I was a bit 2 leisurely.
It seems that I was busy doin' somethin' close 2 nothin',
But different than the day before
That's when I saw her, ooh, I saw her,
She walked in through the out door …out door.She wore a raspberry beret
The kind U find in a second hand store
Raspberry beret
And if it was warm she wouldn't wear much more
Raspberry beret
I think I love her.”

Prince (1958–2016) American pop, songwriter, musician and actor

Raspberry Beret
Song lyrics, Around the World in a Day (1985)

Love, Business, Thinking, Time

“The great investors are almost entirely clueless as to what their supposed “employees,” the corporation managers are doing. The CEOs are almost entirely clueless as to what the branch and facility managers are doing. And the management of each facility are almost entirely clueless as to what is going on within the black box of the actual production process. In the light of this reality, Mises’ “entrepreneur”—so carefully and closely involved in the minutiae of choosing between technical possibilities of production, a brooding omnipresence guiding the efforts of every employee—is largely a construction of fantasy. It’s quite ironic, in fact, considering that Mises starts out the block quote above with the announcement that the entrepreneur is not omnipresent.”

Kevin Carson (1963) American academic

Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective (2008), Chapter 7
Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective (2008)

Quotes, Reality, Effort, Light

“The principles and the purposes expressed in the Charter of the United Nations continue to represent our hope for the eventual establishment of the rule of law in international affairs. The Charter constitutes the basic expression of the code of international ethics to which this country is dedicated. We cannot, however, close our eyes to the harsh fact that through obstruction and even defiance on the part of one nation, this great dream has not yet become a full reality. It is necessary, therefore, that we take additional measures to supplement the work of the United Nations and to support its aims. There are times in world history when it is far wiser to act than to hesitate. There is some risk involved in action — there always is. But there is far more risk in failure to act. For if we act wisely now, we shall strengthen the powerful forces for freedom, justice, and peace which are represented by the United Nations and the free nations of the world.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Special Message to the Congress on the Threat to the Freedom of Europe (1948)

World, Peace, Justice, Law

“I don't keep any close friends. I don't keep any secrets. I don't need friends. I just tell everybody everything, that's all.”

Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) American chess prodigy, chess player, and chess writer

1960s, Portrait of a Genius As a Young Chess Master (1961)

Secret

“All the synoptic gospels show Jesus in close relationship with the ‘outsiders’ and the unloved. Publicans and sinners, prostitutes and criminals are among his acquaintances and companions. If Jesus were homosexual in nature (and this is the true explanation of his celibate state) then this would be further evidence of God’s self-identification with those who are unacceptable to the upholders of ‘The Establishment’ and social conventions.”

Hugh Montefiore (1920–2005) British bishop

Source: Jesus, the Revelation of God, p. 110

God, Nature

“.. wherever you are, you find the sun, a blade of grass, the spirals of the dragonfly. Courage consists of staying at home, close to nature, which could not care less about our disasters. Each grain of dust contains the soul of something marvellous.”

Joan Miró (1893–1983) Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist

Miró admonished art-critic w:Georges Duthuit
1915 - 1940
Source: 'Où allez-vous Miró?' (Where do you go, Miró), Georges Duthuit in Cahiers d'Art 11, nos. 8-10, 1936

Art, Home, Soul, Courage

“Just as the attempt to actualize liberal ideals requires ideas and arrangements unfamiliar to liberals, so the effort to make our moral experience resemble more closely what so much of moral thought already supposes it to be like calls for a practice of role defiance and role jumbling that has little place in traditional moral doctrines.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: False Necessityː Anti-Necessitarian Social Theory in the Service of Radical Democracy (1987), pp. 563-564

Idea, Effort

“Up close, North Korea is not Stalinist — it’s simply racist.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, North Korea's Race Problem (February 2010)

“But coming close wasn't the same as winning, was it? … He had won because winners won and everyone else just went home.”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

56
The Kite Runner (2003)

Home

“The separation of families to me is very close to my heart because we lived that as immigrants. I strongly feel that we all connected, and having felt people's love and support first-hand through difficult moments in my life, makes me feel it's our responsibility to help one another. I am privileged to help in some way, and I will always take that opportunity.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

comment to The Associated Press (September 10, 2005) as she prepared to lead a contingent of Hispanic-American entertainers on a humanitarian mission to Hurricane Katrina victims in Louisiana and Mississippi
2007, 2008

Love, Life, People, Family

“Blast Sputnik for closing terrestrial nature in a man-made environment that transfers the evolutionary process from biology to technology.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, Counterblast (1969), p. 85

Nature

“Comrades, I hear the track and beating of the enemy's horse-feet, and withal perceive that some of them come in a troop and full body against us. Let us rally and close here, then set forward in order, and by this means we shall be able to receive their charge to their loss and our honour.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Gargantua (1534), Chapter 43.

Loss, Horse

“He thought for a moment, brought back from his reflections. "It was only possible for me to do it," he said, "because it was necessary. I either had to write the book or be reduced to despair; it was the only means of saving me from nothingness, chaos and suicide. The book was written under this pressure and brought me the expected cure, simply because it was written, irrespective of whether it was good or bad. That was the only thing that counted. And while writing it, there was no need for me to think at all of any other reader but myself, or at the most, here and there another close war comrade, and I certainly never thought then about the survivors, but always about those who fell in the war. While writing it, I was as if delirious or crazy, surrounded by three or four people with mutilated bodies — that is how the book was produced."”

Hermann Hesse book Journey to the East

Journey to the East (1932)

War, People, Books, Thinking

“Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called by the Masai "Ngàje Ngài," the House of God. Close to the western summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

"The Snows of Kilimanjaro," first published in Esquire (August 1936); later published in The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938)

God, Mountain, Housing

“If his thinking has been sound, then this world is at the end of its tether. The end of everything we call life is close at hand and cannot be evaded.”

