Quotes about friend
page 23

“There's a road, long and winding.
The lights are blindin', but it gets there.
Don't give up, don't look back.
There's a silver linin', it's out there somewhere.
Everybody wants an answer, everybody needs a friend.
We all need a shinin' star on which we can depend.”

Bryan Adams (1959) Canadian singer-songwriter

Star, written by Bryan Adams, Mutt Lange, and Michael Kamen
Song lyrics, 18 til I Die (1996)

Star, Light, Dependency

“Were I to prescribe a rule for drinking, it should be formed upon a saying quoted by Sir William Temple: the first glass for myself, the second for my friends, the third for good humor, and the fourth for mine enemies.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 195 (13 October 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

Quotes, Drink

“Farewell, woman! I intend
Henceforth every night to sit
With my lewd, well-natured friend,
Drinking to engender wit.”

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

Love a woman! Y’are an ass, ll. 9–12.
Other

Drink, Nature, Night

“A good book is the best of friends, the same today and forever.”

Martin Farquhar Tupper (1810–1889) English writer and poet

Of Reading.
Proverbial Philosophy (1838-1849)

Books

“Narrated 'Aisha: I used to play with the dolls in the presence of the Prophet, and my girl friends also used to play with me. When Allah's Apostle used to enter (my dwelling place) they used to hide themselves, but the Prophet would call them to join and play with me. (The playing with the dolls and similar images is forbidden, but it was allowed for 'Aisha at that time, as she was a little girl, not yet reached the age of puberty.)”

Aisha (605–678) Muhammad's wife

Sahih Bukhari 8:73:151 Sahih Bukhari http://www.usc.edu/org/cmje/religious-texts/hadith/bukhari/073-sbt.php#008.073.151

Age, Girl, Time

“I think the initial reason why I became interested in farming is that I wanted to be outdoors. I've always enjoyed being outdoors. And so, I looked around and when I was at high school, probably 14 or so, my parents through friends arranged for me to be able to go work on farms on the weekend.”

Ian Wilmut (1944) embryologist

Interview at the Academy of Acheivement (23 May 1998) http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/printmember/wil0int-1.

School, Thinking, Parent

“I must stop to lament, that we cannot evince an admiring gratitude towards other excellent things by a like readiness of quotation: that we cannot, for instance, quote a star that we have been watching; or a hue of sunset; or a friend's voice, and his shake of the hand (I had almost said heart); or a beautiful picture—a Claude or Titian, for example.”

Samuel Laman Blanchard (1804–1845) British author and journalist

"Quotations"
Sketches from Life (1846)

Beauty, Quotes, Star, Heart

“I'm healthier and I can run longer and faster because I eat a plant-based diet. But I don't preach to my carnivorous friends or lambaste anyone who eats a baked potato slathered with butter and sour cream. Anyone who pays attention to what they eat and how it affects them will naturally move toward plants — and toward health.”

Scott Jurek (1973) American ultramarthon runner

Source: Eat and Run (2012), Ch. 15, p. 149

Health, Nature

“Well, it was a radical concept to me. Like any other American, I wasn’t sophisticated enough to study all its facets. All I knew about it was it was foreign to democracy. And here I was, I had been fighting for democracy and always aware of two political parties and brought up in that kind of atmosphere. Anything radical was dangerous to me, as it was to the average American. Nobody knew where a thing like that would lead and we were always afraid of chaos. So communism became the doorway to chaos, and the doorway to chaos was the doorway to evil. Your family might be hurt. Your friends might be hurt. You didn’t want to see a thing like that.”

Jack Kirby (1917–1994) American comic book artist, writer and editor

TCJ Archive, Jack Kirby Interview http://www.tcj.com/jack-kirby-interview/5/, The Comics Journal

Family, Democracy, Communication, Study

“Abstract reason, formerly the servant of practical human reasons, has everywhere become its master, and denies poetry any excuse for existence.
Though philosophers like to define poetry as irrational fancy, for us it is practical, humorous, reasonable way of being ourselves. Of never acquiescing in a fraud; of never accepting the secondary-rate in poetry, painting, music, love, friends. Of safeguarding our poetic institutions against the encroachments of mechanized, insensate, inhumane, abstract rationality.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"The Case for Xanthippe" in The Crane Bag (1969).
General sources

Love, Music, Way, Fraud

“A human face, a hand, a woman's breast or a manly body, an expression of conflicting joy and pain, the infinite ocean, savage crags, the melancholy speech of black trees against the snow, the fierce power of spring blossoms and the heavy lethargy of a hot summer noon when our old friend Pan is asleep and the ghost of noon are murmuring – all this is enough to make us forget the sorrows of the world, or to give them form. In any case the determination to give form to things brings with it part of the solution for which you are seeking. The path is hard and the goal can never be reached – but it is a path.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

Beckmann's lecture 'Drei Briefe an eine Malerin' ('Three letters to a Woman-painter'), New York and Boston, Spring 1948; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 214
1940s

Pain, World, Spring, Tree

“Is anyone here prepared to say / Just what they mean or is it too late / For anyone here to try to do / Just what it takes to get through to you
Let's all make believe / That we're still friends and we like each other
Let's all make believe / That in the end we're gonna need each other
Strangle my hope and make me pray / To a God I've never seen but who I betray”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

Let's All Make Believe, 7 February 2000
B-sides released by Oasis

God, Hope

“The story has spread that in testifying against Mr. Hiss I am working out some old grudge, or motives or revenge or hatred. I do not hate Mr. Hiss. We were close friends, but we are caught in a tragedy of history. Mr. Hiss represents the concealed enemy against which we are all fighting, and I am fighting. I have testified against him with remorse and pity, but in a moment of history in which this Nation now stands, so help me God, I could not do otherwise.”

Whittaker Chambers Witness

televised testimony of August 25, 1948
Source: Witness (1952), pp. 694-695

God, Hate, History, Motivation

“If I give you romantic advice, don't take it. Look what's happening to me. I have the best taste in friends and the worst taste in husbands. I'm never getting married again. That's just stupid. There's no reason on Earth to do that.”

