Quotes about doe
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“Have this faith that someone is there to take away your weaknesses. Ok, you slipped once, twice, thrice. It does not matter. Keep moving ahead. People take vows never to commit mistakes again. Breaking the vows makes it worse. Surrendering is better”

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (1956) spiritual leader

People, Faith

“Consciousness does not just passively reflect the objective material world; it plays an active role in creating reality
itself.”

Stanislav Grof (1931) Czech pychiatrist

World, Reality

“God does not need your good works, but your neighbor does.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

God

“For he that does good, having the unlimited power to do evil, deserves praise not only for the good which he performs, but for the evil which he forbears.”

Walter Scott book Ivanhoe

Source: Ivanhoe (1819), Ch. 33, The Black Knight speaking to Locksley.

Evil

“God sometimes does His work with gentle drizzle, not storms.”

John Newton (1725–1807) Anglican clergyman and hymn-writer

Source: Amazing Grace

God

“It's like it ain't so much what a fellow does, but it's the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Source: As I Lay Dying

Way

“It does help to actually realize that however stunning the person who is, you know, fluttering eyelashes at you, she doesn't do anything to match up to your wife.”

Colin Firth (1960) English actor

Help, Personality

“Cognition reigns but does not rule.”

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

“Whatever anyone does or says, I must be emerald and keep my colour.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

“A gentleman is someone who does not what he wants to do, but what he should do.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

“The more clearly one sees this world; the more one is obliged to pretend it does not exist.”

John Irving book A Son of the Circus

Source: A Son of the Circus

World

“There is no knowing that does not begin with knowing God.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

God

“Is there a difference between happiness and inner peace? Yes. Happiness depends on conditions being perceived as positive; inner peace does not.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Happiness, Peace, Dependency

“Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Death

“The truth of the matter is rather as Christ says, "He who is not with me is against me."… He does not say "He who is not with me is not against me either, but merely neutral.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Source: The Bondage of the Will

Truth, Christ

“Poor is the pupil that does not surpass his master.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), I Prolegomena and General Introduction to the Book on Painting

“He who does not travel, who does not read,
who does not listen to music,
who does not find grace in himself,
she who does not find grace in herself,
dies slowly.
He who slowly destroys his own self-esteem,
who does not allow himself to be helped”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

dies slowly… Muere lentamente quien no viaja, quien no lee, quien no oye música, quien no encuentra gracia en sí mismo. Muere lentamente quien destruye su amor propio, quien no se deja ayudar... Poem "Muere lentamente" (Dying Slowly), wrongly attributed to Pablo Neruda. See "Fake Pablo Neruda Poem Spreads on Internet" http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=325275&CategoryId=14094 by Ana Mendoza, Latin American Herald Tribune (12 January 2009). Misattributed Source: Selected Poems

Music, Travel, Reading, Help

“Only thought which does violence to itself is hard enough to shatter myth.”

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society

“What one does is what counts. Not what one had the intention of doing.”

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

“Does Big Brother exist?"
"Of course he exists. The Party exists. Big Brother is the embodiment of the Party."
"Does he exist in the same way as I exist?"
"You do not exist.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Way

“I think I need a drink.'
'Almost everybody does only they don't know it.”

Charles Bukowski book Women

Source: Women

Drink, Thinking

“He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him), and took a sort of pleasure in thinking that human affairs would never improve.”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 30
Source: Down and Out in Paris and London
Context: He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him), and took a sort of pleasure in thinking that human affairs would never improve. Sometimes, he said, when sleeping on the Embankment, it had consoled him to look up at Mars or Jupiter and think that there were probably Embankment sleepers there. He had a curious theory about this. Life on earth, he said, is harsh because the planet is poor in the necessities of existence. Mars, with its cold climate and scanty water, must be far poorer, and life correspondingly harsher. Whereas on earth you are merely imprisoned for stealing sixpence, on Mars you are probably boiled alive. This thought cheered Bozo, I do not know why. He was a very exceptional man.

