Quotes about evening
page 17

“My dear Hoschedé, I do not know if in Paris it is the same weather as here, it is probable and so you will be able to understand my discouragement. I am heartbroken, and I absolutely must share with you all my disillusionment; for nearly two months, I have given myself a lot of trouble without result. You do not believe it perhaps, but it is so: I have not lost an hour and would have reproached myself to have taken even a day to come see our exhibition, just out of the fear of losing a single good painting session, an hour of sun. I alone can know my anxieties and the trouble that I give myself to finish canvases that don't even satisfy me and please so few people. In a word, I am absolutely discouraged, not seeing, not hoping in any future... I feel all too well the void that is being made around me and the impossibility of facing up to my part of our expenses if we were to continue living together... I see everything in black, in pain... Please believe all the sorrow that I have in causing you trouble.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

In a letter to Ernest Hoschedé, May 15, 1879 (W, letter, 158); as cited in: Mary M. Gedo (2013) Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Art. p. 123
1870 - 1890

Pain, People, Fear, Hope

“I was on the boat, at sea, not expecting anything (I was of course busy with the inner life, but I was living physically on the boat), when all of a sudden, abruptly, about two nautical miles from Pondicherry, the quality, I may even say physical quality, of the atmosphere of the air, changed so much that I knew we were entering the aura of Sri Aurobindo. It was a physical experience.”

The Mother (1878–1973) spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo

On her return to Pondicherry in April 1920 accompanied by an English lady, Miss Dorothy Hodgeson, after she had refused an offer by Rabindranath Tagore to take charge of Shantiniketan, his educational institute, quoted in "Japan (1916-20)", in [ Chapter 14 Second Coming, K R Srinivas Iyengar http://sriaurobindoashram.com/Content.aspx?ContentURL=_staticcontent/sriaurobindoashram/-09%20e-library/-03%20Disciples/K%20R%20Srinivas%20Iyengar/On%20The%20Mother/-16_Second%20Coming.htm, p. 202

Life, Business, Change, Sea

“I, Titian of Cadore, having studied painting from childhood upwards, and desirous of fame rather than profit, wish to serve the Doge and Signori, rather than his Highness the Pope and other Signori, who in past days, and even now, have urgently asked to employ me: I am therefore anxious, if it should appear feasible, to paint in the Hall of Council, beginning, if it please their sublimity, with the canvas of 'The Battle' on the side towards the Piazza, which is so difficult that no one as yet has had courage to attempt it…”

Titian (1488–1576) Italian painter

Quote from a petition presented by Titian, and read on the 31st of May, 1513, before the Council of ten of Venice; as quoted by J.A.Y. Crowe & G.B. Cavalcaselle in Titian his life and times - With some account..., publisher John Murray, London, 1877, p. 153-154
The chiefs of the Council on the day in question accepted Titian's offer. Sharp monitions reminded him in 1518, 1522 and 1537 that he should complete 'The Battle', he did not until 1539
1510-1540
Source: http://www.everypainterpaintshimself.com/article/titians_battle_of_cadore_1538-9

Courage, Study, Appearance, Past

“Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.”

Charles Caleb Colton (1777–1832) British priest and writer

Vol. I; CCCXXII
Lacon (1820)

Fools

“I'm a guy, for all intents and purposes, never should have even made it to the WWE. I've had roadblock after roadblock after roadblock thrown in my way. But, not only did I get passed those roadblocks, I did it while flipping off the people who put up those roadblocks. I feel I have a responsibility to the younger wrestlers on the roster, the ones who aren't signed yet, and the future of pro-wrestling as a whole to help make this place better, and to change this place. I certainly can't change it by sitting on my couch in Chicago.”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

From his DVD, "CM Punk: Best in the World".
Personal

People, Way, Guy, Feeling

“Under these conditions it is no wonder, that the movement of atheists, which declares religion to be just a deliberate illusion, invented by power-seeking priests, and which has for the pious belief in a higher Power nothing but words of mockery, eagerly makes use of progressive scientific knowledge and in a presumed unity with it, expands in an ever faster pace its disintegrating action on all nations of the earth and on all social levels. I do not need to explain in any more detail that after its victory not only all the most precious treasures of our culture would vanish, but — which is even worse — also any prospects at a better future.”

Max Planck (1858–1947) German theoretical physicist

Religion und Naturwissenschaft (1958)

Religion, Knowledge, Future, Victory

“The important thing is not the amount of welfare, it is that there should be a maximum of love among men. The act of helping is the direct and adequate expression of love, not its meaning or “purpose.” Its meaning lies in itself, in its illumination of the soul, in the nobility of the loving soul in the act of love. Therefore nothing can be further removed from this genuine concept of Christian love than all kinds of “socialism,” “social feeling,” “altruism,” and other subaltern modern things. When the rich youth is told to divest himself of his riches and give them to the poor, it is really not in order to help the “poor” and to effect a better distribution of property in the interest of general welfare. Nor is it because poverty as such is supposed to be better than wealth. The order is given because the act of giving away, and the spiritual freedom and abundance of love which manifest themselves in this act, ennoble the youth and make him even “richer” than he is.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1961), p. 93

Love, Men, Youth, Feeling

“And so if any one would suppose that Æther (like our Air) may contain Particles which endeavour to recede from one another (for I do not know what this Æther is) and that its Particles are exceedingly smaller than those of Air, or even than those of Light: The exceeding smallness of its Particles may contribute to the greatness of the force by which those Particles may recede from one another, and thereby make that Medium exceedingly more rare and elastick than Air, and by consequence exceedingly less able to resist the motions of projectiles, and exceedingly more able to press upon gross Bodies, by endeavouring to expand it self.”

Isaac Newton book Opticks, or a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light

Query 21
Opticks (1704)

Light

“In this tree of humanity, with all of our branches and diversity, we all go back to the same root. We’re all one family -- we're all one tribe. And yet so much of the suffering in our world stems from our failure to remember that -- to not recognize ourselves in each other. We think because somebody’s skin is slightly different, or their hair is slightly different, or their religious faith is differently expressed, or they speak a different language that it justifies somehow us treating them with less dignity. And that becomes the source of so many of our problems. And we think somehow that we make ourselves better by putting other people down. And that becomes the source of so many of our problems. When we begin to see other as somehow less than ourselves -- when we succumb to these artificial divisions of faith or sect or tribe or ethnicity -- then even the most awful abuses are justified in the minds of those who are thinking in those ways. And in the end, abusers lose their own humanity, as well.”