Liza Minnelli (1946) American actress and singer

October 6, 2007 St. Petersburg Times by Shannon Breen.ď

Stupidity

“As a spendthrift squanders his money unthinking, so did my father give me away when yet a girl to his friend. Kunti complaining about her father.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Kunti in: p. 25.
The End Of An Epoch

Money, Girl

“What theory can we use to get us out of the impending slump quickly and reliably? To use the 'new classical' theory of fluctuations begun at Chicago in the 1970s – the theory in which the "risk management" models are embedded – is unthinkable, since it is precisely the theory falsified by the asset price collapse. The thoughts of some have turned to John Maynard Keynes. His insights into uncertainty and speculation were deep. Yet his employment theory was problematic and the 'Keynesian' policy solutions are questionable at best…. At the end of his life Keynes wrote of 'modernist stuff, gone wrong and turned sour and silly'. He told his friend Friedrich Hayek he intended to re-examine his theory in his next book. He would have moved on. The admiration we all have for Keynes's fabulous contributions should not sway us from moving on.”

Edmund Phelps (1933) American economist

Edmund Phelps "Keynes had no sure cure for slumps."in: The Financial Times. Columbia University, November 4, 2008.

Life, Books, Question

“Aristotle once said that the unexamined life is not worth living. I think it's time to examine what we do once more in the spirit of a critical friend. Let's pause for a moment to consider what we need to examine.”

Indra Nooyi (1955) Indian-born, naturalized American, business executive

CEOs need to change: Indra Nooyi

Life, Thinking, Time

“You find out who your real friends are when you're involved in a scandal.”

Elizabeth Taylor (1932–2011) British-American actress

As quoted in "Elizabeth Taylor's 20 best quotes" in The Telegraph (23 March 2011)

“With Christ, and like Christ, and not love our friends! Impossible! when He loves them so tenderly. Going into the fuller presence of Him whose very name is "Love" can never make our hearts less loving.”

Arthur Kenney (1776–1855) Irish dean

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 305.

Love, Heart, Christ

“Then fail not most carefully to peruse the books of the Greek, Arabian, and Latin physicians, not despising the Talmudists and Cabalists; and by frequent anatomies get thee the perfect knowledge of that other world, called the microcosm, which is man. And at some of the hours of the day apply thy mind to the study of the Holy Scriptures; first, in Greek, the New Testament, with the Epistles of the Apostles;: and then the Old Testament in Hebrew. In brief, let me see thee an abyss and bottomless pit of knowledge; for from henceforward, as thou growest great and becomest a man, thou must part from this tranquillity and rest of study, thou must learn chivalry, warfare, and the exercises of the field, the better thereby to defend my house and our friends, and to succour and protect them at all their needs against the invasion and assaults of evildoers.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Pantagruel (1532), Chapter 8.

Books, World, Exercises, Knowledge

“.. can you [contemporary painters] ever get close, even vaguely, to the solidity, the transparency, the lyric strength of colour, to the clarity, the mystery, the emotion of any of the paintings of Fra Angelico, Piero della Francesca, Botticelli, Dürer, Holbein or of young Raphael? Friends, have you ever realized that with the oil colours used today this is absolutely impossible?... In the museums of Europe I have observed the work of the Flemish painters at length – those earlier, later as well as contemporary to the [brothers] Van Eycks – and I am convinced that the above mentioned brothers were not the discoverers of oil paint in its true sense, as is held today, but that what they did was introduce oil in emulsion with other substances, especially live and fossil resins, into so-called oil tempera emulsion, which was already known in the Flanders, to enable them through the use of veiling to give a greater finish, cleanliness and strength of colour to their painting.
'These oils which are their tempera' said Vasari, speaking of the Flemish [painters] in his Life of Antonello; and without doubt he was alluding to Flemish oil tempera emulsion, but it is sure, absolutely sure, that.... we are dealing with.... a tempera based mixture (egg, glue, resin, tempera etc) in which oil was only used as a means of unity and for the finish of the painting.”

Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) Italian artist

Quote from De Chirico's text 'Pro tempera oratio', c. 1920; from 'PRO TEMPERA ORATIO' http://www.fondazionedechirico.org/wp-content/uploads/475-480Metafisica5_6.pdf, p. 475 1920s and later

Life, Sense, Painting

“I listened to the San Juan games on the radio and my idol was Monte Irvin, because he not only was a good hitter but had a very good arm. Even my friends called me Monte Irvin as a nickname. I never thought I’d be good enough to play pro ball. I always felt you had to be like Superman to play professionally. But in 1952, at age 17, I signed a contract with Santurce. My bonus? It was $500 and one glove. They also paid me $30 a week. Two years later – when I was 19 – there were eight or nine big league teams after me and I signed with the Dodgers for a $10,000 bonus. This was a big day in my life.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in “Clouter Clemente: Popular Buc; Rifle-Armed Flyhawk Aims At Second Bat Crown”
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1964</big>

Life, Age, Game

“Two of my favourite current management writers are Americans – Clayton Christensen and Peter Senge. My all-time favourite gurus are Peter Drucker, who became a greatly admired friend, and W. Edwards Deming. The thing that set these people apart from many other business commentators is that they didn’t propose any all - encompassing theories, they simply told it like it is.
The fact is that life cannot be summarised as a simple set of rules; it’s far too complicated for that and it’s always changing. Unfortunately, all-encompassing panaceas do seem to be popular and certainly sell books, which is why I so value the objectivity of thought that each of these people brought to the debate.”

Robert Heller (1932–2012) British magician

Interview: Robert Heller (2006)

Life, People, Books, Business

“Pete's my best friend, I was the best man at his wedding, I love that man to death. I'd take a bullet for him.”

Patrick Stump (1984) American musician

AbsolutePunk.net, Patrick Stump, Part 2 - 10.13.08

Love, Death, Wedding

“As soon as he did not work, the poor man, whose poverty had sufficed to create his title in the world of pious legend, who had been regarded as bearing a sacred character because he symbolized the great affliction of mankind, was no longer the good friend of Jesus Christ. There was thus a type of poor whom Jesus Christ did not recognize, any more than the police did.”