H. G. Wells (1866–1946) English writer

The Mind at the End of its Tether (1945), p. 1

Life, World, Thinking

“Here one cries sudden on a sobbing breath,
Gripped in the clutch of some incarnate fear
What terror through the darkness draweth near?
What memory of carnage and ofdeath
What vanished scenes of dread to his closed eyes appear?”

Eva Dobell (1876–1963) British poet

Unsourced, Night Duty

Fear, Appearance, Memory

“[Harry listening to car radio] …he resents being made to realise, this late, that the songs of his life were as moronic as the rock the brainless kids now feed on, or the Sixties and Seventies stuff that Nelson gobbled up – all of it designed for empty heads and overheated hormones, an ocean white with foam, and listening to it now is like trying to eat a double banana split the way he used to. It's all disposable, cooked up to turn a quick profit. They lead us down the garden path, the music manufacturers, then turn around and lead the next generation down with a slightly different flavour of glop.
Rabbit feels betrayed. He was reared in a world where war was not strange but change was: the world stood still so you could grow up in it. He knows when the bottom fell out. When they closed down Kroll's, Kroll's that had stood in the centre of Brewer all those years, bigger than a church, older than a courthouse, right at the head of Weiser Square there,… […] So when the system just upped one summer and decided to close Kroll's down, just because shoppers had stopped coming in because the downtown had become frightening to white people, Rabbit realised the world was not solid and benign, it was a shabby set of temporary arrangements rigged up for the time being, all for the sake of money. You just passed through, and they milked you for what you were worth, mostly when you were young and gullible. If Kroll's could go, the courthouse could go, the banks could go. When the money stopped, they could close down God himself.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

Life, Money, God, War

“The present industrial era brought with it a new governing class, as every considerable change in human environment must bring with it a governing class to give it expression. Perhaps, for lack of a recognized name, I may describe this class as the industrial capitalistic class, composed in the main of administrators and bankers. I conjecture that this class attained its acme of popularity and power, at least in America, toward the close of the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Almost at the opening of the present century a progressively rigorous opposition found for its mouthpiece the President of the Union himself. If Mr. Roosevelt became, what his adversaries are pleased to call, an agitator, his agitation had a cause which is as deserving of study as is the path of a cyclone.”

Brooks Adams (1848–1927) American political writer

Source: The Theory of Social Revolutions,, pp. 2-3, as cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 9-10

Study, Change

“The English themselves hardly conceived that their mind was either economical, sharp, or direct; but the defect that most struck an American was its enormous waste in eccentricity. Americans needed and used their whole energy, and applied it with close economy; but English society was eccentric by law and for sake of the eccentricity itself.The commonest phrase overheard at an English club or dinner-table was that So-and-So "is quite mad." It was no offence to So-and-So; it hardly distinguished him from his fellows; and when applied to a public man, like Gladstone, it was qualified by epithets much more forcible. Eccentricity was so general as to become hereditary distinction. It made the chief charm of English society as well as its chief terror.”

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

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Law, Madness

“The belief that science destroys culture is sometimes supported by historical statements that the arts have flourished only when the sciences have been neglected. This thesis is… directly contrary to history… [I]n the great age of Greece, art and science penetrate one another more closely than in any modern age. …The example of these men in science as much as in art set the modern world afire in the Renaissance. And the type and symbol of Renaissance man… remains Leonardo da Vinci, painter, sculptor, mathematician, and engineer. No man has shown more strikingly the universality and the unity of the intellect.”

Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician

"Sense and Sensibility"
The Common Sense of Science (1951)

Men, Age, World, Art

“None of us can close our eyes to the fact that we do face enemies who use their distorted version of Islam to justify slaughtering innocent people.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Speech about the Orlando Shooting (June 13, 2016)

People

“I had a sudden longing, like a pain, for the hot smelly East, and remembered that Everett had said something about an Indian restaurant. I asked the barman, a hot-haired Irishman, and he asked one of the business-men (who, I saw now, was a Pakistani) and then was able to tell me that the Calicut Restaurant was on Egg Street, by the Poultry Market. I went there and ate insipid dahl, tough chicken, greasy pappadams, and rice that had congealed to a pudding. The décor was depressing – brown oily wallpaper, a calendar with a Bengali pin-up (buff, deliriously plump, about thirty-eight) – and it was evident that the few Indian students were eating the special curry prepared for the staff. The manager was from Pondicherry : he caled me ‘monsieur’ and was not impressed by my complaints. At least one of the waiters was from Jamaica. I went out angry and, at a pub where the landlady sniffed in curlers, drank brandy till closing-time.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

Men, Pain, Business, Time

“If I were only sure it would kill him," she interrupted, "I’d kill myself directly! These three awful nights, I’ve never closed my lids — and oh, I’ve been tormented! I’ve been haunted, Nelly! But I begin to fancy you don’t like me. How strange! I thought, though everybody hated and despised each other, they could not avoid loving me.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Catherine Earnshaw (Ch. XII).
Wuthering Heights (1847)

Love, Hate, Night

“The question of relative atrocities may be illustrated by this fact: a close examination by the author of newspaper files for 1966 alone disclosed somewhere between 600 and 1,000 reported South Vietnamese civilian deaths attributed to “errors” in the use of “allied” firepower. During the same year the number of NLF killings, including paramilitary personnel, according to official Saigon estimates, was 1,000. That is, our acknowledged accidental civilian killings were of the same order of magnitude as official claims of NLF killings. It should be obvious that U. S. bombings and killings in “unfriendly” villages were many times greater than killings by mistake.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Source: Atrocities in Vietnam: Myths and Realities, 1970, p. 58.

