Quotes about fall
page 21

Norman Angell photo
Roger Ebert photo
John Banville photo
African Spir photo
Isaac Watts photo

“Hush! my dear, lie still and slumber,
Holy angels guard thy bed!
Heavenly blessings without number
Gently falling on thy head.”

Isaac Watts (1674–1748) English hymnwriter, theologian and logician

Song 35: "A Cradle Hymn".
1710s, Divine Songs Attempted in the Easy Language of Children (1715)

Jacob Tobia photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Boris Sidis photo
Freeman Dyson photo
Ian McEwan photo
Harry Truman photo

“Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now. I don't know whether you fellows ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me yesterday what had happened, I felt like the moon, the stars and all the planets had fallen on me. I've got the most terribly responsible job a man ever had.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Comment to reporters on having become president the day before, after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, (13 April 1945) as quoted in Conflict and Crisis : The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1945-1948 by Robert J. Donovan, p. 17; also quoted in "Thoughts Of A President, 1945" at Eyewitness to History http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/tru.htm, and TIME magazine (12 April1968) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,838136-9,00.html

Andrew Vachss photo

“A danger in emphasizing mean values for each sex is that these values may be projected onto all or most normally developing men and women. The mean may be treated as a description of the typical group member, despite the fact that the majority of individuals fall above or below it. Psychologists do make some effort to stress that means cannot be attributed to all members of any group, as evidenced by the fact that we often append the phrase “on average” to our descriptions of mean differences. But is this enough? Consider again the robust sex difference in willingness to engage in casual sex: The mean SO [sociosexuality] score for men is higher than that for women. What does this tell us, though, about individual men and women? It clearly does not tell us that all men are interested in casual sex and that all women are not. However, given the degree of overlap between the male and female distributions, it also does not tell us that a large majority of men are more interested in casual sex than a large majority of women. That is, it is not accurate to say even that “men are typically more interested in casual sex than women, but there are of course exceptions.””

Here is what the data that the means are drawn from actually tell us:
Men and women can be found at virtually every level of interest in casual sex. At the right-hand tail of the distribution, only a small number of people are strongly interested in casual sex; however, of these people, more are men than women. At the left-hand tail, only a small number of people are strongly <I>dis</I>interested in casual sex; however, of these people, more are women than men. Most people — men <I>and</I> women — fall somewhere in between. If you were to choose one man and one woman at random, it would be somewhat more likely that the man would have higher SO. However, you wouldn't want to bet your life savings on it. Around a third of the time — i.e., closer to 50% than to 0% — the woman would have higher SO.
The Ape that Kicked the Hornet's Nest (2013)

Bertolt Brecht photo

“When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out "stop!"When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

"When evil-doing comes like falling rain" [Wenn die Untat kommt, wie der Regen fällt] (1935), trans. John Willett in Poems, 1913-1956, p. 247
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)

Chinua Achebe photo
Roger Ebert photo
Prem Rawat photo
Louis Auguste Blanqui photo
Eugene Rotberg photo
Hjalmar Schacht photo
Edward Everett Hale photo
Frederick Douglass photo

“What he wanted was to make his proclamation as effective as possible in the event of such a peace. He said, in a regretful tone, 'The slaves are not coming so rapidly and so numerously to us as I had hoped'. I replied that the slaveholders knew how to keep such things from their slaves, and probably very few knew of his proclamation. 'Well', he said, 'I want you to set about devising some means of making them acquainted with it, and for bringing them into our lines'. He spoke with great earnestness and much solicitude, and seemed troubled by the attitude of Mr. Greeley, and the growing impatience there was being manifested through the North at the war. He said he was being accused of protracting the war beyond its legitimate object, and of failing to make peace when he might have done so to advantage. He was afraid of what might come of all these complaints, but was persuaded that no solid and lasting peace could come short of absolute submission on the part of the rebels, and he was not for giving them rest by futile conferences at Niagara Falls, or elsewhere, with unauthorized persons. He saw the danger of premature peace, and, like a thoughtful and sagacious man as he was, he wished to provide means of rendering such consummation as harmless as possible. I was the more impressed by this benevolent consideration because he before said, in answer to the peace clamor, that his object was to save the Union, and to do so with or without slavery. What he said on this day showed a deeper moral conviction against slavery than I had ever seen before in anything spoken or written by him. I listened with the deepest interest and profoundest satisfaction, and, at his suggestion, agreed to undertake the organizing a band of scouts, composed of colored men, whose business should be somewhat after the original plan of John Brown, to go into the rebel States, beyond the lines of our armies, and carry the news of emancipation, and urge the slaves to come within our boundaries.”

