Quotes about doing
page 25

“I am no longer content to be the scared, obedient schoolgirl. Who are you, a stranger, to tell me what I can and cannot do?”

Libba Bray (1964) American teen writer

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”

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

"Helen and Teacher: The Story of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan Macy", Joseph P. Lash (1980) http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/04/21/together/

Motivational, For Team, Success, love

“We ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.”

Brother Lawrence book The Practice of the Presence of God

Source: The Practice of the Presence of God

Love, God

“It's overwhelming. I feel as if I am living in an illusion a dream where all things are possible. Amazing things do happen I know but always to someone else always in some far off place and time.”

Christopher Paolini (1983) American author

Dreams, Feeling, Time

“Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true.”

Salman Rushdie book The Satanic Verses

Source: The Satanic Verses

Courage

“You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

People, Help

“Nymphets do not occur in polar regions.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita

Source: Lolita

“This is what the things can teach us: to fall, patiently to trust our heaviness. Even a bird has to do that before he can fly.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Bird, Flying

“Why do I get the feeling that if you give me a hard time, I'll tell all of our year-mates your family nickname is Meathead?”

Tamora Pierce (1954) American writer of fantasy novels for children

Family, Feeling, Time

“if you wanted to do something absolutely honest, something true, it always turned out to be a thing that had to be done alone.”

Richard Yates book Revolutionary Road

Source: Revolutionary Road

“Worldly Wisdom

Do not stay in the field!
Nor climb out of sight.
The best view of the world
Is from a medium height.”

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

Source: The Gay Science

Wisdom, World

“Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?”

Terry Pratchett book Going Postal

Source: Going Postal

Dead

“You cannot do wrong and feel right. It is impossible!”

Ezra Taft Benson (1899–1994) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Feeling

“A sense of calm came over me. More and more often I found myself thinking, "This is where I belong. This is what I came into this world to do.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

World, Thinking, Sense

“I am a man" he told her, "and men do not consume pink beverages. Get thee gone woman, and bring me something brown.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Isabelle and Jace, pg. 534
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Glass (2009)
Context: "I think it's strawberry juice," Isabelle said. "Anyway, it's yummy. Jace?" She offered him the glass.
"I am a man," he told her, "and men do not consume pink beverages. Get thee gone, woman, and bring me something brown."
"Brown?" Isabelle made a face.
"Brown is a manly color."

Men

“Because the truth is, I do love him. I've loved him without ceasing. I've loved him since that very first day. I loved him even when I swore I didn't. I can't help it. I just do.”

Alyson Nöel book Evermore

Source: Evermore

Love, Truth, Help

“Logic takes care of itself; all we have to do is to look and see how it does it.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Journal entry (13 October 1914), also in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (§ 5.47)
1910s, Notebooks 1914-1916

“While you are going through your trial, you can recall your past victories and count the blessings that you do have with a sure hope of greater ones to allow if you are faithful.”

Ezra Taft Benson (1899–1994) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Faith, Hope, Past, Victory

“Do not become so attached to any one belief than you cannot see past it to another possibility.”

Christopher Paolini book Brisingr

Source: Brisingr

Past

“Is there any real purpose in being alive if all we are going to do is get up every day and live only for ourselves?
Live your life to help others. Give & live selflessly.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Life, Help

“We have reached a point today where labor-saving devices are good only when they do not throw the worker out of his job.”

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

“Did you ever think that in a past life Alec was an old woman with ninety cats who was always yelling at the neighborhood kids to get off her lawn? Because I do”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Life, Cats, Thinking, Past

“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”

Peter F. Drucker book The Essential Drucker

Misattributed
Variant: Efficiency is doing the thing right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing.
Source: The Essential Drucker

Leadership

“She thought there were no Gods; no one was to blame; and so she evolved this atheist's religion of doing good for the sake of goodness.”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

God, Religion

“People's whole lives do pass in front of their eye before dying. The process is called "Living”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

People

“Never expect God to do for you what you don't do to others.”

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

God

“Do you find it easy to get drunk on words?"

"So easy that, to tell you the truth, I am seldom perfectly sober.”