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

2015, Remarks to the People of Africa (July 2015)

People, World, Family, Faith

“There are a few of us who could scarcely do more than we are doing of our own regular order of work, but there may yet be spare moments for little extra efforts of another sort which in the aggregate, in the run of a year, might produce a great total of real practical result. We must, like goldsmiths, carefully sweep our shops, and gather up the filings of the gold which God has given us in the shape of time. Select a large box and place in it as many cannon-balls as it will hold, it is after a fashion full, but it will hold more if smaller matters be found. Bring a quantity of marbles, very many of these may be packed in the spaces between the larger globes; the box is full now, but only full in a sense, it will contain more yet. There are interstices in abundance into which you may shake a considerable quantity of small shot, and now the chest is filled beyond all question, but yet there is room. You cannot put in another shot or marble, much less another cannon-ball, but you will find that several pounds of sand will slide down between the larger materials, and even then between the granules of sand, if you empty pondering there will be space for all the water, and for the same quantity several times repeated. When there is no space for the great there may be room for the little; where the little cannot enter the less can make its way; and where the less is shut out, the least of all may find ample room and verge enough.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

"A Spur for a Free Horse" in The Sword and the Trowel (February, 1866) http://www.spurgeon.org/s_and_t/spur.htm

God, Way, Fashion, Question

“Whoever is versed in the jargon does not have to say what he thinks, does not even have to think it properly. The jargon takes over this task.”

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society

Der des Jargons Kundige braucht nicht zu sagen, was er denkt, nicht einmal recht es zu denken: das nimmt der Jargon ihm ab und entwertet den Gedanken.
Source: Jargon der Eigentlichkeit [Jargon of Authenticity] (1964), p. 9

Thinking

“Three years ago, I bought a Beetle, not even thinking. [Audience laughs some] That's not the joke, shut up. See? I can't even tell you guys a story. [mocking laugh] I wasn't thinking, I bought the car, because it was affordable, economical, brand-new freakin' Beetle for like $17,000. I was, like, "AHHH!" First new car, you know? I go to show it off at my friend Martin's house. I thought it was nice. I pull up, like, [Imitates car driving, then brakes screeching] "MARTEEEEEEEEEEEEN!" He lives in the 'hood, I don't get out of the car. Across the street, there are these gang members, the kind of gang members that, they don't get into like shooting people and stuff like that, they just sit on the porch and talk a lot of smack. So I'm there in a Beetle and across the street, I hear this. I was like, "MARTEEEEEEN!" Over here, I hear, "Oralé!" [Looks behind] "Hey, what's up guys, hows it going?" "How did you get in there, esé?" [Gives an frustrated look] "HURRY UP, MARTIN!" 2 months later, I go back to pick him up. Now, I've had some time to work on the car. I put some rims on it, some stickers on it, I put a chip in the motor that makes it go faster. I thought I was bad, right? So I pull up, [Imitates car driving, tires screeching, and the motor revving] "MARTEEEEEN!" [Gesturing to the voice behind him] "Orale!" [Gabriel shakes his head] Uh-uh, I'm not turning around. "Hey!" Mmm-mm. "Hey!" I don't see you! "Yoo-hoo!" [Growls and turns around] "EH!"”

Gabriel Iglesias (1976) American actor

WHAT?! "Check it out, eh, it's the Fat and the Furious!"
Hot & Fluffy (2007)

People, Cars, Guy, Thinking

“While the characters of men are forming, as is always the case in revolutions, there is a reciprocal suspicion, and a disposition to misinterpret each other; and even parties directly opposite in principle will sometimes concur in pushing forward the same movement with very different views, and with the hopes of its producing very different consequences. A great deal of this may be discovered in this embarrassed affair, and yet the issue of the whole was what nobody had in view.”

Thomas Paine book Rights of Man

Part 1.3 Rights of Man
1790s, Rights of Man, Part I (1791)

Men, Hope

“Mrs Ramsay sat silent. She was glad, Lily thought, to rest in silence, uncommunicative; to rest in the extreme obscurity of human relationships. Who knows what we are, what we feel? Who knows even at the moment of intimacy, This is knowledge? Aren't things spoilt then, Mrs Ramsay may have asked (it seemed to have happened so often, this silence by her side) by saying them?”

Virginia Woolf book To the Lighthouse

Part III, Ch. 5
To the Lighthouse (1927)

Feeling, Knowledge, Silence

“The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there.
I promise you, we as a people will get there.”

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

2008, Election victory speech (November 2008)

People, Hope

“Right it is to be taught even by the enemy.”
Fas est et ab hoste doceri.

Ovid Metamorphoses

Variant translation: It is right to learn, even from the enemy.
Book IV, 428
Metamorphoses (Transformations)

“One cannot love anybody without turning away from oneself. However, the crucial question is whether this movement is prompted by the desire to turn toward a positive value, or whether the intention is a radical escape from oneself. “Love” of the second variety is inspired by self-hatred, by hatred of one’s own weakness and misery. The mind is always on the point of departing for distant places. Afraid of seeing itself and its inferiority, it is driven to give itself to the other—not because of his worth, but merely for the sake of his “otherness.” Modern philosophical jargon has found a revealing term for this phenomenon, one of the many modern substitutes for love: “altruism.” This love is not directed at a previously discovered positive value, nor does any such value flash up in the act of loving: there is nothing but the urge to turn away from oneself and to lose oneself in other people’s business. We all know a certain type of man frequently found among socialists, suffragettes, and all people with an ever-ready “social conscience”— the kind of person whose social activity is quite clearly prompted by inability to keep his attention focused on himself, on his own tasks and problems. Looking away from oneself is here mistaken for love! Isn’t it abundantly clear that “altruism,” the interest in “others” and their lives, has nothing at all to do with love? The malicious or envious person also forgets his own interest, even his “preservation.” He only thinks about the other man’s feelings, about the harm and the suffering he inflicts on him. Conversely, there is a form of genuine “self-love” which has nothing at all to do with “egoism.” It is precisely the essential feature of egoism that it does not apprehend the full value of the isolated self. The egoist sees himself only with regard to the others, as a member of society who wishes to possess and acquire more than the others. Selfdirectedness or other-directedness have no essential bearing on the specific quality of love or hatred. These acts are different in themselves, quite independently of their direction.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Love, People, Feeling, Question

“No one can escape the power of language, let alone those of English birth brought up from childhood, as Mrs. Hilbery had been, to disport themselves now in the Saxon plainness, now in the Latin splendor of the tongue, and stored with memories, as she was, of old poets exuberating in an infinity of vocables. Even Katharine was slightly affected against her better judgment by her mother's enthusiasm. Not that her judgment could altogether acquiesce in the necessity for a study of Shakespeare's sonnets as a preliminary to the fifth chapter of her grandfather's biography. Beginning with a perfectly frivolous jest, Mrs. Hilbery had evolved a theory that Anne Hathaway had a way, among other things, of writing Shakespeare's sonnets; the idea, struck out to enliven a party of professors, who forwarded a number of privately printed manuals within the next few days for her instruction, had submerged her in a flood of Elizabethan literature; she had come half to believe in her joke, which was, she said, at least as good as other people's facts, and all her fancy for the time being centered upon Stratford-on-Avon.”