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

Source: 1880s, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881), pp. 434&ndash;435.

William Ralph Inge photo

“Worry is interest paid on trouble before it falls due.”

William Ralph Inge (1860–1954) Dean of St Pauls

Attributed to Inge in The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1993), which cites the London Observer, 14 February 1932. However, this aphorism was in circulation decades earlier, e.g., it features in an advertisement in The Grape Belt, 2 October 1906, p. 5 http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=LY9CAAAAIBAJ&sjid=tLkMAAAAIBAJ&pg=5967,3394664&dq=worry-is-interest-paid-on-trouble-before-it-falls-due&hl=en
Misattributed

Cary Grant photo

“Anyone can do well … It’s all out there waiting for you to take. But first you must reach out and get it. You must work for your riches. You cannot expect it to fall into your lap.”

Cary Grant (1904–1986) British-American film and stage actor

Love – That’s All Cary Grant Ever Thinks About (1964)

Hans Reichenbach photo
Frederick Douglass photo
Adam Smith photo
Leo Buscaglia photo
Walter Warlimont photo
Charles Krauthammer photo
Christopher Hitchens photo

“Taking the points in order, it's fairly easy to demonstrate that Saddam Hussein is a bad guy's bad guy. He's not just bad in himself but the cause of badness in others. While he survives not only are the Iraqi and Kurdish peoples compelled to live in misery and fear (the sheerly moral case for regime-change is unimpeachable on its own), but their neighbors are compelled to live in fear as well.

However—and here is the clinching and obvious point—Saddam Hussein is not going to survive. His regime is on the verge of implosion. It has long passed the point of diminishing returns. Like the Ceausescu edifice in Romania, it is a pyramid balanced on its apex (its powerbase a minority of the Sunni minority), and when it falls, all the consequences of a post-Saddam Iraq will be with us anyway. To suggest that these consequences—Sunni-Shi'a rivalry, conflict over the boundaries of Kurdistan, possible meddling from Turkey or Iran, vertiginous fluctuations in oil prices and production, social chaos—are attributable only to intervention is to be completely blind to the impending reality. The choices are two and only two—to experience these consequences with an American or international presence or to watch them unfold as if they were none of our business.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2002-11-07
Machiavelli in Mesopotamia
Slate
1091-2339
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2002/11/machiavelli_in_mesopotamia.html: On the 2003 invasion of Iraq
2000s, 2002

Robert Spencer photo
Alice A. Bailey photo
Thomas M. Disch photo
Warren Farrell photo
Aleksis Kivi photo
Carole King photo
Jack Vance photo
Raymond Poincaré photo
E. B. White photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Park Chung-hee photo

“Already into the last week of October! The dying fall holds only loneliness. In the garden the chrysanthemums bloom, beautiful, peaceful, as they did a year ago, but the autumn leaves, falling one by one, only make me sad.”

Park Chung-hee (1917–1979) Korean Army general and the leader of South Korea from 1961 to 1979

Diary entry (October 1974), as quoted in The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History Revised and Updated http://books.google.com/books?id=yJZKpYXh2SAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+Two+Koreas:+A+Contemporary+History+revised+updated&hl=en&sa=X&ei=X-xvU5TRFPOisQSa34CIBA&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=already%20into%20the%20last%20week&f=false (2001), by Don Oberdorfer, p. 55.
1970s

Rollo May photo
Bill Hicks photo
Swami Vivekananda photo
Michael Swanwick photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Marianne von Werefkin photo
Johannes Kepler photo
David Ricardo photo

“But a tax on luxuries would no other effect than to raise their price. It would fall wholly on the consumer, and could neither increase wages nor lower profits.”

