Quotes about essence

A collection of quotes on the topic of essence, life, thing, other.

Quotes about essence

“In a way, you are poetry material; You are full of cloudy subtleties I am willing to spend a lifetime figuring out. Words burst in your essence and you carry their dust in the pores of your ethereal individuality.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

Way

“Melody is the essence of music. I compare a good melodist to a fine racer, and counterpointists to hack post-horses; therefore be advised, let well alone and remember the old Italian proverb: Chi sa più, meno sa—Who knows most, knows least.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Austrian Romantic composer

As spoken to Michael Kelly, from Reminiscences of Michael Kelly, of the King's Theatre, and Theatre Royal Drury Lane, including a period of nearly half a century; with Original Anecdotes of many distinguished Personnages, Political, Literary, and Musical (London, Henry Colburn, 1826; digitized 2006), 2nd ed., vol. I (p. 225) http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC00439352&id=ph3XEMzGt5YC&pg=RA2-PA225&lpg=RA2-PA225&dq=%22Melody+is+the+essence+of+music%22&hl=en

Music, Horse

“Few mortals know that the kingdom of God includes the kingdom of mundane fulfillments. … The divine realm extends to the earthly; but the later, illusory in nature, does not contain the essence of Reality.”

Mahavatar Babaji Hindu Yogi

Source: Autobiography of a Yogi (1946), Ch. 34 : Materializing a Palace in the Himalayas

God, Nature, Reality

“What kind of food you eat, how much you eat, how you eat, turning it from a compulsive pattern into a conscious process: this is the essence of fasting. Sadhana”

Sadhguru book Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Food

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

Love, Beauty, Courage, Waiting

“The totalitarian attempt at global conquest and total domination has been the destructive way out of all impasses. Its victory may coincide with the destruction of humanity; wherever it has ruled, it has begun to destroy the essence of man.”

Hannah Arendt book The Origins of Totalitarianism

Preface to the first edition, written in the summer of 1950.
The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)
Context: The totalitarian attempt at global conquest and total domination has been the destructive way out of all impasses. Its victory may coincide with the destruction of humanity; wherever it has ruled, it has begun to destroy the essence of man. Yet to turn our backs on the destructive forces of the century is of little avail.
The trouble is that our period has so strangely intertwined the good with the bad that without the imperialists' "expansion for expansion's sake," the world might never have become one; without the bourgeoisie's political device of "power for power's sake," the extent of human strength might never have been discovered; without the fictitious world of totalitarian movements, in which with unparalleled clarity the essential uncertainties of our time have been spelled out, we might have been driven to our doom without ever becoming aware of what has been happening.
And if it is true that in the final stages of totalitarianism an absolute evil appears (absolute because it can no longer be deduced from humanly comprehensible motives), it is also true that without it we might never have known the truly radical nature of Evil.

Way, Victory

“The essence of true friendship is to make allowance for another's little lapses.”

Ovid (-43–17 BC) Roman poet

Friendship, Friendship, For Friend, For Bestfriend

“Call on Me…
Call on Me..
Call on Me.

I am the Lover you dreamt about in your Angel filled Dreams.

I have sat awaiting your love for an eternity.

Please do not shun Me for I shall die.

My entire existance is the pure essence of You, My dear.

How you have entrapped Me like a Siren.

If I had known what I know now..

If only I had known what I know now.

I do not wish to exhibit My Undying Love for You, My dear.

However it is completely Transparent.

Awaken

and see me.

I am your Destiny.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Lovers, Dreams, Angels, Love

“The energy of the mind is the essence of life.”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy

Source: The Philosophy of Aristotle

Life

“The essence of oppression is that one is defined from the outside by those who define themselves as superior by criteria of their own choice.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

“Black Consciousness is in essence the realization by the black man of the need to rally together with his brothers around the cause of their oppression.”

Steve Biko (1946–1977) anti-apartheid activist in South Africa

“A game that keeps a smile on the player's face is a wonderful thing. Nintendo's theme for 2006 will be "Create new fun". Spread the fun of games to everyone. To do this, we must return to the beginning, to recapture the essence that made people who enjoy games even now enjoy them in the first place.”

Shigeru Miyamoto (1952) Japanese video game designer and producer

Source: Famitsu

People, Smile, Game

“It is not who has a larger or smaller "mass" following today, but the essence of the doctrine that matters.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Anarchism or Socialism (1906)
Context: We are not the kind of people who, when the word "anarchism" is mentioned, turn away contemptuously and say with a supercilious wave of the hand: "Why waste time on that, it's not worth talking about!" We think that such cheap "criticism" is undignified and useless.
Nor are we the kind of people who console themselves with the thought that the Anarchists "have no masses behind them and, therefore, are not so dangerous." It is not who has a larger or smaller "mass" following today, but the essence of the doctrine that matters. If the "doctrine" of the Anarchists expresses the truth, then it goes without saying that it will certainly hew a path for itself and will rally the masses around itself. If, however, it is unsound and built up on a false foundation, it will not last long and will remain suspended in mid-air. But the unsoundness of anarchism must be proved.
Some people believe that Marxism and anarchism are based on the same principles and that the disagreements between them concern only tactics, so that, in the opinion of these people, no distinction whatsoever can be drawn between these two trends.
This is a great mistake.
We believe that the Anarchists are real enemies of Marxism. Accordingly, we also hold that a real struggle must be waged against real enemies.