Virginia Woolf book Night and Day

Source: Night and Day (1919), Ch. 24

People, Way, Literature, Idea

“We live through myriads of seconds, but there is only one second among all these myriads which brings our whole inner world to the boil; the second in which, as Stendhal described, there suddenly takes place a crystallization in the supersaturated blood; a magical second like that of procreation, and, like it, hidden in the warm interior of one's own body, invisible, intangible, impalpable, a unique experience of mystery. No algebra of the soul can calculate it; no alchemy can divine it. Usually, even for ourselves, it remains unsearchable.”

Stefan Zweig (1881–1942) Austrian writer

Confusion of Feelings or Confusion: The Private Papers of Privy Councillor R. Von D (1927)

World, Soul

“Some people think love is the end of the road, and if you're lucky enough to find it, you stay there. Other people say it just becomes a cliff you drive off, but most people who've been around awhile know it's just a thing that changes day by day, and depending on how much you fight for it, you get it, or you hold on to it, or you lose it, but sometimes it's never even there in the first place.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book Three: All Hail and Hallelujah

Love, People, Thinking, Change

“We are citizens of an age, as well as of a State; and if it is held to be unseemly, or even inadmissable, for a man to cut himself off from the customs and manners of the circle in which he lives, why should it be less of a duty, in the choice of his activity, to submit his decision to the needs and the taste of his century?”

Friedrich Schiller book On the Aesthetic Education of Man

Letter 2
On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794)

Age, Decision

“Dearest,
I want to tell you that you have given me complete happiness. No one could have done more than you have done. Please believe that.
But I know that I shall never get over this: and I am wasting your life. It is this madness. Nothing anyone says can persuade me. You can work, and you will be much better without me. You see I can't write this even, which shows I am right. All I want to say is that until this disease came on we were perfectly happy. It was all due to you. No one could have been so good as you have been, from the very first day till now. Everyone knows that.
V.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Letter to Leonard Woolf (28 March 1941), from The Virginia Woolf Reader (1984) edited by Mitchell A. Leaska, p. 369, ISBN 0156935902

Life, Happiness, Disease, Madness

“Christianity is not satisfied with producing merely the specious guise of virtue. She requires the substantial reality, which may stand the scrutinizing eye of that Being “who searches the heart.” Meaning therefore that the Christian should live and breathe; in an atmosphere, as it were, of benevolence, she forbids whatever can tend to obstruct its diffusion or vitiate its purity. It is on this principle that Emulation is forbidden: for, besides that this passion almost insensibly degenerates into envy, and that it derives its origin chiefly from pride and a desire of self-exaltation; how can we easily love our neighbour as ourselves, if we consider him at the same time our rival, and are intent upon surpassing him in the pursuit of whatever is the subject of our competition?
Christianity, again, teaches us not to set our hearts on earthly possessions and earthly honours; and thereby provides for our really loving, or even cordially forgiving, those who have been more successful than ourselves in the attainment of them, or who have even designedly thwarted us in the pursuit. “Let the rich,” says the Apostle, “rejoice in that he is brought low.” How can he who means to attempt, in any degree, to obey this precept, be irreconcilably hostile towards any one who may have been instrumental in his depression?
Christianity also teaches us not to prize human estimation at a very high rate; and thereby provides for the practice of her injunction, to love from the heart those who, justly or unjustly, may have attacked our reputation, and wounded our character. She commands not the shew, but the reality of meekness and gentleness; and by thus taking away the aliment of anger and the fomenters of discord, she provides for the maintenance of peace, and the restoration of good temper among men, when it may have sustained a temporary interruption.
It is another capital excellence of Christianity, that she values moral attainments at a far higher rate than intellectual acquisitions, and proposes to conduct her followers to the heights of virtue rather than of knowledge. On the contrary, most of the false religious systems which have prevailed in the world, have proposed to reward the labour of their votary, by drawing aside the veil which concealed from the vulgar eye their hidden mysteries, and by introducing him to the knowledge of their deeper and more sacred doctrines.”

William Wilberforce (1759–1833) English politician

Source: Real Christianity (1797), p. 257.

Love, Men, Hostility, World

“Modern Feminism has two distinct sides to it: (1) an articulate political and economic side embracing demands for so-called rights; and (2) a sentimental side which insists in an accentuation of the privileges and immunities which have grown up, not articulately or as the result of definite demands, but as the consequence of sentimental pleading in particular cases. In this way, however, a public opinion became established, finding expression in a sex favouritism in the law and even still more in its administration, in favour of women as against men.”

Ernest Belfort Bax (1854–1926) British barrister and journalist

Chapter 1 Historical https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Fraud_of_Feminism/Chapter_1 The Fraud of Feminism (1913)

Women, Men, Law, Sex

“What is a charitable heart? It is a heart which is burning with love for the whole creation, for men, for the birds, for the beasts … for all creatures. He who has such a heart cannot see or call to mind a creature without his eyes being filled with tears by reason of the immense compassion which seizes his heart; a heart which is softened and can no longer bear to see or learn from others of any suffering, even the smallest pain being inflicted upon a creature. That is why such a man never ceases to pray for the animals … [He is] … moved by the infinite pity which reigns in the hearts of those who are becoming united with God.”

Isaac of Nineveh (640–700) Eastern Orthodox saint

Mystic Treatises, cited in Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (1976), [//books.google.it/books?id=dxqvWwPSCSwC&pg=PA111 p. 111]; also cited and discussed in A. M. Allchin, The World is a Wedding (1978), p. 85. Quoted in Andrew Linzey, Animal Theology (1994), [//books.google.it/books?id=ESTjQYS_8hMC&pg=PA56 p. 56].

