Quotes about event
page 19

“Few could read from these pages without being changed. To some the extraordinary insights into world events will be of major interest, while to others the laying bare of the secrets of self-realization, the simple description of experienced truth, will be a revelation. To anyone seeking to understand the Laws of Life, these subtle and pregnant insights will take them quickly to the core of Life itself, and provide them with a simple path stretching to the mountain-top. The essential unity of all life is underscored in a clear and meaningful way. Never, it would appear, have the laws by which we live seemed so natural and so unconstraining.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Maitreya's Teachings - The Laws of Life (2005)

Life, Truth, Secret, World

“In the ultimate matter of life and death, survival or defeat, the insular position of the British nation has set us apart from the inhabitants of the adjacent continent. This is a political fact which cannot be pretended out of existence. As long as it remains true, or is believed by the British themselves to remain true, the commitment of Britain to any continental combination can never be total. … True, it has often been rumoured that Britain had lost, or was about to lose, that characteristic; but events have hitherto always proved that she had it still, and those events are the most formative element in the folk-memory of the British people. … This is the reason why Britain, which is in many sense as European as any nation, cannot be integrated politically with the European continent.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Source: Speech to The Hague (17 May 1971), quoted in The Common Market: Renegotiate or Come Out (Elliot Right Way Books, 1973), p. 109

Life, Death, People, Sense

“The world which lay under darkness and stillness following the closing of the lid was not the world we know. The event was over. Its devastation lay around about us. The clamoring mind and heart stilled, almost indifferent, certainly disembodied, frail, and exhausted. The hills were hushed, obliterated. Up in the sky, like a crater from some distant cataclysm, was a hollow ring.”

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

" Total Eclipse https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/annie-dillards-total-eclipse/536148/", Teaching a Stone to Talk (1982)

World, Distant, Heart, Indifference

“The only excuse for this book is that it is an attempt to penetrate to that deeper meaning underlying the great events in the life of Christ, and to bring into renewed life and interest the weakening aspiration of the Christian. If it can be shown that the story revealed in the Gospels has not only an application to that divine Figure Which dwelt for a time among men, but that it has also a practical significance and meaning for the civilised man today, then there will be some objective gained and some service and help rendered…. A myth is capable of becoming a fact in the experience of an individual, for a myth is a fact which can be proven. Upon the myths we take our stand, but we must seek to re-interpret them in the light of the present. Through self-initiated experiment we can prove their validity; through experience we can establish them as governing forces in our lives; and through their expression we can demonstrate their truth to others. This is the theme of this book, dealing as it does with the facts of the Gospel story, that fivefold sequential myth which teaches us the revelation of divinity in the Person of Jesus Christ, and which remains eternally truth, in the cosmic sense, in the historical sense, and in its practical application to the individual. This myth divides itself into five great episodes: 1. The Birth at Bethlehem. 2. The Baptism in Jordan. 3. The Transfiguration on Mount Carmel. 4. The Crucifixion on Mount Golgotha. 5. The Resurrection and Ascension.”

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

Source: From Bethlehem to Calvary (1937), Chapter One

Life, Men, Truth, Books

“Tikka Khan was a soldier doing a soldier’s job. He went to East Pakistan with precise orders and came back by precise orders. He did what he was ordered to do, though he wasn’t always in agree ment, and I picked him because I know he’ll follow my orders with the same discipline. And he won’t try to stick his nose in politics. I can’t destroy the whole army, and anyway his bad reputation for the events in Dacca is exaggerated. There’s only one man really responsible for those events—Yahya Khan. Both he and his advisers were so drunk with power and corruption they’d even forgotten the honor of the army. They thought of nothing but acquiring beautiful cars, building beautiful homes, making friends with bankers, and sending money abroad. Yahya Khan wasn’t interested in the government of the country, he was interested in power for its own sake and nothing else. What can you say of a leader who starts drinking as soon as he wakes up and doesn’t stop until he goes to bed? You’ve no idea how painful it was to deal with him. He was really Jack the Ripper.”

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1928–1979) Fourth President and ninth Prime Minister of Pakistan

Oriana Fallaci. Interview with Ali Bhutto in Karachi, April 1972

Money, Pain, Bad luck, Making love

“The Revolution and Hanover succession had been objects of the highest veneration to the old Whigs. They thought them not only proofs of the sober and steady spirit of liberty which guided their ancestors; but of their wisdom and provident care of posterity.—The modern Whigs have quite other notions of these events and actions. They do not deny that Mr. Burke has given truly the words of the acts of parliament which secured the succession, and the just sense of them. They attack not him but the law.”

Edmund Burke book An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs

Source: An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791), p. 436

Wisdom, Law, Sense, Success

“I had completely forgotten about religion and in this respect had a savage ignorance of it. The first glimmer of truth came to me through an encounter with a great poet, who played a predominant part in the formation of my thinking and to whom I owe an eternal debt, Arthur Rimbaud. Reading Illuminations, then a few months later, Use Saison en Enfer was for me a capital event. For the first time, his books opened a crack in my materialist servitude and gave me a vivid and almost physical impression of the supernatural.”

Paul Claudel (1868–1955) French diplomat

J'avais complètement oublié la religion et j'étais à son égard d'une ignorance sauvage. La première lueur de vérité me fut donnée par la rencontre des livres d'un grand poète, à qui je dois une éternelle reconnaissance, et qui a eu dans la formation de ma pensée une part prépondérante, Arthur Rimbaud. La lecture des Illuminations, puis, quelques mois après, d'Une Saison en enfer, fut pour moi un événement capital. Pour la première fois, ces livres ouvraient une fissure dans mon bagne matérialiste et me donnaient l'impression vivante et presque physique du surnaturel.
"My Conversion," December 1886, as translated in Negritude and the Civilization of the Universal, p. 28

Truth, Books, Religion, Thinking

“Marxism-Leninism is an explanation of historical events; Marxism-Leninism is a guide for action, Marxism-Leninism is the ideology of the proletariat, which must guide, make its action conscious to overthrow exploiters, to establish a classless society.”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

Speech (2 December 1971) http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1971/esp/f021271e.html

Making love

“The most characteristic custom of tho Nayars is connected with their marriages. Every Nayar girl is married in one sense at a very early age. The tali is tied round her neck before she attains puberty, and it is considered to be disgraceful in her relations not to have this ceremony performed before that event takes place. The tying of tho tali is a great event in each household, and frequently several girls go through this ceremony simultaneously. When this can be managed it enables the family to make a greater display than they would probably be able to afford if there was a separate ceremony for each girl.”

William Logan (author) book Malabar Manual

Malabar Manual, Page 135 https://archive.org/details/MalabarLogan/page/n147 Malabar Manual (1887)

Marriage, Age, Making love, Family

“I don’t pretend to understand what the physicists mean by time, but for people, it isn’t so-and-so many measured units; it’s events, experiences. A man who crowds his life and dies young has lived longer than one who got old sitting in tame sameness.”