God, Pleasure, Thinking, Personality

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

Carlos Castaneda (1925–1998) Peruvian-American author

Question, Heart

“Thinking is only a small aspect of consciousness. Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness does not need thought”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

Thinking

“Sufre mas el que espera siempre
que aquel que nunca espero a nadie?

Does he who is always waiting suffer more than he who’s never waited for anyone?”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Source: The Book of Questions

Suffering, Waiting

“Arguments for preservation based on the beauty of wilderness are sometimes treated as if they were of little weight because they are "merely aesthetic". That is a mistake. We go to great lengths to preserve the artistic treasures of earlier human civilisations. It is difficult to imagine any economic gain that we would be prepared to accept as adequate compensation for, for instance, the destruction of the paintings in the Louvre. How should we compare the aesthetic value of wilderness with that of the paintings in the Louvre? Here, perhaps, judgment does become inescapably subjective; so I shall report my own experiences. I have looked at the paintings in the Louvre, and in many of the other great galleries of Europe and the United States. I think I have a reasonable sense of appreciation of the fine arts; yet I have not had, in any museum, experiences that have filled my aesthetic senses in the way that they are filled when I walk in a natural setting and pause to survey the view from a rocky peak overlooking a forested valley, or by a stream tumbling over moss-covered boulders set amongst tall tree-ferns, growing in the shade of the forest canopy, I do not think I am alone in this; for many people, wilderness is the source of the greatest feelings of aesthetic appreciation, rising to an almost mystical intensity.”

Peter Singer book Practical Ethics

Source: Practical Ethics

People, Beauty, Art, Way

“The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.
Carl Jung
Swiss psychologist (1875 - 1961)”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

“The true test of a man’s character is what he does when no one is watching.”

John Wooden (1910–2010) American basketball coach

“So Einstein was wrong when he said, "God does not play dice." Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that he sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen.”

Stephen Hawking book The Nature of Space and Time

During the same 1994 exchange with Penrose as the previous quote, transcribed in The Nature of Space and Time (1996) by Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, p. 26 http://books.google.com/books?id=LstaQTXP65cC&lpg=PA26&dq=hawking%20%22where%20they%20can't%20be%20seen%22&pg=PA26#v=onepage&q=&f=false and also in "The Nature of Space and Time" (online text) http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9409195 Unsourced variants: Not only does God play dice with the Universe; he sometimes casts them where they can't be seen. Not only does God play dice, but... he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen. Variant: So Einstein was wrong when he said "God does not play dice". Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that He sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen.

God

“We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all.”

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

Fear, Personality, Sad, Heartbreaking

“Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.”

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet

World, Lying, Thinking, Time

“The only man who makes no mistakes is the man who never does anything.”

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

As quoted by Jacob A. Riis in Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen (1904), chapter XVI A Young Men's Hero http://www.bartleby.com/206/16.html 1900s

“The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Notes on Nationalism (1945)

“EMILY: "Does anyone ever realize life while they live it… every, every minute?"

STAGE MANAGER: "No. Saints and poets maybe… they do some.”

Thornton Wilder Our Town

Source: Our Town

Life

“Ah, on what little things does happiness depend! I have read all that the wise men have written, and all the secrets of philosophy are mine, yet for want of a red rose is my life made wretched.”

Oscar Wilde book The Nightingale and the Rose

Source: The Nightingale and the Rose

Life, Men, Happiness, Secret

“I have learned this: it is not what one does that is wrong, but what one becomes as a consequence of it.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Learning

“What does the brain matter compared with the heart?”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

Heart

“The teacher is of course an artist, but being an artist does not mean that he or she can make the profile, can shape the students. What the educator does in teaching is to make it possible for the students to become themselves.”

Paulo Freire (1921–1997) educator and philosopher

Source: We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change

Education, Teachers

“The Christian shoemaker does his duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

God, Shoe

“A warrior does not give up what he loves, he finds the love in what he does”

Dan Millman (1946) American self help writer

Source: Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives

Love

“In a country where the sole employer is the state, [opposition] means death by slow starvation. The old principle: 'who does not work shall not eat,' has been replaced with a new one: 'who does not obey shall not eat.”