“Let us not ponder upon the past. It will simply take us backwards.
Look to the future and start fresh.
Put all of your energy and thoughts into a brand new unblemished tomorrow.
It is of the essence.
Don't dream of something you have no idea about.
Don't drive in reverse.
The past is full of cobwebs and dust.
The future is new and clean.
Don't imagine that the past is better than where you are right now.
Renew.
Move forward.
If you are in a bad place, change it for the better, brighter and new you.
~~~~~~~~~~~~”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Imagination, Idea, Change, Past

“I imbue this place with my essence, every stone and every drop. My visit will do wonders for the flowers."

Aly propped her chin on her hand. "So does manure," she observed.”

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

Source: Trickster's Queen

Flowers

“If I had a soul I sold it
for pretty words
If I had a body I used
it up spurting my essence

Allen Ginsberg warns you
dont follow my path
to extinction”

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet

Soul

“The very essence of dhyana, or meditativeness, is that you push yourself to the highest possible intensity where, after some time, there is no effort. Now meditation will not be an act, but a natural consequence of the intensity that has been achieved. You can simply be. It is in these absolutely non-compulsive states of existence that the necessary atmosphere is set for the blossoming of an individual into a cosmic possibility. If”

Sadhguru book Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Nature, Effort, Time

“The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one's love upon other human individuals.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Reflections on Gandhi (1949)
Source: In Front of Your Nose: 1945-1950

Love, Life, Perfection, Loyalty

“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”

Michael E. Porter (1947) American engineer and economist

Source: What is strategy?, 1996, p. 70

“Change is the essence of life; be willing to surrender what you are for what you could become.”

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) American protestant theologian

Life, Change

“Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

Beauty, Peaceful, Fate, Nature

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

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

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

Way, Nature, Tree, Christ

“Technically he was highly gifted, but also severely limited. His music is well constructed and effective, but monotonous in texture, which consists in essence mainly of artificial and gushing tunes accompanied by a variety of figures derived from arpeggios. The enormous popular success some few of Rakhmaninoff's works had in his lifetime is not likely to last, and musicians never regarded it with much favour.”

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) Russian composer, pianist, and conductor

Eric Blom (ed.) Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 5th edn. (London: Macmillan, 1954) vol. 7, p. 27.
Criticism

Music, Success

“We mustn't fear to adopt the advanced management methods applied in capitalist countries (…) The very essence of socialism is the liberation and development of the productive systems (…) Socialism and market economy are not incompatible (…) We should be concerned about right-wing deviations, but most of all, we must be concerned about left-wing deviations.”

Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997) Chinese politician, Paramount leader of China

Cited by António Caeiro in Pela China Dentro (translated), Dom Quixote, Lisboa, 2004. ISBN 972-20-2696-8

Fear, Country

“All problems are unsolvable. The essence of the existence of a problem is that there is no solution. Looking for a fact means there is no fact. To think is not to know how to be.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 123
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Todos os problemas são insolúveis. A essência de haver um problema é não haver solução. Procurar um facto significa não haver um facto. Pensar é não saber existir.

Problem, Thinking

“Glorified art Thou, O God my God! I indeed testify to Thee and all-things at the moment when I am in Thy presence in pure servitude, upon this, that verily Thou art God, no other God is there besides Thee! Thou art unchanged, O my God, within the elevation of Grandeur and Majesty, and shall be unalterable, O my desirous boon, within the pinnacle of power and perfection inasmuch as nothing shall frustrate Thee and nothing shall extinguish Thee! Thou art unchanged as Thou art the Capable above Thy creation and Thou art unalterable as Thou indeed shall be as from before inasmuch as nothing is with Thee of anything and nothing is in Thy rank of anything! Thou accomplisheth and willeth and doeth and desireth! Glorified art Thou, O God my God, with Thy praise, salutations be upon the Primal Point, the Chemise of Thy Visage and the Light of Thy direction and the Luminosity of Thy Beinghood and the Clarity of Thy Selfhood and the Ocean of Thy Power by all that which Thou hath bestowed upon Him of Thy Stations and Thy Culminations and Thy Foundations, for nothing shall frustrate Thee of anything and nothing shall extinguish Thee of anything! No other God is There besides Thee, for verily Thou art the Lord of all the worlds! And blessings, O God my God, be upon the one who was the first to believe in Thee, the Visage of Thy Selfhood and the Decree of Thy direction; and upon the one who was the last to believe in Thee, the Essence of Thy direction and the Visage of Thy Holiness; and upon those whom Ye have made martyrs/witnesses (shuhadá’) unknown except by Thy Command nor restrained except by Thy Wisdom; then upon those to whom Ye have promised that Ye shall make Him manifest on the Day of Resurrection and He whom Ye will upraise on the Day of the Return by all which Thou will bestow upon Him of Thy Power and Thy Strength, for nothing shall extinguish Thee and nothing shall frustrate Thee! Ye determine all-things, for verily Thou art powerful over whatsoever Thou willeth! And I indeed testify, O my God, between Thy hands that verily there is no other god besides Thee and that He whom Ye shall make manifest on the Day of Resurrection is the Chemise of Thy Creativity and the Visage of Thy Manifestation and the direction of Thy Victory and the substance of Thy Pardoning and the branch of Thy Singularity and the clarity of Thy Unicitarianism and the Pen [of the Letter] Nún (al-qalam al-nún) within Thy Beinghood and the setting of the Cause-Command within Thy Essentiality inasmuch as there is no difference between Him and Thee except that He is Thy servant in Thy grasp, such that whatsoever is in the Heavens and the earth and what is between them will then be filled by His Name and by His Light until it be made apparent that no other god is there besides Thee and no Beloved is there like unto Thee and no Desired One is there other than Thee and no Dread is there of Thy like and no Justice of Thy equal! No other god is there besides Thee! Glorified art Thou, O God, and by Thy praise, blessings, O my God, be upon the Guide to the Throne of the Hidden Cloud and the Path to Thy Presence in the Sina'i of Authorization and the Caller by Thy Logos-Self and the Crier of Thy Permission between Thy Hands and the Ariser of Thy Attendance by Thy Command; then the Triumph, O my God, by all that which Thou will bestow upon Him of Thy Power, then that which will be made manifestly apparent of the Word upon the earth and what is upon it by Thy grandeur, and also in this that nothing shall ever put out His Light! Verily nothing shall frustrate Thee of anything and nothing shall extinguish Thee of anything! Thy mercy encompasseth all-things and verily Thou art powerful over what Ye have willed; and to the one who prays to Thee, Hearing, Answering, for verily Thou art Observant over us, and verily Thou art High, Praised beyond that which the inner hearts can comprehend!”