Poul Anderson book The Boat of a Million Years

Source: The Boat of a Million Years (1989), Chapter 19 “Thule”, Section 14 (p. 441)

Life, People, Understanding, Time

“By making us aware of the futility of this wishful thinking, the psychotechnologies help free us from unhealthy dependencies. We increase our capacity to love without bargaining or expectations, to enjoy without emotional mortgages. At the same time, enhanced awareness adds luster to simple things and everyday events, so that what may seem a turn toward a more austere life is often the discovery of subtler, less perishable riches.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Four, People Changing

Love, Life, Making love, Thinking

“But today the fashion is to ascribe the extinction of Buddhism to the persecution of Buddhists by Hindus, to the destruction of their temples by the Hindus. One point is that the Marxist historians who have been perpetrating this falsehood have not been able to produce even an iota of evidence to substantiate the concoction. In one typical instance, Romila Thapar had cited three inscriptions. The indefatigable Sita Ram Goel looked them up. Two of these turned out to have absolutely no connection with Buddhist viharas or their destruction, and the one that did deal with an object being destroyed had been held by authorities to have been a concoction; in any event, it told a story which was as different from what the historian had insinuated as day from night.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud

Fashion, Night

“In short, what the sensitive liberals want is a thus try to deprive the French Revolution of its status as the founding event of modern democracy, relegating it to a historical anomaly: there was a historical necessity to assert the modern principles of personal freedom, etc.”

Slavoj Žižek (1949) Slovene philosopher

Robespierre: Virtue and Terror (2007)

Democracy, Freedom, Personality

“About a month before his last trip to the front, all his friends noticed that he had changed very much – he stopped talking about the events in Ukraine, became quiet and even-tempered. He decided on what he was to do.”

Vasyl Slipak (1974–2016) Ukrainian opera singer

2017 Orest Slipak, the brother of singer. Brother about brother. The Day. Кyiv.ua. - 2017. - 27 April. https://day.kyiv.ua/en/article/topic-day/brother-about-brother

Change

“I have repeatedly said that I do not want to be prime minister. That has always been my view. But events since last Thursday have weighed heavily with me. I respect and admire all the candidates running for the leadership. In particular, I wanted to help build a team behind Boris Johnson so that a politician who argued for leaving the European Union could lead us to a better future. But I have come, reluctantly, to the conclusion that Boris cannot provide the leadership or build the team for the task ahead.”

Michael Gove (1967) British politician

Michael Gove and Theresa May head five-way Conservative race https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36671336, BBC News, 30 June 2016 2016

Future, Help

“This is a day of great events. We can pay tribute to our State President and to our Republic.”

Hendrik Verwoerd (1901–1966) Prime Minister of South Africa from 1958 until his assassination in 1966

“What is also now fully and universally accepted in this country, but what may not even yet be as well understood elsewhere, is that, in the event of further aggression, we are resolved to use at once the whole of our strength in fulfilment of our pledges to resist it.”

Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) British politician

Speech to the annual dinner of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (29 June 1939), quoted in The Times (30 June 1939), p. 9
Foreign Secretary

Universe, Country

“The anti‐Semite understands nothing about modern society. He would be incapable of conceiving of a constructive plan; his action cannot reach the level of the methodical; it remains on the ground of passion. To a long‐term enterprise he prefers an explosion of rage analogous to the running amuck of the Malays. His intellectual activity is confined to interpretation; he seeks in historical events the signs of the presence of an evil power. Out of this spring those childish and elaborate fabrications which give him his resemblance to the extreme paranoiacs. In addition, anti‐Semitism channels evolutionary drives toward the destruction of certain men, not of institutions. An anti‐Semitic mob will consider it has done enough when it has massacred some Jews and burned a few synagogues. It represents, therefore, a safety valve for the owning classes, who encourage it and thus substitute for a dangerous hate against their regime a beneficent hate against particular people. Above all this naive dualism is eminently reassuring to he anti‐Semite himself. If all he has to do is to remove Evil, that means that the Good is already given.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Anti-Semite and Jew

He has no need to seek it in anguish, to invent it, to scrutinize it patiently when he has found it, to prove it in action, to verify it by its consequences, or, finally, to shoulder he responsibilities of the moral choice be has made. It is not by chance that the great outbursts of anti‐Semitic rage conceal a basic optimism. The anti‐Semite as cast his lot for Evil so as not to have to cast his lot for Good. The more one is absorbed in fighting Evil, the less one is tempted to place the Good in question. One does not need to talk about it, yet it is always understood in the discourse of the anti‐Semite and it remains understood in his thought. When he has fulfilled his mission as holy destroyer, the Lost Paradise will reconstitute itself. For the moment so many tasks confront the anti‐Semite that he does not have time to think about it. He is in the breach, fighting, and each of his outbursts of rage is a pretext to avoid the anguished search for the Good.
Pages 31-32
Anti-Semite and Jew (1945)

Men, Hate, People, Spring

“Spinoza, too, whom I was reading under Royce himself, filled me with joy and enthusiasm: I gathered at once from him a doctrine which has remained axiomatic with me ever since, namely that good and evil are relative to the natures of animals, irreversible in that relation, but indifferent to the march of cosmic events, since the force of the universe infinitely exceeds the force of any of its parts.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

George Santayana, in his A General Confession (from The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings)
S - Z, George Santayana

Nature, Universe, Relation ships, Evil

“But how to write about a man who lived such a contemplative life marked by so few striking external events? He was extraordinarily private, and he kept his own person invisible in his writing. I had none of the material that ordinarily lends itself to narrative—no family dramas, no love affairs, jealousies, curious anecdotes, feuds, spats, or reunions. He had a large correspondence, but after his death his colleagues followed his instructions and removed almost all personal comments from his letters. No, not much external drama in his life: most scholars regard Spinoza as a placid and gentle soul—some compare his life to that of Christian saints, some even to Jesus.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Irvin D. Yalom, in his novel The Spinoza Problem, prologue. (New York: Basic Books, 2012)
S - Z

Love, Life, Death, Making love

“The voice in my soul in which I will have faith, and for the sake of which I have faith in all else, does not merely command me generally to act, but in every particular situation it declares what I shall do and what leave undone; it accompanies me through every event of my life, and it is impossible for me to contend against it. To listen to it and obey it honestly and impartially, without fear or equivocation, is the business of my existence. My life is no longer an empty I play without truth or significance. It is appointed that what I conscience ordains me shall be done, and for this purpose am I here. I have understanding to know, and power to execute it. By conscience alone comes truth and reality into my representations.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 77
The Vocation of Man (1800), Faith

Life, Truth, Fear, Faith

“You didn’t do any of these things because they were necessarily good unto themselves, but because you saw them as means to shape events to serve your own ends. The entire legacy of the Matriarch is the exploitation of others like pieces in some great game.”