Leon Trotsky book The Revolution Betrayed

Source: The Revolution Betrayed (1936), Ch. 11

Death, Country

“Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning

Freedom, Change

“We are all human, and our senses are quicker to prompt us than our reason. Every man gives off a scent, and that scent tells you how to act before your head does.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn book The First Circle

Source: The First Circle

Sense

“How strange! This bed on which I shall lie has been slept on by more than one dying man, but today it does not repel me! Who knows what corpses have lain on it and for how long? But is a corpse any worse than I? A corpse too knows nothing of its father, mother or sisters or Titus. Nor has a corpse a sweetheart. A corpse, too, is pale, like me. A corpse is cold, just as I am cold and indifferent to everything. A corpse has ceased to live, and I too have had enough of life…. Why do we live on through this wretched life which only devours us and serves to turn us into corpses? The clocks in the Stuttgart belfries strike the midnight hour. Oh how many people have become corpses at this moment! Mothers have been torn from their children, children from their mothers - how many plans have come to nothing, how much sorrow has sprung from these depths, and how much relief!… Virtue and vice have come in the end to the same thing! It seems that to die is man's finest action - and what might be his worst? To be born, since that is the exact opposite of his best deed. It is therefore right of me to be angry that I was ever born into this world! Why was I not prevented from remaining in a world where I am utterly useless? What good can my existence bring to anyone? … But wait, wait! What's this? Tears? How long it is since they flowed! How is this, seeing that an arid melancholy has held me for so long in its grip? How good it feels - and sorrowful. Sad but kindly tears! What a strange emotion! Sad but blessed. It is not good for one to be sad, and yet how pleasant it is - a strange state…”

Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) Polish composer

Stuttgart. After 8th September 1831.
Source: "Selected Correspondence Of Fryderyk Chopin"; http://archive.org/stream/selectedcorrespo002644mbp/selectedcorrespo002644mbp_djvu.txt

Life, Children, People, Lie

“I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Part Two, Ch. 4
On the Road (1957)

Star, Night

“The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion, — all in one.”

John Ruskin book Modern Painters

Volume III, part IV, chapter XVI (1856).
Modern Painters (1843-1860)

People, World, Religion, Way

“As soon as any man says of the affairs of the State "What does it matter to me?" the State may be given up for lost.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau book The Social Contract

Source: The Social Contract

“A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Source: Essays and Aphorisms

Love, Solitude, Freedom

“The difference between a strong man and a weak one is that the former does not give up after a defeat.”

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

Strong

“One does not meet oneself until one catches the reflection from an eye other than human.”

Loren Eiseley (1907–1977) US philosopher (1907-1977)

“The man who does more than he is paid for will soon be paid for more than he does.”

Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author

“One does not sell the earth upon which the people walk.”

Crazy Horse (1840–1877) Oglala Sioux chief

As quoted in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1970) by Dee Brown, Ch. 12

People

“Love does not make you weak, because it is the source of all strength, but it makes you see the nothingness of the illusory strength on which you depended before you knew it.”

Léon Bloy (1846–1917) French writer, poet and essayist

Auden, W.H.; Kronenberger, Louis (1966), The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York: Viking Press.

Love, Dependency

“The historical Jesus will be to our time a stranger and an enigma. The study of the Life of Jesus has had a curious history. It set out in quest of the historical Jesus, believing that when it had found Him it could bring Him straight into our time as a Teacher and Savior. It loosed the bands by which He had been riveted for centuries to the stony rocks of ecclesiastical doctrine, and rejoiced to see life and movement coming into the figure once more, and the historical Jesus advancing, as it seemed, to meet it. But He does not stay; He passes by our time and returns to His own. What surprised and dismayed the theology of the last forty years was that, despite all forced and arbitrary interpretations, it could not keep Him in our time, but had to let Him go. He returned to his own time, not owing to the application of any historical ingenuity, but by the same inevitable necessity by which the liberated pendulum returns to its original position.”

Albert Schweitzer book The Quest of the Historical Jesus

Source: The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906), p. 397

Life, History, Study, Teachers

“Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society, that does not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers — such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a façade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Open letter to the Fourth Soviet Writers’ Congress (16 May 1967) “The Struggle Intensifies,” Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record, ed. Leopold Labedz (1970).