Death, Error, Question, Time

“The United States is the most powerful technically advanced country in the world to-day. Its influence on the shaping of international relations is absolutely incalculable. But America is a large country and its people have so far not shown much interest in great international problems, among which the problem of disarmament occupies first place today. This must be changed, if only in the essential interests of the Americans. The last war has shown that there are no longer any barriers between the continents and that the destinies of all countries are closely interwoven. The people of this country must realize that they have a great responsibility in the sphere of international politics. The part of passive spectator is unworthy of this country and is bound in the end to lead to disaster all round.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1940s, The World As I See It (1949)

War, People, World, Problem

“For all practical purposes no other country has bid goodbye to Gandhiji to the same extent as the country where he was born and from which he drew all his inspiration. In the world outside he is honoured as a great Hindu and an outstanding exponent of Hinduism at its best, both in word and deed. His philosophy of life, based on Hinduism, is inviting serious attention from the intellectual elite in America, Europe and Japan. In his own country, however, he has been disfigured into the patron saint of a Secularism which decries Hinduism as “communalism” and goes out of its way to give protection to closed theologies of aggression, ideological as well as physical.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

History of Hindu-Christian Encounters (1996)

Life, World, Way, Communication

“God was feeling sardonic the day He created the Universe. So it's rather up to at least one man every few centuries to pop up and come just as close to making him swallow his laughter as possible.”

L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology

A letter to his wife Polly (October 1938), quoted in Bare-faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard (1987), p. 81.

God, Feeling, Laughter, Universe

“Intimacy is not trapped within words. It passes through words. It passes. The truth is that intimates leave the room. Doors close. Faces move away from the window. Time passes. Voices recede into the dark. Death finally quiets the voice. And there is no way to deny it. No way to stand in the crowd, uttering one’s family language.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982)

Death, Truth, Family, Way

“.. whatever may have been the style and title, the sovereign ruler was there, and accordingly the court established itself at once with all its due accompaniments of pomp, insipidity, and emptiness. Caesar appeared in public not in the robe of the consuls which was bordered with purple stripes, but in the robe wholly of purple which was reckoned in antiquity as the proper regal attire, and received, sitting on his golden chair and without rising from it, the solemn procession of the senate. The festivals in his honour commemorative of birthday, of victories, and of vows, filled the calendar. When Caesar came to the capital, his principal servants marched forth in trips to great distances so as to meet and escort him. To be near to him began to be of such importance, that the rents rose in the quarter of the city where he lived. Personal interviews with him were rendered so difficult by the multitude of individuals soliciting audience, that Caesar found himself compelled in many cases to communicate even with his intimate friends in writing, and that persons even of the highest rank had to wait for hours in the ante-chamber. People felt, more clearly than was agreeable to Caesar himself, that they no longer approached a fellow-citizen. There arose a monarchical aristocracy, which was a remarkable manner at once new and old, and which had sprung out of the idea of casting into the shade the aristocracy of the oligarchy by that of the royalty, the nobility of the patriciate. The patrician body still subsisted, although without essential privileges as an order, in the character of a close aristocratic guild; but as it could receive no new gentes it had dwindled away more and more in the course of centuries, and in Caesar's time there were not more than fifteen or sixteen patrician gentes still in existence. Caesar, himself sprung from one of them, got the right of creating new patrician gentes conferred on the Imperator by decree of the people, and so established, in contrast to the republican nobility, the new aristocracy of the patriciate, which most happily combined all the requisites of a monarchichal aristocracy - the charm of antiquity, entire dependence on the government, and total insignificance. On all sides the new sovereignty revealed itself.”

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

Vol. 4, Part 2. Translated by W.P. Dickson.
The New Court.
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 2

People, Communication, Idea, Birthday

“The harbor and city.... were behind us [Klee's first glimpse of Tunis], slightly hidden. First, we passed down a long canal. On shore, very close, our first Arabs. The sun has a dark power. The colorful clarity on shore full of promise. Macke too feels it. We both know that we shall work well here.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Diary-note, 7 April 1914; as quoted by June Taboroff, on 'AramcoWorld', May, June 1991 http://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/199103/travels.in.tunisia.htm 1911 - 1914, Diary-notes from Tunisia' (1914)

Color, Feeling, Sun

“The problem you have put me will remain a problem till the globe of the world and the globe of the sun meet in their common center and the one consumes the other. This answer I have proposed, however, humanity will know and forget, know and forget, know and forget again. And that knowing and forgetting will approximate the peaks and depths of civilization as closely as the quotient of your tosses approximates that number which, rationally, we know is not there.”

Samuel R. Delany book Neveryóna

Source: Neveryóna (1983), Chapter 12, “Of Models, Monsters, Night, and the Numinous” (p. 358)

World, Problem, Sun, Forgetting

“Forth from his dark and lonely hiding place
(Portentous-sight!) the owlet Atheism,
Sailing an obscene wings athwart the noon,
Drops his blue-fringèd lids, and holds them close,
And hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven,
Cries out, "Where is it?"”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

" Fears in Solitude http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/poems/Fears_in_Solitude.html", l. 81 (1798)

Sun

“As the year draws to a close, the Congress of the Philippines is once more mandated by the Constitution to enact a national budget for the ensuing year. Section 29(1), Article VI of the Constitution provides that “No money shall be paid out of the Treasury except in pursuance of an appropriation by law.” And so today, Mr. President, I rise to sponsor, as Chairman of your Committee on Finance, the General Appropriations Bill for Fiscal Year 2015.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2014, Speech: Sponsorship Speech for the FY 2015 National Budget

Money, Law, Drawing

“Cripple crow say something for our grieving, where do we go once we start leaving. Well close that wound or else keep on bleeding and change your tune, it's got no meaning.”