Bernard Groethuysen (1880–1946) French literary historian, translator and writer

Source: The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1927), p. 160

World, Affliction, Christ

“It is a true saying that a man must eat a peck of salt with his friend before he knows him.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part I, Book III, Ch. 1.

“Tell the Trustees I think it is a very good Sickert — but the question is whether he is important enough for the Tate. I think not; but as an old friend of the artist perhaps I am a prejudiced judge.”

James Bolivar Manson (1879–1945) British artist

Quoted in Frances Spalding, The Tate: A History (1998), pp. 62–70. Tate Gallery Publishing, London. ISBN 1854372319.

Question, Thinking

“The only way to make it clear to him that he should not come here to our lists in the future, is to teach him a hard lesson, and that is done by continually re-adding cc's back to him -- because the mails talk about him -- even when his friends come our mailing lists and delete the his address from the cc list. Like this message, which adds him back in. Richard, you are a lying cheating hypocrite.”

Theo de Raadt (1968) systems software engineer

[Re: Real men don't attack straw men, MARC, openbsd-misc (Mailing list), http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=119761726816776, 2007-12-14, 2017-04-20]

Way, Lying, Future, Cheating

“Friends on pipa, poetry and drinking all of them cast me away. When I see the snow, the moon or blossoms, I long for you deeply.”

Bai Juyi (772–846) Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty

「寄殷律協」[citation needed]
Unsourced

Drink

“I was raised Vegan since birth. … I remember watching undercover investigation videos and reading the pamphlets that were mailed to the house when we were kids—I felt deeply for the animals at an early age. I remember how the other parents of my childhood friends would either get upset or interested when their kids would come home after sleepovers at my house—I felt it was my duty to show my friends what was happening to animals. … Veganism is the ultimate form of compassion. … I never considered my being Vegan was for health reasons—it was always for the love and respect I had for animals. And because of that love and respect I have for non-human animals my compassion flows over to all living beings, of all types. … I am encouraged by compassionate souls and the love I see in the eyes of those I've committed my life to stand up for.”

Seba Johnson (1973) Olympic skier

"Interview with Seba Johnson: Vegan Olympic Ski Racer" http://www.vivalavegan.net/articles/561-interview-with-seba-johnson-vegan-olympic-ski-racer.html, Viva La Vegan! (August 2013).

Love, Life, Health, Age

“For when do friends not delight in the sorrow of the prosperous?”

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

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

“It is in the thirties that we want friends. In the forties we know they won't save us any more than love did.”

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

Notebooks
Quoted, Notebooks

Love

“In 1965 alone we had 300 private talks for peace in Vietnam, with friends and adversaries throughout the world. Since Christmas your government has labored again, with imagination and endurance, to remove any barrier to peaceful settlement. For 20 days now we and our Vietnamese allies have dropped no bombs in North Vietnam. Able and experienced spokesmen have visited, in behalf of America, more than 40 countries. We have talked to more than a hundred governments, all 113 that we have relations with, and some that we don't. We have talked to the United Nations and we have called upon all of its members to make any contribution that they can toward helping obtain peace. In public statements and in private communications, to adversaries and to friends, in Rome and Warsaw, in Paris and Tokyo, in Africa and throughout this hemisphere, America has made her position abundantly clear. We seek neither territory nor bases, economic domination or military alliance in Vietnam. We fight for the principle of self-determination—that the people of South Vietnam should be able to choose their own course, choose it in free elections without violence, without terror, and without fear. The people of all Vietnam should make a free decision on the great question of reunification. This is all we want for South Vietnam. It is all the people of South Vietnam want. And if there is a single nation on this earth that desires less than this for its own people, then let its voice be heard. We have also made it clear—from Hanoi to New York—that there are no arbitrary limits to our search for peace. We stand by the Geneva Agreements of 1954 and 1962. We will meet at any conference table, we will discuss any proposals—four points or 14 or 40—and we will consider the views of any group. We will work for a cease-fire now or once discussions have begun. We will respond if others reduce their use of force, and we will withdraw our soldiers once South Vietnam is securely guaranteed the right to shape its own future. We have said all this, and we have asked—and hoped—and we have waited for a response. So far we have received no response to prove either success or failure.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

People, World, Fear, Peace

“I think we have been the most Conservative. I think that myself, and my friend Mr. Bright, and many I see about me, who have voted for twenty years for what have been considered revolutionary measures, have been the great Conservatives of our own age.”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech in Rochdale (26 June 1861), quoted in John Bright and J. E. Thorold Rogers (eds.), Speeches on Questions of Public Policy by Richard Cobden, M.P. Volume II (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1908), p. 437.
1860s

Age, Thinking

“Once upon a time these two men had been in the same situation; now the difference between them was like the difference between a wish and its fulfillment. The one was what the other had dreamed of, and therefore they did not know one another anymore. He who has wishes yearns for a friend; but when the wishes have been fulfilled, the friends are the first thing we forget.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Four: The Beauty of the Heavens

Men, Dreams, Time, Forgetting

“In times like these, given the cultural and social context in which we are living, there may be a greater risk of reducing Christian hope to an ideology, to a group slogan or to outward appearances. Nothing is more contrary to Jesus' message! He does not want his disciples to "recite" a part, even that of hope. He wants them "to be" hope and they can only be hope if they remain united to him! He wishes each one of you, dear young friends, to be a small source of hope for your neighbour and, all together, to become an oasis of hope for the society in which you are integrated.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

In Homily for Holy mass on the fourth anniversary of the death of John Paul II http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/homilies/2009/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20090402_anniv-morte-gpii_en.html (2 April 2009) 2009

Hope, Appearance, Time, Parting

“Terry Pratchett and I met in February 1985, in a Chinese restaurant. I was a young journalist. He was a former journalist and Electricity Board PR, and a writer who had just published his second Discworld novel. I was the first journalist who had ever interviewed him.
I remember we made each other laugh a lot. We laughed at the same things. We became friends. It was easy.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

