Quotes about daily
page 8

“On the 26th of Mohurrum, in the year AH 861 (AD Dec. 23, 1465), the King again proceeded to Mundulgur; and after a vigorous siege occupied the lower fort, wherein many Rajpoots were put to the sword, but the hill-fort still held out; to reduce which might have been a work of time but the reservoirs of water failing in consequence of the firing of the cannon, the garrison was obliged to capitulate, and Rana Koombho stipulated to pay ten lacks of tunkas. This event happened on the 20th of Zeehuj of the same year AH 861 (AD Nov. 8, 1457), exactly eleven months after the King’s leaving Mando. On the following day the King caused all the temples to be destroyed, and musjids to be erected in their stead, appointing the necessary officers of religion to perform daily worship…”

Firishta (1560–1620) Indian historian

Sultãn Mahmûd Khaljî of Malwa (AD 1435-1469) Mandalgadh (Rajasthan)
Tãrîkh-i-Firishta

Religion, Water, Time

“In a cupboard filled with books he came across one with brightly colored pictures — it was a child's illustrated alphabet — A is for Archer Who shoots with a bow. B is for Boy, His first name is Joe. The pictures interested him greatly.
There were many apes with faces similar to his own, and further over in the book he found, under "M," some little monkeys such as he saw daily flitting through the trees of his primeval forest. But nowhere was pictured any of his own people; in all the book was none that resembled Kerchak, or Tublat, or Kala.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 6 : Jungle Battles

People, Books, Color, Boy

“One who adheres to the five (daily) prayers diligently, they shall be a means of illumination and salvation for him on the Day of Judgment.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Kanzul `Ummal, Volume 7, Tradition 18862
Shi'ite Hadith

“Eight hours daily labour is enough for any human being, and under proper arrangements sufficient to afford an ample supply of food, raiment and shelter, or the necessaries and comforts of life, and for the remainder of his time, every person is entitled to education, recreation and sleep.”

Robert Owen (1771–1858) Welsh social reformer

"Foundation Axioms" of Society for Promoting National Regeneration (1833).

Life, Education, Food, Sleep

“And therefore I think you have done very wisely to make it your business to consider the Phœnomena relating to the present question, which have been afforded by experiments, especially since it might seem injurious to our senses, by whose mediation we acquire so much of the knowledge we have of things corporal, to have recourse to far-fetched and abstracted Ratiocination, to know what are the sensible ingredients of those sensible things that we daily see and handle, and are supposed to have the liberty to untwist (if I may so speak) into the primitive bodies they consist of.”

Robert Boyle book The Sceptical Chymist

Physiological Considerations Part of the First Dialogue (15)
The Sceptical Chymist (1661)

Question, Business, Knowledge, Thinking

“We are living the events which for centuries to come will be minutely studied by scholars who will undoubtedly describe these days as probably the most exciting and creative in the history of mankind. But preoccupied with our daily chores, our worries and personal hopes and ambitions, few of us are actually living in the present.”

Lawrence K. Frank (1890–1968) American cyberneticist

Source: Nature and human nature (1951), p. 8

Hope, History, Study, Personality

“Streams of ideals that originated in the summit of our past, flowing underground in the depth of India’s soul, the ideals of simplicity of life, clarity of spiritual vision, purity of heart, harmony with the universe and consciousness of the infinite personality in all creation and the urge to bring these to the surface of our daily use and purification.”

Zakir Hussain (politician) (1897–1969) 3rd President of India

Source: Uniqueness of Zakir Husain and His Contributions (1997), p. 25.

Life, Soul, Universe, Past

“Within a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day. Fear of imprisonment, fear of torture, fear of death, fear of losing friends, family, property or means of livelihood, fear of poverty, fear of isolation, fear of failure. A most insidious form of fear is that which masquerades as common sense or even wisdom, condemning as foolish, reckless, insignificant or futile the small, daily acts of courage which help to preserve man's self-respect and inherent human dignity. It is not easy for a people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free themselves from the enervating miasma of fear. Yet even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilized man.”

Aung San Suu Kyi book Freedom from Fear

Freedom from Fear (1991)

Death, Wisdom, People, Fear

“The purpose and goal of Jewish living is to raise our consciousness of the presence of God in our every-day lives. Judaism, with its system of brakhot (blessings) for every experience from going to the bathroom to seeing a rainbow, teaches us that we do not need to remove ourselves from our daily routine in order to engender a sense of holiness. Rather, our challenge is to live with the chaos and tension of life in the modern world and, at the same time, to live lives of kedusha”

Bonnie Koppell American rabbi

holiness
Source: Vegetarianism, p. 37

Life, God, World, Sense

“This is the visual world, using the most advanced advertising techniques that are familiar to the crowds in their daily life.... What kind of representational art do you want to inflict on these men then, when they’re solicited everyday by the cinema, radio, huge photo montages and advertising hoardings? How can you compete with these enormous modern mechanisms, which give you art to the 1000th degree?”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

Quote, 1950, in: Fernand Léger - The Later Years, catalogue ed. Nicolas Serota, published by the Trustees of the Whitechapel Art gallery, London, Prestel Verlag, 1988, p. 58
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1950's

Life, Men, World, Art

“We have to let God's love break through the hard crust of our indifference, our spiritual weariness, our blind conformity to the spirit of this age. Only then can we let it ignite our imagination and shape our deepest desires. That is why prayer is so important: daily prayer, private prayer in the quiet of our hearts and before the Blessed Sacrament, and liturgical prayer in the heart of the Church.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

2008, Closing Mass (19 July 2008)

Love, God, Age, Imagination

“One day at Ahmadabad it was reported that many of the infidel and superstitious sect of the Seoras (Jains) of Gujarat had made several very great and splendid temples, and having placed in them their false gods, had managed to secure a large degree of respect for themselves and that the women who went for worship in those temples were polluted by them and other people… The Emperor Jahangir ordered them banished from the country, and their temples to be, demolished. Their idol was thrown down on the uppermost step of the mosque, that it might be trodden upon by those who came to say their daily prayers there. By this order of the Emperor, the infidels were exceedingly disgraced, and Islam exalted…”

Jahangir (1569–1627) 4th Mughal Emperor

Ahmadabad (Gujarat) Intikhab-i-Jahangir Shabi Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own historians, Vol. VI, p. 451.

Women, God, People, Falseness

“My ultimate vocation in life is to be an irritant, someone who disrupts the daily drag of life just enough to leave the victim thinking there's maybe more to it all than the mere hum-drum quality of existence.”

Elvis Costello (1954) English singer-songwriter

New Music Express interview with Nick Kent (1978); quoted in Elvis Costello, Joni Mitchell, and the Torch Song Tradition (2004) by Larry David Smith, p. 166

Life, Thinking

“Administrative efficiency is not merely a matter of paper clips, time clocks, and standardized economies of motion. These are but minor gadgets. Real efficiency goes much deeper down. It must be built into the structure of a government just as it is built into a piece of machinery. Fortunately the foundations of effective management in public affairs, no less than in private, are well known. They have emerged universally wherever men have worked together for some common purpose, whether through the state, the church, the private association, or the commercial enterprise. They have been written into constitutions, charters, and articles of incorporation, and exist as habits of work in the daily life of all organized peoples. Stated in simple terms these canons of efficiency require the establishment of a responsible and effective chief executive as the center of energy, direction, and administrative management.”