Lawrence M. Schoen (1959) American writer and klingonist

She laughed in his face. “You can see it that way if you like. The weak usually do, if they see it at all. But you disappoint me. Despite your study of history, you fail to understand power. It’s obvious you never will...There’s really only one choice you ever have to make in any act of creation. Will you be the instrument or the artist? If you’re only now coming to realize that you’ve been a tool all your life, there’s no one to blame for it but yourself. If you don’t like that state of affairs, then act! Impose your will upon the world and walk your own path. If you don’t, you’ll just end up being a token in someone else’s game; you’ll continue to be used as they see fit. That’s how the universe works. You don’t have to like it, but you’d do well to get used to it.”...
“No, maybe that’s the way the world looks once you’ve already decided to take your path. Or maybe it’s just you’re so jaded, or you’ve bought into your own delusions. I don’t know which, and I don’t care. Those aren’t the only choices: use of be used. There is more than being tyrant or servant. I reject both options and I reject you. You’ve been dead for centuries, Margda, it’s about time you accepted that.”
Source: Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard (2015), Chapter 38, “Loose Ends” (pp. 362-363; ellipses represent elisions of descriptive sections)

Game

“Consider an event, for example the outburst if a nova… Suppose this event is observed from two stars in line with the nova, and suppose further that the two stars are moving uniformly with respect to each other in this line. Let the epoch at which these stars passed by each other be taken as the zero of time measurement, and let an observer A on one of the stars estimate the distance and epoch of the nova outburst to be x units of length and t units of time, respectively. Suppose the other star is moving toward the nova with velocity v relative to A.”

Gerald James Whitrow (1912–2000) British mathematician

Let an observer B on the star estimate the distance and epoch of the nova outburst to be x<nowiki>'</nowiki> units of length and t<nowiki>'</nowiki> units of time, respectively. Then the Lorentz formulae, relating x<nowiki>'</nowiki> to t<nowiki>'</nowiki>, are<center><math>x' = \frac {x-vt}{\sqrt{1-\frac{v^2}{c^2}}} ; \qquad t' = \frac {t-\frac{vx}{c^2}}{\sqrt{1-\frac{v^2}{c^2}}}</math></center>
These formulae are... quite general, applying to any event in line with two uniformly moving observers. If we let c become infinite then the ratio of v to c tends to zero and the formulae become<center><math>x' = x - vt ; \qquad t' = t</math></center>.
The Structure of the Universe: An Introduction to Cosmology (1949)

Star, Time

“Professor Lal was already a veteran whose major book, History of the Khaljis, was compulsory reading for students of medieval Indian history from the undergraduate class onwards. I still find it very useful when I teach any course on the Delhi sultanate. … Historiographically the book fell entirely and conspicuously in the genre of nationalist historiography whose hallmark was its challenge· to the portrayal of medieval Indian history as a story of unrelenting conflict between the medieval Muslim rulers and their Hindu subjects. History of the Khaljis is one of the best works in this genre: empirically sound, objective in its assessment of events and persons, non-judgemental in its evaluation of the motives of rulers or their opponents. The remarkable quality gave the book a long life in the discipline, even when newer problematiques of socio-economic history began to displace the ones of dynastic history that had remained the preoccupation of the earlier generation.”

K. S. Lal (1920–2002) Indian historian

Harbans Mukhia, Obituary, The Indian Historical Review http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/037698360102800245

Life, Books, History, Motivation

“He must always be remembered for a significant event in Indian History viz., when he appeared in Court as President of India when his election was in dispute.”

V. V. Giri (1894–1980) Indian politician and 4th president of India

Chief Justice Alladi Kuppuswamy in: P. 85
Presidents of India, 1950-2003

History, Appearance

“As far as that event is concerned, I would say it is a great tragedy, a monumental historical tragedy for which we deeply regret. We call upon the Government of India and the people of India to be magnanimous, to put the past behind and to approach the ethnic question in a different perspective.”

Rajiv Gandhi (1944–1991) sixth Prime Minister of India

Balasingham, in Tamil Tiger 'regret' over Gandhi (27 June 2006) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5122032.stm

People, Question, Past

“She began life as a poet, in later years when the compulsion of events drew into the national struggle, she plunged into it with all the zest and fire she possessed…. whose whole life became a poem and a song and who infused artistry and grace in the national struggle, just as Mahatma Gandhi had infused moral grandeur to it.”

Sarojini Naidu (1879–1949) Indian politician, governor of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh from 1947 to 1949

Jawahar Lal Nehru quoted in "Selected Letters, Gandhi -Sarojini Naidu Correspondence, Preface".

Life

“Do you expect even dreams to unravel rationally, Kahl Balduin? Must each event have a precise, empirical cause?”

Michael Bishop (1945) American writer

“No, not if you’re narrating a dream. But if you claim, like the Pledgeson, that your visions and reality are the same thing, then, yes I expect consistency. I’m too old for pointless fairy tales.”
Source: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), Chapter 7, “Interlude: Heartseed and Tower” (p. 142)

Dreams

“An unusual event occurred in the seventh. Greengrass tripled over the head of Willie Mays. To a Giant fan this is like tripling over the Empire State building. Willie galloped after the drive but his horse ran second as the ball descended a few inches beyond his reach, a step or two away from the centerfield fence.”

Willie Mays (1931) Baseball player

Bob Cooke: “Giants Down Reds, 6-1, Lead by 3,” The New York Herald Tribune (July 31, 1954), p. 11

Horse

“When people are content, they are difficult to maneuver. We are perennially discontent and offered placebos as remedies. My intention in writing this book is to make you feel better, to offer you a solution to the way you feel. I am confident that this is necessary. When do you ever meet people that are happy? Genuinely happy? Only children, the mentally ill, and daytime television presenters. My belief is that it is possible to feel happier, because I feel better than I used to. I am beginning to understand where the solution lies, primarily because of an exhausting process of trial and mostly error. My qualification to write a book on how to change yourself and change the world is not that I’m better than you, it’s that I’m worse. Not that I’m smarter, but that I’m dumber: I bought the lie hook, line, and sinker. My only quality has been an unwitting momentum, a willingness to wade through the static dissatisfaction that has been piped into my mind from the moment I learned language. What if that feeling of inadequacy, isolation, and anxiety isn’t just me? What if it isn’t internally engineered but the result of concerted effort, the product of a transmission? An ongoing broadcast from the powerful that has colonized my mind? Who is it in here, inside your mind, reading these words, feeling that fear? Is there an awareness, an exempt presence, gleaming behind the waterfall of words that commentate on every event, label every object, judge everyone you come into contact with? And is there another way to feel? Is it possible to be in this world and feel another way? Can you conceive, even for a moment, of a species similar to us but a little more evolved, that have transcended the idea that solutions to the way we feel can be externally acquired? What would that look like? How would that feel—to be liberated from the bureaucracy of managing your recalcitrant mind. Is it possible that there is a conspiracy to make us feel this way?”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

Happiness, Children, People, Lie

“When the history of his time is written he will stand forth as the great figure in the years which have been so crowded with events. He gained the entire confidence of the nation by his patriotism, wisdom and ability, just as he won its love by his kindness and goodness to all men.”

