Quotes about doing
page 30

“I do not remember that you and I ever met personally. I write this now as a grateful acknowledgment for the almost inestimable service you have done the country. I wish to say a word further. When you first reached the vicinity of Vicksburg, I thought you should do, what you finally did, march the troops across the neck, run the batteries with the transports, and thus go below; and I never had any faith, except a general hope that you knew better than I, that the Yazoo Pass expedition, and the like, could succeed. When you got below, and took Port-Gibson, Grand Gulf, and vicinity, I thought you should go down the river and join General Banks; and when you turned Northward East of the Big Black, I feared it was a mistake. I now wish to make the personal acknowledgment that you were right, and I was wrong.”

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

Letter to Ulysses S. Grant http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/grant.htm (13 July 1863), Washington, D.C. 1860s

Fear, Faith, Hope, Personality

“A minister of state is excusable for the harm he does when the helm of government has forced his hand in a storm; but in the calm he is guilty of all the good he does not do.”

Voltaire Le Siècle de Louis XIV

Un ministre est excusable du mal qu’il fait, lorsque le gouvernail de l’État est forcé dans sa main par les tempêtes; mais dans le calme il est coupable de tout le bien qu’il ne fait pas.
Le Siècle de Louis XIV, ch. VI: "État de la France jusqu’à la mort du cardinal Mazarin en 1661" (1752) Unsourced paraphrase or variant translation: Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.
Citas

“What was a reasonable offer? In the first place, there ought to be an amnesty. … The second point in the terms should be a grant of money to rebuild the burned homesteads and restock the devastated farms. … Nothing would do more to accelerate the return of peace and order than to give the people occupation and a chance of living. Then, it should be part of any reasonable offer to the Boers that there should be a speedy restoration of self-governing institutions.”

James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce (1838–1922) British academic, jurist, historian and Liberal politician

Speech to the Women's National Liberal Association Conference, Memorial Hall, London (12 June 1901), quoted in The Times (13 June 1901), p. 12.
1900s

Money, People, Peace, Chance

“To do all that one is able to do, is to be a man; to do all that one would like to do, would be to be a god.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

God

“Every form of catechesis would do well to attend to the “way of beauty” (via pulchritudinis). Proclaiming Christ means showing that to believe in and to follow him is not only something right and true, but also something beautiful, capable of filling life with new splendour and profound joy, even in the midst of difficulties. Every expression of true beauty can thus be acknowledged as a path leading to an encounter with the Lord Jesus. This has nothing to do with fostering an aesthetic relativism which would downplay the inseparable bond between truth, goodness and beauty, but rather a renewed esteem for beauty as a means of touching the human heart and enabling the truth and goodness of the Risen Christ to radiate within it. If, as Saint Augustine says, we love only that which is beautiful, the incarnate Son, as the revelation of infinite beauty, is supremely lovable and draws us to himself with bonds of love. So a formation in the via pulchritudinis ought to be part of our effort to pass on the faith. Each particular Church should encourage the use of the arts in evangelization, building on the treasures of the past but also drawing upon the wide variety of contemporary expressions so as to transmit the faith in a new “language of parables”. We must be bold enough to discover new signs and new symbols, new flesh to embody and communicate the word, and different forms of beauty which are valued in different cultural settings, including those unconventional modes of beauty which may mean little to the evangelizers, yet prove particularly attractive for others.”

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

Section 167
2010s, 2013, Evangelii Gaudium · The Joy of the Gospel

Love, Life, Truth, Faith

“Japanese leaders aren't you teaching a principle that I do not teach, when you say, "I am Abel because I am a church leader. You are Cain. Cain obeys Abel. This is the Principle. So obey." There is no such principle. The person who does not fulfill his mission and become the embodiment of love is not Abel.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

http://www.unification.org/ucbooks/GWW/GWW-29.htm

Love, Personality

“Once they knew each other it was more difficult, because it is difficult to love those we know well. To be in love is to be curious. A thing is only beautiful if we do not have surfeit of it, perhaps only what is new is beautiful; in any case we can only love what is new. In order to love people we have got to know too well, we must first of all forget them, not altogether but very nearly. This they learnt during the fortnight. They didn't tell each other that they had learnt it; they were careful, that is, untruthful. To be able to love someone a long time one must lie, quite often to oneself, but mostly to the person one loves.”

Stig Dagerman book A Burnt Child

Source: A Burnt Child (1948), p. 206

Love, People, Lie, Beauty

“I wish life was not so short," he thought. "Languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) British philologist and author, creator of classic fantasy works

"Alboin Errol", in The Lost Road (1987). Compare this with "The lyf so short, the craft so longe to lerne" by Geoffrey Chaucer

Life, Time

“Don't believe that jazz about there's nothing you can do, "turn on and drop out, man" — because you've got to turn on and drop in, or they're going to drop all over you.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Source: The Beatles Anthology (2000), p. 263

“I think yet again of my father, who struggled to become a painter after he was forced into early and unwelcome retirement by the Great Depression. He has reason to be optimistic about his new career, since the early stages of his pictures, whether still or portraits or landscapes, were full of pow. Mother, meaning to be helpful, would say of each one: "That's really wonderful, Kurt. Now all you have to do is finish it." He would then ruin it. I remember a portrait he did of his only brother, Alex, who was an insurance salesman, which he called "Special Agent". When he roughed it in, his hand and eye conspired with a few bold strokes to capture several important truths about Alex, including a hint of disappointment. Uncle Alex was a proud graduate of Harvard, who would rather have been a scholar of literature than an insurance man.
When Father finished the portrait, made sure every square inch of masonite had its share of paint, Uncle Alex had disappeared entirely. We had a drunk and lustful Queen Victoria instead. This was terrible.”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

Fates Worse than Death (1991)

Truth, Disappointment, Literature, Thinking

“He who did well in war just earns the right
To begin doing well in peace.”

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

Luria, Act ii.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

War, Peace

“He who wants to do good knocks at the gate; he who loves finds the gate open.”