Good Omens: How Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett wrote a book (2014)

“Don't give up
'cos you have friends
Don't give up
You're not beaten yet.
Don't give up
I know you can make it good…”

Peter Gabriel (1950) English singer-songwriter, record producer and humanitarian

Don't Give Up
Song lyrics, So (1986)

“If, then, the things achieved by nature are more excellent than those achieved by art, and if art produces nothing without making use of intelligence, nature also ought not to be considered destitute of intelligence. If at the sight of a statue or painted picture you know that art has been employed, and from the distant view of the course of a ship feel sure that it is made to move by art and intelligence, and if you understand on looking at a horologe, whether one marked out with lines, or working by means of water, that the hours are indicated by art and not by chance, with what possible consistency can you suppose that the universe which contains these same products of art, and their constructors, and all things, is destitute of forethought and intelligence? Why, if any one were to carry into Scythia or Britain the globe which our friend Posidonius has lately constructed, each one of the revolutions of which brings about the same movement in the sun and moon and five wandering stars as is brought about each day and night in the heavens, no one in those barbarous countries would doubt that that globe was the work of intelligence.”
Si igitur meliora sunt ea quae natura quam illa quae arte perfecta sunt, nec ars efficit quicquam sine ratione, ne natura quidem rationis expers est habenda. Qui igitur convenit, signum aut tabulam pictam cum aspexeris, scire adhibitam esse artem, cumque procul cursum navigii videris, non dubitare, quin id ratione atque arte moveatur, aut cum solarium vel descriptum vel ex aqua contemplere, intellegere declarari horas arte, non casu, mundum autem, qui et has ipsas artes et earum artifices et cuncta conplectatur consilii et rationis esse expertem putare. [88] Quod si in Scythiam aut in Brittanniam sphaeram aliquis tulerit hanc, quam nuper familiaris noster effecit Posidonius, cuius singulae conversiones idem efficiunt in sole et in luna et in quinque stellis errantibus, quod efficitur in caelo singulis diebus et noctibus, quis in illa barbaria dubitet, quin ea sphaera sit perfecta ratione.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Book II, section 34
De Natura Deorum – On the Nature of the Gods (45 BC)

Art, Feeling, Star, Intelligence

“No visitors shall yonder valley find.
Except the spirits of the rain and wind:
Here you must bide, my friends, with me entombed
In this dim crypt, where shelved around us lie
The mummied authors.”

Bayard Taylor (1825–1878) United States poet, novelist and travel writer

"Third Evening".
The Poet's Journal (1863)

Lie

“Hebrew שלום, חבר ("Goodbye, friend"). Eulogy at the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin, Jerusalem (February 16, 1996)”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

1990s

“I do like girls as friends, but definitely not as girlfriends. Bleurgh! Lots of girls try to hug me and tell me I'm cute, which is really embarrassing.”

Joseph McManners (1992) British singer, actor

Interview with British Newspaper The Mirror http://www.mirror.co.uk:

Girl

“As therefore, when we consult, not our own pleasures, but that of our friends, our behaviour will be pleasing and agreeable; our first enquiry must be, what those particulars are, with which the greatest part of mankind are universally delighted; and what those are which, in general, they detest, as troublesome and offensive: For thus we shall easily discover, what kind of conduct, in our intercourse with others, is to be avoided, and what to be adopted and pursued.”

Giovanni della Casa (1503–1556) Roman Catholic archbishop

Source: Galateo: Or, A Treatise on Politeness and Delicacy of Manners, p. 7

Pleasure, Universe, Parting

“When I ventured to criticise, the other day, this system I was, I am afraid, misunderstood. As a Conservative, I am naturally in favour of returning into private ownership and private management all those means of production and distribution which are now controlled by state capitalism. I am sure they will be more efficient. What I ventured to question was the using of these huge sums as if they were income.

I know now, I have learnt now from the letters that I have received, that I am quite out of date. Modern economists have decided there is no difference between capital and income. I am not so sure. In my younger days, I and perhaps others of your Lordships had friends, good friends, very good fellows indeed too, who failed to make this distinction. For a few years everything went on very well, and then at last the crash came, and they were forced to retire out to some dingy lodging-house in Boulogne, or if the estate were larger and the trustees more generous, to a decent accommodation at Baden-Baden.”

Harold Macmillan (1894–1986) British politician

Hansard, House of Lords, 5th series, vol. 468, cols. 390-1.
Speech in the House of Lords, 14 November 1985.
1980s

Question, Nature, Housing

“Taylor’s friend Henry Gantt explains to his fellow engineers in the middle of the First World War that they must "develop a task system on the basis of democracy that will yield as good, or better, results than those now in operation under autocracy"”

Henry Gantt (1861–1919) American engineer

Source: Industrial leadership, 1916, p. 53 as cited in: Thibault Le Texier (2011) "Management Is By Nature Knowledge Management: Taylor, Scientific Management and the Early Organization of Knowledge".

War, World, Democracy

“When the six-year-old daughter of a friend of mine overheard her father telling someone that I had been awarded the Nobel Prize, she asked whether I had ever received it before. He replied that the Prize was something you could get only once. Whereupon the small girl thought a moment: 'Oh' she said, 'so it's like chicken-pox.”

Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) South african Nobel-winning writer

Speech at the Nobel Banquet (1991)

Girl, Daughters

“All things – great, small, good, bad, friend, enemy—should be a lesson, not an obsession.”

Eugene J. Martin (1938–2005) American artist

Annotated Drawings by Eugene J. Martin: 1977-1978

“O all ye exorcizers come and exorcize now, and ye clergymen draw nigh and clerge,
For I wish to be purged of an urge.
It is an irksome urge, compounded of nettles and glue,
And it is turning all my friends back into acquaintances, and all my acquaintances into people who look the other way when I heave into view.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

Good Intentions (1942), So Does Everybody Else, Only Not So Much

People, Way, Drawing

“A friend came over to the house
a few days ago and read one of my poems.
He came back today and asked to read the
same poem over again. After he finished
reading it, he said, "It makes me want to write poetry."”