Louis Brownlow (1879–1963) American mayor

Source: Administrative management in the government of the United States. 1937, p. 2

Life, Men, People, Universe

“Meek Nature's evening comment on the shows
That for oblivion take their daily birth
From all the fuming vanities of earth.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Sky-Prospect from the Plain of France.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Birth, Nature

“Amusingly, it [astrology] falls foul of our modern taboo against lazy stereotyping. How would we react if a newspaper published a daily column that read something like this: "Germans: It is in your nature to be hard-working and methodical, which should serve you well at work today. In your personal relationships, especially this evening, you will need to curb your natural tendency to obey orders. Chinese: Inscrutability has many advantages, but it may be your undoing today. British: Your stiff upper lip may serve you well in business dealings, but try to relax and let yourself go in your social life.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

The Enemies of Reason, "Slaves to Superstition" [1.01], 13 August 2007, timecode 0:05:54ff
The Enemies of Reason (August 2007)

Life, Business, Nature, Reading

“Unto the third and fourth generation, General Motors, you have visited your greed on the children. Unto the twentieth, AEC, you have twisted their limbs and closed their eyes. Unto the last dawn of man you have cursed us, O Father. Our Father. Our Father Which art in Washington, give us this day our daily calcium propionate, sodium diacetate monoglyceride, potassium bromate, calcium phosphate, monobasic chloramine T, aluminium potassium sulphate, sodium benzoate, butylated hydroxyanisole, mono-iso-propyl citrate, axerophthol and calciferol. Include with it a little flour and salt.
Amen.”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

January “EARTHMOVER”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Children, Art

“The woman was in abject misery—that worst of poverty, which is haunted by shame—the only relic left by better days. She shrunk from all efforts at recovery, refused to administer the medicines, and spoke of the child's death but as a blessing.
My God! and is the daily page of life
Darken'd with wretchedness like this?”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Dying Child
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

Life, Death, God, Effort

“While doing justice to the intellectual power with which a few Circles have for many generations maintained their supremacy over immense multitudes of their countrymen, he believes that the facts of Flatland, speaking for themselves without comment on his part, declare that Revolutions cannot always be suppressed by slaughter, and that Nature, in sentencing the Circles to infecundity, has condemned them to ultimate failure — "and herein," he says, "I see a fulfilment of the great Law of all worlds, that while the wisdom of Man thinks it is working one thing, the wisdom of Nature constrains it to work another, and quite a different and far better thing." For the rest, he begs his readers not to suppose that every minute detail in the daily life of Flatland must needs correspond to some other detail in Spaceland; and yet he hopes that, taken as a whole, his work may prove suggestive as well as amusing, to those Spacelanders of moderate and modest minds who — speaking of that which is of the highest importance, but lies beyond experience — decline to say on the one hand, "This can never be," and on the other hand, "It must needs be precisely thus, and we know all about it."”

Edwin Abbott Abbott book Flatland

Preface to the Second and Revised Edition (1884)
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884)

Life, Wisdom, World, Justice

“Sometimes in June, when I see unearned dividends of dew hung on every lupine, I have doubts about the real poverty of the sands. On solvent farmlands lupines do not even grow, much less collect a daily rainbow of jewels.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“Wisconsin: The Sand Counties”, p. 102.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Wisconsin: Marshland Elegy," "Wisconsin: The Sand Counties" "Wisconsin: On a Monument to the Pigeon," and "Wisconsin: Flambeau"

“One should view the present situation – the status quo – as being maintained by certain conditions or forces. A culture – for instance, the food habits of a certain group at a given time – is not a static affair but a live process like a river which moves but still keeps to a recognizable form…Food habits do not occur in empty space. They are part and parcel of the daily rhythm of being awake and asleep; of being alone and in a group; of earning a living and playing; of being a member of a town, a family, a social class, a religious group... in a district with good groceries and restaurants or in an area of poor and irregular food supply. Somehow all these factors affect food habits at any given time. They determine the food habits of a group every day anew just as the amount of water supply and the nature of the river bed determine the ﬂow of the river, its constancy or change.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Kurt Lewin (1943) "Psychological ecology". In: D. Cartwright (Ed.) Field Theory in Social Science. London: Social Science Paperbacks. As cited in: Bernard Burnes (2004) " Kurt Lewin and the Planned Approach to Change: A Re-appraisal https://blackboard.le.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/institution/College%20of%20Social%20Science/School%20of%20Management/DL%20Materials/MBA/2.%20Organizational%20Behaviour/Section%208/Burnes.pdf" in: Journal of Management Studies. Vol 41. Nr 6. p. 977-1002. <br class="br">1940s

Family, Food, Nature, Water

“An information system is an organisation of people, materials and machines that serves to facilitate the transfer of information from one person to another. Its function is social: to aid human communication. If we take this to mean all reception of signals by the human senses (sight, sound, small, touch, taste,…)- then communication is an incessant and essential accompaniment of all human activity. If we restrict the meaning of signals to flowing between people, much of the daily life of most of us is occupied by such interpersonal acts.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: Information Systems (1973), p. 1.

Life, People, Communication, Sense

“Science and art may invent splendid modes of illuminating the apartments of the opulent; but these are all poor and worthless compared with the common light which the sun sends into all our windows, which he pours freely, impartially over hill and valley, which kindles daily the eastern and western sky; and so the common lights of reason, and conscience, and love, are of more worth and dignity than the rare endowments which give celebrity to a few.”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

Self-Culture (1838)

Love, Art, Light, Science

“The Bible says God gave herb for the service of man and bread to strengthen man's heart. Did you know bread used to strengthen your heart? But keep in mind, you know, "the love of money, the root of all evil." They learned years ago, if they take out the vitamin E, the lecithin, and the omega-3 fatty acids (they take them out of the wheat; and make the bread with white flour), the bread lasts for months. But the people started dying of heart attacks and strokes and circulation problems. See, it's a simple formula: the whiter the bread, the quicker you're dead. Now it's not the white bread that's killing you. It's what's not in the bread that's killing you. See, God made bread to strengthen your heart. Remember the Bible talked about "our daily bread." But people who are making bread to sell, got tired of having half of it go bad on the shelf where they couldn't sell it. So they had to figure out a way to make their bread last longer to increase profits.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Garden of Eden

Love, Money, God, People

“The immigrant who comes to us from a life of oppression must be made to realize that he assumes an obligation; otherwise, he is not wanted. Either he must live with us in the light of the highest citizenship, or else society will impose upon him the very restrictions he has sought to escape by coming here. It is the wolf in sheep's clothing who has cast a slur on immigration. There are many who land here who really never get to America. They become Americanized in everything but in heart. To teach the foreigner English is a necessary step; but it is not an end in itself; it is merely one of the implements of Americanization. This may hold diners peoples together for a while, just as economic opportunity and financial reward may cover their isolation. But unless, in their living—rather than in then livelihood—they daily exercise the principles on which the Republic rests, we have among us a shell of citizenship liable to explode at the least upsetting of economic balance, rather than the vital spirit which is at the basis of American life.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Whose Country Is This? (1921)

Life, People, Exercises, Light

“What! when it is necessary to take the most simple resolve, we are under the domination of our habitudes, our wants, our social relations, and a host of causes which, all of them, draw us about in a hundred different ways. These influences are so powerful, that we have no difficulty in telling, even when referring to persons whom we are scarcely acquainted with, or even know not at all, what is the resolution to which they will lead such parties. Whence, then, this certainty of foresight, exemplified by you daily, if you were not convinced, at the outset, that it is extremely probable the empire of causes will carry it over free-will. In considering the moral world a priori, you give to this free-will the most entire latitude; and when you come to practice, when you speak of what passes around you, you constantly fall into contradiction with yourselves.”

Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874) Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist

Preface of M. Quetelet
A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)

World, Way, Drawing, Personality

“You need both clarity and earnestness for self-knowledge. You need maturity of heart and mind, which comes through earnest application in daily life of whatever little you have understood. (…).”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Earnestness
Source: I am That, P.124.

Life, Knowledge, Heart

“This, then, is the obedience of faith, whereunto the Holy Ghost sanctifies us, that we should not give ear to the doctrine taught by the world, which is a doctrine of self-righteousness, and that we should keep ourselves altogether “unspotted from the world,” in our daily walk and conversation, and that we join not with the world in any thing that denies God and Christ, be it what it may.”

Hermann Friedrich Kohlbrügge (1803–1874) Dutch minister

Source: Sermons on the First Epistle of Peter (1855), p. 11 (quote from James 1:27)

God, World, Faith, Christ

“There is but one way to Americanize for each and every American to understand the ideals of America and to be able to interpret them in every act of his daily life. But this alone is not enough. Groups of men, from the humblest unit to the greatest political entity in the country, must be able to do this in combination; and there must be agreement. There are certain things that men go all over the world to find. Where those things exist men stay; when they fail men leave. These things are basic. They are opportunities to better conditions, to be equal to other men, to have the right to be heard, freedom of thought, worship, and speech, and to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is for this that men desert their home countries, and it is for this that they may desert America if their native lands in Europe offer the same great adventure and reward.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

Life, Men, Happiness, World

“These pieces have been and will, I think, during my life, continue to be to me the sources of daily and exalted pleasures. The tender and the sublime emotions of the mind were never before so wrought up by the human hand. I am not ashamed to own that I think this rude bard of the North the greatest poet that has ever existed. Merely for the pleasure of reading his works, I am become desirous of learning the language in which he sung, and of possessing his songs in their original form.”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

Thomas Jefferson, letter to Charles McPherson, February 25, 1773, cited from H. A. Washington (ed.) The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Washington, D.C.: Taylor & Maury, 1853) vol. 1, pp. 195-6.
Criticism

Life, Pleasure, Thinking, Learning

“Our Father, who art in Cribari, hallowed be thy glass. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in the lounges. Give us this day our daily splash, and forgive us our hangovers as we forgive those who continue to hangover against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil…and somebody give us all a ride home.”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

The live recording of "The Piano Has Been Drinking", "Bounced Checks" (1981).

Art, Home, Forgiveness, Evil

“The men of the Niagara Movement coming from the toil of the year's hard work and pausing a moment from the earning of their daily bread turn toward the nation and again ask in the name of ten million the privilege of a hearing. In the last year the work of the Negro hater has flourished in the land. Step by step the defenders of the rights of American citizens have retreated. The work of stealing the black man's ballot has progressed and the fifty and more representatives of stolen votes still sit in the nation's capital. Discrimination in travel and public accommodation has so spread the some of our weaker brethren are actually afraid to thunder against color discrimination as such and are simply whispering for ordinary decencies.”

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American sociologist, historian, activist and writer

The Niagara Movement, Address to the Country

Men, Color, Travel

“We must bear our crosses; self is the greatest of them all. If we die in part every day of our lives, we shall have but little to do on the last. O how utterly will these little daily deaths destroy the power of the final dying!”

François Fénelon (1651–1715) Catholic bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 170.

Death, Parting

“Nowadays, everyone seems to be emotionally dead, like zombies in pinstripe suits. Trudging to work each day to make a living, queueing up at McDonalds for their daily fuel intake, coming home to vegetate in front of the TV for hours on end.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

22 October 2004
Fully Ramblomatic

Home, Dead

“In the year 1910 we were beset by an accumulation of grave issues—rapidly becoming graver. … It was becoming evident to discerning eyes that the Party and Parliamentary system was unequal to coping with them. … The shadow of unemployment was rising ominously above the horizon. Our international rivals were forging ahead at a great rate and jeopardising our hold on the foreign trade which had contributed to the phenomenal prosperity of the previous half-century, and of which we had made such a muddled and selfish use. Our working population, crushed into dingy and mean streets, with no assurance that they would not be deprived of their daily bread by ill-health or trade fluctuations, were becoming sullen with discontent. Whilst we were growing more dependent on overseas supplies for our food, our soil was gradually going out of cultivation. The life of the countryside was wilting away and we were becoming dangerously over-industrialised. Excessive indulgence in alcoholic drinks was undermining the health and efficiency of a considerable section of the population. The Irish controversy was poisoning our relations with the United States of America. A great Constitutional struggle over the House of Lords threatened revolution at home, another threatened civil war at our doors in Ireland. Great nations were arming feverishly for an apprehended struggle into which we might be drawn by some visible or invisible ties, interests, or sympathies. Were we prepared for all the terrifying contingencies?”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

War Memoirs: Volume I (London: Odhams, 1938), p. 21.
War Memoirs

Life, War, Health, Alcohol

“Business underlies everything in our national life, including our spiritual life. Witness the fact that in the Lord's Prayer, the first petition is for daily bread. No one can worship God or love his neighbor on an empty stomach.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

Speech in New York (23 May 1912)
1910s

Love, Life, God, Business

“To fire a bullet into the heart or brains of one’s fellow man—even a fellow man striving to do the same to you—creates what might be called an unassimilable memory: a memory that floats on daily life the way an oil stain floats on rainwater. Stir the rain barrel, scatter the oil into countless drops, disperse it all you like, but it will not mix; and eventually the slick comes back, as loathsomely intact as it ever was.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America

Source: Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (2009), pp. 110-111

Life, Way, Memory, Heart

“Well, we haven't had what I would understand as the sort of sudden pressure that seems to screw a lot of people up. We've been under pressure for years. Most of the bands I can think of that have had severe problems with success pretty much had their first or second album go over the top, commercial success like we haven't even seen. And for me personally, and to a degree the rest of the band, none of us are really super social in particular. So we're not in situations on a daily basis where being somebody that's famous is going to become really annoying, or you can't go anywhere because everyone recognizes you. I don't go out too much anyway, 'cause I've never really liked crowds or been that comfortable around a lot of people. In that case, I've been really lucky.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Interview with Request Magazine, October 1994 http://web.stargate.net/soundgarden/articles/request_10-94.shtml, <br class="br">Soundgarden Era

People, Understanding, Problem, Thinking

“The preface is usually that part of a book which can most safely be omitted. It usually represents that efflorescent manifestation of egotism which an author, after working hard, cannot spare either himself or his readers. More often than not the readers spare themselves. When, however, the writer is a daily perpetrator of high treason, his introductory remarks may command from the English public that kind of awful veneration with which £5000 confessions are perused in the Sunday newspapers, quite frequently after the narrator has taken his last leap in the dark.”

William Joyce (1906–1946) British fascist and propaganda broadcaster

William Joyce, Twilight over England (Internationaler Verlag, Berlin, 1940), preface.