Devendra Banhart (1981) American folk singer

-Cripple Crow
From Cripple Crow

Change

“Once I loved, and she I loved was darkened.
Again I loved, and love itself was darkened.
Vainly we follow the circle of shadowy days.
The screen at last grows dark, the flutes are silent.
The doors of night are closed. We go our ways.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Love, Way, Night

“Almost any interesting work of art comes close to saying the opposite of what it really says.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

"What I Know About Writing (in no particular order)", as quoted in Michael Swanwick, "The Wolf in the Labyrinth", Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 2007
Nonfiction

Art

“With regard to migration, I welcome Europe’s increasing movement towards a sensible policy and sensible measures. I would like to make it clear that recently Hungary has closed all the legal loopholes, and it is also prepared for the potential failure of the agreement between the EU and Turkey. At the Hungarian-Serbian border we are able to stop a migration flow of any size. Hungary has also taken the first steps towards elimination of the migrant business: several NGOs clearly see the migrant issue as a business issue, so we shall create conditions for the full transparency of NGOs in Hungary. In my opinion, on the whole we are moving closer to a sensible policy. Those arguments are invalid which seek to link the issue of migration to funding which European policy entitles us to. In the future I shall continue to maintain that we in the V4 must not allow ourselves to be intimidated: we must remain committed to a sensible migrant policy.”

Viktor Orbán (1963) Hungarian politician, chairman of Fidesz

Speech after the meeting of the Visegrád Four http://www.miniszterelnok.hu/prime-minister-viktor-orbans-speech-after-the-meeting-of-the-visegrad-four/, 28 March 2017, Warsaw

Failure, Business, Future

“When I was a small boy, following the affairs of the House of Commons as closely as I could, I asked my father what a Royal Commission was. He said, "It is a broody hen sitting on a china egg."”

Michael Foot (1913–2010) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1964/dec/03/schedule-7-commencement-transitional in the House of Commons (3 December 1964) 1960s

Boy, Housing

“The close affinity between sexual Eros and deceit is very startling - as in infatuation, infidelity and jealousy: " Quoniam lumbi mei repleti sunt illusionibus. " For, isolated, Eros is in every sense the most treacherous counterfeit of love, sending a continual flow of self-deception and delusion throughout the world, etc.”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Broken Lights p. 33 Diaries 1951.

Love, World, Jealousy, Sense

“[The] contention that today's rich person is simply the winner of a "race that is open for anyone to enter" takes no account of inheritance or how we are equipped as we enter that race. It doesn't acknowledge that some approach the starting line in streamlined Lycra suits and track shoes, with full knowledge of the rules, a determined attitude and belief in their own abilities, not to mention a close friendship with those setting the rules and choosing the winner. Others, hungry from not having had a meal that day, barely make it to the starting line, don't really understand the purpose of the race or its rules, lack self-confidence and are full of hostility, and are convinced that those officials at the side of the track are actually cops waiting to bust them.”

Linda McQuaig (1951) journalist and author

All You Can Eat: Greed, Lust and the New Capitalism (2001)

Friendship, Hostility, Shoe, Confidence

“Mr. Speaker, the activities of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church continue to cause distress for many of us. As you know, the House Subcommittee on International Organizations, chaired by my distinguished colleague, Donald Fraser, is investigating allegations of close ties between the Reverend Moon and some of his organizations and the South Korean government, including the KCIA. As a member of the subcommittee, I am, of course, disturbed over such allegations. My greatest concern, however, is for those young people who have been converted by these religious cults and for their parents, who have suffered the loss of their children. One of these parents, Mrs. Ida Watson Camburn of Sunnyvale, Calif., brought to my attention the testimony of John G. Clark, Jr., M. D., assistant professor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School, before a Vermont Senate committee, which was investigating religious cults. Dr. Clark's remarks, based on 2 ½ years of research, deal with the effects of some religious cults on the mental and physical health and welfare of their converts. I highly recommend his conclusions to my colleagues.”

Leo Ryan (1925–1978) American teacher and politician

Statement read into the United States Congressional Record (3 November 2007), "The Effects of Religious Cults on the Health and Welfare of Their Converts", United States Congressional Record, Vol. 123 Part 29, No. 181 Proceedings and Debates of 95th Congress (First Session).

Children, People, Health, School

“The family is the cradle of the world’s misinformation. There must be something in family life that generates factual error. Over-closeness, the noise and heat of being. Perhaps even something deeper like the need to survive. Murray says we are fragile creatures surrounded by a world of hostile facts. Facts threaten our happiness and security. The deeper we delve into things, the looser our structure may seem to become. The family process works towards sealing off the world. Small errors grow heads, fictions proliferate. I tell Murray that ignorance and confusion can’t possibly be the driving forces behind family solidarity. What an idea, what a subversion. He asks me why the strongest family units exist in the least developed societies. Not to know is a weapon of survival, he says. Magic and superstition become entrenched as the powerful orthodoxy of the clan. The family is strongest where objective reality is most likely to be misinterpreted. What a heartless theory, I say. But Murray insists it’s true.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

White Noise (1984)

Life, Hostility, Happiness, World

“In addition, the teaching of theories from axioms, or some close imitation of them such as the basic laws of an algebra, is usually an educational disaster.”

Ivor Grattan-Guinness (1941–2014) Historian of mathematics and logic

Source: The Rainbow of Mathematics: A History of the Mathematical Sciences (2000), p. 739.