Subh-i-Azal (1831–1912) Persian religious leader

Ethics of the Spirituals

Wisdom, God, World, Justice

“As far as socialism is concerned, it is not a heavenly message like Islam but a mere system for regulating the relations between man and his utilization of the means of production in this world. If we decide to regulate our national wealth, it is not against the essence of Islam. God has created man and has given him the faculty of mind to choose between good and bad, between virtue and vice. We have chose social justice instead of exploitation of man by man and this is how we can practically help the individual Muslim and direct him to [a] virtuous life. However, the reactionaries wanted to create a rift between socialism and Islam because socialism is not in their interest.”

Siad Barre (1919–1995) Head of State of Somalia

Speech (1972), as quoted by Ioan Myrddin (1980), A Modern History of Somalia, Wilture Enterprises (International) Ltd.

Life, God, World, Justice

“Communism… is the genuine resolution of the antagonism between man and nature and between man and man; it is the true resolution of the conflict between existence and essence, objectification and self-affirmation, freedom and necessity, individual and species. It is the riddle of history solved and knows itself as the solution.”

Karl Marx book Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

Private Property and Communism, p. 43.
Paris Manuscripts (1844)

History, Communication, Nature, Freedom

“I think the essence of romantic love for women is being the special one, and that's an absolutely terrible trap. If the lover treats certain other people badly, you will be treated that badly, too.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

Norah Vincent, Sex, Love and Politics: Andrea Dworkin, in New York Press, vol. 11, no. 5, Feb. 4–10, 1998, p. 40, col. 4 (main title and subtitle may have been in either order, per id., p. [1]).

Love, Women, People, Lovers

“Today I will speak about love. What is love? How can one get love? Why should one get it? There are two kinds of love. One is the worldly connection. The other is attained through Knowledge. In this human body exists the love we have to discover. You should love one another and behave lovingly because when love comes, everything comes. You should speak to one another with love and humility. Love is the essence.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Ram Lila Grounds, Delhi, India, October 29, 1966 (translated from Hindi) - Published in Divine Light (UK) April 1, 1973, Volume 2, Issue 7
1960s

Love, Knowledge

“It's like there's this predator energy on this planet, and this predator energy feeds upon the essence of the spirit, feeds upon the essence of the human being, the spirit. This predator energy can take fossil fuel and other resources out of the Earth, turn it into fuel, to run a machine system. But in order for there to be a need for that system, and in order for that system to work, they have to mine our minds to get at the essence of our spirit. In the same way the external mining takes place, it pollutes—we see now, people understand how it poisons the environment, the water, the air pollution—the mining of the essence, the mining of the spirit, mining our minds … the pollution from that is all the neurotic, distorted, insecure behavior patterns that we develop. That's the pollution. Because in order for this predatory system, this disease, to work, we must not be able to use our minds in a clear coherent manner. Because if we use our minds in a clear coherent manner, we will not accept the unacceptable.”

John Trudell (1946–2015) Native American rights activist, musician, poet

Columbus Day Speech, San Francisco (1992)

People, Disease, Way, Behavior

“Is it not frightening, that we, the Romanian people, no longer can produce fruit? That we do not have a Romanian culture of our own, of our people, of our blood, to shine in the world side by side with that of other peoples? That we be condemned today to present ourselves before the world with products of Jewish essence? That today, at this moment, when the world expects that the Romanian people appear to show the fruit of our national blood and genius, we present ourselves with an infection of Judaic cultural caricature?”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Nation and Culture

People, World, Appearance

“An ancient writer said that arithmetic and geometry are the wings of mathematics; I believe one can say without speaking metaphorically that these two sciences are the foundation and essence of all the sciences which deal with quantity. Not only are they the foundation, they are also, as it were, the capstones; for, whenever a result has been arrived at, in order to use that result, it is necessary to translate it into numbers or into lines; to translate it into numbers requires the aid of arithmetic, to translate it into lines necessitates the use of geometry.”

Joseph Louis Lagrange (1736–1813) Italian mathematician and mathematical physicist

Dans Les Leçons Élémentaires sur les Mathématiques (1795) Leçon cinquiéme, Tr. McCormack, cited in Moritz, Memorabilia mathematica or, The philomath's quotation-book (1914) Ch. 15 Arithmetic, p. 261. https://archive.org/stream/memorabiliamathe00moriiala#page/260/mode/2up

Mathematics, Science

“"What really is the point of trying to teach anything to anybody?"
This question seemed to provoke a murmur of sympathetic approval from up and down the table.
Richard continued, "What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that's really the essence of programming. By the time you've sorted out a complicated idea into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you've learned something about it yourself."”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987)

Stupidity, Way, Idea, Understanding

“But, ultimately, I don't have very cast iron opinions on black music other than black modern music which I detest. I detest Stevie Wonder. I think Diana Ross is awful. I hate all those records in the Top 40 - Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston. I think they're vile in the extreme. In essence this music doesn't say anything whatsoever.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

From "Home thoughts from abroad", article by Frank Owen, Melody Maker (27 Sep 1986)
In interviews etc., About other artists

Hate, Music, Thinking

“Speed is the essence of war. Take advantage of the enemy's unpreparedness; travel by unexpected routes and strike him where he has taken no precautions.”

Sun Tzu (-543–-495 BC) ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher from the Zhou Dynasty

Source: The Art of War, Chapter XI · The Nine Battlegrounds

War, Travel, Speed

“God, the supreme being, is neither circumscribed by space, nor touched by time; he cannot be found in a particular direction, and his essence cannot change.”

Avicenna (980–1037) medieval Persian polymath, physician, and philosopher

