Quotes about essential
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“We humans look rather different from a tree. Without a doubt we perceive the world differently than a tree does. But down deep, at the molecular heart of life, the trees and we are essentially identical.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos

Life, World, Tree, Heart

“Perhaps love is essential because it's unnecessary.”

Julian Barnes (1946) English writer

Source: A History of the World in 10½ Chapters

Love

“The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man. Unless he understands this, he does not grasp the essential meaning of his life.”

Huey P. Newton book Revolutionary Suicide

Source: Revolutionary Suicide (1973), p. 3

Life, Understanding, Learning

“I do plan on saying one or two things to him when we're allowed an hour for goodbyes. To let him know how essential he's been to me all these years. How better my life has been for knowing him.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Life

“The essential thing is to WANT to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer

Singing

“It’s probably unfair to expect the world at large, or even most people, to see us for all we are. It is essential, however, that we see ourselves for all we are. (413)”

Victoria Moran (1950) American writer

Source: Younger by the Day: 365 Ways to Rejuvenate Your Body and Revitalize Your Spirit

People, World

“If I had learned anything in my life about love, it was that they were tenous things that could end at any moment. Caution was essential-but not at the cost of risking your life”

Richelle Mead book Spirit Bound

Source: Spirit Bound

Love, Life, Learning

“To be interested in something is to be involved in what is essentially a stressful relationship with that thing, to suffer anxiety on its behalf.”

Geoff Dyer (1958) English writer

Source: Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling With D.H. Lawrence

Suffering

“Loads of children read books about dinosaurs, underwater monsters, dragons, witches, aliens, and robots. Essentially, the people who read SF, fantasy and horror haven't grown out of enjoying the strange and weird.”

China Miéville (1972) English writer

Children, People, Books, Reading

“Hope is essential to any political struggle for radical change when the overall social climate promotes disillusionment and despair.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: Talking About a Revolution: Interviews with Michael Albert, Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, bell hooks, Peter Kwong, Winona LaDuke, Manning Marable, Urvashi Vaid, and Howard Zinn

Hope, Change, Despair

“the identity of an individual is essentially a function of her choices, rather than the discovery of an immutable attribute”

Amartya Sen (1933) Indian economist

Source: The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity

“Flight is essential, but I can't let my fear show.”

Suzanne Collins (1962) American television writer and novelist

Fear

“I think sex with him might undo my essential cellular cohesion.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Faefever

Sex, Thinking

“Wit and puns aren't just decor in the mind; they're essential signs that the mind knows it's on, recognizes its own software, can spot the bugs in its own program.”

Adam Gopnik (1956) American journalist

“Every instant of our lives is essentially irreplaceable: you must know this in order to concentrate on life.”

André Gide (1869–1951) French novelist and essayist

Life

“Adults had the notion that juveniles needed to suffer. Only when they had suffered enough to wipe out most of their naturally joyous spirits and innocence were they staid enough to be considered mature. An adult was essentially a broken-down child.”

Piers Anthony book Centaur Aisle

Source: Centaur Aisle

Nature, Suffering

“Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

“… love is essentially a much simpler phenomenon--it becomes complicated, corrupted or obstructed by an unequal balance of power.”

Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) Feminist

Source: The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution

Love

“One down," Beckendorf said. "About five thousand to go." He tossed me a jar of thick green liquid—Greek fire, one of the most dangerous magical substances in the world. Then he threw me another essential tool of demigod heroes—duct tape”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

World

“Things on the essential list: vodka, Nine Inch Nails, a steady supply of mortal men, and an all-purpose bitchy attitude.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Men

“How often does a man ruin his disciples by remaining always with them! When men are once trained, it is essential that their leader leave them, for without his absence they cannot develop themselves. Plants always remain small under a big tree.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Men, Tree, Training

“The existence of other people is essentially awkward.”

Lionel Shriver book Checker and the Derailleurs

Source: Checker and the Derailleurs

People

“Conceptions are artificial. Perceptions are essential.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

“Poetry, the best of it, is lunar and is concerned with the essential insanities. Journalism is solar (there are numerous newspapers named The Sun, none called The Moon) and is devoted to the inessential.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Source: Still Life with Woodpecker

Sun

“The essential quality of life is living' the essential quality of living is change; change is evolution; and we are part of it.”

