Quotes about down
page 35

“This is the basic trick in getting the mind to settle down in the present moment — you've got to give it something that it likes to stay with. If it's here against its will, it's going to be like a balloon you push under the water. As long as your hand has a good grasp on the balloon, it's not going to pop up, but as soon as you slip a little bit, the balloon pops up out of the water. If the mind is forced to stay on an object that it really finds unpleasant, it's not going to stay. As soon as your mindfulness slips just a little bit, it's gone.”

Thanissaro Bhikkhu (1949) Theravadin Buddhist Monk and Scholar

"Meditation: The How and the Why" (2003)

Water

“Walking down the street in London with Suzanne, saw a little homeless.. well I didn't see the homeless bloke right, I saw a leg stickin out of a doorway, thought 'here we go', right. Walked past it, right, you're not gonna believe this. Homeless…. Chinese fella. I've never seen one of them.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Podcast Series 1 Episode 4
On People

Past

“I think that is Amanda’s whole stance; to feel most empowered as a woman is to have the choice to whether or not you dress up or dress down and to feel good about yourself either way. And that is truly the most empowering stance for a woman to take is to not have to comply either way because of a mans expectations of her.”

Brian Viglione (1979) American musician

March 26, 2006 - PunkTv Interview

Way, Feeling, Thinking

“These ideas are present in all sorts of unrelated cultures -- the Easter Islands, Celtic mythology, Plato's Symposium with its notion that we are all originally hermaphrodite. We became too arrogant and so the gods split us down the middle, forcing us to spend our lives chasing our other half. If we start being arrogant all over again, God will come down and split each half in half, and it will take four people to assemble a fifth, making our lives peculiarly, desperately difficult.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

In an interview in the Washington DC City Paper, 6 Apr 1990
Interviews

God, People, Idea

“Good stuff from Kemp, who clumps an attempted yorker from Watson down the ground for four before blasting another full-toss through extra-cover. Watson has bowled like a drain today.”

Rob Smyth (1977) English/Irish rugby league player

Cricket World Cup 2007 Semi-final Over-by-over: South Africa innings http://sport.guardian.co.uk/cricketworldcup2007/story/0,,2065395,00.html (25 April 2007)

“I have definitely come to the conclusion that it is better to eat beefsteak and have a kind tongue than to be a strict vegetarian and, from a pedestal of superiority, look down upon this world. Again, I would point out that generalisations are inexact. I have known many vegetarians who were lovely and sweet and kind and good.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

The Unfinished Autobiography (1951)

Love, World

“I would sooner perish for ever than stoop down before a Being who may have power to crush me, but whom my heart forbids me to reverence.”

James Anthony Froude book The Nemesis of Faith

Letter II
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)

Heart

“I use cracks on the sidewalk to walk down the street. I'd always walk on the lines. I never take anything but a calculated risk, and do it because it gives me a sense of identity. Fear is a man's best friend.”

John Cale (1942) Welsh composer, singer-songwriter and record producer

Attributed without citation at John Cale - Quotes, xs4all.nl, 16 November 2012 http://werksman.home.xs4all.nl/cale/quotes/index.html,

Fear, Sense

“Before him, numberless lovers smiled and talked.
And death was observed with sudden cries,
And birth with laughter and pain.
And the trees grew taller and blacker against the skies
And night came down again.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Death, Pain, Smile, Lovers

“He knew that he had screwed up but he was the kind of guy who, after he shoots his mouth off, cannot back down or admit any failing. The world is full of those people. All of us would be better off if their fathers would strangle them as soon as they showed signs of being that way. This particular fool was willing to sacrifice an army rather than admit his error.”

Glen Cook book She Is the Darkness

Source: She Is the Darkness (1997), Chapter 30 (p. 368)

People, World, Fools, Way

“War is not horrible all the time, as pacifists seem to believe. There are compensations for everything, and there is compensation in comradeship, intimacy, freedom from economic anxiety, the knowledge that once one's mind is adjusted to the worst that can happen – and that is a pretty bad and bloody wound or swift and sudden death – one settled down to existence as an Infantryman. Man is an adaptable animal – I acknowledge that myself. I adapted myself more easily to the environment of the trenches with its lice, filth, heat, stench, flies, dysentery, danger – I adapted myself to these more successfully, I repeat, than I have been able to adapt myself to this life as a shopkeeper.”

William Darling (politician) (1885–1962) Scottish politician

Source: The Bankrupt Bookseller (1947), p. 239

Life, Death, War, Knowledge

“If we sit with Negroes at our tables, if we attend social functions with them as our social equals, if we disregard segregation in all other relations, is it then possible that we maintain it fixedly in the marriage of the South's Saxon sons and daughters? The answer must be "No." By the absolute denial of social equality to the Negro, the barriers between the races are firm and strong. But if the middle wall of the social partition should be broken down, then the mingling of the tides of life would surely begin. It would be a slow process, but the result would be the same. And though the process be gradual, it would be none the less irresistible and inevitable. The lower strata of the white population would probably feel the first effects, and within the foreseeable future the middle and upper classes would be invaded. Then, the Southern White race, the Southern Caucasian, would be irretrievably doomed.”

Theodore G. Bilbo (1877–1947) American politician

Source: Take Your Choice, Separation or Mongrelization (1946), Chapter 4: Southern Segregation and the Color Line.

Life, Marriage, Feeling, Strong

“Sometimes when he is among the sheep — when they have been rounded up to be dipped, and are penned tight and cannot get away — he wants to whisper to them, warn them of what lies in store. But then in their yellow eyes he catches a glimpse of something that silences him: a resignation, a foreknowledge not only of what happens to sheep at the hands of Ros behind the shed, but of what awaits them at the end of their long, thirsty ride to Cape Town on the transport lorry. They know it all, down to the finest detail, and yet they submit. They have calculated the price and are prepared to pay it — the price of being on earth, the price of being alive.”

J.M. Coetzee (1940) South African writer

Boyhood (1998)

Silence

“The fifties were when people started coming down on "juvenile delinquents," "hoodlums," "vandals"--anybody that was young, wore a motorcycle jacket, and didn't act polite around older people.”