William McKinley (1843–1901) American politician, 25th president of the United States (in office from 1897 to 1901)

Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. The Authentic Life of President McKinley, page 413.

Love, Wisdom, Men, Making love

“Almost one year has now passed since the horrifying events in Mina, as a result of which several thousand people tragically lost their lives- under the hot sun with thirsty lips- and this happened on the day of Eid while they were in the clothes of ihram. Shortly before that, another group of people were crushed to death in Masjid ul-Haraam while they were worshiping and performing tawaf and salat. Saudi rulers were at fault in both cases. This is what all those present, observers and technical analysts agree upon. Some experts maintain that the events were premeditated. The hesitation and failure to rescue the half-dead and injured people, whose enthusiastic souls and enthralled hearts were accompanying their praying tongues on Eid ul-Adha, is also obvious and incontrovertible. The heartless and murderous Saudis locked up the injured with the dead in containers- instead of providing medical treatment and helping them or at least quenching their thirst. They murdered them.”

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

2016, Hajj hijacked by oppressors, Muslims should reconsider management of Hajj (September 2015)

Death, People, Soul, Failure

“Garbo is lonely. She always has been and she always will be. She lives in the core of a vast aching aloneness. She is a great artist, but it is both her supreme glory and her supreme tragedy that art is to her the only reality. The figures of living men and women, the events of everyday existence, move about her, shadowy, unsubstantial. It is only when she breathes the breath of life into a part, clothes with her own flesh and blood the concept of a playwright, that she herself is fully awake, fully alive.”

Greta Garbo (1905–1990) Swedish-American actress

Marie Dressler, My Own Story as Told to Mildred Harrington (1934)

Life, Women, Men, Art

“Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed — chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones. Few that fell trees plant them; nor would planting avail much towards getting back anything like the noble primeval forests. … It took more than three thousand years to make some of the trees in these Western woods — trees that are still standing in perfect strength and beauty, waving and singing in the mighty forests of the Sierra. Through all the wonderful, eventful centuries … God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but he cannot save them from fools — only Uncle Sam can do that.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Source: 1900s, Our National Parks (1901), chapter 10: The American Forests

God, Making love, Disease, Beauty

“All my friends with PalmPilots and cell phones, they’re always calling themselves and leaving reminders to themselves about what’s about to happen. We leave Post-it notes for ourselves. We go to that shop in the mall, the one where they engrave whatever shit you want on a silver-plated box or a fountain pen, and we get a reminder for every special event that life goes by too fast for us to remember. We buy those picture frames where you record a message on a sound chip. We videotape everything! Oh, and now there’s those digital cameras, so we can all email around our photos — this century’s equivalent of the boring vacation slide show. We organize and reorganize. We record and archive.”

Chuck Palahniuk (1962) American novelist, essayist

Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories (2004)

Life, Photo, Box

“Most works in realism tell a succession of such abject truths; they are deeply in earnest, every detail is true, and yet the whole finally tumbles to the ground — true but without significance. How did Jane Austen save her novels from that danger? They appear to be compact of abject truth. Their events are excruciatingly unimportant; and yet, with R. Crusoe, they will probably outlast all Fielding, Scott, George Elliot, Thackeray, and Dickens. The art is so consummate that the secret is hidden; peer at them as hard as one may; shake them; take them apart; one cannot see how it is done.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Thornton Wilder, A preface for Our Town (1938)

Truth, Secret, Art, Appearance

“In those days I had seen little further than the old school of political economists into the possibilities of fundamental improvement in social arrangements. Private property, as now understood, and inheritance, appeared to me, as to them, the dernier mot of legislation: and I looked no further than to mitigating the inequalities consequent on these institutions, by getting rid of primogeniture and entails. The notion that it was possible to go further than this in removing the injustice -- for injustice it is, whether admitting of a complete remedy or not -- involved in the fact that some are born to riches and the vast majority to poverty, I then reckoned chimerical, and only hoped that by universal education, leading to voluntary restraint on population, the portion of the poor might be made more tolerable. In short, I was a democrat, but not the least of a Socialist. We were now much less democrats than I had been, because so long as education continues to be so wretchedly imperfect, we dreaded the ignorance and especially the selfishness and brutality of the mass: but our ideal of ultimate improvement went far beyond Democracy, and would class us decidedly under the general designation of Socialists. While we repudiated with the greatest energy that tyranny of society over the individual which most Socialistic systems are supposed to involve, we yet looked forward to a time when society will no longer be divided into the idle and the industrious; when the rule that they who do not work shall not eat, will be applied not to paupers only, but impartially to all; when the division of the produce of labour, instead of depending, as in so great a degree it now does, on the accident of birth, will be made by concert on an acknowledged principle of justice; and when it will no longer either be, or be thought to be, impossible for human beings to exert themselves strenuously in procuring benefits which are not to be exclusively their own, but to be shared with the society they belong to. The social problem of the future we considered to be, how to unite the greatest individual liberty of action, with a common ownership in the raw material of the globe, and an equal participation of all in the benefits of combined labour. We had not the presumption to suppose that we could already foresee, by what precise form of institutions these objects could most effectually be attained, or at how near or how distant a period they would become practicable. We saw clearly that to render any such social transformation either possible or desirable, an equivalent change of character must take place both in the uncultivated herd who now compose the labouring masses, and in the immense majority of their employers. Both these classes must learn by practice to labour and combine for generous, or at all events for public and social purposes, and not, as hitherto, solely for narrowly interested ones. But the capacity to do this has always existed in mankind, and is not, nor is ever likely to be, extinct. Education, habit, and the cultivation of the sentiments, will make a common man dig or weave for his country, as readily as fight for his country. True enough, it is only by slow degrees, and a system of culture prolonged through successive generations, that men in general can be brought up to this point. But the hindrance is not in the essential constitution of human nature. Interest in the common good is at present so weak a motive in the generality not because it can never be otherwise, but because the mind is not accustomed to dwell on it as it dwells from morning till night on things which tend only to personal advantage. When called into activity, as only self-interest now is, by the daily course of life, and spurred from behind by the love of distinction and the fear of shame, it is capable of producing, even in common men, the most strenuous exertions as well as the most heroic sacrifices. The deep-rooted selfishness which forms the general character of the existing state of society, is so deeply rooted, only because the whole course of existing institutions tends to foster it; modern institutions in some respects more than ancient, since the occasions on which the individual is called on to do anything for the public without receiving its pay, are far less frequent in modern life, than the smaller commonwealths of antiquity.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/230/mode/1up pp. 230-233

Love, Life, Men, Education

“Our age is in many ways unique, full of events and phenomena that never occurred before and can never happen again. They distort our thinking, making us believe that what is true now will be true forever, though perhaps on a larger scale. Because we have annihilated distance on this planet, we imagine that we can do it once again. The facts are otherwise, and we see them more clearly if we forget the present and turn our minds towards the past.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

1960s, We'll Never Conquer Space (1960)

Age, Making love, Way, Imagination

“A single neutron begins the chain-reaction that in an instant can destroy a million lives and the toil of generations. Equally insignificant and unimportant are the trigger-events which can sometimes change a man’s course of action and so alter the whole pattern of his future.”