John Wyndham book The Chrysalids

Source: The Chrysalids

Life, Change, Parting

“Knowledge exists in two forms - lifeless, stored in books, and alive, in the consciousness of men. The second form of existence is after all the essential one; the first, indispensable as it may be, occupies only an inferior position.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Men, Books, Knowledge

“Keeping it short and to the point is essential, otherwise he won’t hear a single word.”

Sherry Argov (1977) American writer

Source: Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl-A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship

“I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of a work of fiction should be to tell a story; and I have never believed that the novelist who properly performed this first condition of his art, was in danger, on that account, of neglecting the delineation of character — for this plain reason, that the effect produced, by any narrative of events is essentially dependent, not on the events themselves, but on the human interest which is directly connected with them. It may be possible in novel-writing to present characters successfully without telling a story; but it is not possible to tell a story successfully without presenting characters: their existence, as recognizable realities, being the sole condition on which the story can be effectively told. The only narrative which can hope to lay a strong hold on the attention of readers is a narrative which interests them about men and women — for the perfectly obvious reasons that they are men and women themselves.”

Wilkie Collins book The Woman in White

Source: Collins explaining what he calls the literary principal guiding him, in the preface of the second edition of The Woman in White. Also in Reality's Dark Light: The Sensational Wilkie Collins by Maria K. Bachman & Don Richard Cox [University of Tennessee Press, 2003, ISBN 1-572-33274-3] ( p. xiv https://books.google.com/books?id=_X8AlmIp0dwC&pg=PR14)

Women, Men, Hope, Art

“Dead bodies didn't resemble unconscious ones; it was as if you could sense that something had fled from them, that some essential spark was now missing.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Sense, Dead

“To sing you must first open your mouth. You must have a pair of lungs, and a little knowledge of music. It is not necessary to have an accordion, or a guitar. The essential thing is to want to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer

Music, Knowledge, Singing

“Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat; the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Life, Happiness, Pleasure, Cheating

“Don't try to behave as though you were essentially sane and naturally good. We're all demented sinners in the same cosmic boat - and the boat is perpetually sinking.”

Aldous Huxley book Island

Source: Island

Nature

“What do you love doing so much that the words failure and success essentially become irrelevant?”

Elizabeth Gilbert Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

Source: Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

Love, Failure, Success

“What is essential, therefore, is not that you no longer believe, but that God continues to believe in you.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Of Love and Other Demons

Source: Of Love and Other Demons

God

“An essentially private man who wished his total indifference to public notice to be universally recognized.”

Tom Stoppard Travesties

Carr, Act I
Source: Travesties (1974)

Universe, Indifference

“Nothing is so essential as dignity…Time will reveal who has it and who has it not.”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

Source: The Signature of All Things

Time

“Only the person who is essentially capable of remaining silent is capable of speaking essentially.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Personality

“Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.”

Howard Zinn (1922–2010) author and historian

Law, Democracy, Departure

“I saw something even more beautiful than a sense of humor: an appreciation for life’s essential absurdity.”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 11/22/63

Life, Beauty, Sense

“Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters.”

Samuel Adams (1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher

Men, Personality

“so whatever you want to do, just do it… Making a damn fool of yourself is absolutely essential.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Fools

“I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

First published in the "Roger Ebert's Journal" column (19 May 2010) http://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/cannes-7-a-campaign-for-real-movies

“Love what is simple and beautiful.
These are the essentials.”

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

Source: The Tao of Emerson the Tao of Emerson

Love, Beauty

“A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery.”

Nelson Algren book Nonconformity

Source: Nonconformity (1953/1996)
Context: You don't write a novel out of sheer pity any more than you blow a safe out of a vague longing to be rich. Compassion is all to the good, but vindictiveness is the verity Faulkner forgot: the organic force in every creative effort, from the poetry of Villon to the Brinks Express Robbery, that gives shape and color to all our dreams. [... ] A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery. The strong-armer isn't out merely to turn a fast buck any more than the poet is out solely to see his name on the cover of a book, whatever satisfaction that event may afford him. What both need most deeply is to get even. And, of course, neither will.

Sense

“The art of reading consists in remembering the essentials and forgetting non essentials.”

Adolf Hitler book Mein Kampf

Source: Mein Kampf

Art, Reading, Forgetting

“No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.”