Joe Bob Briggs (1953) American film critic, writer, and actor; alter ego of John Bloom

I Was a Teenage Werewolf review http://www.joebobbriggs.com/drivein/1991/iwasateenagewerewolf.htm

People

“Misunderstood ain’t got to be explained but you don’t understand me so let me explain, stood in the heat the flame the snow, please slow down hurricane, the wind blows my dreads swang, he had hair like wool like Wayne uhh, droppin ashes in da bible I shake them out and they fall on da rifle, scary hale Mary no tale fairy all really very extraordinary.”

Lil Wayne (1982) American rapper, singer, record executive and businessman

Misunderstood/Don't Get It
Official Mix tapes, The Leak (2007)

Understanding

“Several years after Wilt stopped playing, he toyed with the idea of a comeback. On the day he visited the Knicks' offices in Madison Square Garden, he talked to Red Holzman, then strode out to the elevator. When it opened, two deliverymen were struggling with a dolly piled high with boxes of office supplies, mostly letterheads and envelopes. The load was so heavy, the elevator had stopped maybe four inches below the floor level and now the deliverymen were huffing and puffing, but they couldn't raise the dolly high enough to get it on the floor level. After maybe two minutes of the deliverymen's huffing and puffing, Wilt, his biceps bulging in a tank top, peered down at them and intoned, "Gentlemen, maybe I can help." They stepped back, he stepped into the elevator, grabbed each end of the rope slung under the dolly and without much exertion, quickly lifted the dolly onto the floor level. Looking up in awe, the deliverymen said, "Thank you." Wilt said, "You're welcome." Wilt stepped into the elevator and rode down to the street level as another witness followed the two deliverymen toward the Knick offices and asked, "How much does all this weigh?"”

Wilt Chamberlain (1936–1999) basketball player

They quickly surveyed the stack of big boxes of office supplies. "Close to 600 pounds," one said.
The Good Natured Giant Wasn't Belligerent, Sports of the Times; Oct 13, 1999; Dave Anderson
Strength

Idea, Help, Box

“The one who contributed most to break down the barrier between physical method and metaphysical method, and to confound their domains, so clearly distinguished in the Aristotelian philosophy, was surely Descartes.”

Pierre Duhem (1861–1916) French physicist, historian of science

Notice sur les Titres et Travaux scientifiques de Pierre Duhem rédigée par lui-même lors de sa candidature à l'Académie des sciences (mai 1913), The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (1906)

“By the multiplying of slight modifications in the course of thousands of generations, and by the handing down of the newly-acquired peculiarities by inheritance, a greater and greater divergence from the original standard is supposed to be effected, until what may be called a new species, or, in a greater lapse of time, a new genus, will be the result.”

Charles Lyell (1797–1875) British lawyer and geologist

Source: The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863), Ch.21, p. 411

Time

“As darkness falls
The walls grow luminous and warm, the walls
Tremble and glow with the lives within them moving,
Moving like music, secret and rich and warm.
How shall we live tonight? Where shall we turn?
To what new light or darkness yearn?
A thousand winding stairs lead down before us;
And one by one in myriads we descend
By lamplit flowered walls, long balustrades,
Through half-lit halls which reach no end.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Secret, Music, Flowers, Light

“It was apparent… that, all over America, thousands of people threw down a book or got up from a television show and said, 'I can write better than that!' It was amazing how many of them were wrong.”

Donald E. Westlake (1933–2008) American novelist

Dancing Aztecs (1976)

People, Books

“That doesn't make any sense. Sorry. There's no known way of saying an English sentence in which you begin a sentence with "in" and emphasize it. Get me a jury and show me how you can say "In July" and I'll go down on you. That's just idiotic, if you'll forgive me for saying so. It's just stupid… "In July"; I'd love to know how you emphasize "In" in "In July."”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

Impossible! Meaningless!
The Findus Foods "Frozen Peas" Session Out-Takes

Love, Stupidity, Way, Forgiveness

“Go down to Kew in lilac-time, in lilac-time, in lilac-time;
Go down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far from London!)
And you shall wander hand in hand with love in summer's wonderland;
Go down to Kew in lilac-time”

Alfred Noyes (1880–1958) English poet

it isn't far from London!
The Barrel Organ
Poems (1906)

Love, Time, Summer

“In recent weeks, we have taken bold steps to prevent a severe disruption of the American economy, which would have a devastating effect on other economies around the world. We've promoted stability in the markets by preventing the disorderly failure of major companies. The Federal Reserve has injected urgently needed liquidity into the system. And last week, I announced a decisive action by the federal government to address the root cause of much of the instability in our financial markets, by purchasing illiquid assets that are weighing down balance sheets and restricting the flow of credit. I can assure you that my administration and our Congress are working together to quickly pass legislation approving this strategy, and I'm confident we will act in the urgent time frame required.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2008, Address to the United Nations General Assembly (September 2008)

World, Confidence, Failure, Decision

“Success treads on every right step. For the instinct is sure, that prompts him to tell his brother what he thinks. He then learns, that in going down into the secrets of his own mind, he has descended into the secrets of all minds. He learns that he who has mastered any law in his private thoughts, is master to that extent of all men whose language he speaks, and of all into whose language his own can be translated.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1830s, The American Scholar http://www.emersoncentral.com/amscholar.htm (1837)

Men, Secret, Law, Thinking

“The glories of our blood and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against fate;
Death lays his icy hand on kings:
Sceptre and Crown
Must tumble down,
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked scythe and spade.”

James Shirley The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses

sc. iii.
The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses

Death, Fate

“It was like a quilt, a handmade, patterned quilt laid out for this man to take his final steps across and then lie down and die on: a quilted deathbed. It struck me that the world, or chance, or maybe death itself if you can speak of such a thing, must have loved this man in some way to prepare for him such a richly textured fabric to gather and wrap him up in.”

Tom McCarthy (writer) book Déjà vu

Source: Remainder (2005), Ch. 12.