Pain, People, Fear, Confidence

“…no matter how many instances of white swans we may have observed, this does not justify the conclusion that all swans are white.”

Karl Popper book The Logic of Scientific Discovery

The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934)

“That your art follows her so far as it can, as the disciple does the master, so that your art is as it were grandchild of God.”

Dante Alighieri book Inferno

Canto XI, lines 103–105 (tr. Charles Eliot Norton).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

God, Art

“We shall be told: what can literature possibly do against the ruthless onslaught of open violence? But let us not forget that violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is necessarily interwoven with falsehood. Between them lies the most intimate, the deepest of natural bonds. Violence finds its only refuge in falsehood, falsehood its only support in violence. Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his METHOD must inexorably choose falsehood as his PRINCIPLE.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Variant translation: Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.
As quoted in Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record (1974) edited by Leopold Labedz
Nobel lecture (1970)
Context: We shall be told: what can literature possibly do against the ruthless onslaught of open violence? But let us not forget that violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is necessarily interwoven with falsehood. Between them lies the most intimate, the deepest of natural bonds. Violence finds its only refuge in falsehood, falsehood its only support in violence. Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his METHOD must inexorably choose falsehood as his PRINCIPLE. At its birth violence acts openly and even with pride. But no sooner does it become strong, firmly established, than it senses the rarefaction of the air around it and it cannot continue to exist without descending into a fog of lies, clothing them in sweet talk. It does not always, not necessarily, openly throttle the throat, more often it demands from its subjects only an oath of allegiance to falsehood, only complicity in falsehood.

Literature, Support, Nature, Forgetting

“It is always necessary that the substance or essence of a person be good before there can be any good works and that good works follow and proceed from a person who is already good. Christ says in Matthew 7:18: “A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.”… The fruit does not make the tree good or bad but the tree itself is what determines the nature of the fruit. In the same way, a person first must be good or bad before doing a good or bad work.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Source: The Freedom of a Christian (1520), pp. 74-75

Way, Nature, Tree, Christ

“Being the source of goodness, God, even after our failures, calls us anew, not effacing entirely from our mind the knowledge of good, even if we have turned away from virtue through sin. This is what God, at present, also does for Adam in calling him although he has hidden himself, saying to him: 'Adam, where art thou?' Adam, in fact, had been placed there by God for the purpose of working and guarding Paradise; he had received this place from Him to be his own. Having distanced himself from there by disobedience, it is proper that he should hear from God: 'Where art thou?”

Didymus the Blind (313–398) Coptic church theologian

God, Art, Failure, Knowledge

“My social conscience is fairly limited in a lot of ways; there's not much I'm angry about that doesn't affect me quite directly. But the prison system- not particularly capital punishment- but the penal system as it is, and the whole apparatus of judgement, people deciding on other people's fates… that does irritate, and upset me quite a lot. What angers me about the system goes beyond the unreliability of "proof"… it's that the way criminals are dealt with has nothing to do with rehabilitation and readjusting people who've stepped outside society's norms. The same goes for mental institutions and so forth. But it's also the very idea of someone being judged "criminal" or "insane" because they're unable to fit into what a corrupt society considers "social" or "sociable."”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Politics, society and humanity

Fate, People, Way, Idea

“But so much the more malign and wild does the ground become with bad seed and untilled, as it has the more of good earthly vigor.”

Dante Alighieri book Purgatorio

Canto XXX, lines 118–120 (tr. C. E. Norton).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Purgatorio

“If I feel a painting I'm working on doesn't have imagery or emotion, I paint it out and work over it until it does.”