Education, Law

“Relativity distorted classical expectations in a way that Clavain still did not find entirely intuitive. Slam two objects towards each other, each with individual velocities just below light-speed, and the classical result for their closing velocity would be the sum of their individual speeds: just under twice the speed of light. Yet the true result, confirmed with numbing precision, was that the objects saw each other approach with a combined speed that was still just below the speed of light. Similarly, the relativistic closing velocity for two objects moving towards each other with individual speeds of one-half of light-speed was not light-speed itself, but eight-tenths of it. It was the way the universe was put together, and yet it was not something the human mind had evolved to accept.”

Alastair Reynolds book Redemption Ark

Source: Redemption Ark (2002), Chapter 26 (p. 463)

Way, Light, Universe, Speed

“What looks large from a distance, close up ain't never that big.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Empire Burlesque (1985), Tight Connection to My Heart (Has Anybody Seen My Love)

“…when I went out I tried to push the door instead of pulling it. 'Pull it, mate,' said someone, and I had to obey. I nearly tripped over a footscraper and, the door closed, had the impression of loud laughter. The vile blunt-razor-blade wind blew hard from my sister’s house. I felt ashamed and furious. In the East there was politeness, doors opened the right way, there were no footscrapers.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

Way, Sister, Laughter, Housing

“The twenty-six-year-old Baldur von Schirach, leader of the Hitler youth, who could boast of standing close to Hitler, declared bluntly in those revolutionary June weeks: ‘A socialist and anti-capitalist attitude is the most salient characteristic of the Young National Socialist Germany.”

Konrad Heiden (1901–1966) German journalist and historian

Source: Der Fuehrer, Hitler’s Rise to Power (1944), p. 501

Youth

“Where will you go from here?' he asked.Chellin shrugged. 'Who knows? North again. Maybe not. I'm tired of this life, Kiall. I may head south, to Drenai land. Buy a farm, raise a family.'
'And have raiders descend on you to steal your daughters?'
Chellin nodded and sighed. 'Yes. Like all dreams, it doesn't bear close examination […]”

David Gemmell book Quest for Lost Heroes

Source: Drenai series, Quest for Lost Heroes, Ch. 10

Life, Family, Dreams, Daughters

“Everybody knows I worked with Rajiv closely and we also fought each other over our beliefs. We fought the elections on the (Bofors) issue and the people gave their electoral verdict. It was an honest fight and I want to make it clear that at no point of time did I make the charge that Rajiv personally took money in the Bofors affair.”

V. P. Singh (1931–2008) Indian politician

Source: Rediff.com, At no point did I charge that Rajiv personally took money in the Bofors affair http://www.rediff.com/news/2004/feb/07inter.htm, rediff.com, 7 February 2004.

Money, People, Time, Fight

“On Friday, April 27th, he took a walk in the afternoon. That night he fell violently ill. He remained conscious and when informed by the doctor that he could ‘live only a few days, he exclaimed ‘Good!’ Before losing consciousness he said to Mrs. Bevan (who was with him throughout the night) ‘Tell them I've had a wonderful life!’ By ‘them’ he undoubtedly meant his close friends. When I think of his profound pessimism, the intensity of his mental and moral suffering, the relentless way in which he drove his intellect, his need for love together with the harshness that repelled love, I am inclined to believe that his life was fiercely unhappy. Yet at the end he himself exclaimed that it had been ‘wonderful’! To me this seems a mysterious and strangely moving utterance.”

Norman Malcolm (1911–1990) American philosopher

Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, 1958

Love, Life, Way, Thinking

“In terms of the big decisions before the Government, he was incapable of making them. He, as a seasoned politician from the TV cameras could turn it on, but his demeanour behind closed doors was absolutely miserable, irritated. If I was going to summarise it: personally miserable, politically paralysed.”

Julia Gillard (1961) Australian politician and lawyer, 27th Prime Minister of Australia

The Killing Season, Episode two: Great Moral Challenge (2009–10)

Decision, Personality, Season

“Almost all Muslims, including the most enlightened, feel offended by Rushdie's novel or, rather, by reports they have read or heard about it. Very few people have actually read the dense and tortuous book, but they do not have to. The very idea of using the prophet Muhammad as a character in a novel is painful to many Muslims. The entire Islamic system consists of the so-called Hodud, or limits beyond which one should simply not venture. Islam does not recognize unlimited freedom of expression. Call them taboos, if you like, but Islam considers a wide variety of topics as permanently closed. Most Muslims are prepared to be broad-minded about most things but never anything that even remotely touches their faith… To Muslims religion is not just a part of life. It is, in fact, life that is a part of religion. Muslims cannot understand a concept that has no rules, no limits. The Western belief in human rights, which seems to lack limits, is alien to Islamic traditions… The fact that Rushdie propagated his heresy in a book is of especial significance to Muslims. Islam is the religion of the book par excellence.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

Few cultures hold the written and printed word in so much awe as Muslims, even though the vast majority are illiterate. When a Muslim wants to clinch an argument he says, 'It is written.'
"Khomeini's Scapegoat", Times, London, (February 13, 1989).

Life, Pain, People, Books

“Mr. President, as I close, Mr. President, I heard you say Friday that you had questions for voters, particularly African- American voters. And you asked the question: Did the Democratic Party take us for granted? Well, I have raised questions. But let me answer your question. You said the Republican Party was the party of Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. It is true that Mr. Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, after which there was a commitment to give 40 acres and a mule. That's where the argument, to this day, of reparations starts. We never got the 40 acres. We went all the way to Herbert Hoover, and we never got the 40 acres. We didn't get the mule. So we decided we'd ride this donkey as far as it would take us.”