Love, Death, Lie, World

“And I want to be there when you're coming down / And I want to be there when you hit the ground
Don't go away / Say what you say / Say that you'll stay… because I need more time just to make things right
Damn my education / I can't find the words to say
Me and you, what's going on?/All we seem to know/Is how to show, the feelings that are wrong”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

Don't Go Away
Be Here Now (1997)

Education, Feeling, Time

“"You don't understand," he said, "who I am or what I am. I'll show you. By Heaven! I'll show you." Then he put his open palm over his face and withdrew it. The centre of his face became a black cavity. "Here," he said. He stepped forward and handed Mrs. Hall something which she, staring at his metamorphosed face, accepted automatically. Then, when she saw what it was, she screamed loudly, dropped it, and staggered back. The nose—it was the stranger's nose! pink and shining—rolled on the floor.Then he removed his spectacles, and everyone in the bar gasped. He took off his hat, and with a violent gesture tore at his whiskers and bandages. For a moment they resisted him. A flash of horrible anticipation passed through the bar. "Oh, my Gard!" said some one. Then off they came.It was worse than anything. Mrs. Hall, standing open-mouthed and horror-struck, shrieked at what she saw, and made for the door of the house. Everyone began to move. They were prepared for scars, disfigurements, tangible horrors, but nothing! The bandages and false hair flew across the passage into the bar, making a hobbledehoy jump to avoid them. Everyone tumbled on everyone else down the steps. For the man who stood there shouting some incoherent explanation, was a solid gesticulating figure up to the coat-collar of him, and then—nothingness, no visible thing at all!”

H. G. Wells book The Invisible Man

Source: The Invisible Man (1897), Chapter 7: The Unveiling of the Stranger

Understanding, Housing, Falseness

“One of the most terrifying aspects of publishing stories and books is the realization that they are going to be read, and read by strangers. I had never fully realized this before, although I had of course in my imagination dwelt lovingly upon the thought of the millions and millions of people who were going to be uplifted and enriched and delighted by the stories I wrote. It had simply never occurred to me that these the millions and millions of people might be so far from being uplifted that they would sit down and write me letters I was downright scared to open; of the three-hundred-odd letters that I received that summer I can count only thirteen that spoke kindly to me, and they were mostly from friends. Even my mother scolded me: "Dad and I did not care at all for your story in The New Yorker," she wrote sternly; "it does seem, dear, that this gloomy kind of story is what all you young people think about these days. Why don't you write something to cheer people up?"”

Shirley Jackson (1916–1965) novelist, short story writer

Lecture (1960); printed in her collection, Come Along with Me (1968)

People, Books, Imagination, Thinking

“If you got bombarded and shot down from the sky and mistreated, how would you behave? (May 9, 2001)”

Steven M. Greer (1955) American ufologist

Greer's response after being asked why extraterrestrials had not made contact with the general public. UFO spotters slam 'US cover-up', BBC News, Rob Watson, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1322432.stm (May 9, 2001)

“I would live in your love as the sea-grasses live in the sea,
Borne up by each wave as it passes, drawn down by each wave that recedes.”

Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) American writer and poet

"I Would Live in Your Love"
Helen of Troy and Other Poems (1911)

Love, Grass, Sea

“He was without any rival whatever, the first comic genius who ever installed himself in Downing Street”

Michael Foot (1913–2010) British politician

On Benjamin Disraeli, in his own book, Debts of Honour
1980s

“Beware of the possible reason some people are honestly down and out - it is because they tried to copy the many who are superficially doing well.”

Eugene J. Martin (1938–2005) American artist

Annotated Drawings by Eugene J. Martin: 1977-1978

People

“Everything is in slow motion down there and silent. It could replace psychotherapy.”

Ashrita Furman (1954) American world record holder

primoquotes.com https://www.primoquotes.com/author/Ashrita+Furman

“I was heavily influenced by my first attempt at a novel. I started a fantasy novel back in high school, and…. well… it really sucked. It was a plotless, clichéd mess. When I sat down to write this book, I wanted to make something much, much better. I wanted to write something that was pretty much the opposite of that first novel.
Also, I read Cyrano De Bergerac, right before I started writing the book. Cyrano's character reminded me of some important things, namely, what it really means to be a tragic hero. You don't need a lot of the cliché fantasy trappings to have that cool character.
I also read Giacomo Casanova's memoirs soon after starting this project. That opened my eyes to how interesting an autobiography could be, provided the person telling it has a way with words and has lived a sufficiently adventurous life….”

Patrick Rothfuss (1973) American fantasy writer

Interview with Fantasy Book Critic (25 May 2007) http://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com/2007/03/interview-with-patrick-rothfuss.html

Life, Books, School, Way

“Simplicity in a system tends to increase that system’s efficiency. Because less can go wrong with fewer parts, less will. Complexity in a system tends to increase that system’s inefficiency; the greater the number of variables, the greater the probability of those variables clashing, and in turn, the greater the potential for conflict and disarray. Because more can go wrong, more will. That is why centralized systems are inclined to break down quickly and become enmeshed in greater unintended consequences.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action, (2013), p. 191

Parting

“Every drama school in the country turned me down, and so I was lucky to study drama at all, even if it was lowly Birmingham University. But even when I came out with my degree, my mother promptly insisted I go straight to secretarial college to have something to fall back on, just in case – which didn’t exactly fill me with confidence.”

Tamsin Greig (1966) English actress

About studying drama.
From an interview with the Independent on Sunday, "Green Goddess."

School, Confidence, Study, Universe

“People arrive at a factory and perform a totally meaningless task from eight to ﬁve without question because the structure demands that it be that way. There’s no villain, no ‘mean guy’ who wants them to live meaningless lives, it’s just that the structure, the system demands it and no one is willing to take on the formidable task of changing the structure just because it is meaningless. But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There’s so much talk about the system. And so little understanding”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 8

People, Way, Guy, Understanding

“The silky hush of intimate things, fragrant with my fragrance, steal softly down, so loth to rob me of my last dear concealment.”