Books, Parting

“Yes it was 1949. How I came to that. That's like how one gets to know a human being. It so happens that I've always had a preference – as everyone has prejudices and preferences – for the square as a shape in preference to the circle as a shape. And I have known for a long time that a circle always fools me by not telling me whether it's standing still or not. And if a circle circulates you don't see it. The outer curve looks the same whether it moves or does not move. So the square is much more honest and tells me that it is sitting on one line of the four, usually a horizontal one, as a basis. And I have also come to the conclusion that the square is a human invention, which makes it sympathetic to me. Because you don't see it in nature. As we do not see squares in nature, I thought that it is man-made. But I have corrected myself. Because squares exist in salt crystals, our daily salt. We know this because we can see it in the microscope. On the other hand, we believe we see circles in nature. But rarely precise ones. Mature, it seems, is not a mathematician. Probably there are no straight lines either. Particularly not since Einstein says in his theory of relativity that there is no straight line, rod knows whether there are or not, I don't. I still like to believe that the square is a human invention. And that tickles me. So when I have a preference for it then I can only say excuse me.”

Josef Albers (1888–1976) German-American artist and educator

Homage to the square' (1964), Oral history interview with Josef Albers' (1968)

Fools, Nature, Time

“And when I say the world is governed by nothing but demons, who will continue to be demons until they have destroyed the world, I am not using profanities; on the contrary, demon is a scientific term, a formula covering a specific chemical composition without connotations from politics, religion, or moral philosophy.... Here among us on the lowest rung of the world of life, no attention is paid to books unless they are written by chemically analyzed demons, or at least for them. Poets and philosophers are respected in proportion to the contempt and disgust they feel for the creation of life. Give this day our daily war is the prayer of those who govern countries. Kill, kill, said the outlaw Skuggasveinn...”

Halldór Laxness book Kristnihald undir Jökli (bók)

Dr. Sýngmann
Kristnihald undir Jökli (Under the Glacier/Christianity at Glacier) (1968)

Life, War, Books, World

“The advent of colonialism and western capital to the Arab world has transformed most aspects of daily living; however, it has failed to impose a European heterosexual regime on all Arab men, although its efforts were successful in the upper classes and among the increasingly westernised middle classes. It is among members of these richer segments of society that the Gay International has found native informants. Although members of these classes who engage in same-sex relations have more recently adopted a western identity (as part of the package of the adoption of everything western by the classes to which they belong), they remain a minuscule minority among those men who engage in same-sex relations and who do not identify as “gay” nor express a need for gay politics.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Ibid., pp. 172-3
Desiring Arabs

Men, World, Sex, Effort

“Among others, Doctor Caritens died during a momentary absence of my father, who recommended while stepping into his travelling chariot, to bleed the Doctor a second time. I did as he bid me, although convinced that emetics and opening medicine would cure the patient without fail; the Doctor died, and you may easily imagine the state of my feelings. I had just begun to publish a work on practical physic, but had no heart to finish it after this sad catastrophe. I betook myself again to philosophy. I wished daily to return to Gottingen, if I could do so with honour. I passed three years under such painful circumstances, when my friend Leisewitz invited me to go with him to Berlin, for which purpose his brother-in-law in Brunswick would advance me money to defray my expenses. Without much consideration, I accepted the invitation, and my portmanteau was soon ready.”

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

My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Money, Pain, Sadness, Law

“Daily life is a comprimised blend of posturing for the sake of role-playing and of varying degrees of self-revelation. Under stressful conditions even the "true" self cannot be precisely defined, as Erving Goffman observes. …Little wonder that the identity crisis is a major source of modern neuroticism, and that the urban middle class aches for a return to a simpler existence.”

Edward O. Wilson book On Human Nature

Wilson cites Goffman's Frame Analysis (1974) as a reference here.
On Human Nature (1978), Ch.4 Emergence

Life

“In daily life, which sex is usually more disruptive or problem-causing? Percentage-wise, it is usually women. What contributes to that? It is mainly because they lack perseverance.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

Perseverance and Contemplation http://www.unification.net/1978/780827.html (1978-08-27)

Life, Women, Sex, Problem

“If I wanted, I could have changed cars on a daily basis. I could drink selected French Champagne everyday. When thousands of people would queue-up to enter the grounds of the Imperial Palace I had unfettered access to the Emperor. I chose to forfeit these privileges and opportunities and decided to free my people and country from darkness, poverty and underdevelopment. I had no other ambition.”

Mengistu Neway (1919–1961) Commander of the Ethiopian Imperial Bodyguard

As quoted by Dr. Yacob Haile-Mariam (January 2007) Open Letter to the People of Ethiopia and the Judges

People, Cars, Drink, Change

“We don’t realize that in the sizzle of our steaks there is the suffering of animals, the mining of our topsoil, the slashing of our forests, the harming of our economy, and the eroding of our health. We don’t hear in the sizzle the cry of the hungry millions who might otherwise be fed. We don’t see the toxic poisons accumulating in the food chains, poisoning our children and our earth for generations to come. But once we become aware of the impact of our food choices, we can never really forget… All things are deeply connected, and so the choices we make in our daily lives have enormous influence, not only on our own health and vitality, but also on the lives of other beings, and indeed on the destiny of life on earth. Thankfully, we have cause to be grateful—what’s best for us personally is also best for other forms of life, and for the life support systems on which we all depend.”

John Robbins book Diet for a New America

Source: Diet for a New America (1987), Ch. 12: All Things Are Connected

Life, Children, Health, Food

“At present, when the prevailing forms of society have become hindrances to the free expression of human powers, it is precisely the abstract branches of science, mathematics and theoretical physics, which … offer a less distorted form of knowledge than other branches of science which are interwoven with the pattern of daily life, and the practicality of which seemingly testifies to their realistic character.”

Max Horkheimer (1895–1973) German philosopher and sociologist

Source: "The Latest Attack on Metaphysics" (1937), p. 133.

Life, Mathematics, Knowledge, Science

“I don’t need to know most of what’s fed to us by newspapers and the TV. It’s largely useless information and daily moaning. There are only a few things in business that I really want to know about. Tell me about manufacturing productivity, employment, the balance of payments and borrowing levels. With these things you can decide on how to run a business, a constituency or even a country.”

Ivor Tiefenbrun (1946) Scottish businessman

INTERVIEW: Ivor Tiefenbrun – Of High Fidelity & Integrity http://www.hnwmagazine.co.uk/interview-ivor-tiefenbrun-high-fidelity-high-integrity/, HNW Magazine, 2 December 2012. <br class="br">2012

Business, Country

“We're all grossly ignorant about most things that we use and encounter in our daily lives, but each of us is knowledgeable about tiny, relatively inconsequential things. For example, a baker might be the best baker in town, but he's grossly ignorant about virtually all the inputs that allow him to be the best baker. What is he likely to know about what goes into the processing of the natural gas that fuels his oven? For that matter, what does he know about oven manufacture? Then, there are all the ingredients he uses -- flour, sugar, yeast, vanilla and milk. Is he likely to know how to grow wheat and sugar and how to protect the crop from diseases and pests? What is he likely to know about vanilla extraction and yeast production? Just as important is the question of how all the people who produce and deliver all these items know what he needs and when he needs them. There are literally millions of people cooperating with one another to ensure that the baker has all the necessary inputs. It's the miracle of the market and prices that gets the job done so efficiently. What's called the market is simply a collection of millions upon millions of independent decision makers not only in America but around the world. Who or what coordinates the activities all of these people? Rest assuredly it's not a bakery czar.”