Dorothy L. Sayers book Gaudy Night

Source: Gaudy Night

Truth

“If you want a lover
I'll do anything you ask me to.
And if you want another kind of love
I'll wear a mask for you.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

"I'm Your Man"
I'm Your Man (1988)

Love, Lovers

“Granny was an old-fashioned witch. She didn’t do good for people, she did right by them.”

Terry Pratchett book Carpe Jugulum

Source: Carpe Jugulum

People, Fashion

“I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.”

Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband

Lord Goring, Act I
Variant: The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.
Source: An Ideal Husband (1895)

“If a person offends you, and you are in doubt as to whether it was intentional or not, do not resort to extreme measures; simply watch your chance, and hit him with a brick.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Chance, Personality

“I want to tell you, don't marry suffering. Some people do. They get married to it, and sleep and eat together, just as husband and wife. If they go with joy they think it's adultery.”

Saul Bellow book Seize the Day

Source: Seize the Day

People, Thinking, Sleep, Suffering

“The key to winning, as always, was looking as if you had every right, nay, duty to be where you were. It helped if you could also suggest in every line of your body that no one else had any rights to be doing anything, anywhere, whatsoever.”

Terry Pratchett book Night Watch

Source: Night Watch

Help

“Success means doing the best we can with what we have. Success is the doing, not the getting — in the trying, not the triumph.”

Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker

As quoted in The Subconscious Diet : It's Not What You Put in Your Mouth; It Is What You Put in Your Mind (2005) by Hugh B. Sanders, p. 104 
Context: Success means doing the best we can with what we have. Success is the doing, not the getting — in the trying, not the triumph. Success is a personal standard — reaching for the highest that is in us — becoming all that we can be. If we do our best, we are a success. Success is the maximum utilization of the ability that you have.

Success, Success, Motivational

“I don't know what to do with the horrifying freedom that can destroy me.”

Clarice Lispector book The Passion According to G.H.

Source: The Passion According to G.H. (1964), p. 5

Freedom

“Do you remember what you said to me once? That you could help me only by loving me? Well-you did love me for a moment; and it helped me. It has always helped me.”

Edith Wharton book The House of Mirth

Source: The House of Mirth

Love, Help

“I am glad that the country world…retains a power to use our English tongue. It is a part of its sense of reality, of its vocabulary of definite terms, and of its habit of earthly common sense. I find this country writing an excellent corrective of the urban vocabulary of abstractions and of the emotion disguised as thinking which abstractions and humbug have loosed upon the world. May there always be such things as a door, a milk pail, and a loaf of bread, and words to do them honor.”

Henry Beston (1888–1968) American writer

World, Thinking, Reality, Sense

“In this world, who can do a thing, will not;
And who would do it, cannot, I perceive:
Yet the will's somewhat — somewhat, too, the power —
And thus we half-men struggle.”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

Source: Robert Browning's Poetry

Men, World

“Even if I say something, do not believe this nonsense, but do not disbelieve it either. Just see, "Someone is willing to sit in front of so many people and talk absolute nonsense, something that is totally absurd. Let me see what this is about." If you keep that much openness, the possibility is alive in your life. If you believe it, you will kill it. If you disbelieve it, you will kill it.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Source: Life and Death in One Breath

Life, People

“It is inbred in us that we have to do exceptional things for God: but we have not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things, to be holy in mean streets, among mean people, and this is not learned in five minutes”

Oswald Chambers (1874–1917) British missionary

God, People, Learning

“Power isn't doing something terrible to someone who's weaker than you, … It's having the strength to do something terrible, and choosing not to.”

Jodi Picoult book The Storyteller

The Story Teller ISBN: 978-1-4767-2783-7 (2013)
Source: The Storyteller

“My dearest life, I know you are not mine forever; but do love me even if it’s for this moment. After that I shall vanish into the forest where you cast me, I won’t ask anyone for anything again. Give me something that can last me till I die.”

Rabindranath Tagore book Chokher Bali

Source: Chokher Bali

Love, Life

“Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, 'Certainly I can!' Then get busy and find out how to do it.”