Franz Kline (1910–1962) American painter

1950's, Conversations With Artists, 1957

Feeling, Painting

“This world is empty to him alone who does not understand how to direct his libido towards objects, and to render them alive and beautiful for himself, for Beauty does not indeed lie in things, but in the feeling that we give to them.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

The Psychology of the Unconscious (1943)

Lie, World, Beauty, Feeling

“For the gospel proclaims that God is with us now, actively fighting the forces which would make man captive. And it is the task of theology and the Church to know where God is at work so that we can join him in this fight against evil. In America we know where the evil is. We know that men are shot and lynched. We know that men are crammed into ghettos…. There is a constant battle between Christ and Satan, and it is going on now. If we make this message contemporaneous with our own life situation, what does Christ's defeat of Satan mean for us?… The demonic forces of racism are real for the black man. Theologically, Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man "the devil." The white structure of this American society, personified in every racist, must be at least part of what the New Testament meant by the demonic forces.”

James H. Cone (1938–2018) American theologian

Source: Black Theology and Black Power (1969), pp. 39-41

Life, Men, God, Evil

“There is no man, let him be aware of it or not, who is not a combatant in this hot contest; no one who does not take an active part in the responsibility of the defeat or victory. The prisoner in his chains and the king on his throne, the poor and the rich, the healthy and the infirm, the wise and the ignorant, the captive and the free, the old man and the child, the civilized and the savage, share equally in the combat. Every word that is pronounced, is either inspired by God or by the world, and necessarily proclaims, implicitly or explicitly, but always clearly, the glory of the one or the triumph of the other. In this singular warfare we all fight through forced enlistment; here the system of substitutes or volunteers finds no place. In it is unknown the exception of sex or age; here no attention is paid to him who says, I am the son of a poor widow; nor to the mother of the paralytic, nor to the wife of the cripple. In this warfare all men born of woman are soldiers.
And don’t tell me you don’t wish to fight; for the moment you tell me that, you are already fighting; nor that you don’t know which side to join, for while you are saying that, you have already joined a side; nor that you wish to remain neutral; for while you are thinking to be so, you are so no longer; nor that you want to be indifferent; for I will laugh at you, because on pronouncing that word you have chosen your party. Don’t tire yourself in seeking a place of security against the chances of war, for you tire yourself in vain; that war is extended as far as space, and prolonged through all time. In eternity alone, the country of the just, can you find rest, because there alone there is no combat. But do not imagine, however, that the gates of eternity shall be opened for you, unless you first show the wounds you bear; those gates are only opened for those who gloriously fought here the battles of the Lord, and were, like the Lord, crucified.”

Juan Donoso Cortés (1809–1853) Spanish author, political theorist and diplomat

Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism (1879)

Men, God, War, Age

“Reasoning draws a conclusion and makes us grant the conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, nor does it remove doubt so that the mind may rest on the intuition of truth, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience.”

Roger Bacon book Opus Majus

Opus Majus, c. 1267
Source: Robert Belle Burke (2002) The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon Part 2. p. 583

Truth, Drawing

“… exclude the need for appearances: what counts is not appearances; the value of life does not depend on the approval of others or on success, but on what we have inside us.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

As quoted in "Imposition of the Ashes - Homily of pope Francis" at www.vatican.va (5 March 2014) http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/homilies/2014/documents/papa-francesco_20140305_omelia-ceneri_en.html 2010s, 2014

Life, Appearance, Success, Dependency

“The Word of God can take care of itself, and will do so if we preach it, and cease defending it. See you that lion. They have caged him for his preservation; shut him up behind iron bars to secure him from his foes! See how a band of armed men have gathered together to protect the lion. What a clatter they make with their swords and spears! These mighty men are intent upon defending a lion. O fools, and slow of heart! Open that door! Let the lord of the forest come forth free. Who will dare to encounter him? What does he want with your guardian care? Let the pure gospel go forth in all its lion-like majesty, and it will soon clear its own way and ease itself of its adversaries.”

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

The Lover of God's Law Filled with Peace (January 1888) http://www.spurgeongems.org/vols34-36/chs2004.pdf

Men, God, Fools, Way

“"If God is everything and everywhere, then what purpose does the word serve? If it explains everything, then it explains nothing. But if it describes something important, then it should be observable by everyone, examined, and shared with other people" (Ch 8., pp.213).”