Arthur C. Clarke book Breaking Strain

Breaking Strain, p. 181
2000s and posthumous publications, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (2001)

Change, Future

“It is in the animal part of your nature to be most impressed by what you can see and hear in the present—the latest news reports and trends, the opinions and actions of the people around you, whatever seems the most dramatic. This is what makes you fall for alluring schemes that promise quick results and easy money. This is also what makes you overreact to present circumstances—becoming overly exhilarated or panicky as events turn one direction or the other. Learn to measure people by the narrowness or breadth of their vision; avoid entangling yourself with those who cannot see the consequences of their actions, who are in a continual reactive mode. They will infect you with this energy. Your eyes must be on the larger trends that govern events, on that which is not immediately visible. Never lose sight of your long-term goals. With an elevated perspective, you will have the patience and clarity to reach almost any objective.”

Robert Greene (1959) American author

Chap. 6 : Elevate Your Perspective
The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

Money, People, Making love, Nature

“We humans have a deep need to think highly of ourselves. If that opinion of our goodness, greatness, and brilliance diverges enough from reality, we become grandiose. We imagine our superiority. Often a small measure of success will elevate our natural grandiosity to even more dangerous levels. Our high self-opinion has now been confirmed by events. We forget the role that luck may have played in the success, or the contributions of others. We imagine we have the golden touch. Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last. Look for the signs of elevated grandiosity in yourself and in others—overbearing certainty in the positive outcome of your plans; excessive touchiness if criticized; a disdain for any form of authority. Counteract the pull of grandiosity by maintaining a realistic assessment of yourself and your limits. Tie any feelings of greatness to your work, your achievements, and your contributions to society.”

Robert Greene (1959) American author

Chap. 11 : Know Your Limits
The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

Bad luck, Making love, Feeling, Imagination

“In our society, we don not study history to understand the process of change but just to entertain ourselves with past events. For this reason, history is not regarded as a useful subject. The history that we teach in our educational institutions is political history and, as such, it is used by the ruling classes.”

Mubarak Ali (1941) Historian, activist, scholar

In the Shadow of History, Chapter: Why should we study History? p. 4
History, What History Tells Us, In the Shadow of History

Education, History, Understanding, Study

“To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent, unconnected sovereignties in the same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages.”

Alexander Hamilton Federalist Papers

No. 6
The Federalist Papers (1787–1788)

Age

“Art is the principal way in which the human mind has tried to remake the world in a way that makes sense. The carefully edited, slow-motion, action replay of a rugby tackle, a car crash or a sex act has more significance than the original event. Thanks to virtual reality, we will soon be moving into a world where a heightened super-reality will consist entirely of action replays, and reality will therefore be all the more rich and meaningful.”

J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) British writer

"JG Ballard: Theatre of Cruelty" interview by Jean-Paul Coillard in Disturb ezine (1998) https://www.jgballard.ca/media/1998_disturb_magazine.html

World, Making love, Art, Sex

“Literary works do not take as their subjects characters and events which have impressed a writer primarily by the frequency of their appearance. For example, how many Jewish men, as we know them, have come nearly to the brink of plunging a knife into their only son because they believed God had commanded them to? The story of Abraham and Isaac derives its meaning from something other than its being a familiar, recognizable, everyday occurrence. The test of any literary work is not how broad is its range of representation — for all that breadth may be characteristic of a kind of narrative — but the depth with which the writer reveals whatever it may be that he has chosen to represent.”

Philip Roth (1933–2018) American novelist

Writing About Jews (1963)

Men, God, Appearance

“All epoch-defining events are the result of conjunctures - the correlation of normally unconnected happenings which jolts humanity out of its existing rut and sets it on a new course.”

Robert Skidelsky (1939) Economist and author

Source: John Maynard Keynes: The Return of the Master (2009), Ch. 1 : What Went Wrong?

“Let us not fall into the vulgar error, which is to curse and to dishonour the age in which we live. However deep the shame of the present, whatever blows we receive from the fluctuation of events, whatever the apparent desertion or the momentary lethargy of mental vigour, none of us... will repudiate the magnificent epoch in which we live, the virile age of mankind.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Conclusion, Part Second, II
Napoleon the Little (1852)

Age, Error

“Spiritual or mystical experience, the subject of this chapter, is the mirror image of science—a direct perception of nature's unity, the inside of the mysteries that science tries valiantly to know from the outside. This way of understanding predates science by thousands of years. Long before humankind had tools like quantum logic to describe events that ordinary reason could not grasp, individuals moved into the realm of paradox through a shift in consciousness. And there they know that what cannot be is.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Eleven, Spiritual Adventure: Connection to the Source

Way, Understanding, Nature, Science

“I grew up in Kentucky so that's the land of casseroles and barbecue and meat. So when I transitioned over to an entirely plant-based diet, I wasn't sure if I was gonna survive. And I actually became like a machine. […] I just immediately started feeling like I could go kick ass and not need the recovery in between. It was mind-blowing to my teammates. […] I was about ready to retire, as I should've been, because I'm like 35 at that time. But I just kept getting better, and so they had to take me to the Olympics. We were complete underdogs as Team USA. In our semi-final ride against Australia, we were down by 1.7 seconds. No one's ever come back in team pursuit from a deficit that large. And we beat them on the line by eight one-hundredths of a second. I was 39 and a half years old when I stood on the Olympic podium. I'm still the oldest person, male or female, to even go to the Olympic Games in my event. My diet was the most powerful aspect to me being able to perform and produce for the US team at the Olympic Games.”

Dotsie Bausch (1973) cyclist

Interview in the documentary-film The Game Changers by Louie Psihoyos (2018).

Feeling, Game, Time, Personality

“I hope this (COVID-19) outbreak or this event may be over in something like April.”

Zhong Nanshan (1936) Chinese pulmonologist

Source: 2020 Zhong Nanshan (2020) cited in " New coronavirus cases lowest since Jan but experts disagree over peak https://www.malaysiakini.com/news/510517" on Malaysia Kini, 12 February 2020.

Hope

“We had a great event yesterday, an event that was so beautiful, young African American leaders. One of the things I asked them, and I’ve been thinking about this for a long time… And great people, great people. Some of them are here tonight. Do you like the name African American or Black? And they said, “Black!” all at the same time. No, true. I tell you. Because you say, “African American or Black?” And they said almost immediately, “Black.””