Rabindranath Tagore Stray Birds

88
Stray Birds (1916)

Love

“The world at present is obsessed by the conflict of rival ideologies, and one of the apparent causes of conflict is the desire for the victory of our own ideology and the defeat of the other. I do not think that the fundamental motive here has much to do with ideologies. I think the ideologies are merely a way of grouping people, and that the passions involved are merely those which always arise between rival groups. Ideologies, in fact, are one of the methods by which herds are created, and the psychology is much the same however the herd may have been generated.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1950s, What Desires Are Politically Important? (1950)

People, World, Way, Motivation

“Mutual understanding would be immensely facilitated by the use of one universal tongue. But which shall it be, is the great question. At present it looks as if the English might be adopted as such, though it must be admitted that it is not the most suitable. Each language, of course, excels in some feature…. A practical answer to that momentous question must perforce be found in times to come, for it is manifest that by adopting one common language the onward march of man would be prodigiously quickened. I do not believe that an artificial concoction, like Volapuk, will ever find universal acceptance, however time-saving it might be. That would be contrary to human nature. Languages have grown into our hearts.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

A Means for Furthering Peace (1905)

Understanding, Question, Nature, Universe

“I do not say this, that I think there should be no difference of opinions in conversation, nor opposition in men's discourses… 'Tis not the owning one's dissent from another, that I speak against, but the manner of doing it.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 145
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

Men, Thinking

“We speak still of "sunrise" and "sunset." We do so as if the Copernican model of the solar system had not replaced, ineradicably, the Ptolemaic. Vacant metaphors, eroded figures of speech, inhabit our vocabulary and grammar. They are caught, tenaciously, in the scaffolding and recesses of our common parlance. There they rattle about like old rags or ghosts in the attic.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Source: Real Presences (1989), I: A Secondary City, Ch. 1 (p. 3).

“People who truly follow the Way would do well to conceal the fact that they are Buddhists.”

Dogen (1200–1253) Japanese Zen buddhist teacher

V, 3
Shobogenzo Zuimonki (1238)

People, Way

“One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.”

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

1860s, Second Inaugural Address (1865)

War, Color, Parting

“I'd like to think, eight years ago, I was pretty humble and modest. But I think, with each year, you get more modest, more humble, more appreciative. The off the field tragedies put things in better perspective, but life happens to everybody, and I think we all just try to do the best we can.”

Brett Favre (1969) former American football quarterback

Green Bay's big cheese aging gracefully, rockymountainnews.com, October 23, 2007, 2007-12-05 http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2007/oct/23/green-bay146s-big-cheese-aging-gracefully/,

Life, Thinking

“Much more naturally than you do: because flight is a much more natural consequence of fear than of hate. He doesn't flee men because he hates them, but because he is afraid of them. He doesn't flee them in order to harm them, but to try o escape the harm they wish to do to him. They, on the contrary, don't seek him through friendship, but through hate. They seek him and he flees from them just as in the wilderness of Africa, where there are few men and many tigers, the men flee the tigers, the men flee the tigers, and the tigers seek the men.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher

Second Dialogue; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
Dialogues: Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques (published 1782)

Men, Hate, Friendship, Fear

“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them; disagree with them; glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

Used in the Apple "Think Different" marketing campaign and sometimes attributed to Kerouac on the internet, perhaps because it evokes his famous quote from On the Road: "The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"" The original script was actuality written by Rob Siltanen with participation of Lee Clow. In "The Real Story Behind Apple's 'Think Different' Campaign" in Forbes (14 December 2011) http://www.forbes.com/sites/onmarketing/2011/12/14/the-real-story-behind-apples-think-different-campaign/ Rob Siltanen states: "I wrote everything..." "I shared my scripts with Lee, and he thought they were good. He made a couple tweaks..." Misattributed

Motivational, People, World, Quotes

“If there were just one possibility—either to do the good or to combat evil—man would have to opt for the first.”

Adrienne von Speyr (1902–1967) Swiss doctor and mystic

Source: Lumina and New Lumina (1969), p. 36

Evil

“The hopes which inspire communism are, in the main, as admirable as those instilled by the Sermon on the Mount, but they are held as fanatically and are as likely to do as much harm.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Part I, The Present Condition of Russia, Ch. 1: What Is Hoped From Bolshevism
1920s, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (1920)

Hope, Communication

“Have the courage to say no. Have the courage to face the truth. Do the right thing because it is right. These are the magic keys to living your life with integrity.”

W. Clement Stone (1902–2002) American New Thought author

As quoted in Teen Ink : What Matters (2003) by Stephanie H. Meyer, John Meyer, and Peggy Veljkovic, p. 309

Courageous, Life, Truth, Courage

“There will be things that I do that no one will be left to understand.”

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

Le Mystère des saints Innocents [The Mystery of the Holy Innocents] (1912)

Understanding

“We must learn to give ourselves permission to blunder, to fail, and to make fools of ourselves every day for the rest of our lives. We do so in any case.”

Sheldon Kopp (1929–1999) American psychotherapist

Source: Even a stone can be a teacher (1985), p. 85

Fools, Learning

“The Jew is not a disturber of the peace of any country. Even his enemies will concede that. He is not a loafer, he is not a sot, he is not noisy, he is not a brawler nor a rioter, he is not quarrelsome. In the statistics of crime his presence is conspicuously rare — in all countries. With murder and other crimes of violence he has but little to do: he is a stranger to the hangman. In the police court's daily long roll of "assaults" and "drunk and disorderlies" his name seldom appears …”

Mark Twain book Concerning the Jews

Concerning the Jews (Harper's Magazine, Sept. 1899)

Peace, Appearance, Country

“One cannot reign innocently: the insanity of doing so is evident. Every king is a rebel and a usurper.”

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) military and political leader

On ne peut point régner innocemment : la folie en est trop évidente. Tout roi est un rebelle et un usurpateur. Sur le jugement de Louis XVI (1er discours) http://www.royet.org/nea1789-1794/archives/discours/stjust_jugement_louis16_1_13_11_92.htm, speech to the National Convention (November 13, 1792).

“… and then this amazing creature -to whom no one has ever said "Shah!" or "I only hope your children will do the same to you someday!"”