As quoted in 366 Readings From Islam (2000), edited by Robert Van der Weyer
Context: God, the supreme being, is neither circumscribed by space, nor touched by time; he cannot be found in a particular direction, and his essence cannot change. The secret conversation is thus entirely spiritual; it is a direct encounter between God and the soul, abstracted from all material constraints.

God, Change, Time

“When evaluating someone’s actions or temperament, always examine motive for it is the essence of what and who they are. One’s actions are in direct correlation with the conscience.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1992

Motivation

“In less than a hundred years the Germans organised themselves into six very different systems: the Hohenzollern Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, the German Democratic Republic (aka communist East Germany), the Federal Republic of Germany (aka West Germany), and finally democratic reunited Germany. Of course the Germans kept their language and their love of beer and bratwurst. But is there some unique German essence that distinguishes them from all other nations, and that has remained unchanged from Wilhelm II to Angela Merkel?”

Yuval Noah Harari book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Love, Making love, Beer

“[...] art and commerce are in essence incompatible.”

Marilyn Manson book The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

1990s, The Long Hard Road Out of Hell (1998)

Art

“Life may contain the "essence" (what else could?); recollection, the repetition in imagination, may decipher the essence and deliver to you the "elixir"; and eventually you may even be privileged to "make" something out of it, "to compound the story." But life itself is neither essence nor elixir, and if you treat as such it will only play its tricks on you.”

Hannah Arendt book Men in Dark Times

Source: Men in Dark Times

Life, Imagination

“Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today — but the core of science fiction, its essence, the concept around which it revolves, has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

"My Own View" in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1978) edited by Robert Holdstock; later published in Asimov on Science Fiction (1981)
General sources

Science

“When it is understood that one loses joy and happiness in the attempt to possess them, the essence of natural farming will be realized. The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.”

Masanobu Fukuoka book The One-Straw Revolution

Source: The One-Straw Revolution

Nature, Joy, Perfection, Happiness

“It is with the soul that we grasp the essence of another person, not with the mind, not even with the heart.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Variant: It is with the soul that we grasp the essence of another human being, not with the mind, nor even with the heart.

Soul, Heart, Personality

“Any piece of good music is in essence a love song.”

Diana Gabaldon book Dragonfly in Amber

Source: Dragonfly in Amber

Love, Music

“Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: On Love

Love, Understanding

“The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.”

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

Beauty, Beauty, Art, Gratitude

“The essence of life is statistical improbability on a colossal scale.”

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

Life

“I really don't see what is so romantic about proposing. One may be accepted - one usually is, I believe - and then the excitement is ended. The very essence of romance is uncertainty.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Algernon, Act I.
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
Context: I really don’t see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. Why, one may be accepted. One usually is, I believe. Then the excitement is all over. The very essence of romance is uncertainty.

“The essence of what I desire is simply this: to sleep away life.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Life, Sleep

“Form is emptiness, emptiness is form" states the Heart Sutra, one of the best known ancient Buddhist texts. The essence of all things is emptiness.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

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

Heart

“No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream--alone.”

Joseph Conrad book Heart of Darkness

Source: Heart of Darkness

Life, Truth, Dreams

“Canada is the essence of not being. Not English, not American, it is the mathematic of not being. And a subtle flavour - we're more like celery as a flavour.”

Mike Myers (1963) Canadian- British- American actor, comedian, singer, screenwriter, and film producer

Mathematics

“Mystery is the essence of divinity”

Zora Neale Hurston book Dust Tracks on a Road

Source: Dust Tracks on a Road

“That is what I have always understood to be the essence of anarchism: the conviction that the burden of proof has to be placed on authority, and that it should be dismantled if that burden cannot be met.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

“In essence, you are neither inferior nor superior to anyone. True self-esteem and true humility arise out of that realization. In the eyes of the ego, self-esteem and humility are contradictory. In truth, they are one and the same.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

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

Truth

“The essence of warriorship, or the essence of human bravery, is refusing to give up on anyone or anything.”

Chögyam Trungpa book Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior

Source: Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior

“Names and attributes must be accommodated to the essence of things, and not the essence to the names, since things come first and names afterwards.”

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer

Variant translation: Names and attributes must be accommodated to the essence of things, and not the essence to the names, because things came first, and their names subsequently.
Other quotes
Source: As quoted in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo (1957) by Stillman Drake, p. 92

“The very essence of romance is uncertainty.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Variant: The very essence of romance is uncertainty.
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

Romantic, Wedding

“Now the compound or composite may be supposed to be naturally capable of being dissolved in like manner as being compounded; but that which is uncompounded, and that only, must be, if anything is, indissoluble. …And the uncompounded may be assumed to be the same and unchanging, where the compound is always changing and never the same? …Is that idea or essence, which in the dialectical process we define as essence of true existence—whether essence of equality, beauty, or anything else: are these essences, I say, liable at times to some degree of change? or are they each of them always what they are, having the same simple, self-existent and unchanging forms, and not admitting of variation at all, or in any way, or at any time?”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Beauty, Way, Idea, Nature

“Fire may be represented as the destroyer of all sophistry, and as the image and demonstration of truth; because it is light and drives out darkness which conceals all essences”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

or subtle things