Greg Graffin (1964) American musician

Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science, and Bad Religion in a World Without God with Steve Olson (2010)

God, People

“The kind of mathematics foisted on children in schools is not meaningful, fun, or even very useful. This does not mean that an individual child cannot turn it into a valuable and enjoyable personal game. For some the game is scoring grades; for others it is outwitting the teacher and the system. For many, school math is enjoyable in its repetitiveness, precisely because it is so mindless and dissociated that it provides a shelter from having to think about what is going on in the classroom. But all this proves is the ingenuity of children. It is not a justifications for school math to say that despite its intrinsic dullness, inventive children can find excitement and meaning in it.”

Seymour Papert book Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas

Source: Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas (1980), Chapter 2, Mathophobia: The Fear of Learning

Children, School, Game, Mathematics

“There is no doubt a difference in the right hon. gentleman's demeanour as leader of the Opposition and as Minister of the Crown. But that's the old story; you must not contrast too strongly the hours of courtship with the years of possession. 'Tis very true that the right hon. gentleman's conduct is different. I remember him making his protection speeches. They were the best speeches I ever heard. It was a great thing to hear the right hon. gentleman say: "I would rather be the leader of the gentlemen of England than possess the confidence of Sovereigns". That was a grand thing. We don't hear much of "the gentlemen of England" now. But what of that? They have the pleasures of memory—the charms of reminiscence. They were his first love, and, though he may not kneel to them now as in the hour of passion, still they can recall the past; and nothing is more useless or unwise than these scenes of crimination and reproach, for we know that in all these cases, when the beloved object has ceased to charm, it is in vain to appeal to the feelings. You know that this is true. Every man almost has gone through it. My hon. gentleman does what he can to keep them quiet; he sometimes takes refuge in arrogant silence, and sometimes he treats them with haughty frigidity; and if they knew anything of human nature they would take the hint and shut their mouths. But they won't. And what then happens? What happens under all such circumstances? The right hon. gentleman, being compelled to interfere, sends down his valet, who says in the genteelest manner: "We can have no whining here". And that, sir, is exactly the case of the great agricultural interest—that beauty which everybody wooed and one deluded. There is a fatality in such charms, and we now seem to approach the catastrophe of her career. Protection appears to be in about the same condition that Protestantism was in 1828. The country will draw its moral. For my part, if we are to have free trade, I, who honour genius, prefer that such measures should be proposed by the hon. member for Stockport than by one who through skilful Parliamentary manoeuvres has tampered with the generous confidence of a great people and a great party. For myself, I care not what may be the result. Dissolve, if you please, the Parliament you have betrayed. For me there remains this at least—the opportunity of expressing thus publicly my belief that a Conservative Government is an organised hypocrisy.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1845/mar/17/agricultural-interest in the House of Commons (17 March 1845). 1840s

Love, People, Pleasure, Beauty

“When I look at a body I know it gives me choices of what to put in a painting; what will suit me and what won't. There is a distinction between fact and truth. Truth has an element of revelation about it. If something is true, it does more than strike one as merely being so.”

Lucian Freud (1922–2011) British painter and engraver

Lucian Freud: Paintings (1987), p. 20
Lucian Freud : Paintings (1987)

Truth, Painting

“The person who does not control his territory does not control his existence. If someone is not conscious, he is taken over, not only outwardly but also with the thoughts that assault him. He is very vulnerable to desires and feelings. For example, you live calmly with your wife, and then—catastrophe! Suddenly you lose control because you have fallen in love with another. You don't have to fall victim to that reality; what you have to do is navigate in it, overcome the winds and sandstorms. Amid the storms at sea and the signs, you must move forward calmly and look toward the port you're heading for. In New York, when I was filming The Holy Mountain, I had problems of all sorts. I soaked six or seven T-Shirts a night with my sweat. I went to see a Chinese sage that someone had recommended. He was a poet, a great master of tai chi, and a doctor. When he first saw me, he said, "What is your purpose in life?" I was disconcerted and did not answer. He continued, "If you do not tell me what is your purpose in life, I cannot heal you."”