Philip Roth book Portnoy's Complaint

Portnoy's Complaint (1969)

Children, Hope

“I mean the powerful influence which the interesting scenes of the Revolution had upon the passions of the people as distinguished from their judgment. By this influence, the jealousy, envy, and avarice incident to our nature and so common to a state of peace, prosperity, and conscious strength, were for the time in a great measure smothered and rendered inactive, while the deep-rooted principles of hate, and the powerful motive of revenge, instead of being turned against each other, were directed exclusively against the British nation. And thus, from the force of circumstances, the basest principles of our nature, were either made to lie dormant, or to become the active agents in the advancement of the noblest cause — that of establishing and maintaining civil and religious liberty. But this state of feeling must fade, is fading, has faded, with the circumstances that produced it. I do not mean to say that the scenes of the Revolution are now or ever will be entirely forgotten, but that, like everything else, they must fade upon the memory of the world, and grow more and more dim by the lapse of time. In history, we hope, they will be read of, and recounted, so long as the Bible shall be read; but even granting that they will, their influence cannot be what it heretofore has been. Even then they cannot be so universally known nor so vividly felt as they were by the generation just gone to rest. At the close of that struggle, nearly every adult male had been a participator in some of its scenes. The consequence was that of those scenes, in the form of a husband, a father, a son, or a brother, a living history was to be found in every family — a history bearing the indubitable testimonies of its own authenticity, in the limbs mangled, in the scars of wounds received, in the midst of the very scenes related — a history, too, that could be read and understood alike by all, the wise and the ignorant, the learned and the unlearned. But those histories are gone. They can be read no more forever. They were a fortress of strength; but what invading foeman could never do, the silent artillery of time has done — the leveling of its walls. They are gone. They were a forest of giant oaks; but the all-restless hurricane has swept over them, and left only here and there a lonely trunk, despoiled of its verdure, shorn of its foliage, unshading and unshaded, to murmur in a few more gentle breezes, and to combat with its mutilated limbs a few more ruder storms, then to sink and be no more. They were pillars of the temple of liberty; and now that they have crumbled away that temple must fall unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason.”

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

1830s, The Lyceum Address (1838)

Hate, People, Lie, World

“Miracles exist – you just have to believe it. A lot of the time when people pray to God they aren’t specific enough. I always tell people God is the god of details. You have to ask for the detail. So, you want a car – what kind of car do you want? Do you want a Cherokee, a Ford, a Chevy, a Bentley? An off-road vehicle? What about the trim and interior and the wheels? Be specific, then when you get something like that it will be no coincidence. I always prayed to God and that’s why I saw my life as a miracle.”

Fabio Lanzoni (1961) Italian model, actor and author

Fabio: confessions of the original male supermodel https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2015/jul/15/fabio-confessions-original-male-supermodel (July 15, 2015)

Life, God, People, Cars

“If it is true to say of the lazy that they kill time, then it is greatly to be feared that an era which sees its salvation in public opinion, this is to say private laziness, is a time that really will be killed: I mean that it will be struck out of the history of the true liberation of life. How reluctant later generations will be to have anything to do with the relics of an era ruled, not by living men, but by pseudo-men dominated by public opinion.”

Friedrich Nietzsche Untimely Meditations

Wenn man mit Recht vom Faulen sagt, er töte die Zeit, so muß man von einer Periode, welche ihr Heil auf die öffentlichen Meinungen, das heißt auf die privaten Faulheiten setzt, ernstlich besorgen, daß eine solche Zeit wirklich einmal getötet wird: ich meine, daß sie aus der Geschichte der wahrhaften Befreiung des Lebens gestrichen wird. Wie groß muß der Widerwille späterer Geschlechter sein, sich mit der Hinterlassenschaft jener Periode zu befassen, in welcher nicht die lebendigen Menschen, sondern öffentlich meinende Scheinmenschen regierten.
“Schopenhauer as educator,” § 3.1, R. Hollingdale, trans. (1983), p. 128
Untimely Meditations (1876)

Life, Men, Fear, History

“Look, you're small-town. I've had over 50 jobs, maybe a hundred. I've never stayed anywhere long. What I am trying to say is, there is a certain game played in offices all over America. The people are bored, they don't know what to do, so they play the office-romance game. Most of the time it means nothing but the passing of time. Sometimes they do manage to work off a screw or two on the side. But even then, it is just an offhand pasttime, like bowling or t. v. or a New Year's Eve party. You've got to understand that it doesn't mean anything and then you won't get hurt. Do you understand what I mean?”

Charles Bukowski book Post Office

Post Office (1971)

People, Game, Understanding, Time

“There are people in this country who are the great destroyers; they wish to destroy the kind of free society we have. They wouldn't have the freedom and the kind of society they wish to impose on us. Many of those people are in the unions. Many many people in the unions do not wish to strike, and I think many of those who struck in hospitals and in the ambulance service didn't wish to. I'm not suggesting that every strike is dominated by those, but a number are.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

TV Interview for Thames TV TV Eye (24 April 1979) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104040 Leader of the Opposition

People, Thinking, Freedom, Country

“310. A pupil and a teacher. The pupil will not let anything be explained to him, for he continually interrupts with doubts, for instance as to the existence of things, the meaning for words, etc. The teacher says "Stop interrupting me and do as I tell you. So far your doubts don't make sense at all."”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book On Certainty

On Certainty (1969)

Sense, Teachers

“Ours is assuredly the most ridiculous, the most absurd and the most bloody religion which has ever infected this world.Your Majesty will do the human race an eternal service by extirpating this infamous superstition, I do not say among the rabble, who are not worthy of being enlightened and who are apt for every yoke; I say among honest people, among men who think, among those who wish to think. … My one regret in dying is that I cannot aid you in this noble enterprise, the finest and most respectable which the human mind can point out.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

La nôtre [religion] est sans contredit la plus ridicule, la plus absurde, et la plus sanguinaire qui ait jamais infecté le monde.Votre Majesté rendra un service éternel au genre humain en détruisant cette infâme superstition, je ne dis pas chez la canaille, qui n’est pas digne d’être éclairée, et à laquelle tous les jougs sont propres; je dis chez les honnêtes gens, chez les hommes qui pensent, chez ceux qui veulent penser... Je ne m’afflige de toucher à la mort que par mon profond regret de ne vous pas seconder dans cette noble entreprise, la plus belle et la plus respectable qui puisse signaler l’esprit humain. Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano's, 1927), transl. Richard Aldington, letter 156 from Voltaire to Frederick II of Prussia, 5 January 1767 http://perso.orange.fr/dboudin/VOLTAIRE/45/1767/6651.html Often misquoted as "Christianity is...", while in the context, Voltaire was referring specifically to Catholicism. Citas

Men, People, Religion, Thinking

““I think I just want to leave my mark in some way. I hope I leave the world a better place than it was when I came, and I think the best way I can do that is through acting and writing, and hopefully it will make a difference someday.” —Chris Colfer, How would you like to be remembered?”