P. L. Travers (1899–1996) Australian-British novelist, actress and journalist

From a poem (c. 1920) in the Australian publication The Triad, as quoted in Out of the Sky She Came: The Life of P.L. Travers, Creator of Mary Poppins (1999) by Valerie Lawson, ISBN 0733610722 [U.S. and U.K. title: Mary Poppins, She Wrote : The Life of P. L. Travers (2006) ISBN 0743298160]

“Now all the week long we've gone through that period of preparation, gettin' ourselves ready, askin' God to get us ready, askin' Him to purge us with His discipline and burn us with his fire and cleanse us and make us holy and ready to stand. For when you go down to downtown, you are goin' down there amidst mean and cruel people. Your'e goin' down there 'midst the police force and you've got to have God on your side. So you need to get ready. Ask Him to prepare you as He did Shadrach, Meshach and ABednego. You know, when they went to the fiery furnance, they said to the king, "We will not bow" But God was on their side… Just like God went in the fiery furnace with the three Hebrew boys, God will go with us on whatever operation we decide on. Now, you can't win the battle at home. You got to go to the battlefield. Now when you go to the battlefield, ain't no need to go out there without expectin' to have some casualitites. Somebody will get hurt. I don't know who it will be. It may be me. If it is me, I can only rejoice in the Lord that I had a little part to play… Now nobody can enjoin God. I don't care what kind of injuction the city attorney seeks to get, he cannot enjoin God. This is God's movement. Nobody can enjoin God. There can be no injuction against God. Because Albany does not belong to the Democratic Party of the state of Georgia. Albany does not beong to the Republicans of the state of Georgia. Albany does not belong to Governor Vandiver. Albany does not belong to the white people of the state of Georgia. All-benny belongs to God, for the prophet said: "The earth is the Lord's, and the fulllnes thereof, the world and they that dwell therein."”

Ralph Abernathy (1926–1990) American Civil Rights Movement leader

And this is God's world, this is God's All-benny, and God tells us that out of one blood He created all nations that dwell upon the face of this earth."
In a sermon he gave on 15 December 1961, during the Albany Movement; as quoted in Watters, Pat. 2012. Down to Now: Reflections on the Southern Civil Rights Movement. University of Georgia Press. pp. 202-203.

God, People, World, Home

“She came from the shower wrapped in a towel and she sat on the bed and took his hand and looked down at him. I cannot do what you ask, she said. I love you. But I cannot. He saw very clearly how all his life led only to this moment and all after led nowhere at all. He felt something cold and soulless enter him like another being and he imagined that it smiled malignly and he had no reason to believe that it would ever leave.”

Cormac McCarthy book All the Pretty Horses

All the Pretty Horses (1992)

Love, Life, Smile, Imagination

“We came to a side road, and off the side of the side road there was another fifteen foot cliff and at the bottom of the cliff there was another pile of garbage. And we decided that one big pile is better than two little piles, and rather than bring that one up we decided to throw ours down.”

Arlo Guthrie (1947) American folk singer

Alice's Restaurant Massacree

“Bored in a role, but he can't stopStanding up to sit back down,and lose the one thing found.Spinning the world like a toy top'till there's a ghost in every town.<BR”

Elliott Smith (1969–2003) American singer-songwriter

Can't Make A Sound.
Lyrics, Figure 8 (2000)

World

“When it comes right down to physical war and bloodshed, governments don’t protect people; people protect governments.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action, (2013), p. 180

War, People

“What constitutes the primordium of the adult parasite [ Rhizocephala ]? What can be injected through the narrow opening of the dart's hypodermic device? …Imagine going through such complexity as nauplius, cyprid, and kentrogon - and then paring yourself down to just a few cells for a quick and hazardous transition to the adult stage. What a minimal bridge at such a crucial transition! …But other species have achieved the ultimate reduction to a single cell! The dart injects just one cell into the host's interior, and the two parts of the life cyle maintain their indispensable continuity by an absolutely minimal connection - as though, within the rhizocephalan life cycle, nature has inserted a stage analogous to the fertilized egg that establishes minimal connection between generations in ordinary sexual organisms.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

Triumph of the Root-Heads, p. 363
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Life, Imagination, Nature, Parting

“So I strode down to the school like some vengence-brewing chieftain in an Icelandic saga…”

John Fowles book Daniel Martin

Daniel Martin (1977)

School

“The main point of Flying Down to Rio is the screen promise of Fred Astaire…. He's assuredly a bet after this one, for he's distinctly likeable on the screen, the mike is kind to his voice and as a dancer he remains in a class by himself. The latter observation will be no news to the professsion, which has long admitted that Astaire starts dancing where the others stop hoofing.”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

Variety. Flying Down to Rio, December 26, 1933. (M).

Dance, Flying

“Black unemployment is terrible. The black frame of mind is terrible, they're depressed, they're down — Obama's not doing anything for 'em. How is that hoax and change workin' for ya? They're all livid. I mean, they thought there were gonna be an exact 180-degree economic reversal and it's done nothing but get bad for everybody, but they're especially upset about it because they look at him as one of them, and now they feel abandoned. And I'm sure Tiger Woods' choice of females not helping 'em out with their attitudes there either.”

Rush Limbaugh (1951) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, author, and television personality

On the Black state of mind, The Rush Limbaugh Show, December 8, 2009 http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200912080019

Feeling, Change, Help

“Racial prejudice can't be talked down, it must be lived down.”