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), X Studies and Sketches for Pictures and Decorations

Truth, Light

“370. But more correctly: The fact that I use the word "hand" and all the other words in my sentence without a second thought, indeed that I should stand before the abyss if I wanted so much as to try doubting their meanings — shows that absence of doubt belongs to the essence of the language-game, that the question "How do I know…"”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book On Certainty

drags out the language-game, or else does away with it.
On Certainty (1969)

Game, Question

“The good news is that at the essence of who and what we are there is a deep and fundamental goodness. Not the goodness that we've been taught, not like morally good, as opposed to morally bad, but something deeper - a goodness which is inherent in what we are.”

Adyashanti (1962) Spiritual teacher

The Basic Teachings - Part 1: Principles of the Teaching (2009)

“The essence of the Liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment.”

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

1950s, Unpopular Essays (1950)

“The following week, when he Toulmouche passed in front of me, he sat down and squarely positioned on my chair, looked at my piece. I could then see him turn around, inclining his serious face with a satisfied air and I heard him say to me while smiling: "Not bad, not at all bad this, but it is too much like the real model. You have a stocky man and you depict him as stocky… Nature, my friend, serves well as a means to study but offers no real interest. Style is the only thing that matters." I was flabbergasted. The truth, life, nature - all that provoked emotions in me - all that constituted for me the real essence and the unique "raison d'être" of art, did not exist for this man!”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

Quote from Claude Monet par lui-meme – an interview by Thiébault-Sisson / translated by Louise McGlone Jacot-Descombes; published in 'Le Temps newspaper', 26 November 1900.
About Toulmouche, Monet first painting-teacher in Paris c. 1857
1900 - 1920

Life, Truth, Smile, Art

“Now, what is 'unrighteousness' in practice? It is in practice behavior of a kind disliked by the herd. By calling it unrighteousness, and by arranging an elaborate system of ethics around this conception, the herd justifies itself in wreaking punishment upon the objects of its own dislike, while at the same time, since the herd is righteous by definition, it enhances its own self-esteem at the very moment when it lets loose its impulse to cruelty. This is the psychology of lynching, and of the other ways in which criminals are punished. The essence of the conception of righteousness, therefore, is to afford an outlet for sadism by cloaking cruelty as justice.”

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

"The Idea of Righteousness"
1930s, Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization? (1930)

Justice, Way, Behavior, Time

“Walking on these streets, until the night falls, my life feels to me like the life they have. By day they’re full of meaningless activity; by night, they’re full of meaningless lack of it. By day I am nothing, and by night I am I. There is no difference between me and these streets, save they being streets and I a soul, which perhaps is irrelevant when we consider the essence of things.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

"A Factless Autobiography", number 3, tr. by Richard Zenith
The Book of Disquiet

Life, Feeling, Soul, Night

“When from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.And once again I had recognized the taste of the crumb of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-flowers which my aunt used to give me (although I did not yet know and must long postpone the discovery of why this memory made me so happy), immediately the old gray house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like the scenery of a theater.”

Marcel Proust book In Search of Lost Time

Mais, quand d’un passé ancien rien ne subsiste, après la mort des êtres, après la destruction des choses, seules, plus frêles mais plus vivaces, plus immatérielles, plus persistantes, plus fidèles, l’odeur et la saveur restent encore longtemps, comme des âmes, à se rappeler, à attendre, à espérer, sur la ruine de tout le reste, à porter sans fléchir, sur leur gouttelette presque impalpable, l’édifice immense du souvenir.<p>Et dès que j’eus reconnu le goût du morceau de madeleine trempé dans le tilleul que me donnait ma tante (quoique je ne susse pas encore et dusse remettre à bien plus tard de découvrir pourquoi ce souvenir me rendait si heureux), aussitôt la vieille maison grise sur la rue, où était sa chambre, vint comme un décor de théâtre.
"Overture"
In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol I: Swann's Way (1913)

People, Faith, Hope, Soul

“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

“The army is no longer capable of fulfilling the orders left by our ancestors: it only simulates. It is too squeamish to kill. This is no longer an army – it is a large gathering of pacifists and faggots, who are, in essence, the same.”

Yurii Andrukhovych book The Moscoviad

The Moscoviad
Source: The Moscoviad. Yuri Andrukhovych. Spuyten Duyvil, New York City. ISBN1933132523, p. 172

“Since Leibniz there has perhaps been no man who has had a full command of all the intellectual activity of his day. Since that time, science has been increasingly the task of specialists, in fields which show a tendency to grow progressively narrower… Today there are few scholars who can call themselves mathematicians or physicists or biologists without restriction. A man may be a topologist or a coleopterist. He will be filled with the jargon of his field, and will know all its literature and all its ramifications, but, more frequently than not, he will regard the next subject as something belonging to his colleague three doors down the corridor, and will consider any interest in it on his own part as an unwarrantable breach of privacy… There are fields of scientific work, as we shall see in the body of this book, which have been explored from the different sides of pure mathematics, statistics, electrical engineering, and neurophysiology; in which every single notion receives a separate name from each group, and in which important work has been triplicated or quadruplicated, while still other important work is delayed by the unavailability in one field of results that may have already become classical in the next field.
It is these boundary regions which offer the richest opportunities to the qualified investigator. They are at the same time the most refractory to the accepted techniques of mass attack and the division of labor. If the difficulty of a physiological problem is mathematical in essence, then physiologists ignorant of mathematics will get precisely as far as one physiologists ignorant of mathematics, and no further. If a physiologist who knows no mathematics works together with a mathematician who knows no physiology, the one will be unable to state his problem in terms that the other can manipulate, and the second will be unable to put the answers in any form that the first can understand… A proper exploration of these blank spaces on the map of science could only be made by a team of scientists, each a specialist in his own field but each possessing a thoroughly sound and trained acquaintance with the fields of his neighbors; all in the habit of working together, of knowing one another's intellectual customs, and of recognizing the significance of a colleague's new suggestion before it has taken on a full formal expression. The mathematician need not have the skill to conduct a physiological experiment, but he must have the skill to understand one, to criticize one, and to suggest one. The physiologist need not be able to prove a certain mathematical theorem, but he must be able to grasp its physiological significance and to tell the mathematician for what he should look. We had dreamed for years of an institution of independent scientists, working together in one of these backwoods of science, not as subordinates of some great executive officer, but joined by the desire, indeed by the spiritual necessity, to understand the region as a whole, and to lend one another the strength of that understanding.”

