Quotes about friend
page 37

“Do you think I take any pleasure in this dog's life, in seeing and causing death in people unknown to me, in losing friends and acquaintances daily, in seeing my reputation ceaselessly exposed to the caprices of fortune, in spending the whole year with uneasiness and apprehension, in continually risking my life and my fortune? I certainly know the value of tranquility, the charms of society, the pleasures of life, and I like to be happy as much as anybody. Although I desire all these good things, I will not buy them with baseness and infamy. Philosophy teaches us to do our duty, to serve our country faithfully at the expense of our blood and of our repose, to commit our whole being to it.”

Frederick II of Prussia (1712–1786) king of Prussia

Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano's, 1927), trans. Richard Aldington, letter 141 from Frederick to Voltaire (1759-07-02)

Life, Death, Happiness, People

“I understand that fear is my friend, but not always. Never turn your back on fear. It should always be in front of you, like a thing that might have to be killed.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

2000s, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century (2004)

Fear, Understanding

“If thy friends tire of thee, remember that it is human to tire of everything.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 254

“At the age of twenty six I am in the condition of an aged person — all my old friends are gone … & my heart fails when I think by how few ties I hold to the world….”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851) English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer

Journal (15 May 1824)

Age, World, Thinking, Heart

“Our relationship was based almost always on him calling up and asking, 'Is this a good deal?,' I’m not in his business, and I wasn’t trying to be. I was just a guy who admired him a lot and was flattered he wanted my advice.
I buy my clothes at J. Crew online, I’m a very casual guy.
When I go to see Iron Man 3, I’m not as enthralled as I was when I saw The Bridge on the River Kwai
I don’t agree that the best giving is anonymous. We should be examples to our friends and communities. I should be an example to young, gay kids
it’s not like people are really anonymous anyway -- you remember that episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm? In the end, everybody knows who 'anonymous' is.”

David Geffen (1943) American record executive, film producer, theatrical producer, and philanthropist

July 2013 interview with Hollywood Reporter https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/david-geffen-talks-moguls-money-593324

People, Guy, Communication, Business

“I became an actor because it was the only thing I could do. I didn't have any friends, I didn't fit in. But when I started acting everything in my life shifted and I felt happy.”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

Steve Pratt (April 14, 2007) "Straight talking", The Northern Echo, p. 18.
2000s

Life, Happiness

“When I first met Kate I knew there was something very special about her. I knew there was possibly something that I wanted to explore there. But we ended up being friends for a while and that was a good foundation.
I do generally believe now that being friends with one another is a massive advantage. It just went from there. I knew over the years, I knew that things were getting better and better and we went through a few stumbling blocks as every relationship does, but we picked ourselves up and carried on. From were you had the odd problem when you are first getting to know each other, those have all gone and it is just really easy being with each other, it is really fun and I'm extremely funny and she loves that so it's been good.”

Prince William, Duke of Cambridge (1982) a member of the British royal family

First post-engagement interview (2010)

Love, Problem

“My thoughts are with the victims of this morning’s despicable, unprovoked attack on the Republican congressional softball team. Representative Scalise is a friend, and my heart goes out to him and his family. Steve and I wish him and the others wounded a speedy recovery. They remain in our thoughts and prayers. I also want to commend the heroic actions of the Capitol Police officers who clearly prevented today’s attack from being a much bigger tragedy. I am aware that the suspect recently made vile comments about me on social media. It also appears that the suspect targeted members of congress specifically because he disagreed with their views. We should not allow our political differences to escalate to violent attacks. We must all refuse to allow the politics of our country to be defined in this way. Now more than ever, we must unite as a one nation under God. It is incumbent upon all of us to work together in a civil and productive way, even when we disagree.”

Karen Handel (1962) American politician

Karen Handel’s Statement On Today’s Attack In Virginia https://karenhandel.com/karen-handels-statement-todays-attack-virginia/ (June 14, 2017)

God, Family, Way, Appearance

“Love your fellow creature, though vicious. Hate vice in the friend you love the most.”

James Burgh (1714–1775) British politician

The Dignity of Human Nature (1754)

Love, Hate

“I don't really feel sexy when I do love scenes because when I kiss a girl or a guy I want to be the one to decide to do that. And if someone says "OK, kiss him!" and you are getting paid for it, what is your profession? I don't want to be a prostitute being told stuff like "Show us your boob!", you know. So for me it really is a very uncomfortable day whenever you shoot that stuff. And so what you really is someone that you trust and feel comfortable with and someone who you really think has your back as a friend.”