Francis J. Grimké (1852–1937) American activist and minister

The Works of Francis J. Grimke (1942), edited by Carter Godwin Woodson, Associated publishers, Incorporated, vol III, page 323

“If I have a face that rejoices in God's grace, my brother, it is because I have learned more from those who have lived within these [prison] walls than from those who live outside them. I have learned more from those who have fallen down than those who have remained upright.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

the cathedral pastor visiting Ólafur
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Four: The Beauty of the Heavens

God, Learning

“No right was deemed by the fathers of the Government more sacred than the right of speech. It was in their eyes, as in the eyes of all thoughtful men, the great moral renovator of society and government. Daniel Webster called it a homebred right, a fireside privilege. Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, founded in injustice and wrong, are sure to tremble, if men are allowed to reason of righteousness, temperance, and of a judgment to come in their presence. Slavery cannot tolerate free speech. Five years of its exercise would banish the auction block and break every chain in the South. They will have none of it there, for they have the power. But shall it be so here?”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1880s, Plea for Free Speech in Boston (1880)

Men, Exercises

“.. In spite of everything, there is still no more wonderful vocation than to continue to tolerate events and to work on in the name of our mission, in the name of that spirit which lives on in our teaching and in our vision of humanity and art, the spirit which can lead us Jews down the true and just path. But along the way, peoples will spill our blood, and that of others.”

Marc Chagall (1887–1985) French artist and painter

In the last lines of his lecture at the Congress of the Jewish Scientific Institute Vilnius, in 1935, as quoted in Marc Chagall - the Russian years 1906 – 1922, editor Christoph Vitali, exhibition catalogue, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 1991, p. 58
after 1930

People, Art, Way

“Life is filled with holes
Johnny's laying there in his sperm coffin
The angel looks down at him and says "Oh, pretty boy
Can't you show me nothing but surrender?”

Patti Smith (1946) American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist

Land
Lyrics

Life, Angels, Boy

“If any spiritualistic medium can do stunts, there is no more need for special conditions than there is for a chemist to turn down lights, start operations with a hymn, and ask whether there's any chemical present that has affinity with something named Hydrogen.”

Charles Fort book Lo!

Pt 1, Ch. 5 http://www.resologist.net/lo105.htm Lo! (1931)

Light

“As I was painting today, some thoughts came to me and I want to write them down for people I love. I know that I shall not live very long. But I wonder, is that sad? Is a celebration more beautiful because it lasts longer? And my life is a celebration, a short, intense celebration. My powers of perception are becoming finer.... with almost every breeze I take, I get a new sense and understanding of the linden tree, of ripened wheat, of hay... I suck everything up into me. And if only now love would blossom for me, before I depart; and if I can paint three good pictures, then I shall go gladly, with flowers in my hair..”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

excerpt of her Journal (1897); as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 196
1897

Love, Life, People, Sadness

“I have lived no cloistered life and hold in contempt the wise man who has not lived and the scholar who will not share. There have been many wiser men than I, but few have traveled as much road. I have seen life from the top down and the bottom up. I know how it looks both ways. And I know there is wisdom and that there is hope.”

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

My Philosophy (1965) http://www.ronthephilosopher.org/phlspher/page84.htm.

Life, Wisdom, Men, Hope

“What I have been talking about is knowledge. Knowledge, perhaps, is not a good word for this. Perhaps one would rather say my image of the world. Knowledge has an implication of validity, of truth. What I am talking about is what I believe to be true; my subjective knowledge. It is this Image that largely governs my behavior. In about an hour I shall rise, leave my office, go to a car, drive down to my home, play with the children, have supper, perhaps read a book, go to bed. I can predict this behavior with a fair degree to accuracy because of the knowledge which I have: the knowledge that I have a home not far away, to which I am accustomed to go. The prediction, of course, may not be fulfilled. There may be an earthquake, I may have an accident with the car on the way home, I may get home to find that my family has been suddenly called away. A hundred and one things may happen. As each event occurs, however, it alters my knowledge structure or my image. And as it alters my image, I behave accordingly. The first proposition of this work, therefore, is that behavior depends on the image.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1950s, The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society, 1956, p. 5

Children, Truth, Books, World

“Alas, the blue arc of heaven / Is covered with gloomy clouds, / And the bright radiance of the sun / Is completely hidden
See the terrifying force of the tempest / Bows the oaks so that is groans, / And the rose on the beautiful pasture / has ben bent down by the rain.”

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) Swedish painter

some poetry lines of Friedrich, c. 1807-09; as cited by C. D. Eberlein in C. D. Friedrich Bekenntnisse, p 57; as quoted and translated by Linda Siegel in Caspar David Friedrich and the Age of German Romanticism, Boston Branden Press Publishers, 1978, p. 52
1794 - 1840

Beauty, Sun

“The Americans didn't even think about the outcome of the bombing, because the Sudanese were so far below contempt as to be not worth thinking about. Suppose I walk down the sidewalk in Cambridge and, without a second thought, step on an ant. That would mean that I regard the ant as beneath contempt, and that's morally worse than if I purposely killed that ant.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Interview by Michael Powell in the Washington Post, May 5, 2002 https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2002/05/05/an-eminence-with-no-shades-of-gray/7fbaf1b5-ce87-45e3-a84f-604c61bb378e/?utm_term=.e1d833548377 Quotes 2000s, 2002

Thinking

“An immensely tall, angular figure … His gown hung round him in long folds like the wings of a bat, and his wig was perched slightly askew over a lantern jawed face with a blue chin, soulful spaniel-brown eyes and a turned-down mouth like a slit. But for his garb, you would have said that he was a dyspeptic undertaker in a town where nobody ever died.”

Gerald Durrell (1925–1995) naturalist, zookeeper, conservationist, author and television presenter

Rosie Is My Relative (1968)

Soul

“It's not necessarily against a system that it collapses, because most systems do collapse in the end. That’s a part of the wheel of life - systems do collapse. So I’m to some extent slightly inclined to forgive capitalism for being about to collapse. I mean there are lots of fine things, lots of love affairs and the like which have come to a sticky end. On the other hand, it is quite an accusation - quite hard for it to live down - that it's going to destroy the entire planet with it.”

David Fleming (1940–2010) British activist

Interview, November 4th, 2010 http://www.darkoptimism.org/2016/10/14/by-popular-demand-david-flemings-interviews/

Love, Life, Forgiveness, Parting

“We humans replace the bulk of both our “hardware” (e. g., our cells) and our “software” (e. g., our memories) many times in our life span. Nonetheless, we perceive ourselves as stable and permanent. Likewise, we perceive objects other than ourselves as permanent. Or rather, what we perceive as objects are those aspects of the world that display a certain permanence. For instance, when observing the ocean, we perceive the moving waves as objects because they display a certain permanence, even though the water itself is only bobbing up and down. Similarly (…) we perceive only those aspects of the world that are fairly stable against quantum decoherence.”