Love, Men, God, Pain

“I hope to write someday and that’s even more terrifying than performing. You don’t just entertain the audience, you give them little bits of your soul.”

Chris Colfer (1990) actor, singer, book author

Personal Quotes 2009–2012

Hope, Soul

“People in Hollywood keep asking me why can’t I separate my acting career from being a catholic. Actually my faith helps me. When I played basketball it motivated me. It’s the same now. I’m aware of the fact that I’m lazy but that’s the reson I work so hard to overcome my weakness. My faith helps me to make the right choices, even though many people who inspired me didn’t have faith.”

Jim Caviezel (1968) actor

Jim Caviezel: "Jesus is above all else". Spiritual interview with hollywood star https://wpolityce.pl/kultura/336631-jim-caviezel-jesus-is-above-all-else-spiritual-interview-with-hollywood-star (April 22, 107)

People, Faith, Motivation, Help

“We naturally try to forget our personal tragedies, serious or trifling, as soon as possible (even something as petty as being scorned or disdained by a stranger on a street corner). We try not to carry these things over to tomorrow. It is not strange, therefore, that the whole human race is trying to put Hiroshima, the extreme point of human tragedy, completely out of mind.”

Kenzaburō Ōe book A Personal Matter

A Personal Matter (1964)

Nature, Personality, Forgetting

“There (in Mithilā) is settled the city of Janaka which is the crest-jewel (vasu) of the earth (vasumati); the upholder of the Karma as enunciated by the Brāhmaṇas (vasumukhamukhas – the mouths of Agni, who is the chief among the Vasus) and righteousness; the subduer of sins; the destroyer of sorrows; the pleasant destination; supremely spectacular; whose feet are bowed down to by all deities; the good nourisher of pure [forms of] abstention, love and devotion; the remover of doubts; the palace for the pleasure of Rāma; the birthplace of the paramour of the best amongst Raghus; and the cause of fear in [even] the son of Sūrya (Yama, the deity of death). ॥ 2.3 ॥”

Rāmabhadrācārya book Srisitaramakelikaumudi

tahaँ basa basumati basu basumukhamukha
nigadita nigama sukarama dharamadhura ।
durita damana dukha śamana sukha gamana
parama kamana pada namana sakala sura ॥
bimala birati rati bhagati bharana bhala
bharama harana hari haraṣa harama pura ।
giridhara raghubara gharani janama mahi
tarani tanaya bhaya janaka janakapura ॥
Srisitaramakelikaumudi

Love, Death, Pleasure, Fear

“I remember, when we were still living in the Soviet Union, Mum would rush by like the wind in our apartment, covered with fur, or even running from one movie scene to the next, because she was a movie star there. Even if it was 40ºF outside, she always wore a miniskirt. For me, she was the most beautiful of all women.”

Milla Jovovich (1975) Ukrainian-born american model and actress

Interview 1

Women, Beauty, Star

“Speak no ill of a friend, nor even of an enemy.”

Pittacus of Mytilene Greek sage

As quoted by Diogenes Laërtius, i. 78.

“The rude, discursive Thinker is the Scholastic (Schoolman Logician). The true Scholastic is a mystical Subtlist; out of logical Atoms he builds his Universe; he annihilates all living Nature, to put an Artifice of Thoughts (Gedankenkunststuck, literally Conjuror's-trick of Thoughts) in its room. His aim is an infinite Automaton. Opposite to him is the rude, intuitive Poet: this is a mystical Macrologist: he hates rules and fixed form; a wild, violent life reigns instead of it in Nature; all is animate, no law; wilfulness and wonder everywhere. He is merely dynamical. Thus does the Philosophic Spirit arise at first, in altogether separate masses. In the second stage of culture these masses begin to come in contact, multifariously enough; and, as in the union of infinite Extremes, the Finite, the Limited arises, so here also arise "Eclectic Philosophers" without number; the time of misunderstanding begins. The most limited is, in this stage, the most important, the purest Philosopher of the second stage. This class occupies itself wholly with the actual, present world, in the strictest sense. The Philosophers of the first class look down with contempt on those of the second; say, they are a little of everything, and so nothing; hold their views as the results of weakness, as Inconsequentism. On the contrary, the second class, in their turn, pity the first; lay the blame on their visionary enthusiasm, which they say is absurd, even to insanity.”

Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer

Pupils at Sais (1799)

Life, Hate, World, Law

“Jesus’ “mysterious” affection for the sinners, which is closely related to his ever-ready militancy against the scribes and pharisees, against every kind of social respectability … contains a kind of awareness that the great transformation of life, the radical change in outlook he demands of man (in Christian parlance it is called “rebirth”) is more accessible to the sinner than to the “just.” … Jesus is deeply skeptical toward all those who can feign the good man’s blissful existence through the simple lack of strong instincts and vitality. But all this does not suffice to explain this mysterious affection. In it there is something which can scarcely be expressed and must be felt. When the noblest men are in the company of the “good”—even of the truly “good,” not only of the pharisees—they are often overcome by a sudden impetuous yearning to go to the sinners, to suffer and struggle at their side and to share their grievous, gloomy lives. This is truly no temptation by the pleasures of sin, nor a demoniacal love for its “sweetness,” nor the attraction of the forbidden or the lure of novel experiences. It is an outburst of tempestuous love and tempestuous compassion for all men who are felt as one, indeed for the universe as a whole; a love which makes it seem frightful that only some should be “good,” while the others are “bad” and reprobate. In such moments, love and a deep sense of solidarity are repelled by the thought that we alone should be “good,” together with some others. This fills us with a kind of loathing for those who can accept this privilege, and we have an urge to move away from them.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1961), pp. 100-101

Love, Life, Men, Pleasure

“I smile and start to count on my fingers: One, people are good. Two, every conflict can be removed. Three, every situation, no matter how complex it initially looks, is exceedingly simple. Four, every situation can be substantially improved; even the sky is not the limit. Five, every person can reach a full life. Six, there is always a win / win solution. Shall I continue to count?”

Eliyahu M. Goldratt (1947–2011) Israeli physicist and management guru

Goldratt, E. M. (2008). The Choice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Choice_(philosophy_book) North River Press. p. 157

Life, People, Smile, Personality

“So even if a fire develops, it can't really attack the particularly vulnerable locations like the pneumatic system or the avionics or the engine bay. We want to be in the situation that even if a fire develops, the rocket just keeps going.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007)

“When women love, they forgive everything, even our crimes; when they do not love, they cannot forgive anything, not even our virtues.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Lorsque les femmes nous aiment, elles nous pardonnent tout, même nos crimes; lorsqu'elles ne nous aiment pas, elles ne nous pardonnent rien, pas même nos vertus! La Muse du Département http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/La_Muse_du_d%C3%A9partement_-_II_-_34 (1843), translated by James Waring, part II, ch. XXXIV (part XIII in the translated version).