Chris Colfer (1990) actor, singer, book author

Interview Quotes, Random Quotes Source: http://filmreviewonline.com/2012/09/08/glee-chris-colfer/, Online Film Review's journalist Judy Sloane pry's information from Chris Colfer at a party.

World, Hope, Way, Thinking

“The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves.”

John Locke (1632–1704) English philosopher and physician

This might be a paraphrase of some of Locke's expressions or ideas, but the earliest publication of the statement in this form seems to be one made in Oversight Hearing on the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area Act (1997).
Misattributed

People

“I've been living in New York for about seven years and a lot of the people that I started singing with don't sing any more, don't write any more. So the fact that I can still do that that's kind of a gift, that's what I sort of stay focused on.”

Lana Del Rey (1985) American singer-songwriter

Evening Standard (24 January 2012), p. 13

People, Singing

“The primary reality is not what I think, but that I live, for those also live who do not think.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 7

Thinking, Reality

“When Paul thought about his effortless rise in the hierarchy, he sometimes, as now, felt sheepish, like a charlatan. He could handle his assignments all right, but he didn’t have what his father had, what Kroner had, what Shepherd had, what so many had: the sense of spiritual importance in what they were doing; the ability to be moved emotionally, almost like a lover, by the great omnipresent and omniscient spook, the corporate personality. In short, what Paul missed was what made his father aggressive and great: the capacity to really give a damn.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Player Piano

Source: Player Piano (1952), Chapter 6 (pp. 66-67)

Lovers, Sense, Personality

“What can you do? More and more Americans are carrying a gun in the car. An ex-cop I know advises that if you have to use a gun on a youth, you should leave the scene immediately, disposing of the wiped off gun as soon as possible. Such a gun cannot, of course, be registered to you, but one bought privately (through the classifieds, for example.)
I frankly don't know what to make of such advice, but even in my little town of Jackson, Texas, I've urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self-defense. For the animals are coming.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

1992
October
Blast 'Em?
Ron Paul Political Report
2
http://www.tnr.com/sites/default/files/PR_Oct92_p2.pdf
Disputed, Newsletters, Ron Paul Political Report

Youth, Family, Cars, Animals

“Preparation is very important. The pitcher is going to do his job and prepare for you so you as a hitter must do the same. I always watch videotape of pitchers before the game and even sometimes during.”

Albert Pujols (1980) Dominican-American baseball player

When asked about the importance of preparation. http://sports.ign.com/articles/709/709384p1.html

Game

“When an unbaked pot is broken, the potter can use the mud to make a new one; but when a baked one is broken, he cannot do the same any longer. So when a person dies in a state of ignorance, he is born again; but when he becomes well baked in the fire of true knowledge and dies a perfect man, he is not born again.”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (1960), p. 46

Knowledge, Personality, Perfection

“Here I come to one of the memoir writer’s difficulties — one of the reasons why, though I read so many, so many are failures. They leave out the person to whom things happened. The reason is that it is so difficult to describe any human being. So they say: ‘This is what happened’; but they do not say what the person was like to whom it happened. Who was I then? Adeline Virginia Stephen, the second daughter of Leslie and Julia Prinsep Stephen, born on 25th January 1882, descended from a great many people, some famous, others obscure; born into a large connection, born not of rich parents, but of well-to-do parents, born into a very communicative, literate, letter writing, visiting, articulate, late nineteenth century world.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

"A Sketch of the Past" (written 1939, published posthumously)

People, World, Communication, Failure

“Now that the steam engine rules the world, a title is an absurdity, still I am all dressed up in this title. It will crush me if I do not support it. The title attracts attention to myself.”

Stendhal book Armance

Depuis que la machine à vapeur est la reine du monde, un titre est une absurdité, mais enfin, je suis affublé de cette absurdité. Elle m'écrasera si je ne la soutiens. Ce titre attire l'attention sur moi.
Source: Armance (1827), Ch. 14

World, Support

“Back in 2005, when I was Christopher Eccleston, we saw one of the largest increases on record, of CO2 in the atmosphere. Unless we keep the rise in global temperature to under 2 degrees, by the time I'm Daniel Radcliffe or wee Jimmy Crankie, I won't be able to save the planet. I won't be here to help you -- well I might, but I'll be that bloke who won Any Dream Will Do.”

David Tennant (1971) Scottish actor

Live Earth concert 2007

Dreams, Time, Help

“What can a soldier do who charges when out of breath?”

Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus book De re militari

De Re Militari (also Epitoma Rei Militaris), Book III, "Dispositions for Action"

“Why must we stand firm on the party's leadership over the military? Because that's the lesson from the collapse of the Soviet Union. In Soviet Union, where the military was depoliticized, separated from the party and nationalized, the party was disarmed. When the country came to crisis point, a big party was gone just like that. Proportionally, the Soviet Communist Party had more members than we (Communist Party of China) do, but nobody was man enough to stand up and resist.”

Xi Jinping (1953) General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and paramount leader of China

As quoted in "China's new President Xi Jinping: A man with a dream" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-21790384 in BBC News (14 March 2013). 2010s

Country

“I trust to luck and do nothing but work, hoping that all will end well.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

3 February 1944
(1942 - 1944)

Hope

“When men do wrong, it is out of hardness; when women do wrong, it is out of weakness.”

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël book Corinne

Bk. 6, ch. 3
Corinne (1807)

Women, Men

“One who believes, as I do, that the free intellect is the chief engine of human progress, cannot but be fundamentally opposed to Bolshevism, as much as to the Church of Rome.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Part I, Ch. 9: International Policy
1920s, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (1920)

“"We shall say to ourselves," says one, "'After all, why do we make war?' We don't know at all why, but we can say who we make it for. We shall be forced to see that if every nation every day brings the fresh bodies of fifteen hundred young men to the God of War to be lacerated, it's for the pleasure of a few ringleaders that we could easily count; that if whole nations go to slaughter marshaled in armies in order that the gold-striped caste may write their princely names in history, so that other gilded people of the same rank can contrive more business, and expand in the way of employees and shops — and we shall see, as soon as we open our eyes, that the divisions between mankind are not what we thought, and those one did believe in are not divisions."”