Richard Brautigan (1935–1984) American novelist, poet, and short story writer

"Hey! This Is What It's All About"
The Pill Versus the Springhill Mining Disaster

Reading, Housing

“There were many seas. The sea roared like a tiger. The sea whispered in your ear like a friend telling you secrets. The sea clinked like small change in a pocket. The sea thundered like avalanches. The sea hissed like sandpaper working on wood. The sea sounded like someone vomiting. The sea was dead silent.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi (2001), Chapter 78, p. 239

Secret, Change, Sea, Dead

“Yes, his father was a Nazi; yes, he has been a consistent supporter and friend of renowned Nazi Kurt Waldheim. All right, so what if the rumors--confirmed for SPY by a businessman and longtime friend of Arnold's--that in the 1970s he enjoyed playing and giving away records of Hitler's speeches are true?”

Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947) actor, businessman and politician of Austrian-American heritage

Charles Fleming, "Uh-Oh" March 1992, page 62 of Spy Magazine https://books.google.ca/books?id=Xa7j5ofHW0EC&lpg=PP1&dq=spy+magazine+schwarzenegger&pg=PA62&redir_esc=y&hl=en#v=onepage&q=spy%20magazine%20schwarzenegger&f=true About

Support

“The wretched have no friends.”

John Dryden All for Love

Act III, scene I
All for Love (1678)

“It was a doctrine old as the common law, maintained by our Anglo-Saxon ancestors centuries before it was planted in the American Colonies, that taxation and representation were inseparable correlatives, the one a duty based upon the other as a right But the neglect of the government to provide a system which made the Parliamentary representation conform to the increase of population, and the growth and decadence of cities and boroughs, had, by almost imperceptible degrees, disfranchised the great mass of the British people, and placed the legislative power in the hands of a few leading families of the realm. Towards the close of the last century the question of Parliamentary reform assumed a definite shape, and since that time has constituted one of the most prominent features in British politics. It was found not only that the basis of representation was unequal and unjust, but that the right of the elective franchise was granted to but few of the inhabitants, and was regulated by no fixed and equitable rule. Here I may quote from May's Constitutional History: 'In some of the corporate towns, the inhabitants paying scot and lot, and freemen, were admitted to vote; in some, the freemen only; and in many, none but the governing body of the corporation. At Buckingham and at Bewdley the right of election was confined to the bailiff and twelve burgesses; at Bath, to the mayor, ten aldermen, and twenty-four common-councilmen; at Salisbury, to the mayor and corporation, consisting of fifty-six persons. And where more popular rights of election were acknowledged, there were often very few inhabitants to exercise them. Gatton enjoyed a liberal franchise. All freeholders and inhabitants paying scot and lot were entitled to vote, but they only amounted to seven. At Tavistock all freeholders rejoiced in the franchise, but there were only ten. At St. Michael all inhabitants paying scot and lot were electors, but there were only seven. In 1793 the Society of the Friends of the People were prepared to prove that in England and Wales seventy members were returned by thirty-five places in which there were scarcely any electors at all; that ninety members were returned by forty-six places with less than fifty electors; and thirty-seven members by nineteen places having not more than one hundred electors. Such places were returning members, while Leeds, Birmingham, and Manchester were unrepresented; and the members whom they sent to Parliament were the nominees of peers and other wealthy patrons. No abuse was more flagrant than the direct control of peers over the constitution of the Lower House. The Duke of Norfolk was represented by eleven members; Lord Lonsdale by nine; Lord Darlington by seven; the Duke of Rutland, the Marquis of Buckingham, and Lord Carrington, each by six. Seats were held in both Houses alike by hereditary right.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1860s, Oration at Ravenna, Ohio (1865)

People, Family, Law, Quotes

“Just as we respect the right of each nation to determine its own future, we also recognize the responsibility of each nation to secure its own future.
Just as America's role is indispensable in preserving the world's peace, so is each nation's role indispensable in preserving its own peace.
Together with the rest of the world, let us resolve to move forward from the beginnings we have made. Let us continue to bring down the walls of hostility which have divided the world for too long, and to build in their place bridges of understanding — so that despite profound differences between systems of government, the people of the world can be friends.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

1970s, Second Inaugural Address (1973)

Hostility, People, World, Peace

“Or he may study the hidden mind of the animal. A mixture of feelings and of thoughts, of dumb intelligences and of rudimentary affections, he reads the whole humble moral life of the beast in its eyes and in its movements.
He is even the confidant of nature. The trees, the plants talk to him like friends. The old gnarled oaks speak to him of their kindliness for the human race whom they protect beneath their sheltering branches. The flowers commune with him by the gracious swaying of their stalks, by the singing tones of their petals — each blossom amidst the grass is a friendly word addressed to him by nature.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Art, 1912, Ch. II. To the artist, all in nature is beautiful, p. 48

Life, Feeling, Confidence, Intelligence

“Oh, my friends, be warned by me,
That Breakfast, Dinner, Lunch, and Tea
Are all the Human Frame requires.”

Hilaire Belloc book Cautionary Tales for Children

"Henry King, Who Chewed Bits of String, and Was Early Cut off in Dreadful Agonies"
Cautionary Tales for Children (1907)

Tea

“I was surprised, while preparing this lecture, to notice how, among my friends who had read the book, a division into two groups appeared. Both groups are equally discerning and educated, and as far as I can tell, equal in numbers. One group is eager to say that they don't understand a word of it, and there are artists and historians among them. Those of the other group claim that they understood it all on first reading, without difficulty. Of course I believe them both, without understanding the combination that separates them so sharply. Perhaps distinctive and contrasting features in the comprehension of works of art are responsible. What I say speaks to some, but not to others. Some are ready, and others are not. But when both someday find that they agree in understanding it, that day may be its last as a book alive in the dissension over its intelligibility.”