Love, Women, Forgiveness

“Those are the victories they won, with iron wills and hope in their hearts. That is the transformation that they wrought, with each step of their well-worn shoes. That’s the debt that I and millions of Americans owe those maids, those laborers, those porters, those secretaries; folks who could have run a company maybe if they had ever had a chance; those white students who put themselves in harm’s way, even though they didn't have; those Japanese Americans who recalled their own internment; those Jewish Americans who had survived the Holocaust; people who could have given up and given in, but kept on keeping on, knowing that “weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.””

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

2013, "Let Freedom Ring" Ceremony (August 2013)

People, Hope, Shoe, Way

“If by "democracy" we mean the form which the Third Estate as such wishes to impart to public life as a whole, it must be concluded that democracy and plutocracy are the same thing under the two aspects of wish and actuality, theory and practice, knowing and doing. It is the tragic comedy of the world‑ improvers' and freedom‑ teachers' desperate fight against money that they are ipso facto assisting money to be effective. Respect for the big number—expressed in the principles of equality for all, natural rights, and universal suffrage—is just as much a class‑ ideal of the unclassed as freedom of public opinion (and more particularly freedom of the press) is so. These are ideals, but in actuality the freedom of public opinion involves the preparation of public opinion, which costs money; and the freedom of the press brings with it the question of possession of the press, which again is a matter of money; and with the franchise comes electioneering, in which he who pays the piper calls the tune. The representatives of the ideas look at one side only, while the representatives of money operate with the other. The concepts of Liberalism and Socialism are set in effective motion only by money. … There is no proletarian, not even a Communist movement, that has not operated in the interests of money, and for the time being permitted by money—and that without the idealists among its leaders having the slightest suspicion of the fact.”

Oswald Spengler book The Decline of the West

Source: Vol. II, Alfred A. Knopf, 1928, pp. 401–02 https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.49906/page/n893/mode/2up Der Untergang des Abendlandes, Welthistorische Perspektiven (1922) The Decline of the West (1918, 1923)

Life, Money, World, Democracy

“I started to "write" even before I knew the alphabet. I would dip a pen in ink and scribble. I also liked to draw — horses, houses, dogs. The Sabbath was an ordeal for me, because it is forbidden to write on that day.”

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991) Polish-born Jewish-American author

"A Day of Pleasure" (1996)

Dogs, Horse, Drawing, Housing

“We talk about a secular state in India. It is perhaps not very easy even to find a good word in Hindi for "secular". Some people think it means something opposed to religion. That obviously is not correct. What it means is that it is state which honours all faiths equally and gives them equal opportunities; that, as a state, it does not allow itself to be attached to one faith or religion, which then becomes the state religion.”

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister of India

Statement of 1961, as quoted in Locked Minds, Modern Myths (1997) by T. N. Madan

People, Faith, Religion, Thinking

“There are two kinds of pity. One, the weak and sentimental kind, which is really no more than the heart's impatience to be rid as quickly as possible of the painful emotion aroused by the sight of another's unhappiness, that pity which is not compassion, but only an instinctive desire to fortify one's own soul agains the sufferings of another; and the other, the only one at counts, the unsentimental but creative kind, which knows what it is about and is determined to hold out, in patience and forbearance, to the very limit of its strength and even beyond.”

Stefan Zweig book Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

Pain, Soul, Suffering, Heart

“And they don't really know even what they're talkin' about
And I can't image what empty heads can achieve
Leave me alone, don't want your promises no more
'Cos rock & roll is my religion and my law
Won't ever change, may think it's strange
You can't kill rock & roll, it's here to stay”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

You Can't Kill Rock and Roll, written by Ozzy Osbourne, Randy Rhoads and Bob Daisley.
Song lyrics, Diary of a Madman (1981)

Religion, Law, Thinking, Change

“But all this even, is not the full extent of the evil. — By such examples, by instances of the perpetrators of such acts going unpunished, the lawless in spirit, are encouraged to become lawless in practice; and having been used to no restraint, but dread of punishment, they thus become, absolutely unrestrained. — Having ever regarded Government as their deadliest bane, they make a jubilee of the suspension of its operations; and pray for nothing so much, as its total annihilation. While, on the other hand, good men, men who love tranquillity, who desire to abide by the laws and enjoy their benefits, who would gladly spill their blood in the defense of their country, seeing their property destroyed, their families insulted, and their lives endangered, their persons injured, and seeing nothing in prospect that forebodes a change for the better, become tired of and disgusted with a government that offers them no protection, and are not much averse to a change in which they imagine they have nothing to lose. Thus, then, by the operation of this mobocratic spirit which all must admit is now abroad in the land, the strongest bulwark of any government, and particularly of those constituted like ours, may effectually be broken down and destroyed — I mean the attachment of the people.”

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

1830s, The Lyceum Address (1838)

Love, Men, People, Family

“And not only does one not seize at once and retain an impression of works that are really great, but even in the content of any such work (as befell me in the case of Vinteuil’s sonata) it is the least valuable parts that one at first perceives… Less disappointing than life is, great works of art do not begin by giving us all their best.”

Marcel Proust book In Search of Lost Time

Et non seulement on ne retient pas tout de suite les œuvres vraiment rares, mais même au sein de chacune de ces œuvres-là, et cela m'arriva pour la Sonate de Vinteuil, ce sont les parties les moins précieuses qu'on perçoit d'abord... Moins décevants que la vie, ces grands chefs-d'œuvre ne commencent pas par nous donner ce qu'ils ont de meilleur.
Source: In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol II: Within a Budding Grove (1919), Ch. I: "Madame Swann at Home"

Life, Art, Disappointment, Parting

“You don't understand, George, that Ukraine is not even a state. What is Ukraine? Part of its territories is Eastern Europe, but the greater part is a gift from us.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