Walter E. Williams (1936) American economist, commentator, and academic

1970s, Economics for the Citizen (1978)

People, World, Disease, Question

“We take our bearings, daily, from others. To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

Christian Science Monitor (5 March 1979)

“The alarm rings and we’re off, running so hard that by the time we stop we’re too tired to do much of anything except nod in front of the TV, which, like virtually all the other voices in our culture, endorses our exhaustion, fetishizes and romanticizes it and, by daily adding its little trowelful of lies and omissions, helps cement the conviction that not only is this how our three score and ten must be spent but that the transaction is both noble and necessary.”

Mark Slouka (1958) author

Quitting the paint factory: On the virtues of idleness

Time, Help

“There are Republicans, friends of mine, that I talk to that are very concerned about what’s going on. It is not easy for a Republican to take on a president of their own party in the first thirty days. Don’t assume their silence today means they will be forever silent.
They haven’t moved to the place where I think is sufficient. But you are seeing some early signs here. I don’t want to predict that we’re all going to be kumbaya, Republicans and Democrats fighting the Trump administration on a daily basis but I think this is a very uncomfortable moment for a lot of Republicans.”

Chris Murphy (1973) American politician

"2,000 turn out in West Hartford for Sen. Murphy town hall meeting" http://fox61.com/2017/02/21/overflow-crowd-in-west-hartford-for-sen-murphy-town-hall-meeting/, 21 February 2017.

Thinking, Silence, Fight

“If you will observe, it doesn’t take
A man of giant mould to make
A giant shadow on the wall;
And he who in our daily sight
Seems but a figure mean and small,
Outlined in Fame’s illusive light,
May stalk, a silhouette sublime,
Across the canvas of his time.”

John Townsend Trowbridge (1827–1916) American author

Authors’ Night.

Light, Time

“The thing is plain. All that men really understand is confined to a very small compass; to their daily affairs and experience; to what they have an opportunity to know and motives to study or practise. The rest is affectation and imposture.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On the Ignorance of the Learned" <br class="br"> Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

Men, Motivation, Understanding, Study

“Gentrification is a process that hides the apparatus of domination from the dominant themselves. Spiritually, gentrification is the removal of the dynamic mix that defines urbanity—the familiar interaction of different kinds of people creating ideas together. Urbanity is what makes cities great, because the daily affirmation that people from other experiences are real makes innovative solutions and experiments possible. In this way, cities historically have provided acceptance, opportunity, and a place to create ideas contributing to freedom. Gentrification in the seventies, eighties, and nineties replaced urbanity with suburban values, … so that the suburban conditioning of racial and class stratification, homogeneity of consumption, mass-produced aesthetics, and familial privatization got resituated into big building, attached residences, and apartments. This undermines urbanity and recreates cities as centers of obedience instead of instigators of positive change.”

Sarah Schulman (1958) American writer

Source: The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination (2012), p. 27

People, Family, Way, Idea

“I am growing increasingly convinced that if every one of these kids burning with passion to write that hit Christian song or make that hit Christian movie or start that hit Christian ministry to change the world would instead focus their passion on walking with God on a daily basis, the world would change.”

Phil Vischer (1966) American puppeter

Source: Me, Myself, & Bob (2006), p. 243

God, World, Passion, Change

“For tho' it is certainly more laudable, and a thing of greater moment, to be generous, constant, and magnanimous, than merely to be polite and well bred; yet we find, from daily experience, that sweetness of manners, a genteel carriage, and, polite address are frequently of more advantage to those who are so happy as to be possessed of them, than any greatness of soul or brightness of parts are to those who are adorned with those more shining talents. For those slighter accomplishments are of more frequent, or rather of constant and daily use on every occasion; as we are under a necessity of conversing daily with other people: Whereas justice, fortitude, and those other more exalted virtues, are of much less frequent occurrence. For neither is a generous or a brave man obliged to exhibit those virtues, every hour of the day (which indeed would be impossible,) neither has a wise man, or a man of great genius, an opportunity of displaying those extraordinary talents, but very rarely. As much therefore as those greater qualities exceed those more trifling accomplishments in weight and importance; so much the latter exceed the former in number and more frequent use.”

Giovanni della Casa (1503–1556) Roman Catholic archbishop

Source: Galateo: Or, A Treatise on Politeness and Delicacy of Manners, p. 3

Happiness, People, Justice, Soul

“Daily news and sugar confuse our system in the same manner.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012), p. 127

“The atheists aren't the problem here. For example, atheists would not take sequestered school children and force them to recite the daily mantra that there is no god, because atheists aren't the ones imposing religious views onto other people's children, and thus denying their rights. It's not the atheists who impede medical research either; we're usually not the ones against free or affordable healthcare, and we're not the ones minimizing or criminalizing women healthcare either. We're not the ones proudly perpetuating prejudice, be it racism, sexism or homophobia (among others). We're not the ones prohibiting or punishing partnerships between consenting adults, and we were not the ones who argued that persecution against gays (for example) should be somehow excusable or not considered a hate crime if it's done in the spirit or inspired by religion. Atheists don't want religion to have exemptions under the law, and why should we? It's not our demographic that has the most divorces, that has the most chemical dependencies, domestic violence, criminal convictions or even abortions. The only thing we might have more of are diplomas.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Youtube, Other, Don't Blame the Atheists https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0Ca88xNw_w (October 21, 2012)

Women, God, Hate, Children

“It was so easy living day by day
Out of touch with the rhythm and blues
But now I need a little give and take
The New York Times, The Daily News.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

New York State of Mind.
Song lyrics, Turnstiles (1976)

Time

“Art, moreover, is taste. It is the reflection of the artist's heart upon all the objects that he creates. It is the smile of the human soul upon the house and on the furnishing. It is the charm of thought and of sentiment embodied in all that is of use to man. But how many of our contemporaries fed the necessity of taste in house or furnishing? Formerly, in old France, Art was everywhere. The smallest bourgeois, even the peasant, made use only of articles which pleased the eye. Their chairs, their tables, their pitchers and their pots were beautiful. Today Art is banished from daily life. People say that the useful need not be beautiful. All is ugly, all is made in haste and without grace by stupid machines. The artist is regarded as an antagonist. Ah, my dear Gsell, you wish to jot down an artist's musings. Let me look at you! You really are an extraordinary man!”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Art, 1912, Preface, p. 8-9

Life, People, Stupidity, Smile

“History, as it comes into our daily lives, is charged with surprise and shock.”