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

But we had an incredible group of people and what happened is NBC… It was such a love fest. It was so incredible. It went on for 45 minutes. It was a love fest. It was incredible. NBC turned down… There they are right there. They turned down… Comcast, which owns NBC… Actually NBC, I think, we call it MSDNC, right? MSDNC. But NBC I think is worse than CNN. I actually do. And Comcast, a company that spends millions and millions of dollars on their image… I’ll do everything possible to destroy their image because they are terrible. They are terrible. They’re a terrible group of people. And they paid me a fortune for years for the Apprentice. They paid me a fortune. And when I left the show, it was doing great. When I left the show, 14 seasons, think of that, they got a big movie star. I won’t tell you his name. Nobody would know. Actually nobody will know his name because he was on for such a short period of time. But the show went down the tubes very quickly after they had Trump. But the country in five years from now, of course you want to upset them, five years or nine years or 13 years. Or 18 years! 10 more years. Nah. Oh, they go crazy when you say it. When you say to them five more years, so it’s five, but you then say maybe nine, maybe 13, maybe 17, maybe 21, or not, maybe 21. Let’s do this. Let’s term limit ourselves at 25 years. No more than 25 years. No more. Okay. They’ll pass something in the Senate. Tim, pass it in the Senate with Lindsey, a 25 year term limit please.
2020s, 2020, February, Donald Trump Charleston, South Carolina Rally (February 28, 2020)

People, Beauty, Thinking, Time

“There was something disruptive about Christmas and not only in the merely material way. The original Christmas had proved exceedingly disrupting to the entire world and the tremors of the original event vibrated through every life year by year.”

Elizabeth Goudge (1900–1984) English fiction writer

The Scent of Water (1963), Chapter 14.2

Life, World, Way, Christmas

“...life has taught me to make no distinction between a hero and a little man, between great events and small trifles. From my point of view, men and events are all more or less the same size.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

Life, Men, Making love

“Trump did not create the worst dysfunctions of our democracy; our worst dysfunctions created him. He's the symptom, not the cause, of a dangerous slide away from vital democracy toward corporate authoritarian rule. The slide began 40 years ago and he's simply the climactic event.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Twitter https://twitter.com/marwilliamson (15 Dec 2019) Williamson's quotes in social media

Democracy

“Look, I could tell you about — and I’m not going to do it, because I didn’t want to bring it up — but I could tell you about events that took place. And I said things like, “You’ll never do that again” or “You’ll never do this again” or — I don’t even want to mention the events. I don’t want to mention what you’re supposed to be doing because — and you know one of them was so horrible. I said, “A certain industry will be out of business — never happen again.””

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Two weeks later, it was like nothing ever happened. Hopefully, we get rid of this. We have tremendous talent up here and all over, including governors, including local governments, state governments.

[https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-briefing-april-17-2020/ Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing | April 17, 2020]
2020s, 2020, April

Business

“The real evil, the fundamental cause of all the problems of the world today — the fact that two-thirds of the world live in absolute poverty, on less than a dollar a day, while others have not even that, and are dying in the millions — the root of all of that is our complacency. If we were not complacent we could not bear to live in a world in which these events were happening, these people were dying in the midst of plenty. We would not allow it to happen if we were not complacent. This is something which we need to remember... because this is the root of all the troubles in the world. It is a sign of our separateness.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The World Teacher for All Humanity (2007)

People, World, Problem, Evil

“History, as Treitschke contends, is first of all the presentation of res gestae, and of active statesmen. The essential things in the statesman are strength of will, courage, massive ambition, passionate joy in the result. It needs no wizard to see how such doctrine as this lends a hand to the sinister school of political historians, who insist that the event is its own justification; that Force and Right are one.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

‘Politics and History’, Address as Chancellor of the University of Manchester (summer 1912), quoted in The Works of Lord Morley: Volume IV (1921), p. 33
1910s

School, History, Courage, Passion

“Jung believed there was a large pattern to life, that it wasn't just chaos. Our song Synchronicity II is about two parallel events that aren't connected logically or causally, but symbolically.”

Sting (1951) English musician

Life

“Matter, space, and time ... according to the relativist, are types of relations between events.”

Herbert Dingle (1890–1978) British astronomer

page 12 https://books.google.com/books?id=hwpKAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA12 Relativity for All, London, 1922

Relation ships, Time

“There is a general time period, cosmically determined, but the exact timing of such events depends on humanity’s readiness and ability to respond.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Maitreya's Mission Vol. I (1986)

Time, Dependency

“I suspect there’s little difference between whim and inspiration at the beginning of any chain of events. It’s what happens later that tells us which is which.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Colonel Doctor Jens Ladislav in Ch. 33 : dezmai of the drums, p. 294
The Visitor (2002)

“I was very young, and those events affected me deeply. I feel the time given to me doesn't belong only to me. In everything – my writing, my travelling, my happiness – I live partly on behalf of those who weren't able to survive. I feel I'm living their share of life.”

Kyung-sook Shin (1963) Korean writer

On being a survivor in “Kyung-Sook Shin: 'In my 20s I lived through an era of terrible political events and suspicious deaths'” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jun/07/kyung-sook-shin-south-korea-interview in The Guardian (2014 Jun 7)

Life, Happiness, Travel, Feeling

“Another somewhat confusing usage is the name "the big bang" for the standard model. It is not appropriate, because it connotes a spatially isolated event, an explosion, that marked the start of everything. ... But the name has a very evident appeal and I expect that people will continue to use it.”

Jim Peebles (1935) Canadian-American astronomer

[Principles of Physical Cosmology, Princeton University Press, 1993, xvii, https://books.google.com/books/about/Principles_of_Physical_Cosmology.html?id=AmlEt6TJ6jAC&pg=PR17]

People

“Turn where we may,—within,—around,—the voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that you may preserve. Now, therefore, while every thing at home and abroad forebodes ruin to those who persist in a hopeless struggle against the spirit of the age,—now, while the crash of the proudest throne of the continent is still resounding in our ears,—now, while the roof of a British palace affords an ignominious shelter to the exiled heir of forty kings,—now, while we see on every side ancient institutions subverted, and great societies dissolved,—now, while the heart of England is still sound,—now, while the old feelings and the old associations retain a power and a charm which may too soon pass away,—now, in this your accepted time,—now in this your day of salvation,—take counsel, not of prejudice,—not of party spirit,—not of the ignominious pride of a fatal consistency,—but of history,—of reason,—of the ages which are past,—of the signs of this most portentous time. Pronounce in a manner worthy of the expectation with which this great Debate has been anticipated, and of the long remembrance which it will leave behind. Renew the youth of the State. Save property divided against itself. Save the multitude, endangered by their own ungovernable passions. Save the aristocracy, endangered by its own unpopular power. Save the greatest, and fairest, and most highly civilized community that ever existed, from calamities which may in a few days sweep away all the rich heritage of many ages of wisdom and glory. The danger is terrible. The time is short. If this Bill should be rejected, I pray to God that none of those who concur in rejecting it may ever remember their votes with unavailing regret, amidst the wreck of laws, the confusion of ranks, the spoliation of property, and the dissolution of social order.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Speech in the House of Commons (2 March 1831) https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1831/mar/02/ministerial-plan-of-parliamentary-reform#column_1204 in favour of the Reform Bill 1830s

Wisdom, God, Youth, Age

“What is at stake today is not only protecting the West against the terrorists, home-grown and foreign, but — perhaps above all — protecting the West from itself. The reproduction of any one of its most monstrous events would be enough to lose everything that has been attained to date with respect to Human Rights. Beginning with respect for diversity. And it is highly probable that such a thing could occur in the next ten years, if we do not react in time.”