James Marsters (1962) American actor

James Marsters talks kissing Sarah and John at Phoenix Comic Con (May 29 '10) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAEH8t4-t7U&t=0s&list=PLC81dErieu1XuNMZ7LzXSB1LZmxGIpZif

Love, Guy, Feeling, Girl

“We may live without poetry, music and art;
We may live without conscience and live without heart;
We may live without friends; we may live without books;
But civilized man can not live without cooks.
He may live without books,—what is knowledge but grieving?
He may live without hope—what is hope but deceiving?
He may live without love,—what is passion but pining?
But where is the man that can live without dining?”

Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton (1831–1891) English statesman and poet

Part i, canto ii.
Lucile (1860)

Love, Books, Hope, Art

““My feet they are sore, and my limbs they are weary;
Long is the way, and the mountains are wild;
Soon will the twilight close moonless and dreary
Over the path of the poor orphan child.Why did they send me so far and so lonely,
Up where the moors spread and grey rocks are piled?
Men are hard-hearted, and kind angels only
Watch o’er the steps of a poor orphan child.Yet distant and soft the night breeze is blowing,
Clouds there are none, and clear stars beam mild,
God, in His mercy, protection is showing,
Comfort and hope to the poor orphan child.Ev’n should I fall o’er the broken bridge passing,
Or stray in the marshes, by false lights beguiled,
Still will my Father, with promise and blessing,
Take to His bosom the poor orphan child.There is a thought that for strength should avail me,
Though both of shelter and kindred despoiled;
Heaven is a home, and a rest will not fail me;
God is a friend to the poor orphan child.””

Charlotte Brontë book Jane Eyre

Bessie's song (Ch. 3)
Jane Eyre (1847)

Men, God, Hope, Angels

“It was unbelievable! My family and close friends were sitting together till quite late in the night. People outside the gate just kept standing, hordes and hordes of them. It was overwhelming. I kept going out to meet them at half-hour intervals. But it just wasn't enough.”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

People, Family, Night

“Is it not absurd when a human being tries to find happiness somewhere outside himself, and thinks that wealth and birth and the influence of friends… is of the utmost importance?”

Julian (emperor) (331–363) Roman Emperor, philosopher and writer

As quoted in The Works of the Emperor Julian (1923) by Wilmer Cave France Wright, p. 41
General sources

Happiness, Birth, Thinking, Wealth

“On the one hand I did think the war was less than righteous. On the other hand I love my country. And I valued my life in a small town and my friends and family. So I wrestled with what was, for me, at least, more torturous and devastating and emotionally painful than anything that happened in Vietnam. Do you go off and kill people if you're not pretty sure it's right? And if your nation isn't pretty sure it's right? If there isn't some consensus, do you do that? In the end, I just capitulated, and one day I got on a bus with some other recent graduates, and we went over to Sioux Falls about sixty miles away, and raised our hands and went into the Army. But it wasn't a decision; it was a forfeiture of a decision. It was letting my body go, turning a switch in my conscience, just turning it off, so it wouldn't be barking at me saying, "You're doing a bad and evil and stupid and unpatriotic thing."”

Tim O'Brien (1946) American novelist

from the companion book, p. 318
From The Vietnam War (2017)

Love, Life, Pain, War

“My friend said to me "I think the weather's trippy." I said "No, man, it's not the weather that's trippy, perhaps it is the way that we perceive it that is indeed trippy." Then I thought "Man, I should have just said 'Yeah.'"”

Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) American stand-up comedian

Strategic Grill Locations

Way, Thinking, Weather

“Frankenstein, he makes a friend, he wants a wife… That’s the one that I think cemented the creature as an icon, because all of the sudden you got to know the creature as a full-fledged person, and you felt sympathy for it, and not just, “Oh, it’s a monster.””

Michael Dougherty

TRICK 'R TREAT DIRECTOR MICHAEL DOUGHERTY ON THE FILM’S RISE TO CULT CLASSIC STATUS http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/10/17/trick-r-treat-director-michael-dougherty-on-the-films-rise-to-cult-classic-status?page=2 (October 17, 2013)

Thinking, Personality

“Friends, we're hardly strangers at meeting danger.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

XII. 209 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)

“A kind and gentle heart he had,
To comfort friends and foes;
The naked every day he clad
When he put on his clothes.”

Oliver Goldsmith book The Vicar of Wakefield

Source: The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), Ch. 17, An Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog, st. 3.

Heart, Clothes

“I was reminded as I was reviewing my life, that I have been in too many conflicts, too many wars, political battles, military battles, civil strifes in government. And always one lesson stands out and that is, those whom you fight most passionately often turn out to be your best friends.”