Alejandro Jodorowsky (1929) Filmmaker and comics writer

So I understood that if a ship crosses the sea without a purpose, it will arrive at no port. What prevents life from devouring us is having a purpose. The higher it is, the further it will carry us...
Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy (2010)

Love, Life, Feeling, Mountain

“Whoever does not philosophize for the sake of philosophy, but rather uses philosophy as a means, is a sophist.”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

“Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #96
Athenäum (1798 - 1800)

“I frankly confess that, for myself, even if it could be, I should not want "free-will" to be given me, nor anything to be left in my own hands to enable me to endeavour after salvation; not merely because in face of so many dangers, and adversities and assaults of devils, I could not stand my ground; but because even were there no dangers. I should still be forced to labour with no guarantee of success.¦ But now that God has taken my salvation out of the control of my own will, and put it under the control of His, and promised to save me, not according to my working or running, but according to His own grace and mercy, I have the comfortable certainty that He is faithful and will not lie to me, and that He is also great and powerful, so that no devils or opposition can break Him or pluck me from Him. Furthermore, I have the comfortable certainty that I please God, not by reason of the merit of my works, but by reason of His merciful favour promised to me; so that, if I work too little, or badly, He does not impute it to me, but with fatherly compassion pardons me and makes me better. This is the glorying of all the saints in their God.”

Martin Luther book On the Bondage of the Will

Source: On the Bondage of the Will (1525), p. 313-314

God, Lie, Faith, Success

“He knows the universe, and himself he does not know.”

Jean De La Fontaine (1621–1695) French poet, fabulist and writer.

Il connaît l’univers, et ne se connaît pas.
Book VIII (1678–1679), fable 26.
Fables (1668–1679)

Universe

“A fool is someone whose pencil wears out before its eraser does.”

Marilyn vos Savant (1946) US American magazine columnist, author and lecturer

As quoted in The Truth in Words: Inspiring Quotes for the Reflective Mind (2002) by Paras, p. 92

Fools

“Let all the 'free-will' in the world do all it can with all its strength; it will never give rise to a single instance of ability to avoid being hardened if God does not give the Spirit, or of meriting mercy if it is left to its own strength.”

Martin Luther book On the Bondage of the Will

Source: On the Bondage of the Will (1525), p. 202

God, World

“How sweet the air does smell — even the air of a back-street in the suburbs — after the shut-in, subfaecal stench of the spike!”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 27, on the morning after Orwell is let out of his first tramps' accommodation, or 'spike'.

“As sheep come issuing forth from out the fold
By ones and twos and threes, and the others stand
Timidly, holding down their eyes and nostrils,
And what the foremost does the others do,
Huddling themselves against her, if she stop,
Simple and quiet and the wherefore know not.”

Dante Alighieri book Purgatorio

Canto III, lines 79–84 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Purgatorio

“His [ Van Gogh's] pathos is alien to me, especially in my current phase, but he is certainly a genius. Pathetic to the point of being pathological, this endangered man can endanger one who does not see through him. Here a brain is consumed by the fire of a star. It frees itself in its work just before the catastrophe. Deepest tragedy takes place here, real tragedy, natural tragedy, exemplary tragedy. Permit me to be terrified.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote (1908), # 816, in The Diaries of Paul Klee; University of California Press, 1964; as quoted by Francesco Mazzaferro, in 'The Diaries of Paul Klee - Part Three' : Klee as a Secessionist and a Neo-Impressionist Artist http://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.nl/2015/05/paul-klee-ev.html 1903 - 1910

Star, Nature

“He who does not bellow the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers.”

Charles Péguy (1873–1914) French poet, essayist, and editor

"Lettre du Provincial" (21 December 1899)
Basic Verities, Prose and Poetry (1943)

Truth

“All pleasure is a vice, for seeking pleasure is what everybody does in life, and the only dark vice is doing what everybody does.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 265
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Todo o prazer é um vício, porque buscar o prazer é o que todos fazem na vida, e o único vício negro é fazer o que toda a gente faz.

Life, Pleasure

“GG Allin is an entertainer with a message to a sick society. He makes us look at it for what we really are. The human is just another animal who is able to speak out freely, to express himself clearly. Make no mistake about it, behind what he does is a brain.”