Henri Barbusse book Under Fire

Under Fire (1916), Ch. 24 - The Dawn

Men, God, War, People

“And this is probably a good place for me to end by just saying that the issue of climate change is a perfect example of why young people have to lead. Because old people, they've created a mess, and then they'll be gone. And then you -- (applause) -- you're the ones who have to deal with it. And also what happens is old people get set in their ways. So the older you get, the more likely you are to say, that's how it's always been so that's how I'm going to keep on doing it -- even if there's a better way to do things. Young people, they're asking, well, why do I have to do it that way? Let's try it this way. And that kind of willingness to accept challenges and try things in a new way, to not be stuck in the past, or to look towards the future, that's what all of you represent.”

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

2014, Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative Town Hall Speech (November 2014)

People, Way, Change, Past

“Watch people like a hawk, and when they do something good, tell them.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Personality Lectures

People

“I believe more in the goodness of bad people than i do in the badness of good people.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Source: A Thousand & One Epigrams: Selected from the Writings of Elbert Hubbard (1911), p. 18.

People

“I do not mean that it is not worthwhile to attempt a revision of the canon or that no success is possible. A few valuable minor changes have been made to our sense of the basic material of the history of music, and other alterations are still waiting to take hold. Gesualdo has not displaced Monteverdi or Palestrina but has won a permanent place; on the other hand, the attempt to convince us that Telemann is a major composer appears to have been abandoned. Alkan has not had the breakthrough his admirers had hoped for. Attacks on Tchaikovsky have not had much success in removing his music from the repertory; his credit with performers has not changed a bit.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Frontiers of Meaning: Three Informal Lectures on Music (1994), Ch. 2 : How to Become Immortal

Hope, Music, History, Sense

“Lastly, what is history for? This is perhaps a harder question than the others; a man who answers it will have to reflect rather more widely than a man who answers the three we have answered already. He must reflect not only on historical thinking but on other things as well, because to say that something is `for' something implies a distinction between A and B, where A is good for something and B is that for which something is good. But I will suggest an answer, and express the opinion that no historian would reject it, although the further questions to which it gives rise are numerous and difficult.
My answer is that history is `for' human self-knowledge. It is generally thought to be of importance to man that he should know himself: where knowing himself means knowing not his merely personal peculiarities, the things that distinguish him from other men, but his nature as man. Knowing yourself means knowing, first, what it is to be a man; secondly, knowing what it is to be the kind of man you are; and thirdly, knowing what it is to be the man you are and nobody else is. Knowing yourself means knowing what you can do; and since nobody knows what he can do until he tries, the only clue to what man can do is what man has done. The value of history, then, is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is.”

R. G. Collingwood (1889–1943) British historian and philosopher

Source: The Idea of History (1946), p. 10

Men, History, Question, Nature

“In God is my being, my me, my strength, my beatitude, my good, and my delight. I say mine at present because it is not possible to speak otherwise; but I do not mean by it any such thing as me or mine, or delight or good, or strength or stability, or beatitude; nor could I possibly turn my eyes to behold such things in heaven or in earth; and if, notwithstanding, I sometimes use words which may have the likeness of humility and of spirituality, in my interior I do not understand them, I do not feel them. In truth it astonishes me that I speak at all, or use words so far removed from the truth and from that which I feel. I see clearly that man in this world deceives himself by admiring and esteeming things which are not, and neither sees nor esteems the things which are”

Catherine of Genoa (1447–1510) Italian author and nurse

Source: Life and Doctrine, Ch. XIV

God, Truth, World, Feeling

“In addition to the animal essence, we have something that is above animal existence. This something is called our egoism. It is based on our aspirations to wealth, honor, fame, power, and knowledge. Animals do not have these aspirations […] — envy, inclination to pleasures, and aspiration to honor. These aspirations bring a person to a level above the animal. Since they are above animal qualities, these aspirations and qualities are praiseworthy. On the other hand, their common natural utilization puts us below all other levels”

Yehuda Ashlag (1886–1954) Orthodox Jewish Rabbi and Kabbalist

i.e. still, vegetative, and animate
Introduction to the Book of Zohar, in Introduction to the Book of Zohar: Volume Two, Michael Laitman, ed., Laitman Kabbalah Publishers, 2005, p. 94.
Introduction to the Book of Zohar

Pleasure, Nature, Knowledge, Animals

“Although I am new in the business, my team is not. I would say that, person for person, there has never been a better rocket company in existence, in history. I don’t think there has ever been a group this talented in one place, in one company, developing a rocket – ever.
If you have millions of dollars it changes your lifestyle, and anyone who says differently is talking ########. I don’t need to work, from a standard of living point of view, but I do, you know. I work every day and on weekends and I haven’t taken a vacation for years.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007)

History, Business, Thinking, Change

“As the Holy Koran tells us: "Be conscious of God and speak always the truth." That is what I will try to do today - to speak the truth as best I can, humbled by the task before us, and firm in my belief that the interests we share as human beings are far more powerful than the forces that drive us apart.”

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

2009, A New Beginning (June 2009)

God, Truth

“…to be redeemed to aim at the highest value, to sacrifice what's no longer useful and valid in yourself, and to tell the truth. And the consequence of that is, existence on a deep state of meaning that justifies the tragedy of being and the possibility of transforming your own life, in the most beneficial positive direction, while simultaneously doing that for the people around you. And that's Redemption.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

podcast episode 5 ( https://jordanbpeterson.com/podcasts/podcast-episode/episode-5/) Other