Al Sharpton (1954) American Baptist minister, civil rights activist, and television/radio talk show host

From the 2004 DNC

Way, Question

“In the 1920… the closed body rose to dominance, the Model T came to an end, and the upgrading of cars began. The events of the past few years of car market, I believe, have validated the General Motors product policy that we formulated in 1921. John Gordon, president of General Motors, recently observed that our slogan of “a car for every purse and purpose” is as appropriate as ever; indeed, we have never offered our customers greater variety and choice than we do today. In the 1963 model year the industry offers 429 models of domestically produced cars, compared with 272 in 1955; General Motor alone had 138 models in 1963, compared with 85 in 1955.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Source: My Years with General Motors, 1963, p. 512 (2015 edition)

Cars, Past

“In the early days of the DCC I preferred to let the proponents do their thing and then see how it all worked out in the end. Now we are pretty close to the end.”

Mark Shuttleworth (1973) South African entrepreneur; second self-funded visitor to the International Space Station

Debian Common Core Alliance, Mark, Shuttleworth, 2006-01-03, 2011-09-11, Ubuntu Sounder List https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/sounder/2006-January/003630.html,

“People who barely know the two of you assume you are close friends; people who know both of you intimately suspect you profoundly hate each other.”

Chuck Klosterman (1972) Author, Columnist

Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas (2006), Recognizing Your Nemesis

Hate, People

“Whatever the source of the leader's ideas, he cannot inspire his people unless he expresses vivid goals which in some sense they want. Of course, the more closely he meets their needs, the less "persuasive" he has to be, but in no case does it make sense to speak as if his role is force submission. Rather it is to strengthen and uplift, to make people feel that they are the origins, not the pawns, of the socio-political system.”

David C. McClelland (1917–1998) American psychological theorist

David C. McClelland in: Robert A. Portnoy (1986), Leadership: what every leader should know about people. p. 16

People, Feeling, Idea, Sense

“Chairman White, and the other Trustees that are present today, faculty and staff and alumni, distinguished guests, cadets, and friends of Hargrave: It's been a great run. It really has. I look out over the congregation gathered here today, and I see faculty, staff, cadets, parents, members of the Parent Council that we work closely with, other colleagues in the same business- and it makes me reflect on on fifteen years here, what all we've accomplished. I can also state that we wouldn't have accomplished much without the leadership of the Board of Trustees. And I'd like to thank all of the Board that's here- the Chairman, past Chairmen, and other members of the Board- that've A, put their trust in my leadership, put up with me at times, and set the guidance and the tone to keep the school on a straight path. Not an easy task. And the Board has done a magnificent job. I would also be remiss if I didn't recognize- I wish I could recognize every member of our faculty and staff, which is the heart and soul of an independent school. Our faculty is the best- best in the nation- very dedication people, that work constant hours with the cadets here, proven by our great success we've had over the past, what… hundred and- we graduated 102nd class last May. It's been really an honor for me to be part of Hargrave's history. But we're not done. We've completed 102 years, and now we've hired Brigadier General Broome, who's the right person to take the helm at Hargrave. And I am convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that General Broome is ready, willing, and dedicated to take Hargrave to the next level. It's a great school- I would tell you, in my mind, it's the best school in the country, because of the cadets and the folks we have here. I've been spending a lot of time with General Broome and his wife, and they are really gonna be a great fit for Hargrave, and I think Hargrave's gonna have a super next one hundred years. I wish we could all be here a hundred years from now to open our time capsule, but unfortunately, I don't think anybody in this room is gonna see what's in the time capsule… Anyhow, thank you for coming, it's been an honor to be part of this, and I will sincerely miss it. I'm not the type to watch things from the sidelines, but, in this case, I will. Thank you very much.”

Wheeler L. Baker (1938) President of Hargrave Military Academy

Baker's speech at the change-of-command ceremony in Hargrave's chapel on June 24, 2011.

People, School, Soul, History

“Why make excuses close to the truth, especially when now I am presuming to try to grasp in my old age what I did not gain in my youth because my sins prevented me from making what I had read my own? But who will believe me, even though I should say it again? A young man, almost a beardless boy, I was taken captive before I knew what I should desire and what I should shun.”

Saint Patrick (385–461) 5th-century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland

The Confession (c. 452?)

Truth, Youth, Age, Boy

“Little I ask, my wants are few;
I only wish a hut of stone,
(A very plain brown stone will do,)
That I may call my own;—
And close at hand is such a one,
In yonder street that fronts the sun.”

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

"Contentment".
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

Sun

“(When asked about his Westwood experiences) Westwood was a fantastic place to work, with great people, great games we created, and we all really loved what we did. We were passionate about it. I have so many great memories there, and the ironic thing is I actually regret not having attended more of the fun company functions and parties while I was instead playing club gigs with bands with the mentality of trying to get signed or discovered. Granted thats the kind of thing you try for when you're young, but it took awhile to sink in, that my real future and career was already under my nose. Lots of funny stuff happened. Office pranks, fun extra content we created, certain personalities that always made you laugh. Just all of life's experiences along the way whether it was staying in an awful hotel on a business trip, or trying to set-up an embarrassed co-worker with a date, it's all great stuff you can laugh about later. When Westwood closed it was truly the end of an era, but in a way it has been resurrected at Petroglyph where I am now. Half the company are old Westwood employees and although it's a different time in the industry, we are all thankful to still be working together and making the best games we can.”