George Kubler (1912–1996) American art historian

George Kubler (1982)"The Shape of Time, Reconsidered," in: Perspecta (Volume 19, MIT Press)

Books, Education, Art, Intelligence

“I became aware of something today when I was with Fräulein Weshoff [German woman-sculptor, who married later the poet Rilke ]. I should like to have her as a friend. She is grand and splendid to look at – and that's the way she is as a person and as an artist. Today we raced down the hill on our little sleds. It was such fun.”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

excerpt of her Journal, Worpswede 1897; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 194
1897

Way, Personality

“Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need - a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Three Men in a Boat

Source: Three Men in a Boat (1889), Ch. 3.

Love, Life, Pleasure, Dogs

“America betrays its friends. It sets them up and betrays them. I’d rather be America’s enemy.”

Ahmed Chalabi (1944–2015) Iraqi politician

Dexter Filkins, " Where Plan A Left Ahmad Chalabi http://select.nytimes.com/gst/tsc.html?URI=http://select.nytimes.com/preview/2006/11/05/magazine/1154652190060.html&OQ=_rQ3D1Q268tpwQ3DQ26emcQ3DtpwQ26pagewantedQ3Dprint&OP=7b29a451Q2Fvqfdv_gQ20KK_vmQ20fuQ5EfqvVQ2FQ2FJvQ7DQ7DvQ2FevTQ7CpQ7CQ5CQ5EQ7BfvQ7DQ7DeGJeVQ7DyQ2FQ2FJQ2F!i_TQ3C", New York Times Magazine, November 5, 2006.

“…it is a revolution without any mandate from the people. (Cheers.) Now, gentlemen, it is in the first place a revolution in fiscal methods…this Budget is introduced as a Liberal measure. If so, all I can say is that it is a new Liberalism and not the one that I have known and practised under more illustrious auspices than these. (Cheers.) Who was the greatest, not merely the greatest Liberal, but the greatest financier that this country has ever known? (A voice, "Gladstone.") I mean Mr. Gladstone. (Cheers.) With Sir Robert Peel—he, I think, occupied a position even higher than Sir Robert Peel—for boldness of imagination and scope of financing Mr. Gladstone ranks as the great financial authority of our time. (Cheers.) Now, we have in the Cabinet at this moment several colleagues, several ex-colleagues of mine, who served in the Cabinet with Mr. Gladstone…and I ask them, without a moment's fear or hesitation as to the answer that would follow if they gave it from their conscience, with what feelings would they approach Mr. Gladstone, were he Prime Minister and still living, with such a Budget as this? Mr. Gladstone would be 100 in December if he were alive; but, centenarian as he would be, I venture to say that he would make short work of the deputation of the Cabinet that waited on him with the measure, and they would soon find themselves on the stairs and not in the room. (Laughter and cheers.) In his eyes, and in my eyes, too, as a humble disciple, Liberalism and Liberty were cognate terms. They were twin-sisters. How does the Budget stand the test of Liberalism so understood and of Liberty as we have always comprehended it? This Budget seems to establish an inquisition, unknown previously in Great Britain, and a tyranny, I venture to say, unknown to mankind…I think my friends are moving on the path that leads to Socialism. How far they are advanced on that path I will not say, but on that path I, at any rate, cannot follow them an inch. (Loud cheers.) Any form of protection is an evil, but Socialism is the end of all, the negation of faith, of family, of prosperity, of the monarchy, of Empire.”

Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery (1847–1929) British politician

Loud cheers.
Speech in Glasgow attacking the "People's Budget" (10 September 1909), reported in The Times (11 September 1909), pp. 7-8.

People, Fear, Family, Faith

“Smoking marijuana is more fun than drinking beer,
But a friend of ours was captured and they gave him thirty years
Maybe we should raise our voices, ask somebody why
But demonstrations are a drag, besides we're much too high.”

Phil Ochs (1940–1976) American protest singer and songwriter

"Outside Of A Small Circle Of Friends" http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~trent/ochs/lyrics/small-circle-of-friends.html Pleasures of the Harbor (1967)

Drink, Beer, Marijuana

“One of life’s joys was to have friends who gave you reality checks…who would call you on your crap before it rose so high you drowned in it.”

David Brin book Earth

Part VI (p. 311)
Earth (1990)

Life, Reality, Joy

“The worst disgrace that can befall a producer is an unkind notice from a New York reviewer. When this happens, the producer becomes a pariah in Hollywood. He is shunned by his friends, thrown into bankruptcy, and like a Japanese electing hara-kiri, he commits suttee.”

S.J. Perelman (1904–1979) American humorist, author, and screenwriter

"Strictly from Hunger", The Most of S. J. Perelman (1992) p. 47

“I met him [Arshile Gorky] in 1929. Of course I met a lot of artists, but then I met Gorky. Well I had some training in Holland, quite a training, you know, The Academy. And then I met Gorky [in New York], who didn't have that at all, he became from no place [Tiflis, Armenia]... And for some mysterious reason, he knew lots more about painting, and art, he just knew it by nature - things I was supposed to know and feel and understand - he really did it better. He had an extraordinary gift for hitting the nail on the head, very remarkable, so I immediately attached myself to him and we became very good friends.”

Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) Dutch painter

In an interview (March 1960) with David Sylvester, edited for broadcasting by the BBC first published in 'Location', Spring 1963; as quoted in Interviews with American Artists, by David Sylvester; Chatto & Windus, London 2001, p. 47
1960's

Art, Feeling, Understanding, Nature

“For art, the intervention of capital always signals a further degree of mediation. To say that art is commodified is to say that a mediation, or standing-in-between, has occurred, & that this betweenness amounts to a split, & that this split amounts to "alienation". Improv music played by friends at home is less "alienated" than music played "live" at the Met, or music played through media (whether PBS or MTV or Walkman). In fact, an argument could be made that music distributed free or at cost on cassette via mail, is less alienated than live music played at some huge We Are The World spectacle or Las Vegas niteclub, even though the latter is live music played to a live audience (or at least so it appears), while the former is recorded music consumed by distant & even anonymous listeners.”