David Ricardo (1772–1823) British political economist, broker and politician

Source: The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1821) (Third Edition), Chapter XVII, Taxes on Other Commodities, p. 161 (see also.. Consumption Tax)

Jiang Yi-huah photo

“Many government officials have very high moral standards at the beginning of their duties, but after a while some officials sway from the right path and easily fall into the temptation of bribery and fraud.”

Jiang Yi-huah (1960) Taiwanese politician

Jiang Yi-huah (2013) cited in " Premier looks back, forward in corruption fight http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/national/national-news/2013/05/02/377546/Premier-looks.htm" on The China Post, 2 May 2013

Dora Russell photo
Meher Baba photo
Siobhan Fahey photo
Muqtada Sadr photo
Marcel Duchamp photo

“If a straight horizontal thread one meter long falls from a height of one meter on to a horizontal plane twisting as it pleases [it] creates a new image of the unit of length.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

Duchamp's stated premise for his art-work: '3 Standard stoppages' he made during 1913 -1914; ; as quoted in Looking at Dada, eds. Sarah Ganz Blythe & Edward D. Powers - The Museum of Modern Art New York, ISBN: 087070-705-1; p. 50
1915 - 1925

Nathanael Greene photo
Hal David photo
Thomas Robert Malthus photo

“It accords with the most liberal spirit of philosophy to suppose that not a stone can fall, or a plant rise, without the immediate agency of divine power.”

Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) British political economist

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter VII, paragraph 10, lines 8-10

Bono photo

“And if You listen, I can call. And if You jump, You just might fall. And if You shout, I'll only hear You”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

"Stay (Faraway,So Close)
Lyrics, Zooropa (1993)

Leo Tolstoy photo
T. H. White photo
Michael Chabon photo
Henning von Tresckow photo
Mary, Crown Princess of Denmark photo

“A secure life and a well developed social system; not many people fall through the net. And shared values, I would say; that sense of equality…”

Mary, Crown Princess of Denmark (1972) Crown Princess of Denmark

On reasons for Denmark being voted the happiest country, 'True Romance', Interview with DailyLife.com.au http://www.dailylife.com.au/dl-people/interviews/true-romance-20131012-2vf07.html (12 October 2013)

George Lippard photo
Demi Lovato photo

“I don't fall easy often
I never had a love like you before.”

Demi Lovato (1992) American singer, songwriter, actress, and author

All Night Long
Lyrics, Unbroken (2011)

Aristide Maillol photo
Alex Salmond photo
Sun Myung Moon photo
Zbigniew Herbert photo

“And if the City falls and one survives
he shall carry the City within on the roads of exile
he shall be the City”

Zbigniew Herbert (1924–1998) Polish writer

Report from the Besieged City.
Quoes

John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester photo

“Lest, once more wandering from that heaven,
I fall on some base heart unblest,
Faithless to thee, false, unforgiven,
And lose my everlasting rest.”

John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (1647–1680) English poet, and peer of the realm

Absent from thee, I languish still, ll. 13-16.
Other

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“What is the world that lies around our own? Shadowy, unsubstantial, and wonderful are the viewless elements, peopled with spirits powerful and viewless as the air which is their home. From the earth's earliest hour, the belief in the supernatural has been universal. At first the faith was full of poetry; for, in those days, the imagination walked the earth even as did the angels, shedding their glory around the children of men. The Chaldeans watched from their lofty towers the silent beauty of night — they saw the stars go forth on their appointed way, and deemed that they bore with them the mighty records of eternity. Each separate planet shone on some mortal birth, and as its aspect was for good or for evil, such was the aspect of the fortunes that began beneath its light. Those giant watch-towers, with their grey sages, asked of the midnight its mystery, and held its starry roll to be the chronicle of this breathing world. Time past on, angels visited the earth no more, and the divine beliefs of young imagination grew earthlier. Yet poetry lingered in the mournful murmur of the oaks of Dodona, and in the fierce war song of the flying vultures, of whom the Romans demanded tidings of conquest. But prophecy gradually sank into divination, and it is a singular proof of the extent both of human credulity and of curiosity, to note the various methods that have had the credit of forestalling the future. From the stars to a tea-cup is a fall indeed”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Literary Remains