Life, People, Truth

“Those who advocate common usage in philosophy sometimes speak in a manner that suggests the mystique of the 'common man.' They may admit that in organic chemistry there is need of long words, and that quantum physics requires formulas that are difficult to translate into ordinary English, but philosophy (they think) is different. It is not the function of philosophy – so they maintain – to teach something that uneducated people do not know; on the contrary, its function is to teach superior persons that they are not as superior as they thought they were, and that those who are really superior can show their skill by making sense of common sense. No one wants to alter the language of common sense, any more than we wish to give up talking of the sun rising and setting. But astronomers find a different language better, and I contend that a different language is better in philosophy. Let us take an example, that of perception. There is here an admixture of philosophical and scientific questions, but this admixture is inevitable in many questions, or, if not inevitable, can only be avoided by confining ourselves to comparatively unimportant aspects of the matter in hand. Here is a series of questions and answers.
Q. When I see a table, will what I see be still there if I shut my eyes?
A. That depends upon the sense in which you use the word 'see.'
Q. What is still there when I shut my eyes?
A. This is an empirical question. Don't bother me with it, but ask the physicists.
Q. What exists when my eyes are open, but not when they are shut?
A. This again is empirical, but in deference to previous philosophers I will answer you: colored surfaces.
Q. May I infer that there are two senses of 'see'? In the first, when I 'see' a table, I 'see' something conjectural about which physics has vague notions that are probably wrong. In the second, I 'see' colored surfaces which cease to exist when I shut my eyes.
A. That is correct if you want to think clearly, but our philosophy makes clear thinking unnecessary. By oscillating between the two meanings, we avoid paradox and shock, which is more than most philosophers do.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1950s, Portraits from Memory and Other Essays (1956), p. 159

People, Color, Question, Thinking

“I have lived an honest and useful life to mankind; my time has been spend in doing good and I die in perfect composure and resignation to the will of my Creator, God.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

Last will (1809), as quoted in The Fortnightly Review https://books.google.com/books?id=PtlBAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA398&lpg=PA398&dq=%22Let+me+have+none+of+your+Popish+stuff%22&source=bl&ots=XKTgMyyfOF&sig=N-KTteQDfZyKQaQA0yyMGyHkBvU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiBhM3xmcrLAhXonIMKHSBLCcoQ6AEIIjAD#v=onepage&q=%22Let%20me%20have%20none%20of%20your%20Popish%20stuff%22&f=false, Volume 31, pp. 398&ndash;399 1800s

Life, God, Time, Perfection

“When the commander in chief of a nation finds it necessary to order employees of the government or agencies of the government to do things that would technically break the law, he has to be able to declare it legal in order for them to do that.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Response to the Frost-Nixon interviews on the Watergate scandal, UPI (21 May 1977)
1970s

Law

“I am a libertine, but I am not a criminal nor a murderer, and since I am compelled to set my apology alongside my vindication, I shall therefore say that it might well be possible that those who condemn me as unjustly as I have been might themselves be unable to offset the infamies by good works as clearly established as those I can contrast to my errors. I am a libertine, but three families residing in your area have for five years lived off my charity, and I have saved them from the farthest depths of poverty. I am a libertine, but I have saved a deserter from death, a deserter abandoned by his entire regiment and by his colonel. I am a libertine, but at Evry, with your whole family looking on, I saved a child—at the risk of my life—who was on the verge of being crushed beneath the wheels of a runaway horse-drawn cart, by snatching the child from beneath it. I am a libertine, but I have never compromised my wife’s health. Nor have I been guilty of the other kinds of libertinage so often fatal to children’s fortunes: have I ruined them by gambling or by other expenses that might have deprived them of, or even by one day foreshortened, their inheritance? Have I managed my own fortune badly, as long as I have had a say in the matter? In a word, did I in my youth herald a heart capable of the atrocities of which I today stand accused?… How therefore do you presume that, from so innocent a childhood and youth, I have suddenly arrived at the ultimate of premeditated horror? No, you do not believe it. And yet you who today tyrannize me so cruelly, you do not believe it either: your vengeance has beguiled your mind, you have proceeded blindly to tyrannize, but your heart knows mine, it judges it more fairly, and it knows full well it is innocent.”

Marquis de Sade (1740–1814) French novelist and philosopher

This passage comes from a letter addressed to his wife. It was written during his imprisonment at the Bastille.
"L’Aigle, Mademoiselle…"

Life, Death, Children, Health

“Christianity destroyed for us the whole harvest of ancient civilization, and later it also destroyed for us the whole harvest of Mohammedan civilization. The wonderful culture of the Moors in Spain, which was fundamentally nearer to us and appealed more to our senses and tastes than that of Rome and Greece, was trampled down ( — I do not say by what sort of feet — ) Why? Because it had to thank noble and manly instincts for its origin — because it said yes to life, even to the rare and refined luxuriousness of Moorish life! The crusaders later made war on something before which it would have been more fitting for them to have grovelled in the dust — a civilization beside which even that of our nineteenth century seems very poor and very "senile." […] Intrinsically there should be no more choice between Islam and Christianity than there is between an Arab and a Jew. The decision is already reached; nobody remains at liberty to choose here. Either a man is a Chandala or he is not…. “War to the knife with Rome! Peace and friendship with Islam!”: this was the feeling, this was the act, of that great free spirit, that genius among German emperors, Frederick II.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Antichrist

Sec. 60
The Antichrist (1888)

Life, Friendship, War, Peace

“We simply do not consider it desirable that a realm of justice and concord should be established on earth (because it would certainly be the realm of the deepest leveling and chinoiserie); we are delighted with all who love, as we do, danger, war, and adventures, who refuse to compromise, to be captured, reconciled, and castrated; we count ourselves among conquerors; we think about the necessity for new orders, also for a new slavery — for every strengthening and enhancement of the human type also involves a new kind of enslavement.”

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

The term chinoiserie indicates "unnecessary complication" and some translations point out that this passage invokes ideas in the concluding poem of Beyond Good and Evil: "nur wer sich wandelt bleibt mit mir verwandt" : Only those who keep changing remain akin to me.
The Gay Science (1882)

Love, War, Justice, Thinking

“A desire for children, I suppose; for Nessa's life; for the sense of flowers breaking all round me involuntarily. […] Years and years ago, after the Lytton affair, I said to myself, walking up the hill at Bayreuth, never pretend that the things you haven't got are not worth having; good advice I think. And then I went on to say to myself that one must like things for themselves; or rather, rid them of their bearing upon one's personal life. One must venture on to the things that exist independently of oneself. Now this is very hard for young women to do. Yet I got satisfaction from it. And now, married to L., I never have to make the effort. Perhaps I have been to happy for my soul's good? And does some of my discontent come from feeling that?”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

2 January 1923
A Moment's Liberty (1990)

Life, Women, Children, Feeling

“Live with your century; but do not be its creature. Work for your contemporaries; but create what they need, not what they praise.”