Norbert Wiener book Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine

Source: Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948), p. 2-4; As cited in: George Klir (2001) Facets of Systems Science, p. 47-48

Books, Dreams, Literature, Mathematics

“The essence of striving to the far-off worlds is contained in the assimilation of a consciousness of our life in them. The possibility of life on them becomes for our consciousness, as it were, a channel of approach. Indeed, this consciousness must be dug through as a channel. People are able to swim, yet a considerable portion of them do not swim. Such an obvious fact as the far-off worlds completely fails to attract humanity. It is time to cast this seed into the human brain.”

Nicholas Roerich (1874–1947) Russian painter, writer, archaeologist, theosophist, enlightener, philosopher

§ 44
New Era Community (1926)

Life, People, World, Time

“The ancient philosopher said that strife is the father of all things. No new values can be created where a free conflict of ideas is impossible. To be sure, a revolutionary dictatorship means by its very essence strict limitations of freedom. But for that very reason epochs of revolution have never been directly favorable to cultural creation: they have only cleared the arena for it. The dictatorship of the proletariat opens a wider scope to human genius the more it ceases to be a dictatorship. The socialist culture will flourish only in proportion to the dying away of the state.”

Leon Trotsky book The Revolution Betrayed

The Revolution Betrayed (1936)

Idea, Freedom

“And when the father who begat it perceived the created image of the eternal gods, that it had motion and life, he rejoiced and was well pleased; and he bethought him to make it yet more nearly like its pattern. Now whereas that is a living being eternally existent, even so he essayed to make this All the like to the best of his power. Now so it was that the nature of the ideal was eternal. But to bestow this attribute altogether upon a created thing was impossible; so he bethought him to make a moving image of eternity, and while he was ordering the universe he made of eternity that abides in unity an eternal image moving according to number, even that which we have named time. For whereas days and nights and months and years were not before the universe was created, he then devised the generation of them along with the fashioning of the universe. Now all these are portions of time, and was and shall be are forms of time that have come to be, although we wrongly ascribe them unawares to the eternal essence. For we say that it was and is and shall be, but in verity is alone belongs to it: and was and shall be it is meet should be applied only to Becoming which moves in time; for these are motions. But that which is ever changeless without motion must not become elder or younger in time, neither must it have become so in past nor be so in the future; nor has it to do with any attributes that Becoming attaches to the moving objects of sense: these have come into being as forms of time, which is the image of eternity and revolves according to number. Moreover we say that the become is the become, and the becoming is the becoming, and that which shall become is that which shall become, and not-being is not-being. In all this we speak incorrectly. But concerning these things the present were perchance not the right season to inquire particularly.”

Plato book Timaeus

38b, as quoted by R. D. Archer-Hind, The Timaeus of Plato (1888)
Timaeus

Life, God, Fashion, Nature

“This independence is glorified as "academic freedom," … except that in the background, a discreet distance away, stands the state watching with a certain supervisory look on its face, making sure to remind everybody from time to time that it is the aim, the purpose, the essence of this whole strange process.”

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

Diese doppelte Selbständigkeit preist man mit Hochgefühl als ›akademische Freiheit‹: ... nur daß hinter beiden Gruppen in bescheidener Entfernung der Staat mit einer gewissen gespannten Aufsehermiene steht, um von Zeit zu Zeit daran zu erinnern, daß er Zweck, Ziel und Inbegriff der sonderbaren Sprech- und Hörprozedur sei.
Anti-Education (1872)

Freedom, Time

“To the Youth in Europe and North America,
The recent events in France and similar ones in some other Western countries have convinced me to directly talk to you about them. I am addressing you, [the youth], not because I overlook your parents, rather it is because the future of your nations and countries will be in your hands; and also I find that the sense of quest for truth is more vigorous and attentive in your hearts.
I don’t address your politicians and statesmen either in this writing because I believe that they have consciously separated the route of politics from the path of righteousness and truth.
I would like to talk to you about Islam, particularly the image that is presented to you as Islam. Many attempts have been made over the past two decades, almost since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, to place this great religion in the seat of a horrifying enemy. The provocation of a feeling of horror and hatred and its utilization has unfortunately a long record in the political history of the West.
Here, I don’t want to deal with the different phobias with which the Western nations have thus far been indoctrinated. A cursory review of recent critical studies of history would bring home to you the fact that the Western governments’ insincere and hypocritical treatment of other nations and cultures has been censured in new historiographies.
The histories of the United States and Europe are ashamed of slavery, embarrassed by the colonial period and chagrined at the oppression of people of color and non-Christians. Your researchers and historians are deeply ashamed of the bloodsheds wrought in the name of religion between the Catholics and Protestants or in the name of nationality and ethnicity during the First and Second World Wars. This approach is admirable.
By mentioning a fraction of this long list, I don’t want to reproach history; rather I would like you to ask your intellectuals as to why the public conscience in the West awakens and comes to its senses after a delay of several decades or centuries. Why should the revision of collective conscience apply to the distant past and not to the current problems? Why is it that attempts are made to prevent public awareness regarding an important issue such as the treatment of Islamic culture and thought?