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) prominent American realist painter and printmaker

Imagination

“Writing is one of the few careers for which you essentially train yourself, the other two major ones being juggling and pickpocketing.”

Maureen Johnson (1973) writer from the USA

Training

“PHILOSOPHY essential nature or essence.”

Erin McKean (1971) Lexicographer, dictionary editor

The New Oxford American Dictionary

Nature

“An ongoing relationship with God through His Word is essential to the Christian's consistent victory!”

Beth Moore (1957) American evangelist

Source: Believing God

God, Victory

“There were thousands and thousands of forms of joy in the world, but that all were essentially one and the same, namely, the joy of being able to love.”

Michael Ende book The Neverending Story

Source: The Neverending Story

Love, World, Joy

“If we had to say what writing is, we would have to define it essentially as an act of courage.”

Cynthia Ozick (1928) American writer

Courage, Courageous

“BELLADONNA, n. In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Source: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

Beauty

“The depressed person was in terrible and unceasing pain, and the impossibility of sharing or articulating this pain was itself a component of the pain and a contributing factor in its essential horror.”

David Foster Wallace book Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

Source: Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

Pain, Personality

“Of all the virtues we can learn no trait is more useful, more essential for survival, and more likely to improve the quality of life than the ability to transform adversity into an enjoyable challenge.”

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1934) Hungarian American psychologist

Source: Flow: The Psychology of Happiness

Life, Learning

“Clary and Simon continued to stare judgmentally. It made Simon very happy. Judging people together was an essential part of best friendship.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Born to Endless Night

Friendship, Happiness, People, Parting

“Love is so painful, how could you ever wish it on anybody? And love is so essential, how could you ever stand in its way?”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Two Boys Kissing

Love, Pain, Way

“Judging people together was an essential part of best friendship”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Born to Endless Night

Friendship, People, Parting

“That which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal; from which it follows that irregularity—that is to say, the unexpected, surprise and astonishment, are an essential part and characteristic of beauty.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Beauty, Parting

“It's essential you create a fiery will from within--harness that power of decisiveness--and choose to be your strongest self.”

Karen Salmansohn American writer

Decision

“Well, first you have to be very, very funny. I have realized that it is essential for a boy to be funny. Otherwise, what is the point in a boy?”

Jaclyn Moriarty (1968) Australian writer

Source: The Year of Secret Assignments

Boy

“Trust is the glue of life. It's the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It's the foundational principle that holds all relationships.”

Stephen R. Covey (1932–2012) American educator, author, businessman and motivational speaker

Life, Communication, Relationship

“The essential question is not, "How busy are you?' but 'What are you busy at?' 'Are you doing what fulfills you?”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

Question, Business

“For a colonized people the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity.”

Frantz Fanon book The Wretched of the Earth

Source: The Wretched of the Earth

People

“Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man's soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it.”

Laura Hillenbrand book Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Source: Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Life, Food, Soul, Water

“And I thought about the color and I realized what blue it was. It was the soft and changeable, essential blue of a well-worn pair of pants.

Pants = Love”

Ann Brashares book Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood

Source: Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood

Love, Color

“The formulation of the problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Mathematics, Problem

“Sometimes when you work in advertising you'll get a product that's really garbage and you have to make it seem fantastic, something that is essential to the continued quality of life.”

Augusten Burroughs book Dry

Source: Dry

Life

“Simon became inarticulate in his effort to express mankind's essential illness.”

William Golding (1911–1993) British novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate

Effort

“The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.”

D.H. Lawrence book Studies in Classic American Literature

Source: Studies in Classic American Literature

Soul

“This essential coalition between royal military power and often dubious supernatural authority anticipated a similar alliance between the scientists and mathematical games theorists with the higher agents of government today, and was subject to similar corruptions, miscalculations, and hallucinations.”

Lewis Mumford book The Myth of the Machine

pg 176
The Myth of the Machine (1967-1970), Technics and Human Development (1967)

Game, Mathematics

“If we observe the totality of Camille Pissarro's works, we find there, despite the fluctuations, not only an extreme artistic will which never lies, but what is more, an essentially intuitive pure-bred art... He looked at everybody, you say! Why not? Everyone looked at him, too, but denied him. He was one of my masters and I do not deny him.”