Ты же понимаешь, Джордж, что Украина — это даже не государство! Что такое Украина? Часть ее территорий — это Восточная Европа, а часть, и значительная, подарена нами! According to the same source, “and then he very transparently hinted that if Ukraine was still admitted to NATO, this state would simply cease to exist, that is, in fact, he threatened that Russia could start the rejection of the Crimea and Eastern Ukraine.” (И тут он очень прозрачно намекнул, что если Украину все же примут в НАТО, это государство просто прекратит существование. То есть фактически он пригрозил, что Россия может начать отторжение Крыма и Восточной Украины.) Speaking to George H. Bush at the NATO Bucharest Summit, April 4, 2008. http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1900838,00.html Originally reported in Kommersant.ru based on an unidentified source http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/877224. On Ukraine

Understanding, Parting

“I learnt to see philosophical systems in the context of the social milieu which produced them. I therefore learnt to look for social contention in philosophical systems. It is of course possible to see the history of philosophy in diverse ways, each way of seeing it being in fact an illumination of the type of problem dealt with in this branch of human thought. It is possible, for instance, to look upon philosophy as a series of abstract systems. When philosophy is so seen, even moral philosophers, with regrettable coyness, say that their preoccupation has nothing to do with life. They say that their concern is not to name moral principles or to improve anybody's character, but narrowly to elucidate the meaning of terms used in ethical discourse, and to determine the status of moral principles and ru1es, as regards the obligation which they impose upon us. When philosophy is regarded in the light of a series of abstract systems, it can be said to concern itself with two fundamental questions: first, the question 'what there is'; second, the question how 'what there is' may be explained. The answer to the first question has a number of aspects. It lays down a minimum number of general under which every item in the world can and must be brought. It does this without naming the items themselves, without furnishing us with an inventory, a roll-call of the items, the objects in the world. It specifies, not particu1ar objects, but the basic types of object. The answer further implies a certain reductionism; for in naming only a few basic types as exhausting all objects in the world, it brings object directly under one of the basic types.”

Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972) Pan Africanist and First Prime Minister and President of Ghana

Source: Consciencism (1964), Philosophy In Retrospect, pp. 5-6.

Life, World, Way, History

“We feel the necessity of deceiving ourselves, of even grossly deceiving ourselves, and of believing, when we are doing wrong, that we are doing right. When we do not succeed in reaching such persuasion, merely by sounding our own reason and conscience, we look about for something or some person to aid us in the attempt.”

Alexandre Vinet (1797–1847) Swiss theologian

Evangelical Meditations (1858)

Feeling, Personality

“Freedom without organization of work would be useless. The child left free without means of work would go to waste, just as a new-born baby, if left free without nourishment, would die of starvation. The organization of the work, therefore, is the cornerstone of this new structure of goodness [in education], but even that organization would be in vain without the liberty to make use of it.”

Maria Montessori (1870–1952) Italian pedagogue, philosopher and physician

Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook: A short guide to her ideas and materials (1914), Schocken Books, Inc." New York, p. 94

Education, Freedom, Baby

“I don't feel pressure. I don't give a toss about it. I spent the afternoon of Sunday, July 9, 2006 in Berlin sleeping and playing the PlayStation. In the evening, I went out and won the World Cup.”

Andrea Pirlo (1979) Italian footballer

Ibid [p. 12]

World, Feeling, Sleep

“First, [the bourgeoisie] must recognize his own impotence, his incapacity to believe in a sense of history, even if his reason leans towards the truth, the passions and prejudices produced by his class position, prevent him from accepting it. So he should not exert himself with proving the truth of the historical mission of the working class; rather, he should learn to subdue his petty bourgeois passions and prejudices. He should take lessions from those who were once as important as he is now, but are ready to risk all for the revolutionary Cause.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

38
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Truth, History, Sense, Learning

“The true nature of the international system under which we were living was not realized until it failed. Hardly anyone understood the political function of the international monetary system; the awful suddenness of the transformation thus took the world completely by surprise. And yet the gold standard was the only remaining pillar of the traditional world economy; when it broke, the effect was bound to be instantaneous. To liberal economists the gold standard was a purely economic institution; they refused even to consider it as a part of a social mechanism.”

Karl Polanyi book The Great Transformation

The Great Transformation (1944), Ch. 2 : Conservative Twenties, Revolutionary Thirties

World, Nature, Parting

“But we have to follow through, even when the politics are hard. Because in the eyes of innocent men and women and children who, through no fault of their own, have had to flee everything that they know, everything that they love, we have to have the empathy to see ourselves. We have to imagine what it would be like for our family, for our children, if the unspeakable happened to us. And we should all understand that, ultimately, our world will be more secure if we are prepared to help those in need and the nations who are carrying the largest burden with respect to accommodating these refugees.”

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

2016, United Nations Address (September 2016)

Love, Women, Men, Children

“The truth is that, promoting science isn't just about providing resources, it's about protecting free and open inquiry. It's about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology. It's about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it's inconvenient, especially when it's inconvenient. Because the highest purpose of science is the search for knowledge, truth and a greater understanding of the world around us. That will be my goal as President of the United States, and I could not have a better team to guide me in this work.”

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

President-elect Obama's Weekly Address (20 December 2008) http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/barackobama/barackobamaweeklytransition7.htm 2008

Truth, World, Search, Understanding

“This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.”

Erich Maria Remarque book All Quiet on the Western Front

Epigraph
All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)

Death, Men, War, Books

“The poet is a pretender.
He pretends so completely,
that he even pretends that it is pain
the pain he really feels.”

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

O poeta é um fingidor.
Finge tão completamente
Que chega a fingir que é dor
A dor que deveras sente.
"Autopsicografia" ["Autopsychography"], in Presença, No. 36 (November 1932)
Fernando Pessoa's most translated poem.
Richard Zenith's translation:
The poet is a faker
Who's so good at his act
He even fakes the pain
Of pain he feels in fact.

Pain, Feeling

“I say that there are two systems of policy to apply to the management of what is commonly called the Eastern question, but which resolves itself into the geographical question, namely, the possession of that site which commands the empire of the world—the city of Constantinople. There is that school of opinions which I call British opinions, advocated by the noble Lord the Leader of this House (Lord J. Russell) and the noble Lord the Secretary of State for the Home Department (Viscount Palmerston), who believe in the vitality of Turkey, that it may remain an independent and even a progressive country, and form a powerful and sufficient barrier against the encroachment of Russia. There is the other school, which I call the school of Russian polities, that believes that Turkey is exhausted; that all we can do is, by gradually enfranchising the Christian population, to prevent, when its fall takes place, perfect anarchy, and contemplates the possibility of Russia occupying the Bosphorus.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1854/mar/31/war-with-russia-the-queens-message in the House of Commons (21 March 1854). 1850s

World, School, Home, Question

“Some might consider him as too fond of fame; for the desire for glory clings even to the best men longer than any other passion.”