You know well that humiliation and spreading hatred and illusionary fear of the “other” have been the common base of all those oppressive profiteers. Now, I would like you to ask yourself why the old policy of spreading “phobia” and hatred has targeted Islam and Muslims with an unprecedented intensity. Why does the power structure in the world want Islamic thought to be marginalized and remain latent? What concepts and values in Islam disturb the programs of the super powers and what interests are safeguarded in the shadow of distorting the image of Islam? Hence, my first request is: Study and research the incentives behind this widespread tarnishing of the image of Islam.
My second request is that in reaction to the flood of prejudgments and disinformation campaigns, try to gain a direct and firsthand knowledge of this religion. The right logic requires that you understand the nature and essence of what they are frightening you about and want you to keep away from.”

Ali Khamenei (1939) Iranian Shiite faqih, Marja' and official independent islamic leader

Message of Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei To the Youth in Europe and North America http://english.khamenei.ir//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2001, Khamenei.ir (January 21, 2015) <br class="br">2015

War, People, Truth, Youth

“All ancient philosophers, poets, and moralists agree that love is a striving, an aspiration of the “lower” toward the “higher,” the “unformed” toward the “formed,” … “appearance” towards “essence,” “ignorance” towards “knowledge,” a “mean between fullness and privation,” as Plato says in the Symposium. … The universe is a great chain of dynamic spiritual entities, of forms of being ranging from the “prima materia” up to man—a chain in which the lower always strives for and is attracted by the higher, which never turns back but aspires upward in its turn. This process continues up to the deity, which itself does not love, but represents the eternally unmoving and unifying goal of all these aspirations of love. Too little attention has been given to the peculiar relation between this idea of love and the principle of the “agon,” the ambitious contest for the goal, which dominated Greek life in all its aspects—from the Gymnasium and the games to dialectics and the political life of the Greek city states. Even the objects try to surpass each other in a race for victory, in a cosmic “agon” for the deity. Here the prize that will crown the victor is extreme: it is a participation in the essence, knowledge, and abundance of “being.” Love is only the dynamic principle, immanent in the universe, which sets in motion this great “agon” of all things for the deity.
Let us compare this with the Christian conception. In that conception there takes place what might be called a reversal in the movement of love. The Christian view boldly denies the Greek axiom that love is an aspiration of the lower towards the higher. On the contrary, now the criterion of love is that the nobler stoops to the vulgar, the healthy to the sick, the rich to the poor, the handsome to the ugly, the good and saintly to the bad and common, the Messiah to the sinners and publicans. The Christian is not afraid, like the ancient, that he might lose something by doing so, that he might impair his own nobility. He acts in the peculiarly pious conviction that through this “condescension,” through this self-abasement and “self-renunciation” he gains the highest good and becomes equal to God. …
There is no longer any “highest good” independent of and beyond the act and movement of love! Love itself is the highest of all goods! The summum bonum is no longer the value of a thing, but of an act, the value of love itself as love—not for its results and achievements. …
Thus the picture has shifted immensely. This is no longer a band of men and things that surpass each other in striving up to the deity. It is a band in which every member looks back toward those who are further removed from God and comes to resemble the deity by helping and serving them.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1961), pp. 85-88

Love, Life, Men, God

“The present age… prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, fancy to reality, the appearance to the essence… for in these days illusion only is sacred, truth profane.”

Ludwig Feuerbach book The Essence of Christianity

Aber freilich für diese Zeit, welche das Bild der Sache, die Kopie dem Original, die Vorstellung der Wirklichkeit, den Schein dem Wesen vorzieht … denn heilig ist ihr nur die Illusion, profan aber die Wahrheit.
Preface to Second Edition (1843)
The Essence of Christianity (1841)

Truth, Age, Reality, Appearance

“Nature must not win the game, but she cannot lose. And whenever the conscious mind clings to hard and fast concepts and gets caught in its own rules and regulations - as is unavoidable and of the essence of civilized consciousness - nature pops up with her inescapable demands.”

C.G. Jung book Alchemical Studies

Alchemical Studies

Game, Nature

“I don't like to cast aspersions on the fans because I know you mean well, but what I have found is that ninety-nine percent of the Jar Jar Binks haters are failures at life. In essence, these haters are taking out their frustrations on Jar Jar. I don't mean to be cruel, but we need to examine the facts. The most popular Star Wars collectibles are all Jar Jar-related. Now, the failures at life who have no money, no women, and no future will spend all day on the Internet talking about how they hate Jar Jar Binks. This is very sad. The Phantom Menace is one of the top five films of all time.”

George Lucas (1944) American film producer

The George Lucas Interviews at SuperShadow.com (27 June 2005) http://web.archive.org/web/20050630002609/http://www.supershadow.com:80/starwars/lucas/

Life, Women, Money, Hate

“In all the previous cases of wholes, we have nowhere been able to argue from the parts of the whole. Compared to its parts, the whole constituted by them is something quite different, something creatively new, as we have seen. Creative evolution synthesises from the parts a new entity not only different from them, but quite transcending them. That is the essence of a whole. It is always transcendent to its parts, and its character cannot be inferred from the characters of its parts.”

Jan Smuts (1870–1950) military leader, politician and statesman from South Africa

Source: Holism and Evolution (1926), p. 342

Parting

“If we live in our oneness-heart, we will feel the essence of all religions which is the love of God. Forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, brotherhood and the feeling of oneness are the signs of a true religion.”

Sri Chinmoy (1931–2007) Indian writer and guru

World-Destruction: Never, Impossible! (1994)

Love, God, Religion, Feeling

“The death of Che Guevara places a responsibility on all revolutionaries of the World to redouble their decision to fight on to the final defeat of Imperialism. That is why in essence Che Guevara is not dead, his ideas are with us.”

Stokely Carmichael (1941–1998) American activist

in (1967), as quoted in Andrew Sinclair's Viva Che!: The Strange Death and Life of Che Guevara

Death, World, Idea, Decision

“We tend to believe the premises because we can see that their consequences are true, instead of believing the consequences because we know the premises to be true. But the inferring of premises from consequences is the essence of induction; thus the method in investigating the principles of mathematics is really an inductive method, and is substantially the same as the method of discovering general laws in any other science.”