Robert L. Heilbroner (1919–2005) American historian and economist

Source: The Future As History (1960), Chapter I, Part 1, The Shock of Events, p. 13

History

“Like any internationalist, I embrace Scotland's interdependence and the advantages that such interdependence confers. But in international relations - perhaps even more than the economic sphere - there are major advantages to pursuing an independent policy that promotes Scotland's global interests. Indeed it precisely because we live in an interdependent world - one where markets are integrating and information flow is unstoppable - a world where the reality of climate change acts as a daily reminder of our reliance on each other - that independence matters. Interdependence is a welcome fact of modern global politics. What matters in the Scottish national interest - above all else - are the terms on which Scotland engages. The equality of esteem, of authority between nations matters more now than it has ever done.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Scotland in the World Forum (February 4, 2008)

World, Reality, Change

“One sacrifice, however great, is insufficient to pay the debt of sin. The atonement requires constant self-immolation on the sinner’s part. That God’s wrath should be vented upon His beloved Son, is divinely unnatural. Such a theory is man-made. … The material blood of Jesus was no more efficacious to cleanse from sin when it was shed upon ‘the accursed tree,’ than when it was flowing in his veins as he went daily about his Father’s business. … His disciples believed Jesus to be dead while he was hidden in the sepulchre, whereas he was alive”

Mary Baker Eddy book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures

.
Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, pp. 23:3–6, 25:6–8, 44:28–29 (1867).

God, Business, Tree, Parting

“Thus, at long last, as a visible emblem of unity was daily growing in the new Palace of Justice then being erected in the Strand, half way between the historic site of Westminster the historic centre of the commercial capital of the world, there began to grow up, in the minds of reformers, the vision of a great and united Supreme Court of Justice, with uniform principles, uniform law, and uniform procedure.”

Edward Jenks (1861–1939) British legal scholar

Source: A Short History Of The English Law (First Edition) (1912), Chapter XIX, Modern Civil Procedure, p. 364

World, Justice, Law, Way

“Every man worships the dollar, and is down before his shrine from morning to night… Other men, the world over, worship regularly at the shrine with matins and vespers, nones and complines, and whatever other daily services may be known to the religious houses; but the New Yorker is always on his knees.”

Anthony Trollope (1815–1882) English novelist (1815-1882)

Source: North America (1862), Ch. 14

Men, World, Housing, Night

“Where does a story truly start? In life, there are seldom clear-cut beginnings, those moments when we can, in looking back, say that everything started. Yet these are moments when fate intersects with our daily lives, setting in motion a sequence of events whose outcome we could never have foreseen”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Narrator, Prologue, p. 1
2000s, A Bend in the Road (2001)

Life, Fate

“I was very sickly and weak during the first years of my infancy, and was, as much as I can remember of myself, a very whimsical boy. Sometimes I learned with enthusiasm, and often found myself in such a kind of ecstasy, that I neither could see nor hear what passed around me. In these fits of thought I forgot playthings and playfellows; I was happy only in my own musings. I always preferred the company of little girls to boys. I was not ten years old when I presented them with some poetry and little verses, the effusions of my heated imagination; some of them fell into my hands in riper years, and after reading them over, I left off poetry altogether. I loved my first private teacher very much; I even can remember him now. My second teacher was a simpleton; he could never understand me, nor enter into my feelings. My antipathy to this man grew daily greater; I could not learn of him, nor could he teach me anything. At last, when in my thirteenth year, I got rid of him, and he being encumbered with debts, I gave him my saving-box when he left. Whether I did this for pity's sake, or joy to get rid of him, I did not know.”

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

My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Love, Happiness, Feeling, Imagination

“Although one can sympathize with lay persons trying to break their attachment to a diet featuring meat, it is something else again to extend those sympathies to monks, priests, and teachers. What business have these latter to propound the Dharma when they possess neither the perception nor compassion to see the connection between meat eating and the killing of harmless animals, and when they lack the self-discipline to put Buddhist compassion before the pleasures of their palates? What right have they to wear the Buddha's robes when they won't or can't honor the bodhisattvic vows they recite daily to liberate all beings?”

Philip Kapleau (1912–2004) American Zen Buddhist monk

Source: To Cherish All Life (1981), p. 74

Pleasure, Business, Teachers, Animals

“If the life we live in this world is wholly for Christ, it is a life of daily surrender.”

Ellen G. White (1827–1915) American author and founder/leader of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church

Vol. 6, p. 116
Testimonies for the Church (1855 - 1868)

Life, World, Christ

“It could even be said, perhaps, that this very opposition, this threat from the world of total work, is what characterizes the situation of philosophy today more than its own particular content. Philosophy increasingly adopts — necessarily, it seems — the character of the alien, of mere intellectual luxury, of that which seems ever more intolerable and unjustifiable, the more exclusively the demands of the daily world of work take over the world of man.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), The Philosophical Act, pp. 65–66

World

“Can the human appropriation of nature ever achieve the elimination of violence, cruelty, and brutality in the daily sacrifice of animal life for the physical reproduction of the human race? To treat nature "for its own sake" sounds good, but it is certainly not for the sake of the animal to be eaten, nor probably for the sake of the plant. The end of this war, the perfect peace in the animal world — this idea belongs to the Orphic myth, not to any conceivable historical reality. In the face of the suffering inflicted by man on man, it seems terribly "premature" to campaign for universal vegetarianism or synthetic foodstuffs; as the world is, priority must be on human solidarity among human beings. And yet, no free society is imaginable which does not, under its "regulative idea of reason," make the concerted effort to reduce consistently the suffering which man imposes on the animal world.”

Herbert Marcuse book Counterrevolution and Revolt

Source: Counterrevolution and Revolt (1972), Chapter "Nature and Revolution," in The Essential Marcuse: Selected Writings of Philosopher and Social Critic Herbert Marcuse, edited by Andrew Feenberg and ‎William Leiss, Beacon Press, 2007, pp. 240 https://books.google.it/books?id=JqoyBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA240-241

Life, War, World, Peace

“When we hear [the crane’s] call we hear no mere bird. We hear the trumpet in the orchestra of evolution. He is the symbol of our untamable past, of that incredible sweep of millennia which underlies and conditions the daily affairs of birds and men.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“Wisconsin: Marshland Elegy”, p. 96.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Wisconsin: Marshland Elegy," "Wisconsin: The Sand Counties" "Wisconsin: On a Monument to the Pigeon," and "Wisconsin: Flambeau"

Men, Bird, Past

“Nietzsche … argues that all that passes in the life of a society is ephemeral and banausic except for the presence of great personalities, of men like Goethe … who seem to forge their own destinies, who seem to move unhampered by those burdens of existence which keep most men from rising above the vicissitudes of their daily toil.”

John Carroll (1944) Australian professor and author

Source: Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974), p. 93

Life, Men, Personality

“And oft-times cometh our wise Lord God, master of every trade,
And tells them tales of His daily toil, of Edens newly made;
And they rise to their feet as He passes by, gentlemen unafraid.”

Rudyard Kipling book Barrack-Room Ballads

Dedication, Stanza 5.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892, 1896)

God, Time

“Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the daily life of most humans ran its course within three ancient frames: the nuclear family, the extended family and the local intimate community.* Most people worked in the family business – the family farm or the family workshop, for example – or they worked in their neighbours’ family businesses. The family was also the welfare system, the health system, the education system, the construction industry, the trade union, the pension fund, the insurance company, the radio, the television, the newspapers, the bank and even the police.”

Yuval Noah Harari book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Life, People, Health, Education

“Oh, are not the pleasures in life, in this daily round, trifling compared with the pains!”
Satin parva res est voluptatum in vita atque in aetate agunda praequam quod molestum est?