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

Business

“Anybody will do for you, but not for me. I must have.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

“The pas has no power to stop you from being present now. Only your grievance about the past can do that.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

Past

“Just remember, you can do anything you set your mind to, but it takes action, perseverance, and facing your fears.”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

Excerpt from the foreword in Girl Boss: Running the Show Like the Big Chicks http://www.gilliananderson.ws/transcripts/99_00/99girlboss.shtml, by Stacy Kravetz (1999) <br class="br">1990s

For women, Fear, Perseverance

“I was merely endeavoring to indicate that if we do not grab events by the collar they will have us by the throat.
-Lord Vetinari”

Terry Pratchett book The Truth

Source: The Truth

“I hope you liked them, Reader; that they did for you what any good story should do--make you forget the real stuff weighing on your mind for a little while and take you away to a place you've never been. It's the most amiable sort of magic I know.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Hope, Forgetting

“If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Variant: If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it.

“Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”

Thomas Paine book Rights of Man

Part 2.7 Chapter V. Ways and means of improving the condition of Europe, interspersed with miscellaneous observations
Source: 1790s, Rights of Man, Part 2 (1792)
Context: I speak an open and disinterested language, dictated by no passion but that of humanity. To me, who have not only refused offers, because I thought them improper, but have declined rewards I might with reputation have accepted, it is no wonder that meanness and imposition appear disgustful. Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.

World, Religion, Personality, Country

“People always ask me how long it takes to do my hair. I don’t know, I’m never there.”

Dolly Parton (1946) American singer-songwriter and actress

People

“But what do I have? The things I'm told and the things I tell, that's all. And as far as I know, that never yet made anyone fly.”

Mario Vargas Llosa book The Storyteller

Source: The Storyteller

Flying

“Though those that are betray'd Do feel the treason sharply, yet the traitor stands in worse case of woe”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Feeling

“You've no idea how long life goes on and how many, many changes it brings. Young people seem to imagine that it's over in a flash, that they do this thing, or that thing, and then die, but I can assure you they are quite wrong.”

Nancy Mitford (1904–1973) British writer

Source: Love in a Cold Climate and Other Novels

Life, People, Imagination, Idea

“Do not mourn the dead. They know what they are doing.”

Clarice Lispector book The Hour of the Star

Source: The Hour of the Star

Dead

“What'll you do if you can't find a way to cure him?" Seth asked.
Dale paused. "I'll never know that day has come, because I'll never stop trying.”

Brandon Mull Fablehaven

Source: Fablehaven

Way

“A lot of what we experience as strength comes from knowing what to do with weakness.”

Barbara Ehrenreich book Nickel and Dimed

Source: Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

“Self-control is something for which I do not strive. Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

31
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

“I do not believe anyone can be perfectly well, who has a brain and a heart”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

Heart

“I don’t regret the things I’ve done. I regret the things I didn’t do when I had the chance.”

Harlan Coben book Missing You

Source: Missing You

Chance

“What is this thing called life? I believe
That the earth and the stars too, and the whole glittering universe, and rocks on the mountains have life,
Only we do not call it so--I speak of the life
That oxidizes fats and proteins and carbo-
Hydrates to live on, and from that chemical energy
Makes pleasure and pain, wonder, love, adoration, hatred and terror: how do these things grow
From a chemical reaction?
I think they were here already, I think the rocks
And the earth and the other planets, and the stars and the galaxies
have their various consciousness, all things are conscious;
But the nerves of an animal, the nerves and brain
Bring it to focus; the nerves and brain are like a burning-glass
To concentrate the heat and make it catch fire:
It seems to us martyrs hotter than the blazing hearth
From which it came. So we scream and laugh, clamorous animals
Born howling to die groaning: the old stones in the dooryard
Prefer silence; but those and all things have their own awareness,
As the cells of a man have; they feel and feed and influence each other, each unto all,
Like the cells of a man's body making one being,
They make one being, one consciousness, one life, one God.”

Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962) American poet

Source: The Selected Poetry

Love, Life, God, Pain

“Peace is not something you wish for, it is something you make, something you are, something you do, and something you give away.”

Robert Fulghum (1937) American writer

Peaceful, Peace

“Do you know how wizards like to be buried?"
"Yes!"
"Well, how?"
Granny Weatherwax paused at the bottom of the stairs.
"Reluctantly.”