Tacitus book Histories

Book IV, 6
Histories (100-110)

Men, Passion

“Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.”

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

As translated in The Portable Nietzsche (1954) by Walter Kaufmann, p. 96

“Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving — it doesn't matter,
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow a hundred times,
Come, come again, come.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

As quoted in Sunbeams : A Book of Quotations (1990) by Sy Safransky, p. 67 Variant translations: Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, idolator, worshipper of fire, come even though you have broken your vows a thousand times, Come, and come yet again. Ours is not a caravan of despair. As quoted in Muslim Narratives and the Discourse of English (2004) by Amin Malak, p. 151 Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshipper, lover of living, it doesn't matter Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come even if you have broken your vow a thousand times, Come, yet again, come, come. As quoted in Rumi and His Sufi Path of Love (2007) by M Fatih Citlak and Huseyin Bingul, p. 81 Come, come again, whoever you are, come! Heathen, fire worshipper or idolatrous, come! Come even if you broke your penitence a hundred times, Ours is the portal of hope, come as you are. As quoted in Turkey: A Primary Source Cultural Guide (2004) by Martha Kneib This poem is wrongly considered to be Rumi's work, where it is actually from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ab%C5%AB-Sa%27%C4%ABd_Abul-KhayrAbū-Sa'īd Abul-Khayr. The original poem in Farsi is باز آ باز آ هر آنچه هستی باز آ گر کافر و گبر و بت‌پرستی باز آ این درگه ما درگه نومیدی نیست صد بار اگر توبه شکستی باز آ http://ganjoor.net/abusaeed/robaee-aa/sh1/

Lovers, Time, Despair

“I remember the casting session that I had where I was a break dancer, having this punk hair cut. They rejected me and I became really disillusioned with the business and said well this is what it's all about, and I haven't even got in to read a line. He said don't worry, some day we're going to get you back into this and it's going to happen for you, which I kind of took to heart. It was one of those situations where I was lucky and fortunate enough to be at the right places at the right time. All of a sudden I was on the set of Growing Pains and got this audition for This Boy's Life and was able to jump into the feature film world. It's really been just simply the fact that I'd been able to work, you know what I mean? I would probably still be trying to be an actor even if I was out of work, but I would probably become a little disillusioned at some point and move on to other things. But it's the one thing that I know that I love.”

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer

http://www.popmonk.com/actors/leonardo-dicaprio/quotes-leonardo-dicaprio.htm

Love, Life, Pain, World

“It takes a person of great care and insight to watch for any abnormality in the green grass even while it grows abundantly and healthily.”

Kenzaburō Ōe book A Personal Matter

A Personal Matter (1964)

Grass, Personality

“In the evening you hear the scream of bats,
Two black horses jump in the meadow,
The red maple rustles.
To the traveller the small inn appears by the wayside.
Wonderful the taste of young wine and nuts,
Wonderful: stumbling drunk into darkening wood.
Through black branches painful bells sound,
On the face dew drips.”

Georg Trakl (1887–1914) austrian poet

"Towards Evening My Heart," Poems (1913)
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/2014/10/29/wild-heart-turning-white-georg-trakl-and-cocaine/

Pain, Travel, Appearance, Wine

“Everything turns on pain; the rest is accessory, even nonexistent, for we remember only what hurts. Painful sensations being the only real ones, it is virtually useless to experience others.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Pain, Hurt

“Even after all that, each and every being here believe,
that the heat will be defeated and coolness will prevail.
The experience knows
that the rule of an autocrat cannot last long.”

Suman Pokhrel (1967) Nepali poet, lyricist, playwright, translator and artist

Heat http://asiansignature.com/contemporary-poets/suman-pokhrel/ From Poetry

“If a painter once devoted himself to dynamism and now abandons it, denies it and even criticizes it, it is his own business. This does not mean, however that futurism has had his day. It is always worthy of interest and many artists still work in its ranks with unchanged passion. Dynamism is in life and in nature itself.”

Fortunato Depero (1892–1960) Italian painter, writer, sculptor and graphic designer

Source: So I think, so I paint (1947), p. 112

Life, Business, Nature, Passion

“I hope I am over wary; but if I am not, there is, even now, something of ill-omen, amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts; and the worse than savage mobs, for the executive ministers of justice. This disposition is awfully fearful in any and that it now exists in ours, though grating to our feelings to admit, it would be a violation of truth and an insult to our intelligence to deny.”

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

1830s, The Lyceum Address (1838)

Truth, Fear, Justice, Law

“He (Hitler) knew even less than the rest. He allowed himself to be taken for a sucker by everyone.”

Sepp Dietrich (1892–1966) German SS commander

To David Irving, from "Hitler's Gladiator: The Life and Wars of Panzer Army Commander Sepp Dietrich" - by Charles Messenger - Biography & Autobiography - 2005 - Page 174

“Who can attain to anything great if he does not feel in himself the force and will to inflict great pain? The ability to suffer is a small matter: in that line, weak women and even slaves often attain masterliness. But not to perish from internal distress and doubt when one inflicts great suffering and hears the cry of it — that is great, that belongs to greatness.”

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

Sec. 325
The Gay Science (1882)

Women, Pain, Feeling, Suffering

“It was a long season of mourning and there were times when I wondered if I should mourn all my life and never again be free of it; but at last I could remember without weeping, and recall the days of love without unending sorrow welling up like tears from the very depths of my being. There is no sorrow like the memory of love and the knowledge that it is gone forever; even in dreams, I never saw again his face, and though I longed for it, I came at last to see that it was just as well, lest I live all the rest of my life in dreams…but at last there came a day when I could look back and know that the time for mourning was ended.”

Marion Zimmer Bradley book The Mists of Avalon

Morgaine
The Mists of Avalon (1983)

Love, Life, Dreams, Knowledge

“For a woman as for a man, marriage might enormously help or devastatingly hinder the growth of her power to contribute something impersonally valuable to the community in which she lived, but it was not that power, and could not be regarded as an end in itself. Nor, even, were children ends in themselves; it was useless to go on producing human beings merely in order that they, in their sequence, might produce others, and never turn from this business of continuous procreation to the accomplishment of some definite and lasting piece of work.”