John Wayne Gacy (1942–1994) American serial killer and torturer

John Wayne Gacy on Todd Phillips: Hated: GG Allin and the Murder Junkies, Skinny Nervous Guy Prod, 1994. 2007 DVD re-release watched March 1, 2010.

Animals

“Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Notes on Nationalism (1945)

Change

“The modern State is by its very nature a military State; and every military State must of necessity become a conquering, invasive State; to survive it must conquer or be conquered, for the simple reason that accumulated military power will suffocate if it does not find an outlet. Therefore the modern State must strive to be a huge and powerful State: this is the indispensable precondition for its survival.”

Mikhail Bakunin book Statism and Anarchy

Source: Statism and Anarchy (1873)

Nature

“When you wish to see whether the general effect of your picture corresponds with that of the object represented after nature, take a mirror and set it so that it reflects the actual thing, and then compare the reflection with your picture, and consider carefully whether the subject of the two images is in conformity with both, studying especially the mirror. The mirror ought to be taken as a guide… you see the picture made upon one plane showing things which appear in relief, and the mirror upon one plane does the same. The picture is on one single surface, and the mirror is the same. …if you but know well how to compose your picture it will also seem a natural thing seen in a great mirror.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

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

Nature, Study, Appearance

“Concerning the female sorcerer. Roman law also prescribes this. Why does the law name women more than men here, even though men are also guilty of this? Because women are more susceptible to those superstitions of Satan; take Eve, for example. They are commonly called “wise women.””

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Let them be killed.
Sermon on Exodus, 1526, WA XVI, p. 551 as quoted in Luther on Women: A Sourcebook, edited by Susan C. Karant-Nunn, Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, (2003), p. 231

Women, Men, Law

“The most powerful weapon to conquer the devil is humility. For, as he does not know at all how to employ it, neither does he know how to defend himself from it.”

Vincent de Paul (1581–1660) French priest, founder and saint

As quoted in A Year with the Saints (1891) by Anonymous, p. 47

“The Doctor does have some long speeches and he talks very quickly. Learning all his babble can take a while, but it's very well written babble so I don't mind and you do get quicker. When I filmed Recovery during the break in Doctor Who I would sit down at the weekend and learn the script in an hour and I was like 'Hang on??”

David Tennant (1971) Scottish actor

You do get used to it though. Davidtennant.com exclusive interview (February 2007) http://www.team-tennant.com/article/id154.html

Learning

“How does it feel,
When you're alone and you're cold inside?”

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

Stranger In Moscow
HIStory: Past, Present & Future, Book I (1995)

Feeling

“…"Yes, the true servant unceasingly rebukes the wicked, but he does it most of all by his conduct, but the truth that shines in his words, by the light of his example, by all the radiance of his life." (1989) The Road to Assisi, Sabatier as edted by Sweeney, pg 143.”

Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) Catholic saint and founder of the Franciscan Order

Disputed, Preach the gospel, and if necessary, use words.

Life, Truth, Light

“Prayer is the opening of the heart to God as to a friend. Not that it is necessary in order to make known to God what we are, but in order to enable us to receive Him. Prayer does not bring God down to us, but brings us up to Him.”

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

Steps to Christ (1892) http://www.whiteestate.org/books/sc/sc.asp, p. 93

God, Heart

“What does Christianity mean today? National Socialism is a religion. All we lack is a religious genius capable of uprooting outmoded religious practices and putting new ones in their place. We lack traditions and ritual. One day soon National Socialism will be the religion of all Germans. My Party is my church, and I believe I serve the Lord best if I do his will, and liberate my oppressed people from the fetters of slavery. That is my gospel.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Dated 16 October 1928
Diary excerpts

People, Religion

“Self-belief does not necessarily ensure success, but self-disbelief assuredly spawns failure.”

Albert Bandura book Self-Efficacy

[Self-efficacy: The exercise of control, Bandura, Albert, w:Albert Bandura, 1997, W. H. Freeman, New York, 9780716728504, http://books.google.com/books?id=eJ-PN9g_o-EC&printsec=frontcover&dq=bandura+isbn:9780716728504&hl=en&ei=HAwYTbKsLpTmsQPp8cCPCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false] (p. 77)

Failure, Success