Jorge Majfud (1969) Uruguayan-American writer

"The Slow Suicide of the West" Monthly Review (2006) https://mronline.org/2006/11/14/majfud141106-html/ La Republica newspaper, Uruguay, (February 2003)

Home, Time

“A sense of art mixes with our modern piety. We are apt to admire the evangelical reticence for its dignity,[…] we are apt to respect the Scripture narratives with their few intense details, their close events and their great omissions alike, for their simplicity, and—it is to be feared that our literature leads us so far—for their "effect."”

Alice Meynell (1847–1922) English publisher, editor, writer, poet, activist

Source: Mary, the Mother of Jesus: An Essay (1912), Ch. II. "Mary in the Scriptures", pp. 18, 21

Fear, Art, Literature, Sense

“This perception—this comprehension—this right discernment of the great events and general results of universal history, is what might be termed a science of history; and I would have here preferred that term, were it not liable to much misconception, and might have been understood as referring more to special and learned inquiries, than the other name I have adopted...”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

The Philosophy of History (1852), Lecture I.

History, Learning, Universe, Science

“...if the Catholick religion is destroyd by the Infidels, it is a most contemptible and absurd Idea, that, this, or any Protestant Church, can survive that Event. ... in Ireland particularly, the R[oman] C[atholic] Religion should be upheld in high respect and veneration. ... I am more serious on the positive encouragement to be given to this religion...because the serious and earnest belief and practice of it by its professors forms, as things stand, the most effectual Barrier, if not the sole Barrier, against Jacobinism.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to William Smith, Member of the Irish Parliament (29 January 1795), quoted in R. B. McDowell (ed.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VIII: September 1794–April 1796 (1969), p. 131
1790s

Religion, Idea

“...the French business is no light or trivial thing, or such as has commonly occurd in the course of political Events. At present the whole political State of Europe hinges upon it. On the Continent there is little doubt; every thing will take is future shape and colour from the good or ill success of the Duke of Brunswick. In my opinion, it is the most important crisis that ever existed in the World. ... My poor opinion is, that these principles...cannot possibly be realized in practice in France, without an absolute certainty and that at no remote period, of overturning the whole fabrick of the British Constitution.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

1790s
Source: Letter to the Foreign Secretary Lord Grenville (19 September 1792), quoted in P. J. Marshall and John A. Woods (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VII: January 1792–August 1794 (1968), pp. 218-219

World, Business, Light, Success

“Our children, it seems to me, learn the history of events, but are woefully unversed in the history of thought… The result of this kind of teaching is to diminish all respect for intellect, reason and experience.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
pp. 48-49
Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)

Children, History, Learning

“This Administration has been looking hard at exactly what civil defense can and cannot do. It cannot be obtained cheaply. It cannot give an assurance of blast protection that will be proof against surprise attack or guaranteed against obsolescence or destruction. And it cannot deter a nuclear attack. We will deter an enemy from making a nuclear attack only if our retaliatory power is so strong and so invulnerable that he knows he would be destroyed by our response. If we have that strength, civil defense is not needed to deter an attack. If we should ever lack it, civil defense would not be an adequate substitute. But this deterrent concept assumes rational calculations by rational men. And the history of this planet, and particularly the history of the 20th century, is sufficient to remind us of the possibilities of an irrational attack, a miscalculation, an accidental war, for a war of escalation in which the stakes by each side gradually increase to the point of maximum danger which cannot be either foreseen or deterred. It is on this basis that civil defense can be readily justifiable--as insurance for the civilian population in case of an enemy miscalculation. It is insurance we trust will never be needed--but insurance which we could never forgive ourselves for foregoing in the event of catastrophe. Once the validity of this concept is recognized, there is no point in delaying the initiation of a nation-wide long-range program of identifying present fallout shelter capacity and providing shelter in new and existing structures. Such a program would protect millions of people against the hazards of radioactive fallout in the event of large-scale nuclear attack. Effective performance of the entire program not only requires new legislative authority and more funds, but also sound organizational arrangements.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1961, Speech to Special Joint Session of Congress

Men, War, People, Making love

“The experiences differ from the typical dream state principally in the following ways: (1) Continuity of some sort of conscious awareness; (2) Intellectual or emotional (or blends of the two) decisions made during the experiences; (3) Multivalued perception via sensory inputs or their equivalents; (4) Non-recurrence of identical patterns; and (5) Development of events in sequence that seem to indicate a time lapse.”

Robert Monroe (1915–1995) American founder of The Monroe Institute

Journeys Out of the Body (1971), Chapter 14. Mind and Supermind

Dreams, Way, Decision, Time

“Difficult or sad events belong to every being. Whenever it happens to have, it must seriously think if that situation is really worth getting a smile. Who has and knows how to give smile, is the master of the whole world.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Eventi duri, difficili o tristi appartengono ad ogni essere. Ogniqualvolta dovesse capitare di averne, bisogna seriamente pensare se per quella situazione valga davvero la pena farsi togliere il sorriso. Chi ha e sa donare sorriso, è padrone del mondo intero.
Source: prevale.net

World, Sadness, Smile, Thinking

“Persons whom I saw thirty years ago and with whom I was intimate now appear on the page, and this compels me to declare that The Story of the Stone is a book of the deepest feelings and the truest words. Unless, however, one has in fact experienced such events or been deluded by such feelings, reading it is like "chewing wax" absentmindedly, never understanding the miraculous wonders of what one has witnessed.”

Zhiyanzhai

Comment in the 1760 manuscript of Dream of the Red Chamber, as quoted by Anthony C. Yu in Rereading the Stone (Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 7

Books, Feeling, Understanding, Appearance

“Violence is a bit like antibodies. Small doses build up until you can reject and be immune to the most horrific events.”