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist artist

Quote c. 1902, in Racontars d'un Rapin, Paul Gauguin; as quoted in 'Introduction' of Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien, ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro – (translated from the unpublished French letters by Lionel Abel); Pantheon Books Inc. New York, second edition, 1943, p. 15
After Paul Cezanne it was Gauguin who came to ask advice and painted landscape at the side of the much elder Pissarro. The traces of this apprenticeship as an impressionist were soon to disappear from Gauguin's works, but shortly before he died, he wrote these sentences about his former teacher
1890s - 1910s

Art

“There has been 32 isms since the advent of Cubism, yet after all there are essentially the same two old strings, the Romantic and the Classical. We've just be confused by the storm. Science and psychology have played a great part to say nothing of sex.”

Mark Tobey (1890–1976) American abstract expressionist painter

The Tigers Eye 1, Mark Tobey, 1952; as quoted in Abstract Expressionist Painting in America, W.C, Seitz, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1983, p. 103
1950's

Sex, Science, Parting

“Thought is not essential to existence nor its cause, but it is an instrument for becoming; I become what I see in myself. All that thought suggests to me, I can do; all that thought reveals in me, I can become. This should be man's unshakable faith in himself, because God dwells in him.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Thoughts and Glimpses (1916-17)

God, Faith

“The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means. Whenever you parry, hit, spring, strike or touch the enemy's cutting sword, you must cut the enemy in the same movement. It is essential to attain this. If you think only of hitting, springing, striking or touching the enemy, you will not be able actually to cut him.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Water Book

Spring, Thinking

“One way … in which a political philosophy can be ideological is by presenting a relatively marginal issue as if it were central and essential.”

Raymond Geuss book Philosophy and Real Politics

Source: Philosophy and Real Politics (2008), p. 54.

Way

“Although the roots of geography, as a field of study, reach back to Classical Antiquity… its establishment as a modern science was essentially the work of the century from 1750 to 1850. The second half of this period, the time of Humboldt and Ritter, is commonly spoken of as the "classical period" of geography.”

Richard Hartshorne (1899–1992) American Geographer

Source: The Nature of Geography (1939), p. 35

Study, Science, Time

“WaiWai was an essential guide to Japanese attitudes and editorial directives.”

Debito Arudou (1965) Author/activist with Japanese citizenship born in the USA

"Defending the weeklies, as well as Connell and his collaborators, is the unflagging media critic and campaigner for human rights Debito Arudou, who wrote that WaiWai was an essential guide to Japanese attitudes and editorial directives.") Justin Norrie, "Japan rails at Australian's tabloid trash" http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/world/japan-rails-at-australians-tabloid-trash/2008/07/04/1214951041660.html?page=2, Brisbane Times (2008-07-05

“If one does not wish to be dissatisfied with one’s lot at home, one ought to go where the flies and the stinks are, which means the Middle East. This is also a good way of reconciling oneself to one’s laws and police force and the probity of one’s magistrates. The really great British travellers, like Charles M. Doughty for instance, to say nothing of ‘Eothen’ Kinglake, always went East, but not too far East. When you get to Southeast Asia you find no dirt or flies but the suspicion that you are in a tropical paradise, and then you go to pieces. It is essential, when travelling, to feel that you belong to a superior civilization, and the lands of the Arabs lavishly grant opportunities to nourish this conviction….”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, Homage to QWERT YUIOP: Selected Journalism 1978-1985 (1986)

Law, Way, Travel, Feeling

“You see, essentially, you cannot win the war on terror by military force. It is first and foremost a battle of ideas. It is secondly a law enforcement effort and a cooperative effort among nations. And only as a last resort do you use military force. This president has distorted the capabilities of the United States Armed Forces. He's used our men and women in uniform improperly in Guantanamo and engaged in actions that I think are totally against the Uniform Code of Military Justice and against what we stand for as the American people.”