Max Tegmark book Our Mathematical Universe

Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality (2014)

Life, World, Water, Memory

“[The killing of Gaddafi] means a lot. That means dictatorships is going down and is done, and there are a lot of scenarios for the end of those dictators…In Yemen, we will have our own scenario. We will not go in the direction of violence.”

Tawakkol Karman (1979) Yemeni journalist, politician, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

2010s, Democracy Now! interview (2011)

“When you make a certain sound and look your thing, it makes it all the more impactful to drop that and start with a new thing. So I cut my hair off and lost the hat. It felt only natural to me to tear that canvas down and put a new one up.”

James Bay (1990) British singer-songwriter

[2018-03-28, https://www.femalefirst.co.uk/music/musicnews/james-bays-reinvention-inspired-sheeran-taylor-swift-1136499.html, James Bay's reinvention inspired by Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift, femalefirst.co.uk, 2018-08-25]

Nature, Tear

“Story on Story of wonderful hills and streams
Their blue-green haze locked in clouds!
Mists brush my thin cap with moisture
Dew wets my coat of plaited straw
On my feet I wear pilgrim's sandals
My hand holds a stick of old rattan
Though I look down again on the dusty world
What is that land of dreams to me?”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain: 100 Poems by the T'ang Poet Han-shan

World, Dreams

“Little sister, do you know why humanity passes down
ancient tales, from hand to hand, from generation to generation?
It is so that each generation can add something that was not there yesterday.
…The miracle of today is in the hands of those who go unshod, their hearts bare.”

Chế Lan Viên (1920–1989) Vietnamese writer

As quoted in Translation as Transhumance by Mireille Gansel (Feminist Press, 2017), ISBN 978-1936932085

Sister, Heart

“There are all kinds of atrocities, and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50-caliber machine guns, which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search and destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare, all of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all of this is ordered as a matter of written established policy by the government of the United States from the top down. And I believe that the men who designed these, the men who designed the free fire zone, the men who ordered us, the men who signed off the air raid strike areas, I think these men, by the letter of the law, the same letter of the law that tried Lieutenant [William] Calley, are war criminals.”

John F. Kerry (1943) politician from the United States

Testimony before subcommittees of the U.S. Senate, April, 1971

Men, War, People, Law

“And he looks down where the soil has been dug and there's a sparkle, and there's a glint in the morning light, and he reaches down and he picks it up with his stubby dirty fingers, and the last thing in the world he might have expected, and here is this, this speck of the future, this tiny little shock that's going to reverberate right to today -- literally till now! He picks it up, and he says, you know, he says, 'My God!”

J. S. Holliday (1924–2006) American historian

And he yells out, he said, 'My God, I think I've found gold!'
About James W. Marshall discovering gold in 1848
The West (1996)

God, World, Thinking, Light

“The way that we cheered whenever our team was scoring a touchdown,
The time that the floor fell out of my car when I put the clutch down.”

Hal David (1921–2012) American lyricist

Song Magic Moments

Cars, Way, Time

“I try to live with few rules, but one that I’ve adopted over the years is this: if it’s down to me being screwed up, or everybody else being screwed up, it is far, far, far more likely that I’m the one who’s screwed up.”

Mark Manson (1984) American writer and blogger

Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (2016), Chapter 6, “You’re Wrong About Everything (But So Am I)” (pp. 145-146)

“This is the age in which hills can look down upon the mountains.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

A Morir [To Die]

Age, Mountain

“On a fair morning the mountain invited you to get down and roll in its new grass and flowers (your less inhibited horse did just this if you failed to keep a tight rein). Every living thing sang, chirped, and burgeoned. Massive pines and firs, storm-tossed these many months, soaked up the sun in towering dignity. Tassel-eared squirrels, poker-faced but exuding emotion with voice and tail, told you insistently what your already knew full well: that never had there been so rare a day, or so rich a solitude to spend it in.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“Arizona and New Mexico: On Top”, p. 125.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Arizona and New Mexico: On Top," & "Arizona and New Mexico: Thinking Like a Mountain"

Mountain, Flowers, Solitude, Grass

“I put the words down and push them a bit.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

As quoted in his obituary in The New York Times (11 April 1966)

“Now it might be easier even sometimes when it's soft to get it down, but it's hard to manipulate then, if you don't have any resistance to work against. He'll probably get hard anyhow with you fooling with it! So you might as well work it hard.
Actually, when he's big & hard & feeling good is one of the best times to do it, like when you wash it during his bath, sort of under the guise that you're trying to make him feel good, & he'll like it. Other times, if you put a little lubricant on it it's a big help. Try putting a little baby oil or vaseline on it to lubricate it real good before pulling the foreskin down. The mucous of your mouth is a good lubricant too!”

David Berg (1919–1994) Children of God founder

Uncircumcision! To be, or not to be?

Fools, Feeling, Time, Help

“It was during the first years [1906-1910] that we [the Futurist artists] realized the presence of a dualism deep down within us, where another person, whom we ourselves do not know, tends, at the moment of the creative act, to supplant the person we believe ourselves to be and would like to be. It is difficult to bring these two individualities into accord, yet it is upon this accord that the development of a personality largely depends. My first contact with the art of Seurat whom I adopted, once and for all, as my master, did a great deal to help me to express myself in terms of the two simultaneous and often opposed aspirations. This opposition caused me much mental torture, I must admit..”

Gino Severini (1883–1966) Italian painter

In an interview, 1956; as quoted in Letters of the great artists, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson , London, 1963, p. 247

Art, Help, Dependency, Personality

“When I am dead and over me bright April
Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,
Tho' you should lean above me broken-hearted,
I shall not care. I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful
When rain bends down the bough,
And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted
Than you are now.”

Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) American writer and poet

"I Shall Not Care
Rivers to the Sea (1915)

Peace, Tree, Heart, Dead

“All doctrines relating to the creation of the world, the government of man by superior beings, and his destiny after death, are conjectures which have been given out as facts, handed down with many adornments by tradition, and accepted by posterity as "revealed religion". They are theories more or less rational which uncivilised men have devised in order to explain the facts of life, and which civilised men believe that they believe.”

William Winwood Reade (1838–1875) British historian

Source: The Martyrdom of Man (1872), Chapter II, "Religion", p. 138.

Life, Death, Men, World

“It is a recognised fact that the greatest composers were likewise the greatest virtuosos; but did they play like the pianists of the present day, who run up and down the keyboard with passages studied beforehand? Pooh! pooh! pooh! Don't tell me! A real virtuoso, when extemporising, plays pieces which hold together and possess a form. Were the ideas in them fixed instantly on paper, they would be taken for pieces written at leisure. That is what I call playing the piano; everything else is a bad joke.”

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770–1827) German Romantic composer

24th November, 1814
Source: Johann Wenzel Tomaschek, "A Talk with Beethoven", The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular, Vol. 33, Beethoven Supplement (Dec. 15, 1892)

Idea, Study

“If we fail to see that there are powers that cause people to be bowed down in bondage, we are going to fight the wrong battle.”

T. B. Joshua (1963) Nigerian Christian leader

On the xenophobic attacks in South Africa - "How I Predicted Xenophobic Attacks In South Africa - TB Joshua" http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/04/how-i-predicted-xenophobic-south-africa-t-b-joshua/ Vanguard Nigeria (April 17 2015)

People, Fight

“As these old soldiers, the living descendants of the spirit of Washington that made our country, go down toward the setting sun, representing the spirit of Lincoln, who saved our country, they will have the satisfaction of knowing that they are leaving behind them the same spirit, still undaunted, still ready to maintain in the future a more abiding peace and a more abounding prosperity, under which America can continue to work for the salvation of the world.”

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

1920s, Ways to Peace (1926)

World, Peace, Sun, Future

“Those who are skeptical about carbon dioxide greenhouse warming might profitably note the massive greenhouse effect on Venus. No one proposes that Venus's greenhouse effect derives from imprudent Venusians who burned too much coal, drove fuel-inefficient autos, and cut down their forests. My point is different. The climatological history of our planetary neighbor, an otherwise Earthlike planet on which the surface became hot enough to melt tin or lead, is worth considering — especially by those who say that the increasing greenhouse effect on Earth will be self-correcting, that we don't really have to worry about it, or (you can see this in the publications of some groups that call themselves conservative) that the greenhouse effect is a "hoax."”

Carl Sagan book Pale Blue Dot

Source: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994), p. 227

History

“A great storm destroys much that is precious, but it may also clear the air and blow down trees which might have been obscuring the view and making our life stuffy, and reveal in our estate possibilities of development that we had not thought of.”

John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician

"A University's Bequest to Youth" (10 October 1936)
Canadian Occasions (1940)

Life, Tree

“Hey, the band was rockin'
Goin' around and around
Well, reelin' and a rockin'
What a crazy sound
Well, they never stopped rockin'
Till the moon went down”

Chuck Berry (1926–2017) American rock-and-roll musician

"Around and Around" (1957)
Song lyrics

“First and foremost, yoga made its contribution to my quest to understand consciously the mechanics of violin playing, a quest which by 1951 had long been one of the themes of my life. All influences pointed to less tension, more effective application of energy, the breaking down of resistance in every joint, the coordination of all motions into one motion; and illustrated the profound truth that strength comes not from strength but from the subtle comprehension of process, proportion and balance.”

Yehudi Menuhin (1916–1999) American violinist and conductor

Source: The Dawn of Indian Music in the West http://books.google.co.in/books?id=OSZKCXtx-wEC&pg=PA46, A&C Black, 24 April 2006, p. 46

Life, Truth, Understanding

“And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don’t know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.”

Robert W. Service (1874–1958) Canadian poet

The Shooting of Dan McGrew http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/biography/service_r_w/dan_mcgrew.html (1907), The Cremation of Sam McGee http://www.wordinfo.info/words/index/info/view_unit/2640/?letter=C&spage=26

“You took me riding in your rocket and gave me a star,
But at a half a mile from heaven
You dropped me back down to this cold, cold world.”

Stevie Wonder (1950) American musician

Rocket Love
Song lyrics, Hotter Than July (1980)

World, Star

“Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[1992Jul2.222039.26476@netlabs.com, 1992]
Usenet postings, 1992

Hell, Madness

“I thought about taking a shower but I could see the headlines: MAILMAN CAUGHT DRINKING THE BLOOD OF GOD AND TAKING A SHOWER, NAKED, IN A ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. …I found out later that mail for the church was delivered to the parish house around the corner. But now, of course, I knew where to… shower when I'm down and out.”

Charles Bukowski book Post Office

Post Office (1971)

God, Drink, Housing

“.. But it doesn't frighten me, because I studied in France, thank God, and I know of no artist in history who was not 'literary' when it came down to it. Not a single one. And even if they don't appear to be, I know of none and you at least don't recall them, because there is nothing to recall... Sometime or other I'd like to see a << pure >> artist, but I didn't even find one in France. Obviously the trouble is that one approaches painting from the other side, so that the word << sujet >> conceals the point of the thing. Yet even the most beautiful and << emptiest >> sujet (an apple, a grape or any << non-figurative painting >>) doesn't help if there are no foundations, either innate or acquired through hard work... Why don't we say clearly: << That is freedom, and this is commitment to the subject >> and << to each tree its berries >>, but let it be a tree and not a donkey..”