Friedrich Schiller book On the Aesthetic Education of Man

Lebe mit deinem Jahrhundert, aber sei nicht sein Geschöpf; leiste deinen Zeitgenossen, aber was sie bedürfen, nicht was sie loben.
Letter 9
On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794)

“Iltutmish did not forget that he was a Muslim conqueror. He showed himself to be very pious, never forgetting to do his five devotional daily…. He likewise showed himself totally intolerant vis-à-vis the Hindus who refused to convert, destroying their temples and annihilating Brahmin communities.”

Iltutmish (1210–1236) Sultan of Mamluk Sultanate

Louis Frederic, L'Inde de l'Islam, p. 42-49, (quoted from: Decolonizing the Hindu Mind - By Koenraad Elst p. 328)

Communication, Forgetting

“Our mistake is not that we take our theories too seriously, but that we do not take them seriously enough. It is always hard to realize that these numbers and equations we play with at our desks have something to do with the real world. …The most important thing accomplished by the three-degree radiation background in 1965 was to force us to take seriously the idea that there was an early universe.”

Steven Weinberg (1933) American theoretical physicist

1977
The First Three Minutes (1977; second edition 1993)

World, Idea, Universe

“Do not even flippantly badmouth anybody this week. Button it up.”

Tom Peters (1942) American writer on business management practices

November 2, 2010.
Tom Peters Daily, Weekly Quote

“Monetarism—both of the older Friedman version stressing adherence to money stock targets and of the newer rational expectations variety—has been badly discredited. The stage has been set for recovery in the popularity of Keynesian diagnoses and remedies. I do not mean to imply, of course, that there is some Keynesian truth, vintage 1936 or 1961, to which economists and policymakers will or should now return, ignoring the lessons of economic events and of developments in economics itself over these last turbulent fifteen years. I do mean that in the new intellectual synthesis which I hope and expect will emerge to replace the divisive controversies and chaotic debates on macroeconomic policies, Keynesian ideas will have a prominent place.”

James Tobin (1918–2002) American economist

James Tobin, "Keynes' Policies in Theory and Practice", Challenge (1983).
1970s and later

Money, Truth, Hope, Idea

“Love and faith do not happen just with words alone. Living according to the Word is faith. The Bible is not just made up of holy words, but it is a message of miracles in which are fulfilled for me even today, and it is the guide for our lives. The Lord's Word is being delivered even today, and I will continue to carry out the work of the Lord everyday.”

Jung Myung Seok (1945) South Korean Leader of New Religious Movement, Poet, Author, Founder of Wolmyeongdong Center

Extracted from the Wolmyeongdong Website http://wmd.god21.net/WolMyeongDong/Founder

Love, Faith

“Marxist schools have authors. Just as Marxism sprang from the mind of Marx, so we have Leninists, Maoists, Trotksyites, Gramscians, Althusserians… (Note how the list starts with heads of state and grades almost seamlessly into French professors.) … Now consider the different schools of anarchism. There are Anarcho-Syndicalists, AnarchoCommunists, Insurrectionists, Cooperativists, Individualists, Platformists… None are named after some Great Thinker; instead, they are invariably named either after some kind of practice, or most often, organizational principle. (Significantly, those Marxist tendencies which are not named after individuals, like Autonomism or Council Communism, are also the ones closest to anarchism.) Anarchists like to distinguish themselves by what they do, and how they organize themselves to go about doing it.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Source: Fragments for an Anarchist Anthropology (2004), p. 5

School, Communication

“If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it is wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it is wrong for America to draft us and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Message to the Grass Roots (1963)

Women, Men, Children, People

“The only profound thinkers are the ones who do not suffer from a sense of the ridiculous.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Drawn and Quartered (1983)

Sense, Suffering

“The passive idler of all men in the world is the most difficult to please. Those who do the least themselves are always the severest critics upon the noble achievements of others.”

Elias Lyman Magoon (1810–1886) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 345.

Men, World

“What for is marriage? It is to unite a man and a woman to enjoy a natural life with happiness. It is to find solace after hard work. Most of the people do not realize that marriages are for sharing pleasures of the wedded life.”

Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (1879–1973) Tamil politician and social reformer

citation needed
Marriage

Life, Marriage, People, Pleasure

“Did not Troyon tell me to enter the studio of Couture [in Paris]? It is needless to tell you how decided was my refusal to do so. I admit even that it cooled me, temporarily at least, in my esteem and admiration of Troyon.... and [I] after all, connected myself only with artists who were seeking.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

Quote from an interview with Thiebault-Sisson, 1900; as cited in Monet and His Muse: Camille Monet in the Artist's Life, Mary Mathews Gedo; University of Chicago Press, Sept. 2010, p. 10
1900 - 1920

“How much good it would do if one could exterminate the human race.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

A characteristic saying of Russell, reported by Aldous Huxley in a letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell dated 8 October 1917, as quoted in Bibliography of Bertrand Russell (Routledge, 2013)
1910s

“I may as well say at once that I do not distinguish between inference and deduction. What is called induction appears to me to be either disguised deduction or a mere method of making plausible guesses.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Principles of Mathematics (1903), Ch. II: Symbolic Logic, p. 11
1900s

Appearance

“There is a thing that happens when you are not as privileged and you start hanging out with a seedier crowd because you can afford to do the same things, […] And all of a sudden the big night out is sitting in somebody's trailer, smoking something or getting hold of something to put up to your nose.”

Eddie Vedder (1964) musician, songwriter, member of Pearl Jam

L.A. Times 5/1/94, "He Didn't Ask for All This".

Night

“I was raised to feel that doing nothing was a sin. I had to learn to do nothing.”

Jenny Joseph (1932–2018) Poet

The Observer, 19 April, 1998, p. 23

Feeling, Learning

“Man of science seeks to resolve the links between art, aesthetics, and the science. The man of science …seeks to resolve [nature’s] infinite complexities in to a few simple principles or elements of action which he calls the laws of nature. In doing this, like the exponents of other forms of art, subjects himself to a rigorous discipline, the rules of which he had laid down for himself and which he calls logic …. Science… Is a fusion of man’s aesthetic and intellectual functions devoted to the representations of nature. It is therefore the highest form of creative art.”