Wesley Clark (1944) American general and former Democratic Party presidential candidate

92nd Street Y Cultural Center (2007)

Women, Men, War, People

“This is precisely what is decisive in Nietzsche’s conception of art, that he sees it in its essential entirety in terms of the artist; this he does consciously and in explicit opposition to that conception of art which represents it in terms of those who “enjoy” and “experience” it.
That is a guiding principle of Nietzsche’s teaching on art: art must be grasped in terms of creators and producers, not recipients. Nietzsche expresses it unequivocally in the following words (WM, 811): “Our aesthetics heretofore has been a woman’s aesthetics, inasmuch as only the recipients of art have formulated their experiences of ‘what is beautiful.’ In all philosophy to date the artist is missing.” Philosophy of art means “aesthetics” for Nietzsche too—but masculine aesthetics, not feminine aesthetics. The question of art is the question of the artist as the productive, creative one; his experiences of what is beautiful must provide the standard.”

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German philosopher

Source: Nietzsche (1961), p. 70

Beauty, Art, Question, Decision

“So long as commerce specializes in business methods which take no account of human nature and social motives, so long may we expect strikes and sabotage to be the ordinary accompaniment of industry. Sabotage is essentially a protest of the human spirit against dull mechanism. And the emphasis which democracy places upon political methods tends to transform mere sporadic acts of sabotage into an organized conspiracy against society.”

Elton Mayo (1880–1949) Australian academic

Source: Democracy and freedom. 1919, p. 56

Democracy, Motivation, Business, Nature

“It's time to stop a foreign policy which is essentially a marketing strategy for the weapons industry.”

Jill Stein (1950) American politician and physician

"Making the Wars for Oil Obsolete," May 22, 2016 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hd6gLKkaBD4

Time

“For years I have encouraged my patients and students to play musical instruments. I believe that it is essential for their ultimate health to be able to express themselves musically. Inside each of us is the deep desire to open our hearts and sing out with love. I find that when they allow music-making to enter into their lives, there is a beautiful change. There is an opening of the heart.”

John Diamond (doctor) (1934) Australian doctor

Source: The Life Energy in Music, Vol. 1 (1981), p. 105

Love, Health, Beauty, Music

“The capacity of indignation makes an essential part of the outfit of every honest man.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners (1869)

Parting

“The term organization, and the principles that govern it, are inherent in every form of concerted human effort, even where there are no more than two people involved. For example take two men who combine their efforts to lift and move a stone that is too heavy to be moved by one. In the fact of this combination of effort we have the reality of human organization for a given purpose. Likewise in the procedure necessary to this end we find the fundamental principles of organization. To begin with, the two lifters must lift in unison. Without this combination of effort the result would be futile. Here we have co-ordination, the first principle of organization. Likewise one of these two must give the signal "heave ho!" or its equivalent, to the other, thus illustrating the principle of leadership or command. Again the other may have a suggestion to make to the leader in the matter of procedure, which involves the vital staff principle of advice or counsel. And so on. Thus in every form of concerted effort principles of organization are as essential and inevitable as organization itself.”

James D. Mooney (1884–1957) American businessman

Source: "The principles of organization", 1937, p. 90

Men, People, Reality, Effort

“This essential principle of our Constitutional Republic is being ridden roughshod over by imperial Washington, which bullies local governments into accepting its illegal and unconstitutional policies.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Interview by Joseph Murtagh, June 28, 2007 http://www.muckrakerreport.com/id447.html <br class="br">2000s, 2006-2009

“The calculus is to mathematics no more than what experiment is to physics, and all the truths produced solely by the calculus can be treated as truths of experiment. The sciences must proceed to first causes, above all mathematics where one cannot assume, as in physics, principles that are unknown to us. For there is in mathematics, so to speak, only what we have placed there… If, however, mathematics always has some essential obscurity that one cannot dissipate, it will lie, uniquely, I think, in the direction of the infinite; it is in that direction that mathematics touches on physics, on the innermost nature of bodies about which we know little.”

Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657–1757) French writer, satirist and philosopher of enlightenment

Elements de la géométrie de l'infini (1727) as quoted by Amir R. Alexander, Geometrical Landscapes: The Voyages of Discovery and the Transformation of Mathematical Practice (2002) citing Michael S. Mahoney, "Infinitesimals and Transcendent Relations: The Mathematics of Motion in the Late Seventeenth Century" in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, ed. David C. Lindberg, Robert S. Westman (1990)