Hakim Bey (1945) American political writer, poet and essayist

Immediatism (AK Press: 1994)

World, Art, Music, Home

“I was talkin' with a friend of mine,
Said a woman done hurt his pride.
Told him that she loved him so, then
Turned around and let him go.
Then he said "you'd better watch your step"
Or you're gonna get hurt yourself.
Someone's gonna tell you lies
Cut you down to size…”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Don't Do Me Like That
Lyrics, Damn The Torpedoes (1979)

Love, Hurt

“In the world you have three sorts of friends: your friends who love you, your friends who do not care about you and your friends who hate you.”

Nicolas Chamfort (1741–1794) French writer

Proverbs of all nations. (1859)
Attributed

Love, Hate, World

“This, my friends, is the Jaziya that non-Muslims pay in "free" India, one governed by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Hajpayee.”

Varsha Bhosle (1956–2012) Singer, Columnist

Varsha Bhosle: The Jaziya that Hindus yet pay http://www.rediff.com/news/2000/aug/28varsha.htm. See also https://mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/mumbai/other//articleshow/16969076.cms and Bhosle's definition: 'Hajpayee = Atal Bihari Vajpayee, for forcing non-Muslims to subsidise the Hajj' https://www.rediff.com/news/2001/apr/19varsha.htm

“I am sorry that my convictions do not allow me to repeat my friend’s offer, said one of the others. But I have had to abandon the humanitarian and egalitarian fancies. His name was Mr. Neo-Classical.”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Pilgrim's Regress

Pilgrim’s Regress 89
The Pilgrim's Regress (1933)

“This year, my Friend, is big with mighty events. Nothing less than the fate of America depends on the virtue of her sons, and if they do not have virtue enough to support the most Glorious Cause ever human beings were engaged in, they don’t deserve the blessings of freedom.”

William Whipple (1730–1785) American signatory of the Declaration of Independence

As quoted in "William Whipple" http://www.dsdi1776.com/signers-by-state/william-whipple/ (11 December 2011), The Society of the Descendants of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence

Fate, Support, Freedom, Dependency

“Obsequiousness begets friends, truth hatred.”
Obsequium amicos, veritas odium parit.

Terence Andria

Act I, scene i, Line 41
Andria (The Lady of Andros)

Truth

“On the whole, I have annoyances to bear, of which you can hardly form a conception. One of them is the mutual jealousy of almost all the French officers, particularly against those of higher rank than the rest. These people think of nothing but their incessant intrigues and backbitings. They hate each other like the bitterest enemies, and endeavor to injure each other wherever an opportunity offers. I have given up their society, and very seldom see them. La Fayette is the sole exception; I always meet him with the same cordiality and the same pleasure. He is an excellent young man, and we are good friends… La Fayette is much liked, he is on the best of terms with Washington.”

Johann de Kalb (1721–1780) American general

Letter to Madame de Kalb (5 January 1778), as quoted in The Marquis de La Fayette in the American Revolution http://books.google.com/books?id=vDuF70s1Eu4C&pg=PA22&dq=de+kalb#PPA241,M1 (1894), by Charlemagne Tower. J.B. Lippincott Company, p. 241. 1770s

Hate, People, Pleasure, Jealousy

“I've had marvelous and incredible luck, and devoted parents, sisters, friends, and teachers. What more can one ask? These things contribute enormously. Probably the major part of one's success is due to these factors.”

Yehudi Menuhin (1916–1999) American violinist and conductor

As stated in his interview with Martyn Lewis in Lewis' book, Reflections on Success(1997)

Parent, Sister, Teachers, Success

“Disinterestedness is a necessary attribute to real friendship and it is the duty of one friend to guess another's problems and render assistance before it is asked. If our friends have needs that we can satisfy, we should relieve them of the necessity of seeking our help. Apart from the satisfaction usually produced by an action, this permanent ability to give pleasure is perhaps the only advantage of wealth and power.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Friendship

Friendship, Pleasure, Problem, Help

“I was also upset to hear of a black conservative in Virginia named Jay Parker. How could a black man call himself a conservative? In a twist of fate, they both are dear friends today, and the youthful wrath I visited upon them is now being visited upon me, though without the youth. What goes around does indeed come around.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

Fate, Youth

“Evil reports of a churlish wilderness, a pitiless climate, disease, misery, and death, had heralded the arrival of De Monts. The outlay had been great, the returns small; and when he reached Paris, he found his friends cold, his enemies active and keen.”

Francis Parkman (1823–1893) American historian

Pt. II, Ch. 4 Lescarbot and Champlain
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)

Death, Disease, Evil

“There would be dreamers of dreams and seers of visions and hearers of voices; readers of the entrails of beasts and interpreters of the flight of birds; there would be burning bushes and stone tablets on mountain-tops, and inspired words dictated to aged disciples on lonely islands. There would arise special castes of men and women, learned in these sacred matters; and these priestly castes would naturally emphasize the importance of their calling, would hold themselves aloof from the common herd, endowed with special powers and entitled to special privileges. They would interpret the oracles in ways favorable to themselves and their order; they would proclaim themselves friends and confidants of the god, walking with him in the night-time, receiving his messengers and angels, acting as his deputies in forgiving offenses, in dealing punishments and in receiving gifts. They would become makers of laws and moral codes. They would wear special costumes to distinguish them, they would go through elaborate ceremonies to impress their followers, employing all sensuous effects, architecture and sculpture and painting, music and poetry and dancing, candles and incense and bells and gongs.”

Upton Sinclair book The Profits of Religion

Book One : The Church of the Conquerors, "The Priestly Lie"
The Profits of Religion (1918)

Women, Men, God, Age

“I repudiate these attacks on him…a German of the Germans…his honour so assailed. Who made this infamous attack upon our friend? Men who till now have been looked upon as Germans, but who henceforth are unworthy of that name. And these men come from the Reich's working classes, who owe so infinite a debt of gratitude to Krupp!”

Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia

Speech at the funeral of Friedrich Alfred Krupp (27 November 1902), quoted in William Manchester, The Arms of Krupp 1587-1968 (London: Michael Joseph, 1968), p. 275
1900s

Men, Gratitude

“It was in the 1960s that I began the detailed study of public regulation. My interests were aroused, and my faith in the cliches of the subject destroyed, as so often with other subjects, by the discussions with my friend, Aaron Director. This wonderful man is that rarest of scholars: a clear-headed, imaginative, erudite man who enjoys the task of constructing luminous and original theories but does not even write them down!”