C. V. Raman (1888–1970) Indian physicist

[Parameswaran, Uma, C.V. Raman: A Biography, http://books.google.com/books?id=RbgXRdnHkiAC, 2011, Penguin Books India, 978-0-14-306689-7] page=xiv

Law, Art, Nature, Science

“He found that if people wrote about uncertain things - past, present, or future - they could be traumatic things, they could be uncertain things, that their physical health improved. He did a lot of detailed research to find out why this is. He basically figured out that it is an uncertainty reduction mechanism at work, because your brain is always figuring out how well situated you are in the world. How much do you not know compared to how much have you mastered. You can tell that you've mastered things because when you go somewhere and you act, things turn out the way you want them to. That's an indication of mastery. And your brain is keeping track of your whole life, recording information about how many places you have been where things haven't worked out compared to how many places you have been where things have worked out. And if all those places in your past where things haven't worked out, you need to map and master. And that decreases the existential load on you, but that actually decreases your psych-physiological load. It makes you healthier. It makes you less stressed. And so we have put all that together in this Self-Authoring Suite to help people write about their past and to sort it out in a detailed auto-biography.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Concepts

Life, People, Health, World

“The energy to manufacture Art doesn't come merely from the superficial darshan (philosophy) of objects; nor from mere intellect and knowledge; but it comes from those subtle conscience, which finds emotional caressing from divine experience climbing above bestial eyes. The beast merely looks and remains satisfied, but man tries to touch the heart of everything. The superficial understandings do not satisfy him, in the world containing form-relation and conscience he cannot remain satisfied though philosophy. He tries to connect the things seen and experienced in his mind and outer nature with eternal and true and tries to touch them with the help of relation and support of chief reason.”

Laxmi Prasad Devkota (1909–1959) Nepali poet

कला र जीवन (Art and Life)
Art and Life

World, Art, Understanding, Support

“When love grows diseased, the best thing we can do is to put it to a violent death. I cannot endure the torture of a lingering and consumptive passion.”

George Etherege The Man of Mode

Act II, sc. ii
The Man of Mode (1676)

Love, Death, Disease, Passion

“For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic and must remain so if he does not wish to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have in mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Source: The German Ideology (1845-1846), Vol. 1, Part 1.

Fish

“In case you haven’t noticed, we … dehumanize our own soldiers, not because of their religion or race, but because of their low social class. Send 'em anywhere. Make 'em do anything. Piece of cake.”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

I Love You, Madame Librarian (2004)

Religion

“We passionately long that there may be another life in which we shall be similar to what we are here below. But we do not pause to reflect that, even without waiting for that other life, in this life, after a few years we are unfaithful to what we have been, to what we wished to remain immortally.”

Marcel Proust book In Search of Lost Time

Nous désirons passionnément qu'il y ait une autre vie où nous serions pareils à ce que nous sommes ici-bas. Mais nous ne réfléchissons pas que, même sans attendre cette autre vie, dans celle-ci, au bout de quelques années, nous sommes infidèles à ce que nous avons été, à ce que nous voulions rester immortellement.
Pt. II, Ch. 2
In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol. IV: Cities of the Plain (1921-1922)

Life, Unfaithfulness, Passion, Waiting

“Back around 1971, I was playing in a bar in Chicago one night, and after the show, I was packing up my guitar and stuff, and I was walking out the door, and a little guy stopped me. And he said, "Arlo, before you leave, I wanna sing you a song." I said "Come on man, I don't wanna hear no songs. I hate songs. I don't even like my songs! Why should I like your songs?" I was just tired, I wanted to get out of there, I was being a butt-head. He said, "Arlo, I just wanna sing you one song." I said, "Tell you what. Buy me beer. I'll sit here and drink it. As long as it lasts, you can do whatever you want." He said, "That sounds like a good deal."”

Arlo Guthrie (1947) American folk singer

I said "It does?" It turned out to be one of the finer beers of my entire life.
Arlo talking about his first meeting with Steve Goodman, who would perform to him "The City of New Orleans" (Live in Sydney)

Life, Hate, Guy, Drink

“As a nation today, we have not rejected the sanctity of human life. The American people have not had an opportunity to express their view on the sanctity of human life in the unborn. I am convinced that Americans do not want to play God with the value of human life. It is not for us to decide who is worthy to live and who is not. Even the Supreme Court's opinion in Roe v. Wade did not explicitly reject the traditional American idea of intrinsic worth and value in all human life; it simply dodged this issue.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

1980s, First term of office (1981–1985), Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation (1983)

Life, God, People, Idea

“I can be President of the United States, or I can control Alice. I cannot possibly do both.”

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

Response when a dignitary asked if he could better control his daughter, as quoted in Hail to the Chiefs : My Life and Times with Six Presidents (1970) by Ruth Shick Montgomery, and TIME magazine (3 March 1980) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,950286,00.html?promoid=googlep 1900s

“I've been dictating to my son, who's helping me on his computer. I'm spending a lot of time doing research--I've just got up to 1971, when I went crazy and dived through the window. My life is so full of interesting stories…”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

Launch.com, November 2, 2000

Life, Time, Help

“There are two things that I want you to make up your minds to: first, that you are going to have a good time as long as you live – I have no use for the sour-faced man – and next, that you are going to do something worthwhile, that you are going to work hard and do the things you set out to do.”

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

Talk to schoolchildren in Oyster Bay, Christmastime (1898), as quoted in The Bully Pulpit : A Teddy Roosevelt Book of Quotations (2002) by H. Paul Jeffers, p. 22
1890s

Time

“I figure I've done what I could do, more or less, and now I'm going back to being a chemical; all we are is a lot of talking nitrogen, you know…”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

Leo in I Can't Remember Anything in Danger: Memory! : Two Plays (1987)

“Marie falls back upon her idea, obdurately, and says, "A woman only lives by love and for love. When she's no longer good for that she's no longer anything."
She repeats, "You see — I'm nothing any more."
Ah, she is at the bottom of her abyss! She is at the extremity of a woman's mourning! She is not thinking only of me. Her thought is higher and vaster. She is thinking of all the woman she is, of all that love is, of all possible things when she says, "I'm no longer anything." And I — I am only he who is present with her just now, and no help whatever is left her to look for from any one.
I should like to pacify and console this woman who is gentleness and simplicity and who is sinking there while she lightly touches me with her presence — but exactly because she is there I cannot lie to her, I can do nothing against her grief, her perfect, infallible grief.
"Ah!" she cries, "if we came to life again!"”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XIX - Ghosts

Love, Life, Lie, Idea

Quotes about doing page 30

Quotes about doing
page 30