Plautus Amphitryon

Amphitryon, Act II, scene 2.
Amphitryon

Life, Pain, Pleasure

“At heart, the issues raised in a work of fantasy are those we face in real life. In whatever guise—our own daily nightmares of war, intolerance, inhumanity; or the struggles of an Assistant Pig-Keeper against the Lord of Death—the problems are agonizingly familiar. And an openness to compassion, love and mercy, is as essential to us here and now as it is to any inhabitant of an imaginary kingdom.”

Lloyd Alexander (1924–2007) American children's writer

Newbery Award acceptance speech (1969)

Love, Life, Death, War

“I've seen those big machines come rolling through the quiet pines.
Blue suits and bankers with their Volvos and their valentines.
Give us this day our daily discount outlet merchandise.
Raise up a multiplex and we will make a sacrifice.
Now we're gonna get the big business.
Now we're gonna get the real thing.
Everybody's all excited about it.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

No Man's Land.
Song lyrics, River of Dreams (1993)

Business

“If failure or disgrace arrives, if one suddenly finds that the faces of men show coldness or contempt instead of the kindliness and deference that he is used to, he will perceive from the shock, the fear, the sense of being outcast and helpless, that he was living in the minds of others without knowing it, just as we daily walk the solid ground without thinking how it bears us up.”

Charles Cooley (1864–1929) American sociologist

Source: Human Nature and the Social Order, 1902, p. 207

Men, Fear, Failure, Thinking

“I was trying to write a book that simply would not come. I did my daily five hundred words, but the characters never began to live. So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one’s days. One may be preoccupied with shopping and income tax returns and change conversations, but the stream of the unconscious continues to flow undisturbed, solving problems, planning ahead: one sits down sterile and dispirited at the desk, and suddenly the words come as though from the air: the situations that seemed blocked in a hopeless impasse move forward: the work has been done while one slept or shopped or talked with friends. But this hate and suspicion, this passion to destroy went deeper than the book – the unconscious worked on it instead…”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Bk. 1, ch. 2
The End of the Affair (1951)

Hate, Books, Problem, Passion

“The problem is one in the general physiology of society. The continuance of life and health for any individual depends on maintenance of a moving organic equilibrium within certain definite limits of tolerance. The daily work of the world is done by individuals living their specialized economic and social lives within a moving equilibrium… But specialized progress brought uneven social and economic developments and serious maladjustment. General equilibrium is lost. The limits of tolerance, the margins of safety, are exceeded.”

Wallace Brett Donham (1877–1954) American academic

Source: "The Failure of Business Leadership and the Responsibility of the Universities", 1933, p. 423; as cited in: Wallace Donham http://www.eoht.info/page/Wallace+Donham at Hmolpedia, 2015

Life, Health, World, Problem

“The daily sight of her is going to be a torment, like God torturing Moses with a glimpse of Zion from the top of Mount Pisgah every single day of his life.”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

Source: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007), Chapter 9

Life, God

“It started with me being a vegetarian, and then it eventually moved towards veganism. Now it's permanent. It's a true way of life. As a professional athlete, my diet helps me tremendously. There's no difficulty in me making weight before fights, or maintaining it. I feel better than ever, light on my feet… Heck, I even think with a more clear mind, all from my eating the right choices for me and my body. I research everyday on veganism, learning new things daily, which is pretty cool.”

Bryant Jennings (1984) boxer

"Exclusive: Bryant Jennings: The Man Behind The Gloves" https://hypefreshmag.com/culture/exclusive-bryant-jennings-the-man-behind-the-gloves, interview with Hypefresh Magazine (April 18, 2015).

Life, Way, Feeling, Thinking

“Human nature is accused of much more selfishness than it really has; a thousand kindly emotions break in upon and redeem our daily and interested life.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Life, Nature, Selfishness

“We bore round the point toward the old anchoring ground of the hide ships, and there, covering the sand hills and the valleys… flickering all over with the lamps of its streets and houses, lay a city of one hundred thousand inhabitants. The dock into which we drew, and the streets about it, were densely crowded with express wagons and handcarts… Though this crowd I made my way, along the well-built and well-light streets, as alive as by day, where boys in high-keyed voices where already crying the latest New York papers. When I awoke in the morning, and looked from my windows over the city of San Francisco, with its storehouses, towers, and steeples; its courthouses, theaters, and hospitals, its daily journals, its well-filled learned professions, its fortresses and lighthouses; its wharves and harbor… when I saw all these things, and reflected on what I once saw here, and what now surrounded me, I could scarcely keep my hold on reality at all, or the genuineness of anything.”

Richard Henry Dana Jr. (1815–1882) United States author and lawyer

Twenty-Four Years After (1869)

Way, Boy, Reality, Light

“They shaved my head and took layers of skin from my scalp. To heal the wounds, I was in a hyperbaric chamber for 90 minutes twice daily for four days. It’s claustrophobic. One of my first nights home, I watched ‘Iron Man’ with friends. In the scene where Robert Downey Jr. comes out of the cave with a blowtorch, my whole body cringed. That night, I had a nightmare someone spilled fuel on me and was trying to light me on fire. I woke up and thought, ‘Oh my God, this is going to happen forever?”

Adam Goldstein (1973–2009) American DJ

DJ AM talks about plane crash http://www.celebritysmackblog.com/2008/10/16/dj-am-opens-up-about-the-plane-crash-that-nearly-took-his-life/ People Magazine. October 2008.

God, Home, Light, Night

“For in spite of much greater public interest in all aspects of visual culture, including design and architecture, the challenge posed by contemporary art has not evaporated. We have only to recall the headlines for last year's Turner Prize. "Eminence without merit" (The Sunday Telegraph). "Tate trendies blow a raspberry" (Eastern Daily Press), and my favourite, "For 1,000 years art has been one of our great civilising forces. Today, pickled sheep and soiled bed threaten to make barbarians of us all" (The Daily Mail). Are these papers speaking the minds of their readers? I have no delusions. People may be attracted by the spectacle of new buildings, they may enjoy the social experience of visiting a museum, taking in the view, an espresso or glass of wine, purchasing a book or an artist designed t-shirt. Many are delighted to praise the museum, but remain deeply suspicious of the contents.”