Terry Pratchett book Equal Rites

Source: Equal Rites

“We do not fear being called meticulous, inclining as we do to the view that only the exhaustive can be truly interesting.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain

Fear

“Don't use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“Do not deny the classical approach, simply as a reaction, or you will have created another pattern and trapped yourself there.”

Bruce Lee book Tao of Jeet Kune Do

Source: Tao of Jeet Kune Do (1975), p. 25

“It's not differences that divide us. It's our judgments about each other that do.”

Margaret J. Wheatley (1941) American writer

“You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it.”

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

Source: Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters

Star

“Do ye not understand?"he said, in near desparation. "I would lay the world at your feet, Claire-and I have nothing to give ye!"
He honestly thought it mattered.”

Diana Gabaldon book Voyager

Source: Voyager

World, Understanding

“Whenever we seek to avoid the responsibility for our own behavior, we do so by attempting to give that responsibility to some other individual or organization or entity. But this means we then give away our power to that entity.”

M. Scott Peck (1936–2005) American psychiatrist

Source: The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth

Behavior

“If I think more about death than some other people, it is probably because I love life more than they do.”

Angelina Jolie (1975) American actress, film director, and screenwriter

Love, Life, Death, People

“What do we know but that we face one another in this place?”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

“What you tell me about in the nights. That is not love. That is only passion and lust. When you love you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Farewell to Arms

Source: A Farewell to Arms

Love, Passion, Night

“Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“Those who still think that listening isn’t an art should see if they can do it half as well.”

Michael Ende book Momo

Source: Momo

Art, Thinking

“I don't know when we'll see each other again or what the world will be like when we do. We may both have seen many horrible things. But I will think of you every time I need to be reminded that there is beauty and goodness in the world.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

World, Beauty, Thinking, Time

“Alec looked at her and shook his head. "How do you manage never to get mud on your clothes?"
Isabelle shrugged philosophically. "I'm pure at heart. It repels the dirt.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Heart, Clothes

“When your mother asks, "Do you want a piece of advice?" it's a mere formality. It doesn't matter if you answer yes or no. You're going to get it anyway.”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…

Family, Mother's Day

“And if they don't believe us, I can give them the ghost eyes, you can go all big and threatening, Farmer can do his cracknob simpleton, and my lady can don her nobleness. We'll do all right.”

Tamora Pierce book Mastiff

Source: Mastiff

“People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they are willing to remain actually fools.”

Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist

People, Fools, Appearance

“Each one must do his part if we wish to show that the nation is worthy of its good fortune.”

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

1900s, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900), National Duties
Context: Exactly as each man, while doing first his duty to his wife and the children within his home, must yet, if he hopes to amount to much, strive mightily in the world outside his home, so our nation, while first of all seeing to its own domestic well-being, must not shrink from playing its part among the great nations without. Our duty may take many forms in the future as it has taken many forms in the past. Nor is it possible to lay down a hard-and-fast rule for all cases. We must ever face the fact of our shifting national needs, of the always-changing opportunities that present themselves. But we may be certain of one thing: whether we wish it or not, we cannot avoid hereafter having duties to do in the face of other nations. All that we can do is to settle whether we shall perform these duties well or ill.

Parting

“Sometimes, when I have to do something I don't want to do, I pretend I'm a character from a book. It's easier to know what they would do.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Books

“Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world… would do this, it would change the earth.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

Motivational, Back To Work, People, Truth

“But we're going to smile and pretend we're fine with the dorky birthmas gifts because people do not get that they can't mush a birthday into christmas.”

P. C. Cast book Chosen

Source: Chosen

People, Smile, Birthday, Christmas

“What do you suppose is the use of a child without any meaning? Even a joke should have some meaning-- and a child's more imporant than a joke, I hope. You couldn't deny that, even if you tried with both hands.”