Frank Klepacki (1974) American musician, video game music composer and sound director

Gameplay magazine

Love, Life, People, Way

“Now one of the interesting facts here with respect to intermarriage, and our time is just about up and we will conclude in a moment, is this; that historically, whenever you have had two peoples close together, and one in a position of power and the other in a position of either slavery or inferiority, it takes only a very short time for the two races to merge, no matter how great the hatred between them. Thus, when the Normans took England, there was nothing more hateful to the Anglo Saxon peoples of England than a Norman. And yet, because they were of comparable ability, in spite of that intense hatred, they did merge, ultimately. But when you find two peoples of very different intellectual and cultural levels close together, they can be together generation after generation, and the amount of merging is very slight. So that there is no disappearing of one as against the other. This is why the Negro did not disappear in the South. Had the slaves been, say of another racial group, it would not have taken more than a hundred years of slavery for the two groups to have merged. But you had a couple of hundred years of slavery in the south, and the Negro did not disappear. So this is the remarkable fact. As a result, when you hear stories told about how the Negro women were exploited and so on, these stories tend to be exaggerations. As a matter of fact, the truth was usually the other way, it was very difficult to raise children in the south, or to rear children in the south, because one way of promotion was to capture the interest of a white boy or a white man. Now this goes counter to the Marxist thesis, but when you study the history of the west you discover that one of the best things that ever happened incidentally to the morality of the upper classes was modern inventions which abolished the need for servants in the home. Because one of the major problems that existed was the seduction of the boys and the men in a household by servant girls.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, The Law of Divorce (n.d.)

Women, Men, Hate, Children

“The first of a thousand lies. Truth flowed to Micah Quill, was sucked in and disappeared, and emerged again looking ever so much like it used to, but changed subtly, at the edges, where none would notice, so that simple truth became a complicated fabric indeed, one that could wrap you up so tightly and close you off from the air until you suffocated in it.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 9.

Truth, Change

“You can give music variation without changing the notes. When you get close to a piece there will inevitable be tinkering. I sometimes wonder if concert pianists expend so much effort and energy finding new ways to interpret that what they really need is some more direct form of self-expression.”

Joanna MacGregor (1959) British musician

Denver Post, 18/02/2005
On Classical Music

Music, Way, Effort, Change

“If he could read a line, just understand one sign. Close his mouth and hear the peace of hope and fear, if he could read a line. If he could keep in time.”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

"The Poets"
The Poets And The Prophet (2006)

Fear, Peace, Hope, Understanding

“The ceremony took only a minute or so because Archie insisted on getting it over with quickly before anyone knew what was going on. The less drama, the better. Don't let Obie and Carter build it up. Thus, before any protest could be made, Archie had shot out his hand and pulled a marble from the box. White. Obie's jaw dropped in surprise. Things were moving too fast. He'd wanted Archie to squirm; he'd wanted the audience to realize what was going on here. He'd wanted to prolong the ceremony, to get as much of the drama and suspense out of the situation as possible. Archie's hand shot out again and it was too late for Obie to prevent the action. He drew in his breath. The marble was hidden in Archie's closed fist. He held the fist out, toward the audience. Archie held his back stiff. The marble had to be white. He hadn't come this far to be denied at the last moment. He let a smile play over his lips as he faced the audience, gambling everything in his show of confidence. He opened his palm and held up the marble for all to see. White.”

Robert Cormier book The Chocolate War

Source: The Chocolate War (1974), p. 245-246

Smile, Confidence, Box

“And be desired, she said while holding me in her arms:
because happy are the desired, each and all, she said with eyes
closed, in a desperate embrace. And our bodies cuddled up
to each other. Happy are those who want to love, she said,
today happy are the desired ones. I want you, she said,
want your movements, because they all are good for me,
want your caresses, because they all are good for me.
Give you my untouched young body, because I’m yearning
now for your embrace. I give you my vulnerable young body,
because I am yearning --- even for pain. Desired you are,
and I desire your desire, and do with me whatever you want
to do, she said, for happy are the desired ones, each and all,
and what I want to be is: desired-for-ever.”

András Petőcz (1959) Hungarian writer

THE DESIRE FOR DESIRÉE http://www.c3.hu/~mediumar/PETVERS1.HTM (1993). András Petőcz: In Praise of the Sea (1999, ISBN 963 9101 51 6). Poems

Love, Pain, Happiness

“She called me a rat.’ ‘Oh yes, I gathered you two were very close!”

Lindsey Davis book Shadows in Bronze

Shadows in Bronze

“The Soviets are a new state apparatus which, in the first place, provides an armed force of workers and peasants; and this force is not divorced from the people, as was the old standing army, but is very closely bound up with the people, From the military point of view this force is incomparably more powerful than previous forces; from the revolutionary point of view, it cannot be replaced by anything else.”

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

Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?, (1917)
1910s

People

“A few months ago I read an interview with a critic; a well-known critic; an unusually humane and intelligent critic. The interviewer had just said that the critic “sounded like a happy man”, and the interview was drawing to a close; the critic said, ending it all: “I read, but I don’t get any time to read at whim. All the reading I do is in order to write or teach, and I resent it. We have no TV, and I don’t listen to the radio or records, or go to art galleries or the theater. I’m a completely negative personality.”
As I thought of that busy, artless life—no records, no paintings, no plays, no books except those you lecture on or write articles about—I was so depressed that I went back over the interview looking for some bright spot, and I found it, one beautiful sentence: for a moment I had left the gray, dutiful world of the professional critic, and was back in the sunlight and shadow, the unconsidered joys, the unreasoned sorrows, of ordinary readers and writers, amateurishly reading and writing “at whim”. The critic said that once a year he read Kim, it was plain, at whim: not to teach, not to criticize, just for love—he read it, as Kipling wrote it, just because he liked to, wanted to, couldn’t help himself. To him it wasn’t a means to a lecture or an article, it was an end; he read it not for anything he could get out of it, but for itself. And isn’t this what the work of art demands of us? The work of art, Rilke said, says to us always: You must change your life. It demands of us that we too see things as ends, not as means—that we too know them and love them for their own sake. This change is beyond us, perhaps, during the active, greedy, and powerful hours of our lives, but during the contemplative and sympathetic hours of our reading, our listening, our looking, it is surely within our power, if we choose to make it so, if we choose to let one part of our nature follow its natural desires. So I say to you, for a closing sentence: Read at whim! read at whim!”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“Poets, Critics, and Readers”, pp. 112–113
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)