Bernard MacLaverty book Cal

Source: Novels, Cal (1983), Ch.5 - p.127

“The bitter, yet merciful, lesson which death teaches us is to distinguish the gold from the tinsel, the true values from the worthless chaff.
The terrible events of life are great eye-openers. They force us to learn that which it is wholesome for us to know, but which habitually we try to ignore — namely, that really we have no claim on a long life ; that we are each of us liable to be called off at any moment, and that the main point is not how long we live, but with what meaning we fill the short allotted span — for short it is at best.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Life and Destiny (1913)

Life, Death, Learning

“The greater your successes and victories, the more opposition your enemies will come your way, with painful and discouraging events.”

Attila (406–453) King of the Hunnic Empire

Turkish Wikipedia
https://quotestats.com/topic/attila-hun-quotes/

Pain, Way, Success, Victory

“If we succeed not only in keeping France itself quiet, but also in having it plead for peace in Petersburg, this turn of events will weaken the Franco-Russian alliance.”

Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg (1856–1921) German chancellor during World War I

Letter to Rödern (15 July 1914), quoted in Konrad H. Jarauschl, ‘The Illusion of Limited War: Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg's Calculated Risk, July 1914’, Central European History, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Mar., 1969), p. 62

Peace

“Life is so constructed that an event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation.”

Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) English novelist and poet

Life

“The fortune of war has thrown me into the hands of Government, and I am utterly ignorant of what fate may attend me, but in the worst event I hope I shall bear it like a man, and that my death will not disgrace my life.”

Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763–1798) Irish politician

Letter to Thomas Addis Emmet, William James MacNaven, Arthur O'Connor and John Sweetman (10 November 1798), quoted in T. W. Moody, R. B. McDowell and C. J. Woods (eds.), The Writings of Theobald Wolfe Tone, 1763–98, Volume III: France, the Rhine, Lough Swilly and Death of Tone, January 1797 to November 1798 (2007), p. 402

Life, Death, Fate, War

“I did something good: I made Juneteenth very famous.
It’s actually an important event, an important time. But nobody had ever heard of it.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Wednesday 17 June 2020 interview in the Oval Office according to 19 June 2020 article https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-talks-juneteenth-john-bolton-economy-in-wsj-interview-11592493771 by Michael Bender of Wall Street Journal, highlighted 21 June 2020 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/20/donald-trump-tulsa-rally-crowd-empty-seats by Richard Wolffe of The Guardian 2020, June 2020

Time

“I think that interpreting events as signs from God is a slippery slope.”

Emma Newman book Planetfall

Source: Planetfall (2015), Chapter 7 (p. 61)

God, Thinking

“It is disgraceful, instead of proceeding ahead, to be carried along, and then suddenly, amid the whirlpool of events, to ask in a dazed way: “How did I get into this condition?””

Seneca the Younger book Epistulae morales ad Lucilium

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XXXVII: On Allegiance to Virtue

Way

“Unexpected events happen… always.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Gli eventi inaspettati accadono... sempre. Source: From the radio show Memories http://www.m2o.it/special/memories-reloaded/ conducted by Prevale

“Our brains are […] not equipped to process events on the geologic scale—at least in reference to how we choose to live, or what we choose to do in the here-and-now.”

James Howard Kunstler book The Long Emergency

Source: The Long Emergency (2005), Chapter 5, p. 148.

“History is a combination of a lot of things. You can’t isolate events today and say, “Oh, well, this happened—those awful people.””

Joe Sacco (1960) Maltese-American cartoonist and journalist; pioneer of the Non-Fiction Graphic Novel (b. 1960)

The acts might be brutal, but there must be a context to it. I certainly didn’t want to drop the reader into those incidents without telling the story of, well: Why are there refugees? Why were the Israelis and the Palestinians battling along the border? Who were the fedayeen? What was the Israeli response to that? But more than that, I think, for me, the book ends up being—this is going to sound strange—a dead end. Because I don’t know where to go from here, except to delve into human psychology. I think I understand how history works. I understand why one people are battling another people. I understand that they both want land. But ultimately there’s a level that I haven’t really got to yet… On the multifaceted quality of history in “An Interview with Joe Sacco” https://believermag.com/an-interview-with-joe-sacco/ in Believer Magazine (2011 Jun 1)

People, History

“For myself, I am totally convinced that these are the true happenings of our time; that, even as I write, these events are unfolding. As they further unfold, I believe they will prove to your fullest satisfaction that this is the true condition of our present time in history.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The Great Approach (2001) p. 1

History, Time

“I imagined the structure of the novel like a braid. My job was to blend three strands evenly and neatly. Each piece of the braid represented one of the stories. The characters were very different but they had something in common: they were emotionally wounded by events of their past.”

Isabel Allende (1942) Chilean writer

On her work In the Midst of Winter in “INTERVIEWS: Isabel Allende” https://bookpage.com/interviews/21986-isabel-allende-fiction#.XajuoPlKjcs in BookPage (2017 Oct 31)

Imagination, Past

“No purpose is served by making private suffering into a public event.”

Charles Sheffield book Summertide

Source: The Heritage Universe, Summertide (1990), Chapter 23 (p. 254)

Suffering

“As you can tell at this crucial point, in life, it is only the present moment that matters to us and not the past events.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Life, Past

“Sometimes, we find peace by becoming forgetful of the past events. That is truly the bright-side of forgetting negative things in our lives.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Peace, Past, Forgetting

“There is no peace without forgetting past events.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Peace, Past, Forgetting

“Our ignorance of the event saved us all from being judged on Judgment Day.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“Our minds must be capable of concentrating and living in the present moment, rather than always seeking for the past events that cannot be proven to be true.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Past

“My motto is to always do your homework before any meeting or event, and to always dress for the occasion. Sometimes I say that it’s better to say nothing than to speak with no purpose!”

Brigitte Lin (1954) Taiwanese actress

As quoted in "Brigitte Lin on the Hong Kong Film Industry’s Golden Age" in Hong Kong Tatler (7 November 2012) https://hk.asiatatler.com/life/brigitte-lin-on-the-hong-kong-film-industry-s-golden-age

“Most people go through life never knowing the truth about the major events of their time. They're watching a farce performed at the edge of the stage while the real drama is going on behind the curtain.”

John Twelve Hawks book The Traveler

Source: Fourth Realm Trilogy (2005-2009), The Traveler (2005), Ch. 31

Life, People, Truth, Time

“The best event can happen in your life is to make a person fall in love with your strengths.. and above all with your defects, which make your existence unique.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Il miglior evento che possa accadere nella tua vita è far innamorare una persona dei tuoi pregi.. e soprattutto dei tuoi difetti, che rendono unica la tua esistenza.
Source: prevale.net

Love, Life, Personality

“Our brains are […] not equipped to process events on […] scale[s] [larger than a human lifetime] […].”

James Howard Kunstler book The Long Emergency

Source: The Long Emergency (2005), Chapter 5, p. 148.

“...the impossible must be supposed in order to explain the superdetermination of the event”

Jean Paul Sartre book Saint Genet

Source: Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952), p. 301