Nicholas Serota (1946) British curator

The Dimbleby Lecture 2000

People, Books, Art, Wine

“Through violence, you may 'solve' one problem, but you sow the seeds for another.
…
One has to try to develop one's inner feelings, which can be done simply by training one's mind. This is a priceless human asset and one you don't have to pay income tax on!
…
First one must change. I first watch myself, check myself, then expect changes from others.
…
Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.
…
I myself feel, and also tell other Buddhists that the question of Nirvana will come later.
There is not much hurry.
If in day to day life you lead a good life, honesty, with love,
with compassion, with less selfishness,
then automatically it will lead to Nirvana.
…
The universe that we inhabit and our shared perception of it are the results of a common karma. Likewise, the places that we will experience in future rebirths will be the outcome of the karma that we share with the other beings living there. The actions of each of us, human or nonhuman, have contributed to the world in which we live. We all have a common responsibility for our world and are connected with everything in it.
…
If the love within your mind is lost and you see other beings as enemies, then no matter how much knowledge or education or material comfort you have, only suffering and confusion will ensue.
…
It is under the greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good, both for oneself and others.
…
Whenever Buddhism has taken root in a new land, there has been a certain variation in the style in which it is observed. The Buddha himself taught differently according to the place, the occasion and the situation of those who were listening to him.
…
Samsara - our conditioned existence in the perpetual cycle of habitual tendencies and nirvana - genuine freedom from such an existence- are nothing but different manifestations of a basic continuum. So this continuity of consciousness us always present. This is the meaning of tantra.
…
According to Buddhist practice, there are three stages or steps. The initial stage is to reduce attachment towards life.
The second stage is the elimination of desire and attachment to this samsara. Then in the third stage, self-cherishing is eliminated.
…
The creatures that inhabit this earth-be they human beings or animals-are here to contribute, each in its own particular way, to the beauty and prosperity of the world.
…
To develop genuine devotion, you must know the meaning of teachings. The main emphasis in Buddhism is to transform the mind, and this transformation depends upon meditation. in order to meditate correctly, you must have knowledge.
…
Anything that contradicts experience and logic should be abandoned.
…
The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual's own reason and critical analysis.
…
From one point of view we can say that we have human bodies and are practicing the Buddha's teachings and are thus much better than insects. But we can also say that insects are innocent and free from guile, where as we often lie and misrepresent ourselves in devious ways in order to achieve our ends or better ourselves. From this perspective, we are much worse than insects.
…
When the days become longer and there is more sunshine, the grass becomes fresh and, consequently, we feel very happy. On the other hand, in autumn, one leaf falls down and another leaf falls down. The beautiful plants become as if dead and we do not feel very happy. Why? I think it is because deep down our human nature likes construction, and does not like destruction. Naturally, every action which is destructive is against human nature. Constructiveness is the human way. Therefore, I think that in terms of basic human feeling, violence is not good. Non-violence is the only way.
…
We humans have existed in our present form for about a hundred thousand years. I believe that if during this time the human mind had been primarily controlled by anger and hatred, our overall population would have decreased. But today, despite all our wars, we find that the human population is greater than ever. This clearly indicates to me that love and compassion predominate in the world. And this is why unpleasant events are "news"; compassionate activities are so much a part of daily life that they are taken for granted and, therefore, largely ignored.
…
The fundamental philosophical principle of Buddhism is that all our suffering comes about as a result of an undisciplined mind, and this untamed mind itself comes about because of ignorance and negative emotions. For the Buddhist practitioner then, regardless of whether he or she follows the approach of the Fundamental Vehicle, Mahayana or Vajrayana, negative emotions are always the true enemy, a factor that has to be overcome and eliminated. And it is only by applying methods for training the mind that these negative emotions can be dispelled and eliminated. This is why in Buddhist writings and teachings we find such an extensive explanation of the mind and its different processes and functions. Since these negative emotions are states of mind, the method or technique for overcoming them must be developed from within. There is no alternative. They cannot be removed by some external technique, like a surgical operation."”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the Great Perfection, Snow Lion Publications, Ithaca, 2004

Love, Life, War, Happiness

“Admiration, is a joy daily kindled afresh… I talk out of the -fullness of life; it belongs to me in a sense larger than that of ownership.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Rodin : the man and his art, with leaves from his notebook, 1917, p. 121

Life, Sense, Joy

“If a wise man should ask, What are the modern virtues? and should answer his own question by a summary of the things we admire; if he should discard as irrelevant the ideals which by tradition we profess, but which are not found outside of the tradition or the profession—ideals like meekness, humility, the renunciation of this world; if he should include only those excellences to which our hearts are daily given, and by which our conduct is motived,—in such an inventory what virtues would he name?”

John Erskine (1879–1951) American educator

Source: The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent (1915), p. 3

World, Motivation, Question, Heart

“In my own household, for example, an electric refrigerator has been in service for nineteen years, with only a single minor repair: an admirable job. Both automatic refrigerators for daily use and deepfreeze preservation are inventions of permanent value. Though one cannot bestow any such unqualified commendation upon the design of the contemporary motor car, one can hardly doubt that if biotechnic criteria were heeded, rather than those of market analysts and fashion experts, an equally good product might come forth from Detroit, with an equally long prospect of continued use.”

Lewis Mumford book The Myth of the Machine

Megatechnic Costs and Benefits
The Myth of the Machine (1967-1970), The Pentagon of Power (1970)

Cars, Fashion

“Can I live a life, daily life, without sense of self-concern?”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

4th Public Talk, Saanen, Switzerland (25 July 1971)
1970s

Life, Sense

“Sense of justice is one of the most wonderful ideals of Islam, because as I read in the Quran I find those dynamic principles of life, not mystic but practical ethics for the daily conduct of life suited to the whole world.”

Sarojini Naidu (1879–1949) Indian politician, governor of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh from 1947 to 1949

Sarojini Naidu, Islam, 1 December 2013, Radio Islam http://www.radioislam.org.za/a/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6322&Itemid=47,

Life, World, Justice, Sense

“Living in the world as a cripple allows you to see more clearly the crippled hearts of some people whose bodies are whole and sound. All of us, from time to time, suffer this crippling. Some suffer it daily and nightly; and while most of us, nearly all of us, have compassion and love in our hearts, we cannot of will not see these barely visible wounds of other human beings, and so cannot or will not pick up the telephone or travel to someone’s house or write a note or make some other seemingly trifling gesture to give to someone what only we, and God, can give: an hour’s respite, or a day’s, or a night’s; and sometimes more than respite: sometimes joy.”

Andre Dubus (1936–1999) Novelist, short story writer, teacher

A Woman in April.
Broken Vessels (1991)

Love, God, People, World

“If I am to be known for anything, I would like it to be for encouraging Canadians, for knowing a little bit about their daily, extraordinary courage. And for wanting that courage to be recognized.”

Romeo LeBlanc (1927–2009) Canadian politician

Source: installation speech, February 8, 1995

Courage

“I have been on record all 54 years of my ministry as being opposed to dual covenant theology… I simply cannot alter my deeply held belief in the exclusivity of salvation through the Gospel of Christ for the sake of political or theological expediency. Like the Apostle Paul, I pray daily for the salvation of everyone, including the Jewish people.”

Jerry Falwell (1933–2007) American evangelical pastor, televangelist, and conservative political commentator

Response to a Jerusalem Post (1 March 2006) article which portrayed him as endorsing a "dual covenant" theology in which Jews are saved with a "special relationship with God and so need not become Christians to get to heaven." in The Jerusalem Post (2 March 2006)

People, Christ

“The foot, the pound, and the pint are all close to the size of many things used in daily life. In contrast, the metre, the kilogram, and the litre are all rather large, and the centimetre, the gram, and the millilitre rather small, for many practical uses.”

Thomas Flanagan (political scientist) (1944) author, academic, and political activist

Source: Game Theory and Canadian Politics (1998), Chapter 4, Models of Metrication, p. 64.

Life

“The system here, is rigid, strict, and hopeless solitary confinement… I believe that very few men are capable of estimating the immense amount of torture and agony which this dreadful punishment, prolonged for years, inflicts upon the sufferers… I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain, to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body: and because its ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye and sense of touch as scars upon the flesh; because its wounds are not upon the surface, and it extorts few cries that human ears can hear; therefore I the more denounce it, as a secret punishment which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay”

Charles Dickens (1812–1870) English writer and social critic and a Journalist

American Notes online at Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/675/pg675.html

Men, Secret, Sense, Suffering

Quotes about daily page 8

Quotes about daily
page 8