George Stigler (1911–1991) American economist

"George J. Stigler - Biographical," 1982

Faith, Imagination, Study

“There are various ways of flattering, and, of course, you must adapt your style to your subject. Some people like it laid on with a trowel, and this requires very little art. With sensible persons, however, it needs to be done very delicately, and more by suggestion than actual words. A good many like it wrapped up in the form of an insult, as—"Oh, you are a perfect fool, you are. You would give your last sixpence to the first hungry-looking beggar you met;" while others will swallow it only when administered through the medium of a third person, so that if C wishes to get at an A of this sort, he must confide to A's particular friend B that he thinks A a splendid fellow, and beg him, B, not to mention it, especially to A. Be careful that B is a reliable man, though, otherwise he won't.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

People, Fools, Art, Way

“Better to have one friend of great value, than many friends who were good for nothing.”

Anacharsis Scythian philosopher

As quoted in The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius, as translated by C. D. Yonge, (1853), "Anacharsis" sect. 5, p. 48

“Well, well, perhaps I am a bit of a talker. A popular fellow such as I am — my friends get round me — we chaff, we sparkle, we tell witty stories — and somehow my tongue gets wagging. I have the gift of conversation. I’ve been told I ought to have a salon, whatever that may be.”

Kenneth Grahame book The Wind in the Willows

Toad, Ch. 11, "Like Summer Tempests Came His Tears"
The Wind in the Willows (1908)

“Because of the distrust that has grown from our experience, we are very careful whom we welcome. We are selective in our companions, we look suspiciously those who sit beside us in a bar and start talking to us: “is he crazy? What’s he up to?” we wonder. The city becomes a desert. With groups of friends who are nobody else’s friends. As Emily Dickinson, the reclusive poet, once wrote: “The soul selects its own society, then shuts the door.””

Michael Elmore-Meegan (1959) British humanitarian

All shall be well (2014)

Soul

“Under a tyranny, most friends are a liability. One quarter of them turn "reasonable" and become your enemies, one quarter are afraid to speak, and one quarter are killed and you die with them. But the blessed final quarter keep you alive.”

Sinclair Lewis book It Can't Happen Here

It Can't Happen Here (1935)

“My experiences of meditation began before bearded pajama time, which a friend of mine is encouraging me to describe as a mental breakdown. I don’t think it was, as I would say that despair is a necessary ingredient of a breakdown. What did happen at the time of my divorce was that a lot of my beliefs and their outward manifestations fell away.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

Thinking, Time, Despair

“People you don't like are pigheaded. Your friends are stubborn, or hold to their purpose.”

Harry Turtledove (1949) American novelist, short story author, essayist, historian

Source: The United State of Atlantis (2008), p. 184

People

“To make our story shorter than the miniature groom's, he learnt that his own property in himself was in danger; and that, if the patriot’s definition of liberty be true —"it is like the air we breathe, without it we die"—his life was near its termination. A writ was issued against him; and, thanks to a douceur to his valet, two professional gentlemen, as he left his toilet, would deprive his friends at the Clarendon of his company.”

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

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Life

“Engvall: Yesterday, my son was out in the yard playing with his friend, and he hit his friend. I walked up to him, and I said, "Hey…" (pantomimes hitting his son) "We don't hit". He looked at me like, "Here's your sign, Dad".”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

Cheap Drunk: An Autobiography (2002)
Here's Your Sign, "Here's MY Sign..."

“…we live in such an instantaneous age. We want everything right away—whether it’s an Uber or your favorite TV show—and we want it tailored to our exact preferences and beliefs. We fill our Twitter feed with voices that confirm, rather than challenge, our views. If we dislike someone’s Facebook post, we just un-follow them, we un-friend them. …in the real world, there are plenty of people who think very differently than you do, and they hold their opinions just as passionately. So if you want to change their minds, if you want to work with them to move this country forward, you can’t just shut them out. You have to persuade them, and you have to compromise with them. That is what so many of our heroes of history have done.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

2010s, Commencement speech for Oberlin College Prep graduates (2015)

People, Age, World, History

“"Why," said I — "why should you suppose that I dislike the place?"
"You told me so yourself," was the decisive reply. "You said, at least, that you could not live contentedly, without a friend; and that you had no friend here, and no possibility of making one — and, besides, I know you must dislike it."”

Anne Brontë book Agnes Grey

Source: Agnes Grey (1847), Ch. XX : The Farewell

Decision

“My friends, the apples that I love for their delightful red, yellow, mauve and green clothing cease to be apples for me when I see them against this or that background, in such or such surroundings... And they resound in my sight like a music, reproducing this or that mood of my soul, this or that fleeting contact with the soul of things... To reproduce the things which exist without being, to reveal them to other people, by passing them through my sympathetic understanding, by revealing them in the passion I feel for hem, that is the goal of my artistic existence. To me apples, trees, human faces are not more than hints as to what else I should seen in them: the life of colour, comprehended by a passionate lover.”

Alexej von Jawlensky (1864–1941) Russian painter

Quote of Jawlensky, c. 1903; as cited by de:Wolf-Dieter Dube, in Expressionism; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 115
1900 - 1935

Love, Life, People, Music

“When I reached the [Yosemite] valley, all the rocks seemed talkative, and more lovable than ever. They are dear friends, and have warm blood gushing through their granite flesh; and I love them with a love intensified by long and close companionship. … I … bathed in the bright river, sauntered over the meadows, conversed with the domes, and played with the pines.”

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

letter to Mrs. Ezra S. Carr (December 1872); published as " A Geologist's Winter Walk http://books.google.com/books?id=OAEbAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA355", Overland Monthly, volume 10, number 4 (April 1873) pages 355-358 (at page 355); modified slightly and reprinted in Steep Trails (1918), chapter 2 1870s

Love