Ferdinand Marcos (1917–1989) former President of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986

Extemporaneous speech at the Sixth Centennial Celebration of Islam in the Philippines (10 June 1980)
1965

Life, War, Passion, Fight

“Having made an utter failure of my life, I found myself one day, in the midst of my poverty and wretchedness, thinking about the female companions of my youth. As I went over them one by one, examining and comparing them in my mind's eye, it suddenly came over me that those slips of girls – which is all they were then – were in every way, both morally and intellectually, superior to the 'grave and mustachioed signior' I am now supposed to have become. The realization brought with it an overpowering sense of shame and remorse, and for a while I was plunged in the deepest despair. There and then I resolved to make a record of all the recollections of those days I could muster – those golden days when I dressed in silk and ate delicately, when we still nestled in the protecting shadow of the Ancestors and Heaven still smiled on us. I resolved to tell the world how, in defiance of all my family's attempts to bring me up properly and all the warnings and advice of my friends, I had brought myself to this present wretched state, in which, having frittered away half a lifetime, I find myself without a single skill with which I could earn a decent living. I resolved that, however unsightly my own shortcomings might be, I must not, for the sake of keeping them hid, allow those wonderful girls to pass into oblivion without a memorial.”

Cao Xueqin (1724–1763) Chinese writer during the Qing dynasty

Cao Xueqin, as quoted in the introduction attributed to his younger brother (Cao Tangcun) to the first chapter of Dream of the Red Chamber, present in the jiaxu (1754) version (the earliest-known manuscript copy of the novel), translated by David Hawkes in The Story of the Stone: The Golden Days (Penguin, 1973), pp. 20–21

Life, Youth, World, Family

“When you move off a point of power, pay all your obligations on the nail, empower all your friends completely and move off with your pockets full of artillery, potential blackmail on every erstwhile rival, unlimited funds in your private account and the addresses of experienced assassins and go live in Bulgravia and bribe the police.”

L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology

"The Responsibilities of Leaders" (12 February 1967) ( Bulgravia http://solitarytrees.net/racism/bulgrav1.htm is an acronym of BULgaria, GReece, Albania and YugoslaVIA]. Scientology Policy Letters

“Oh all the money that in my whole life I did spend
Be it mine right or wrongfully
I let it slip gladly past the hands of my friends
To tie up the time most forcefully”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Compare: "Of all the money e'er I had, I spent it in good company. And all the harm e'er I've done, Alas! it was to none but me." The Parting Glass.
Song lyrics, The Times They Are A-Changin' (1964), Restless Farewell

Life, Money, Time, Past

“In his private dealings he was just. He treated friends and strangers, the rich and poor, the powerful and weak, with equity, and was beloved by the common people for the affability with which he received them, and listened to their complaints. […]”

Washington Irving (1783–1859) writer, historian and diplomat from the United States

Mahomet and his successors, George P. Putnam, 1850, p. 330.
Mahomet and his successors (1849)

People

“.. the best way to know God is to love many things. Love a friend, a wife, something, whatever you like... But one must love with a lofty and serious intimate sympathy, with strength, with intelligence… That leads to God, that leads to unwavering faith... To give you an example: someone loves Rembrandt, but seriously, - that man will know that there is a God, he will surely believe it... To try to understand the real significance, of what the great artists, the serious masters, tell us in their masterpieces, that leads to God..”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Cuesmes, Belgium July 1880; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 133) p. 39 1880s, 1880

Love, God, Faith, Way

“Even if it means oblivion, friends, I'll welcome it, because it won’t be nothing. We’ll be alive again in a thousand blades of grass, and a million leaves; we’ll be falling in the raindrops and blowing in the fresh breeze; we’ll be glittering in the dew under the stars and the moon out there in the physical world, which is our true home and always was.”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

Source: His Dark Materials, The Amber Spyglass (2000), Ch. 23 : No Way Out

World, Home, Star, Grass

“Of course I have nothing to do with racism and xenophobia, and I have my life-story to prove it. Given the democratic slump in Europe, I am convinced that a measured and carefully monitored immigration is necessary. My hometown is host to people from every country, and I have a lot of foreign friends, mostly Indian and Chinese. So, I am not at all against immigrants, and I have personally helped some to integrate or to get naturalized as citizens of my country. But my criticism of Islam stands: Islam is intrinsically separatist and hostile to neighbour communities.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

1990s, Negationism in India, (1992)

Life, Hostility, People, Communication

“To all my friends without distinction I am ready to display my opulence: come one, come all; and whosoever likes to take a share is welcome to the wealth that lies within my soul.”

Antisthenes (-444–-365 BC) Greek philosopher

iv. 35
From Symposium by Xenophon

Soul, Wealth

“Should you be willing to read [ Xenophon's Anabasis] very carefully you shall discover how … to deceive one’s enemies to their harm and one’s friends to their advantage, and to speak the truth in a way that will not pain those who are needlessly disturbed by it.”