Marc Chagall (1887–1985) French artist and painter

Quote in Chagall's letter to A. N. Benois, 1918; as quoted in Marc Chagall - the Russian years 1906 – 1922, editor Christoph Vitali, exhibition catalogue, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 1991, p. 150
1910's

God, Beauty, History, Tree

“The morning slips away in a Valium haze and catalogues,
And numerous cups of coffee,
In the afternoon the weekly food is put in bags - as you float off down the high street.
The shop windows reflect, play a nameless host to a closet ghost -
A picture of your fantasy, a victim of your misery…”

Paul Weller (singer) (1958) English singer-songwriter, Guitarist

Private Hell, from Setting Sons (1979)

Food, Coffee

“Eight simple steps of what I think caused the Flood and explain all these strange phenomena on the planet. Then we'll go into a little bit more detail and then we'll close this down.
1. Noah and the animals got safely in the ark.
2. A 300 degree below zero ice meteor came flying toward the earth and broke up in space. As it was breaking up, some of the fragments got caught and became the rings around the planets. They made the craters on the Moon, the craters on some of the planets, and what was left over came down and splattered on top of the North and South pole.
3. This super cold snow fell on the poles mostly, burying the mammoths, standing up.
4. The dump of ice on the North and South pole cracked the crust of the earth releasing the fountains of the deep. The spreading ice caused the Ice Age effects. The glacier effects that we see. It buried the mammoths. It made the earth wobble around for a few thousand years. And it made the canopy collapse, which used to protect the earth. And it broke open the fountains of the deep.
5. During the first few months of the flood, the dead animals would settle out, and dead plants, and all get buried. They would become coal, if they were plants, and oil if they're animals. And those are still found today in huge graveyards. Fossils found in graveyards. Oil found in big pockets under the ground.
6. During the last few months of the flood, the unstable plates of the earth would shift around. Some places lifted up; other places sank down. That's going to form ocean basins and mountain ranges. And the runoff would cause incredible erosion like the Grand Canyon in a couple of weeks.
7. Over the next few hundred years, the ice caps would slowly melt back retreating to their current size. The added water from the ice melt would raise the ocean level creating what's called a continental shelf. It would also absorb carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere which allows for radiation to get in which is going to shorten people's life spans. And in the days of Peleg, it finally took affect.
8. The earth still today shows the effects of this devastating flood.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Hovind theory

Life, People, Age, Mountain

“I have known a lot of people to go down and out — they kill themselves with alcohol or downers. But I've never known anybody to go up and out.”

Ken Kesey (1935–2001) novelist

Trip of a Lifetime (1999)

People, Alcohol

“There is no "slippery slope" toward loss of liberty, only a long staircase where each step down must first be tolerated by the American people and their leaders.”

Alan Simpson (1931) American politician

As quoted in The New York Times (26 September 1982).

People, Loss

“I loved these compliments, which he lobbed at me like popcorn at a pigeon. I felt silly for craving his attention and powerful because he had noticed me. I bounced between those extremes, every other heartbeat, laying down hope one stratum at a time. The fact that he was all wrong––married, my boss, a flirt––gave me a perverse desire to make it right.”

Andrea Lewis (writer) Microsoft employee

"Tierra Blanca" Bryant Literary Review, Vol. 11 (2010)
2010-

Love, Hope, Time

“I got those, Data’s chair and console, the side walls, and some panels from Vegas. And though I didn’t know I'd have the entire bridge someday, I knew they were an invaluable history of Trek,
I couldn't allow it to bring me down. I spent almost a year trying to convince people to help me. If worst came to worst it could go to a rich guy’s house but then no one would see it.
Once this happened, that's how this bridge got forgotten about—people changed hands, people got fired,
I didn't know if he had standing assembled walls or what,
My whole thing was: this is good, it's great to have a dream, but it’s great to have your feet on the floor too.
They said: ‘You have to do something. This can't remain in this condition.”

Huston Huddleston

December 2012 https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/12/captain-i-saved-the-bridge-boldly-going-where-no-tv-set-has-gone-before/

People, Dreams, Guy, History

“No one is beat till he quits,
No one is through till he stops,
No matter how hard Failure hits,
No matter how often he drops,
A fellow's not down till he lies
In the dust and refuses to rise.”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

Defeat, stanza 1, p. 112.
A Heap o' Livin' (1916)

Failure

“Scotty and I became good friends. We had an immediate musical rapport that was sensational. We did a lot of listening and talking. Besides technique, he had governing, control. I think he was the first bass player who was fleet-footed in the musical sense.
[…]
What a trauma! It struck me right down—that someone I was developing such a relationship with would suddenly not be there.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

On bassist Scott LaFaro and his premature demise, as quoted in Jade Visions: The Life and Music of Scott LaFaro https://books.google.com/books?id=KnTSqVu9Zr4C&pg=PA67&dq=%22Clare+relates%22+intitle:Jade&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAGoVChMI-9Dphf_kxgIVCGk-Ch3DaQiT#v=onepage&q=%22Clare%20relates%22%20intitle%3AJade&f=false (2009) by Helene LaFaro-Fernandez, pp. 67-68

Music, Thinking, Sense

“I made a lot of exits through side doors, down fire escapes or over rooftops. I abandoned more wardrobes in the course of five years than most men acquire in a lifetime. I was slipperier than a buttered escargot.”

Frank W. Abagnale (1948) American security consultant, former confidence trickster, check forger, impostor, and escape artist

Source: Catch Me if You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake, 2002, Ch.1 Pg.4(a), Ch.1 Pg. 11(b),Back cover(c), Ch.6 Pg.116(d)

Men

“I paused and set down my glass, searching for the fine edge of deceit that always lies right up against the truth.”

Richard K. Morgan book Altered Carbon

Source: Altered Carbon (2002), Chapter 32 (p. 394)

Truth, Search

“No man can sit down and withhold his hands from the warfare against wrong and get peace from his acquiescence.”

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

“A Book Which Reveals Men to Themselves”, Address on the Tercentenary of the Tranlation of the Bible (7 May 1911) in The Politics of Woodrow Wilson, p. 104 http://books.google.com/books?id=rxC4IG60KTwC&pg=PA104&dq=%22withhold+his+hands+from+the+warfare+against+wrong%22 1910s

Peace

Quotes about down page 35

Quotes about down
page 35