Albert Einstein photo

“Never before have I lived through a storm like the one this night. … The sea has a look of indescribable grandeur, especially when the sun falls on it. One feels as if one is dissolved and merged into Nature. Even more than usual, one feels the insignificance of the individual, and it makes one happy.”

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

Entry in a travel diary (10 December 1931) discussing a storm at sea, p. 23
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)

Susan Sontag photo

“Since it is hardly likely that contemporary critics seriously mean to bar prose narratives that are unrealistic from the domain of literature, one suspects that a special standard is being applied to sexual themes. … There is nothing conclusive in the well-known fact that most men and women fall short of the sexual prowess that people in pornography are represented as enjoying; that the size of organs, number and duration of orgasms, variety and feasibility of sexual powers, and amount of sexual energy all seem grossly exaggerated. Yes, and the spaceships and the teeming planets depicted in science-fiction novels don’t exist either. The fact that the site of narrative is an ideal topos disqualifies neither pornography or science-fiction from being literature. … The materials of the pornographic books that count as literature are, precisely, one of the extreme forms of human consciousness. Undoubtedly, many people would agree that the sexually obsessed consciousness can, in principle, enter into literature as an art form. … But then they usually add a rider to the agreement which effectively nullifies it. They require that the author have the proper “distance” from his obsessions for their rendering to count as literature. Such a standard is sheer hypocrisy, revealing one again that the values commonly applied to pornography are, in the end, those belonging to psychiatry and social affairs rather than to art. (Since Christianity upped that ante and concentrated on sexual behavior as the root of virtue, everything pertaining to sex has been a “special case” in our culture, evoking particularly inconsistent attitudes.) Van Gogh’s paintings retain their status as art even if it seems his manner of painting owed less to a conscious choice of representational means than to his being deranged and actually seeing reality the way he painted it. … What makes a work of pornography part of the history of art rather than of trash is not distance, the superimposition of a consciousness more conformable to that of ordinary reality upon the “deranged consciousness” of the erotically obsessed. Rather, it is the originality, thoroughness, authenticity, and power of that deranged consciousness itself, as incarnated in a work.”

“The Pornographic Imagination,” pp. 45-47
Styles of Radical Will (1966)

Peter Beckford photo
Vincent Van Gogh photo
James Braid photo

“… [Y]our observer's camera is clicking steadily. It's beautiful up above the sunlit clouds. The smooth drone of your twin motors makes you happy. You feel like singing and then you do. Then out of the corner of your eye, you see four black dots, growing larger momentarily. It's an enemy patrol of German Messerschmitts. Your gunner has seen them too. You hear the rattle of the machine gun as you put your bomber in a fast climbing turn, but the Messerschmitt fighters climb faster. They form under your tail, two on each side. One by one, they attack. A yellow light flashes in front of you. The first fighter slips away while the next comes on at you. Again that smashing yellow flame. Your observer falls over unconscious. Before you can think, the next Messerschmitt is upon you. A terrific jolt. Your port engine belches smoke. It's been hit…. You force-land on the first Allied airfield. That night, seated next to a hospital bed where your observer nurses a scalp wound, you hear an enemy communique. A British bomber was shot down over the lines today. Well, you puff a cigarette and grin.”