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

"The Regressive Method of Discovering the Premises of Mathematics" (1907), in Essays in Analysis (1973), pp. 273–274
1900s

Law, Mathematics, Science

“All things which have being, have it from the essence of God by his participation: but pure love cannot stop to contemplate this general participation coming from God, nor to consider whether in itself, considered as a creature, it receives it in the same way as do the other creatures which more or less participate with God. Pure love cannot endure such comparison; on the contrary, it exclaims with a great impetus of love; my being is God, not by participation only but by a true transformation and annihilation of my proper being.”

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

Life and Doctrine

Love, God, Way

“And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is.”

Plato (-427–-347 BC) Classical Greek philosopher

211
The Symposium

Love, Beauty

“Poetry is simply literature reduced to the essence of its active principle. It is purged of idols of every kind, of realistic illusions, of any conceivable equivocation between the language of "truth" and the language of "creation."”

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

Littérature (1930)

Truth, Literature

“You are outside life, you are above life, you have miseries which the ordinary man does not know, you exceed the normal level, and it is for this that men refuse to forgive you, you poison their peace of mind, you undermine their stability. You have irrepressible pains whose essence is to be inadaptable to any known state, indescribable in words. You have repeated and shifting pains, incurable pains, pains beyond imagining, pains which are neither of the body nor of the soul, but which partake of both. And I share your suffering, and I ask you: who dares to ration our relief?… We are not going to kill ourselves just yet. In the meantime, leave us the hell alone.”

Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French-Occitanian poet, playwright, actor and theatre director

General Security: The Liquidation of Opium (1925)

Life, Men, Pain, Peace

“America: A place where we can be a part of something bigger. A place where we can contribute our talents and fulfill our ambitions and secure new opportunity for ourselves and for others. A place where we can retain pride in our heritage, but where we recognize that we have a common creed, a loyalty to these documents, a loyalty to our democracy; where we can criticize our government, but understand that we love it; where we agree to live together even when we don’t agree with each other; where we work through the democratic process, and not through violence or sectarianism to resolve disputes; where we live side by side as neighbors; and where our children know themselves to be a part of this nation, no longer strangers, but the bedrock of this nation, the essence of this nation.”

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

2015, Naturalization Ceremony speech (December 2015)

Love, Children, Democracy, Understanding

“Contradiction is the essence of the universe.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

A essência do universo é a contradição.
"A Nova Poesia Portuguesa no Seu Aspecto Psicológico", published in A Águia, Porto (September 1912)

Universe

“I feel how inside of me word follows word and thought follows thought, growing to the last act of creation. Holy hour of bringing forth, you are pain and pleasure, and a longing for form, image and essence. I am only the instrument that God uses to sing his song. I am only the vessel that nature smilingly fills with new wine.”

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

Ich fühle, wie in mir sich wachsend Wort an Wort, Gedanke an Gedanke reiht zum letzten Akt der Schöpfung. Heilige Stunde des Gebärens, Schmerz bist du und Lust und eine Sehnsucht nach Form, Gestalt und Wesen. Ich bin nur Instrument, darauf der alte Gott sein Lied singt. Ich bin nur harrendes Gefäß, in das Natur den neuen Wein mit Lächeln füllt.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

God, Pain, Pleasure, Feeling

“At many stages in the advance of humanity, this conflict between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess is the central condition of progress. In our day it appears as the struggle of freemen to gain and hold the right of self-government as against the special interests, who twist the methods of free government into machinery for defeating the popular will. At every stage, and under all circumstances, the essence of the struggle is to equalize opportunity, destroy privilege, and give to the life and citizenship of every individual the highest possible value both to himself and to the commonwealth.”

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

1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)

Life, Men, Appearance

“I am convinced that the species humanity embraces the double species man and woman; that the essence of the complete human being is characterized by this duality; and that the entire structure of the essence demonstrates the specific character. There is a difference, not only in body structure and in particular physiological functions, but also in the entire corporeal life.”

Edith Stein (1891–1942) Jewish-German nun, theologian and philosopher

Essays on Woman (1996), Problems of Women's Education (1932)

Life

“In the more sophisticated versions of the critics of ideology - that developed by the Frankfurt School, for example - it is not just a question of seeing things (that is, social reality) as they 'really are," of throwing away the distorting spectacles of ideology; the main point is to see how the reality itself cannot reproduce itself without this so-called ideological mystification. The mask is not simply hiding the real state of things; the ideological distortion is written into its very essence… the moment we see it 'as it really is,' this being dissolves itself into nothingness or, more precisely, it changes into another kind of reality. That is why we must avoid simple metaphors of demasking, of throwing away the veils which are supposed to hide the naked reality.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

24-25
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

School, Question, Reality, Change

“Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, gaiety and life to everything. It is the essence of order, and leads to all that is good, just, and beautiful, of which it is the invisible, but nevertheless dazzling, passionate, and eternal form.”

Plato (-427–-347 BC) Classical Greek philosopher

This quotation is not known to exist in Plato's writings. It apparently first appeared as a quotation attributed to Plato in The Pleasures of Life, Part II by Sir John Lubbock (Macmillan and Company, London and New York), published in 1889.
Misattributed

Life, Sadness, Law, Beauty

“Love is God’s essence; Power but his attribute: therefore is his love greater than his power.”

Richard Garnett (1835–1906) British scholar, librarian, biographer and poet

De Flagello myrteo. iv.

Love, God

“Mysticism is, in essence, little more than a certain intensity and depth of feeling in regard to what is believed about the universe.”

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

Source: 1910s, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays http://archive.org/stream/mysticism00russuoft/mysticism00russuoft_djvu.txt (1918), Ch. 1: Mysticism and Logic

Feeling, Universe