Lewis Carroll book Through the Looking-Glass

Source: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There

Hope

“467. I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again "I know that that's a tree", pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell them: "This fellow isn't insane. We are only doing philosophy."”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book On Certainty

Source: On Certainty (1969)

Tree

“When I was a boy a farmer's wife who lived five miles from our village had great fame as a faith-doctor—that was what she called herself. Sufferers came to her from all around, and she laid her hand upon them and said, "Have faith—it is all that is necessary," and they went away well of their ailments. She was not a religious woman, and pretended to no occult powers. She said that the patient's faith in her did the work. Several times I saw her make immediate cures of severe toothaches. My mother was the patient. In Austria there is a peasant who drives a great trade in this sort of industry, and has both the high and the low for patients. He gets into prison every now and then for practising without a diploma, but his business is as brisk as ever when he gets out, for his work is unquestionably successful and keeps his reputation high. In Bavaria there is a man who performed so many great cures that he had to retire from his profession of stage-carpentering in order to meet the demand of his constantly increasing body of customers. He goes on from year to year doing his miracles, and has become very rich. He pretends to no religious helps, no supernatural aids, but thinks there is something in his make-up which inspires the confidence of his patients, and that it is this confidence which does the work, and not some mysterious power issuing from himself.”

Mark Twain Christian Science

Source: Christian Science (1907), Ch. 4

Faith, Confidence, Boy, Business

“Later I had two green ones [alligator pears] — not so perfect. I painted them several times [c. 1920] when the men [American modernist artists, a. o. Marsden Hartley ] didn't think much of what I was doing. They were all discussing Paul Cézanne, with long involved remarks about the 'plastic quality' of his form and colour. I was an outsider. My colour and form were not acceptable. It had nothing to do with Cézanne or anything else. I didn't understand what they were talking about why one colour was better than another... Years later when I finally got to Cézanne's Mont Sainte-Victoire in the south of France, I remember sitting there thinking, 'How could they attach all those analytical remarks to anything he did with that mountain?”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

All those entire words piled on top of that poor little mountain seemed too much.
1970 - 1986, Some Memories of Drawings (1976)

Men, Mountain, Understanding, Thinking

“If I tell the Berliners to step forward, they do it. If I tell the Viennese to step forward, they do it, but then they ask why.”

Herbert von Karajan (1908–1989) Austrian conductor

On why he preferred conducting the Berlin Philharmonic to the Vienna Philharmonic
Herbert von Karajan in Brian Moynahan, 'Funeral in Berlin', The Sunday Times, 30 January 1983, quoted in Norman Lebrecht, The Book of Musical Anecdotes.

“(…) if you can change yourself you will find that no other change is needed. To change the picture you merely change the film, you do not attack the cinema screen! (…) Clarify your mind, purify your heart, sanctify your life – this is the quickest way to a change of your world.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Change
Source: I am That, P.129.

Life, World, Way, Change

“Modern scientists and so-called scholars think that there are no living entities on planets other than this one. Recently they have said that they have gone to the Moon but did not find any living entities there. But Srimad-Bhagavatam and the other Vedic literatures do not agree with this foolish conception.”

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

Srimad Bhagavatam, Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1999. Canto 7, Chapter 14, verse 36, purport. Vedabase http://www.vedabase.com/en/sb/7/14/36 <br class="br">Quotes from Books: Loving God, Quotes from Books: Regression of Science

Literature, Thinking

“If you have had an unfortunate experience, forget it. If you have made a failure in speech, your song, your book, your article, if you have been placed in an embarrassing position, if you have fallen and hurt yourself by a false step, if you have been slandered and abused, do not dwell upon it. There is not a single redeeming feature in these memories, and the presence of their ghosts will rob you of many a happy hour. There is nothing in it. Drop them. Forget them. Wipe them out of your mind forever. If you have been indiscreet, imprudent, if you have been talked about, if your reputation has been injured so that you fear you can never outgrow it or redeem it, do not drag the hideous shadows, the rattling skeletons about with you, Rub them off from the shite of memory. Wipe them out. Forget them. Start with a clean slate and spend all your energies in keeping it clean for the future.”

Orison Swett Marden (1850–1924) American writer

Masterful Personality (1923).