Larry LeSueur (1909–2003) American journalist

Woo, Elaine. " Larry LeSueur/'Murrow Boy' former war correspondant http://articles.latimes.com/2003/feb/07/local/me-lesueur7", (obituary), Los Angeles Times, February 8, 2003, accessed June 21, 2011. As quoted by Stanley W. Cloud and Lynne Olson in The Murrow Boys: Pioneers on the Front Lines of Broadcast Journalism, ISBN 0395877539. LeSueur just "after interviewing a young British pilot who had just flown a reconnaissance mission over Germany.

Clive Staples Lewis photo

“Legal and economic equality are absolutely necessary remedies for the Fall, and protection against cruelty.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

Equality (1943)

John Dickinson photo

“Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all!
By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall.”

John Dickinson (1732–1808) American politician

The Liberty Song (1768).

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Josh Billings photo
Victor Hugo photo
Statius photo

“Beyond the cloud-wrapt chambers of western gloom and Aethiopia's other realm there stands a motionless grove, impenetrable by any star; beneath it the hollow recesses of a deep and rocky cave run far into a mountain, where the slow hand of Nature has set the halls of lazy Sleep and his untroubled dwelling. The threshold is guarded by shady Quiet and dull Forgetfulness and torpid Sloth with ever drowsy countenance. Ease, and Silence with folded wings sit mute in the forecourt and drive the blustering winds from the roof-top, and forbid the branches to sway, and take away their warblings from the birds. No roar of the sea is here, though all the shores be sounding, nor yet of the sky; the very torrent that runs down the deep valley nigh the cave is silent among the rocks and boulders; by its side are sable herds, and sheep reclining one and all upon the ground; the fresh buds wither, and a breath from the earth makes the grasses sink and fail. Within, glowing Mulciber had carved a thousand likenesses of the god: here wreathed Pleasure clings to his side, here Labour drooping to repose bears him company, here he shares a couch with Bacchus, there with Love, the child of Mars. Further within, in the secret places of the palace he lies with Death also, but that dread image is seen by none. These are but pictures: he himself beneath humid caverns rests upon coverlets heaped with slumbrous flowers, his garments reek, and the cushions are warm with his sluggish body, and above the bed a dark vapour rises from his breathing mouth. One hand holds up the locks that fall from his left temple, from the other drops his neglected horn.”
Stat super occiduae nebulosa cubilia Noctis Aethiopasque alios, nulli penetrabilis astro, lucus iners, subterque cavis graue rupibus antrum it uacuum in montem, qua desidis atria Somni securumque larem segnis Natura locavit. limen opaca Quies et pigra Oblivio servant et numquam vigili torpens Ignauia vultu. Otia vestibulo pressisque Silentia pennis muta sedent abiguntque truces a culmine ventos et ramos errare vetant et murmura demunt alitibus. non hic pelagi, licet omnia clament litora, non ullus caeli fragor; ipse profundis vallibus effugiens speluncae proximus amnis saxa inter scopulosque tacet: nigrantia circum armenta omne solo recubat pecus, et nova marcent germina, terrarumque inclinat spiritus herbas. mille intus simulacra dei caelaverat ardens Mulciber: hic haeret lateri redimita Voluptas, hic comes in requiem vergens Labor, est ubi Baccho, est ubi Martigenae socium puluinar Amori obtinet. interius tecti in penetralibus altis et cum Morte jacet, nullique ea tristis imago cernitur. hae species. ipse autem umentia subter antra soporifero stipatos flore tapetas incubat; exhalant vestes et corpore pigro strata calent, supraque torum niger efflat anhelo ore vapor; manus haec fusos a tempore laevo sustentat crines, haec cornu oblita remisit.

Source: Thebaid, Book X, Line 84 (tr. J. H. Mozley)

David Ricardo photo

“Neither machines, nor the commodities made by them, rise in real value, but all commodities made by machines fall, and fall in proportion to their durability.”

David Ricardo (1772–1823) British political economist, broker and politician

Source: The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1821) (Third Edition), Chapter I, Section V, On Value, p. 26

Linus Torvalds photo
Nelson Mandela photo

“The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

1990s, Long Walk to Freedom (1995)