Love, Life, Happiness, Books

“I have frequently had men describe the following scenario to me: "If at the beginning of a relationship, I keep the woman at a distance and don't want to get too close, she feels that I am pushing her away and that I am not making a commitment—that I am afraid to be intimate. When I finally let down my guard and try to be intimate and close, when I really make myself vulnerable and give up control, which is uncomfortable for me, then I feel really inadequate. She blames me for things that she never blamed me for when I kept my distance. When I start to get close, that's when I am accused of saying the wrong thing or trying to control her. So I am better off staying at a distance and letting her complain about a lack of intimacy."Stewart, age thirty-six, described it this way: "Maryann was liberated on the surface, but the undertow was very different. I would find out a couple of evenings after I had been with her that she was very angry and I wouldn't even know that I had done something wrong. She would be angry because she said I wasn't really involved enough. I didn't care enough about her. The irony is that the women in my life whom I've made the greatest effort to get close to are the ones who always wind up saying they are angry because I wasn't getting close. When I made no effort to get close and really kept my distance, I never got any complaints. The moment I felt I was really opening myself up to be intimate, that was when I was found to be failing. That is the double bind for me."Another such truth was experienced by Alex. He said, "If you keep the control, the distance, then the woman is kept insecure; and so long as she is insecure about the relationship, she will be less inclined to attack. If she's interested in you, but you keep her at a distance, she will be careful about attacking you. She won't criticize you because she's afraid of you. The moment you cross the barrier and actually start to get committed, you find that she begins to feel that you are inadequate as a partner. You know then and there that you are never going to be able to satisfy her."I found this to be true sexually. At the times when I personally thought I was the most sensitive and the most involved and caring as a lover, I would find out often that I was a failure. At the times when I allowed myself to be totally selfish, without apology and didn't give one thought to what the woman experienced, I never got any complaints. I was never told I was selfish as a lover. In fact, I was often told that I was wonderful."”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

Why men and women can't talk to each other: the hidden unconscious messages of gender, pp. 39–40
The Inner Male (1987)

Life, Women, Men, Truth

“When I go to the house of God I do not want amusement; I want the doctrine which is according to godliness. I want to hear the remedy against the harassing of my guilt and the disorder of my affections. I want to be led from weariness and disappointment to that goodness which filleth the hungry soul. I want to have light upon the mystery of Providence; to be taught how the judgments of the Lord are right; how I shall be prepared for duty and for trial; how I may fear God all the days of my life, and close them in peace.”

John M. Mason (1770–1829) American Doctor of Divinity

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers, P. 150.

Life, God, Fear, Peace

“These last days [of Manet, dying] were very painful. Poor Edouard suffered atrociously. His agony was horrible, death in one of its most appealing forms, that I once again witnessed at a very close range. If you add to these almost physical emotions my old bond of friendship with Edouard, a entire past of youth and work suddenly ending, you will know that I am devastated.”

Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) painter from France

in a letter to her sister Edma, April 1883; as quoted in The Correspondence of Berthe Morisot, with her family and friends Denish Rouart - newly introduced by Kathleen Adler and Tamer Garb; Camden Press London 198, p. 131
1881 - 1895

Death, Pain, Friendship, Youth

“Zoe slowed but didn’t stop. She kept her hands in front of her, still a judicious distance from the animal.
But close enough to smell it. Close enough to see the steam rising from its warm underbelly into the night air. Four billion years of un-Earthly evolution had shaped this aggregate of cells, this beast. She looked at it. And, amazingly, it looked at her. An impossible distance from the planet of her birth, this miracle had happened: Clay had made life. Life regarded life. First light, Zoe thought.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Bios

Source: Bios (1999), Chapter 15 (p. 140)

Life, Birth, Light, Animals

“Although it may be extremely reasonable (especially from our present vantage point) to conclude that some part of human evolution, if not aspects of the diversification of hominoids in general, is indeed preserved in the fossil record of Africa, this does not in and of itself lead inexorably to the conclusion that humans and African apes are closely related.”

Jeffrey H. Schwartz (1948) American anthropologist

5 History, Morphology, Paleontology, and Evolution
Orang-utan Biology (1988)

Parting

“I can show you who's the man
Let me show you with my hands
I just want you close to me
I'll get you wet
Just wait and see”

Eamon (singer) (1984) American singer

"I Want You So Bad"
Lyrics, I Don't Want You Back (2004)

Waiting

“When people ask me, I tell them, "Hey don't believe all that mess. We're close and people took it the wrong way."”

Aaliyah (1979–2001) American singer, actress and model

Aaliyah on a possible romantic relationship with fellow musician R. Kelly (December 1994); Quoted by Christopher John Farley in Aaliyah: More Than a Woman, p. 47. (2001)

People, Way

“The attempt to regulate relations between people too closely, by means of the law, in the name of an abstraction such as equality, leads to both absurdity and cruelty.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

The Social Affairs Unit (2006 - 2008)

People, Law

“Old Labour’s international solidarity did not require the abandonment of the national democratic inheritance. But today’s left-liberals simply do not understand the traditional commitment to earning and belonging. This puts them at odds with how people understand themselves. We are beings with a tendency to attachment; in order to be open to the environment our bodies must also be closed; and in physics, atoms have a tendency to cluster. And yet in politics an ultra-liberal ideal developed that belonging, attachment and sociability, reinforced by institutions, should be replaced by the almost unmediated movement of people through space.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

Prospect Magazine, Why Brexit is a chance for national renewal, 13 March 2017 https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/why-brexit-is-a-chance-for-national-renewal

People, Understanding