Books, Fear, Failure, Memory

“To [aunt] Marie Hill,
Dearest
Why do you tempt me? I really cannot. It's impossible! Be happy? The only thought I have in my mind is to immerse myself in my art, to merge completely with it until I can begin to express what I really feel – and after that to be consumed even more by it. Even if I wanted to, I could not leave here [Worpswede]… I want to live here. I want to 'live' – and develop further as a person and as an artist… Can you understand this? I think you can. And do you approve? I hope so. In any case, I can't do any different..”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

In a letter to her aunt Mary Hill, from Worpswede, June 1899; as quoted in Paula Modersohn-Becker – The Letters and Journals, ed: Günther Busch & Lotten von Reinken; (transl, A. Wensinger & C. Hoey; Taplinger); Publishing Company, New York, 1983, p. 135
1899

Hope, Art, Feeling, Understanding

“I have satisfied myself that the [cosmic] rays are not generated by the formation of new matter in space, a process which would be like water running up a hill. Nor do they come to any appreciable amount from the stars. According to my investigations the sun emits a radiation of such penetrative power that it is virtually impossible to absorb it in lead or other substances…. This ray, which I call the primary solar ray, gives rise to a secondary radiation by impact against the cosmic dust scattered through space. It is the secondary radiation which now is commonly called the cosmic ray, and comes, of course, equally from all directions in space. [The article continues: The phenomena of radioactivity are not the result of forces within the radioactive substances but are caused by this ray emitted by the sun. If radium could be screened effectively against this ray it would cease to be radioactive, he said. ]”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

Quoted in 'Tesla, 75, Predicts New Power Source', New York Times (5 Jul 1931), Section 2, 1.

Star, Water, Sun

“… we do not consider it as good engineering practice to consume a resource lavishly just because it happens to be cheap.”

Niklaus Wirth (1934) Swiss computer scientist

Niklaus Wirth (2013) " Project Oberon https://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/ProjectOberon/PO.System.pdf". Section 2.3, p. 19.

“Even as Japanese responders continue to do heroic work, we know that the damage to the nuclear reactors in Fukushima Daiichi plant poses a substantial risk to people who are nearby. That is why yesterday, we called for an evacuation of American citizens who are within 50 miles of the plant. This decision was based upon a careful scientific evaluation and the guidelines that we would use to keep our citizens safe here in the United States, or anywhere in the world.”

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

2011, Address on the natural and nuclear energy disasters in Japan (March 2011)

People, World, Decision

“Do not forget, man, consumed by lust:
you—are the stone, the desert, are death …”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Dionysian-Dithyrambs

Dionysian-Dithyrambs (1888)

Death, Forgetting

“After Herberholz had shown me all sorts of techniques, I suddenly got very interested in etching. I had a lot to say, I had a subject. Wash off the acid, put on the aquatint: a wonderful technique that you can use to get as many different shades and tones as you want. The 'doing' aspect of art becomes tremendously interesting when you start doing etchings; you get to be a real alchemist.”

Otto Dix (1891–1969) German painter and printmaker

Otto Dix quoted by Eva Karcher, in Otto Dix, New York: Crown Publishers, 1987, p. 22; as cited by Roy Forward, in 'Education resource material: beauty, truth and goodness in Dix's War' https://nga.gov.au/dix/edu.pdf, p. 10

Art

“If […] the ability to tell right from wrong should turn out to have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to "demand" its exercise from every sane person, no matter how erudite or ignorant, intelligent or stupid, he may happen to be. Kant—in this respect almost alone among the philosophers—was much bothered by the common opinion that philosophy is only for the few, precisely because of its moral implications.”

Hannah Arendt book The Life of the Mind

Source: The Life of the Mind (1971/1978), p. 13.

Stupidity, Exercises, Intelligence, Thinking

“I will not sign a 30-day or a 60-day or a 90-day extension. That is just not an acceptable approach. And if we think it’s going to be hard -- if we think it’s hard now, imagine how these guys are going to be thinking six months from now in the middle of election season where they’re all up. It’s not going to get easier. It’s going to get harder. So we might as well do it now -- pull off the Band-Aid; eat our peas. Now is the time to do it. If not now, when?”

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

Regarding stopgap measures for the federal budget, White House press conference (11 July 2011) http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/07/11/press-conference-president <br class="br">2011, Remarks on the economy (July 2011)

Guy, Imagination, Thinking, Time

Quotes about doing page 25

Quotes about doing
page 25