Truth, Lie, Mathematics, Nature

“Consider some of the qualities of typical modernistic poetry: very interesting language, a great emphasis on connotation, "texture"; extreme intensity, forced emotion — violence; a good deal of obscurity; emphasis on sensation, perceptual nuances; emphasis on details, on the part rather than on the whole; experimental or novel qualities of some sort; a tendency toward external formlessness and internal disorganization — these are justified, generally, as the disorganization required to express a disorganized age, or, alternatively, as newly discovered and more complex types of organization; an extremely personal style — refine your singularities; lack of restraint — all tendencies are forced to their limits; there is a good deal of emphasis on the unconscious, dream structure, the thoroughly subjective; the poet's attitudes are usually anti-scientific, anti-common-sense, anti-public — he is, essentially, removed; poetry is primarily lyric, intensive — the few long poems are aggregations of lyric details; poems usually have, not a logical, but the more or less associational style of dramatic monologue; and so on and so on. This complex of qualities is essentially romantic; and the poetry that exhibits it represents the culminating point of romanticism.”

Randall Jarrell book Five Young American Poets

"A Note on Poetry," preface to The Rage for the Lost Penny: Five Young American Poets (New Directions, 1940) [p. 49]
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Age, Dreams, Sense, Parting

“This book is about a simple, benign experiment, or perhaps we should call it an inquiry, to learn what are the essential ingredients in interspecies friendships and even love. The basic idea was to raise together a kitten, a puppy, a bunny, a chick, and a baby rat in close circumstances to see if they would all get along and even become good friends.”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (1941) American writer and activist

Introduction
Raising the Peaceable Kingdom (2005)

Love, Friendship, Books, Idea

“Jeffersonian isolationism expressed an essentially cosmopolitan spirit. The Jeffersonian was determined — even at the expense of separating himself from the rest of the globe, and even though he be charged with provincial selfishness — to preserve America as an uncontaminated laboratory.”

Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American historian

Source: The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson (1948), Ch. 4, part 6: The American Destiny, p. 229.

Selfishness

“Thus, by mere confusion of thought, or by inability to rise above conceptions couched in terms of space and time, the original theistic formula — which in its contrasting of theism against deism and pantheism is unobjectionable, and correct enough so far as it goes — is brought in the end to contradict its own essential idea.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Modern Science and Pantheism, p.60-1

Idea, Time

“The nature of the mind is to interpret non-essentials essential. The mind creates artificial needs, believing it cannot live without them. In this way we carry a great burden of attachments throughout our life. Attachment is itself a great burden on our minds. We may never understand the extent of the burden till we’re free of it. But if we find joy within, we can live a simple life, free of endless complications.”

Radhanath Swami (1950) Gaudiya Vaishnava guru

?
The Journey Home: Autobiography of an American Swami (Tulsi Books, 2010)

Life, Way, Understanding, Nature

“There is a divergence between private and social accounting that the market fails to register. One essential task of law and government is to institute the necessary conditions.”

John Rawls book A Theory of Justice

Source: A Theory of Justice (1971; 1975; 1999), Chapter V, Section 42, p. 268

Law

“Cultural essentialism is, thus, intimately tied to power relations. Fixity, homogeneity and separateness are prioritised within an essentialist framework. Therefore, part of any effort to resist essentialism is recognising diversity within difference, contingency, mutability and connectedness.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Source: Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009), p.393

Effort, Parting

“The free creativeness of mind is possible because, […] the world ultimately exists, not of material stuff, but of patterns, of organization, the evolution of which involves no absolute creation of an alien world of material from nothing. The purely structural character of reality thus helps to render possible and intelligible the free creativeness of life and mind, … The energy which is being dissipated by the decay of physical structure is being partly taken up and organized into life structures … Life and mind thus appear as products of the cosmic decline, … Our origin is thus accidental, our position is exceptional and our fate is sealed, with the inevitable running down of the solar system. Life and mind, […] are thus reduced to a very casual and inferior status in the cosmic order […] – a transient and embarrassed phantom in an alien, if not hostile universe. […] The human spirit is not a pathetic, wandering phantom of the universe, […] but meets with spiritual hospitality and response everywhere. Our deepest thoughts and emotions are but responses to stimuli which come to us not from an alien, but from an essentially friendly and kindred universe.”

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

Smuts expounding a confrontation of opposites in his presidential address to the British Association in September 1931, as cited by W. K. Hancock in SMUTS 2: The Fields of Force 1919-1950, p. 232-234

Life, Hostility, Fate, World