Vera Brittain book Testament of Youth

Source: Testament of Youth (1933), Chapter 11

Marriage, Children, Communication, Business

“We know that the overwhelming majority of police officers do an incredibly hard and dangerous job fairly and professionally. They are deserving of our respect and not our scorn. And when anyone, no matter how good their intentions may be, paints all police as biased or bigoted, we undermine those officers we depend on for our safety. And as for those who use rhetoric suggesting harm to police, even if they don’t act on it themselves -- well, they not only make the jobs of police officers even more dangerous, but they do a disservice to the very cause of justice that they claim to promote.”

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

2016, Memorial Service for Fallen Dallas Police Officers (July 2016)

Justice, Painting, Dependency

“All portions of this confederacy should act in harmony and with careful deliberation. The Democrats cry John Brown invasion. We are guiltless of it, but our denial does not satisfy them. Nothing will satisfy them but disinfecting the atmosphere entirely of all opposition to slavery. They have not demanded of us to yield the guards of liberty in our state constitutions, but it will naturally come to that after a while. If we give up to them, we cannot refuse even their utmost request. If slavery is right, it ought to be extended; if not, it ought to be restricted, there is no middle ground. Wrong as we think it, we can afford to let it alone where it of necessity now exists; but we cannot afford to extend it into free territory and around our own homes. Let us stand against it!”

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

1860s, Speech at Hartford (1860)

Home, Nature, Thinking, Cry

“Hitler didn't snub me; it was our president who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram.”

Jesse Owens (1913–1980) American track and field athlete

About Franklin D. Roosevelt, as quoted in Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler's Olympics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/978-0-618-68822-7 (2007), by Jeremy Schaap, New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, p. 211 1930s

“I don’t believe in God as you imagine Him to be, but I believe in many things that you could never even dream of.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Aleph (2011)

God, Dreams, Imagination

“Soma, the predominating deity of the Moon, is the source of food grains and therefore the source of strength even for the celestial beings, the demigods. He is the vital force for all vegetation. Unfortunately, modern so-called scientists, who do not fully understand the Moon, describe the Moon as being full of deserts. Since the Moon is the source for our vegetation, how can the Moon be a desert? The moonshine is the vital force for all vegetation, and therefore we cannot possibly accept that the Moon is a desert.”

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

Srimad Bhagavatam, Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1999. Canto 8, Chapter 5, verse 34, purport. Vedabase http://www.vedabase.com/en/sb/8/5/34 Quotes from Books: Loving God, Quotes from Books: Regression of Science

Food, Understanding

“I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife. At length, I even offered her personal violence.”

Edgar Allan Poe book The Black Cat

The Black Cat (1843)

Feeling, Suffering, Personality

“Waiting is the worst part,' said Pismire.
'No it isn't,' said Owlglass, who wasn't even being trusted to hold a sword. 'I expect that having long sharp swords stuck in you is the worst part.”

Terry Pratchett book The Carpet People

The Carpet People (1971; 1992)

Waiting, Parting

“If you are possessed by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell it.”

Thomas Mann book Tonio Kröger

Variant translation: It is strange. If an idea gains control of you, you will find it expressed everywhere, you will actually smell it in the wind.
As translated by Bayard Quincy Morgan
Tonio Kröger (1903)

Idea

“If the immortal is also imperishable, the soul when attacked by death cannot perish; for the preceding argument shows that the soul will not admit of death, or even be dead, any more than three or the odd number will admit of the even…”

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

Plato, Phaedo

Death, Soul, Dead

“Recently, while I was in the street, my eye was caught by a poulterer's shop; I stared unthinkingly at his piled-up wares, neatly and appetizingly laid out, when I became aware of a man at the side busily plucking a hen, while another man was just putting his hand in a cage, where he seized a live hen and tore its head off. The hideous scream of the animal, and the pitiful, weaker sounds of complaint that it made while being overpowered transfixed my soul with horror. Ever since then I have been unable to rid myself of this impression, although I had experienced it often before. It is dreadful to see how our lives—which, on the whole, remain addicted to pleasure—rest upon such a bottomless pit of the cruellest misery! This has been so self-evident to me from the very beginning, and has become even more central to my thinking as my sensibility has increased … I have observed the way in which I am drawn in the [direction of empathy for misery] with a force that inspires me with sympathy, and that everything touches me deeply only insofar as it arouses fellow-feeling in me, i. e. fellow-suffering. I see in this fellow-suffering the most salient feature of my moral being, and presumably it is this that is the well-spring of my art.”

Richard Wagner (1813–1883) German composer, conductor

Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, translated by Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1987), pp. 422-424 http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-c/wagner02.htm

Pleasure, Art, Way, Feeling

“Now I must tell that nothing will induce me to support the 3 F's—three fiddlesticks. During a long parliamentary life, and long before I was in Parliament, I have been profoundly convinced, that the greatness and character of this country depended on our landed tenure. All the rest, I look upon, and have ever looked upon, as "leather and prunella". I fear the pass is sold… I have formally, and even solemnly, warned the house in wh[ich] I now sit, that the landed system of this country would be attacked and invaded by the revolutionary party.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Letter to Lord Salisbury (27 December 1880), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860–1881 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 1468.
1880s

Life, Fear, Support, Housing

“I thought that in your struggle for the Union, to whatever extent the negroes should cease helping the enemy, to that extent it weakened the enemy in his resistance to you. Do you think differently? I thought that whatever negroes can be got to do as soldiers, leaves just so much less for white soldiers to do, in saving the Union. Does it appear otherwise to you? But negroes, like other people, act upon motives. Why should they do any thing for us, if we will do nothing for them? If they stake their lives for us, they must be prompted by the strongest motive — even the promise of freedom. And the promise being made, must be kept.”

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

1860s, Letter to James C. Conkling (1863)

People, Motivation, Thinking, Freedom

“I say that the eye is not open when it is limited to the passive role of a mirror – even if the water of that mirror offers some interesting peculiarities.... that eye impresses me as no less dead than the eye of a slaughtered steer if it has only the capacity to reflect – what if it reflects the object in one or in many aspects, in repose or in motion, in waking or in dream? The treasure of the eye is elsewhere! Most artists are still for tuning around the hands of the clock.... without having the slightest concern for the spring hidden in the opaque case. The eye-spring.... Arshile Gorky – for me the first painter to whom the secret have been completely revealed.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

Breton's quote in the Introduction to the exhibition of Gorky's first show, Julien Levy Gallery, March 1945; as quoted in Arshile Gorky, – Goats on the roof, ed. by Matthew Spender, Ridinghouse, London, 2009, pp. 257-258
after 1930

Secret, Dreams, Spring, Water