Dio Chrysostom (40–120) Greek philosopher

“On the Cultivation of Letters,” Discourses (18.16–17), quoted and translated by Bartlett, Xenophon: The Shorter Socratic Writings, 4

Pain, Truth, Way, Reading

““It's been such a short visit, I haven't had time to make sense of why you have become so intense about the animal business.”
She watches the wipers wagging back and forth. “A better explanation,” she says, “is that I have not told you why, or dare not tell you. When I think of the words, they seem so outrageous that they are best spoken into a pillow or into a hole in the ground, like King Midas.”
“What is it you can't say?”
“It's that I no longer know where I am. I seem to move around perfectly easily among people, to have perfectly normal relations with them. Is it possible, I ask myself, that all of them are participants in a crime of stupefying proportions? Am I fantasizing it all? I must be mad! Yet every day I see the evidences. The very people I suspect produce the evidence, exhibit it, offer it to me. Corpses. Fragments of corpses that they have bought for money. It is as if I were to visit friends, and to make some polite remark about the lamp in their living room, and they were to say, ‘Yes, it's nice, isn't it? Polish-Jewish skin it's made of, we find that's best, the skins of young Polish-Jewish virgins.’ And then I go to the bathroom and the soap-wrapper says, ‘Treblinka— 100% human stearate.’ Am I dreaming, I say to myself?””

J.M. Coetzee book The Lives of Animals

Source: The Lives of Animals (1999), p. 69

Money, People, Dreams, Business

“This occasion is dedicated to freedom. The people of Baltimore, and of Maryland, are gathered here in that spirit. Because Americans cherish that sentiment they cherish the name of Lafayette. On the anniversary of his birth, we are gathered about his statue in this proud city which we know he loved, almost in the shadow of the stately monument reared to his great friend Washington, to rededicate ourselves to the inspiring memory of a true son of world freedom.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Ordered Liberty and World Peace (1924)

Love, People, World, Birth

“Then re-united to the friends with whom vve took sweet counsel upon earth, we shall recount our toil, only to heighten our ecstasy; and call to mind the toil and the din of war, oniy that, with a more bounding throb and a richer song, we may fee! and celebrate the wonders of redemption.”

Henry Melvill (1798–1871) British academic

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

War

“My talents are not those of Kan Pao, elegant explorer of the records of the Gods; I am rather animated by the spirit of Su Tung-P'o, who loved to hear men speak of the supernatural. I get people to commit what they tell me to writing, and subsequently I dress it up in the form of a story; thus in the lapse of time my friends from all quarters have supplied me with quantities of material, which, from my habit of collecting, has grown into a vast pile.”

Pu Songling (1640–1715) Chinese writer

"Author's Own Record", trans. Herbert Allen Giles in Gems of Chinese Literature (1922), p. 235 Variant translation: With time And my love of hoarding, The matter sent me by friends From the four corners Has grown into a pile. "Author's Preface", lines 28–32, trans. John Minford in Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (Penguin, 2006), pp. 30–31
/ Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (1740)

Love, Men, God, People

“I was particularly struck in this context by my honourable Friend, Mr K. S. Lo's concern at the decline in the enamelware industry as an example of the effect of lost advantages, as if this decline were a loss rather than a gain to the community. It has declined, I believe, because we have learned to use our resources of enterprise, capital and labour in other more profitable directions. That is progress. We would be in a sorry way if enamelware was still our fourth biggest industry.”

John James Cowperthwaite (1915–2006) British colonial administrator

October 9, 1970, page 114.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

Way, Communication, Learning, Loss

“I have no friends.”

DMX (rapper) (1970) American rapper and actor from New York

"What's My Name" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjygLlxQqnw (December 1999), ... And Then There Was X, Def Jam 1990s

“The dead are friends whom death is powerless to take from us. Great writers are immortal companions who can embellish our old age as they enchanted our young days. Music, too, is an extraordinarily faithful friend. To those of us who have lost our faith in human nature, it offers refuge in other pleasant worlds.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Growing Old

Death, Age, World, Faith

“In a 2004 interview with This Is London, Tyson announces that since declaring bankruptcy he has been sleeping in homeless shelters and living off handouts: "I've got nowhere to live. I've been crashing with friends, literally sleeping in shelters. Unsavoury characters are giving me money and I'm taking it. I need it. The drug dealers, they sympathise with me. They see me as some sort of pathetic character."”

Mike Tyson (1966) American boxer

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/showbiz/article-11621981-details/I'm+a+street+bum,+says+broke+Tyson/article.do;jsessionid=dZGvFJZGkLvsnbWWXZrVhsZ2kJlny8kkygtqYThr5ZL2nyWzmSjJ!-686754952
On himself

Money, Sleep

“Wolf was in Israel, because that's where Wolf belongs, with Ariel Sharon about to croak. … Wolf is an old friend of Ariel's. Wolf - remember - was the Washington Bureau Chief of the Jerusalem Post, before he signed on with CNN to work 80 hours a day. Ummm… I'm so sick of his face, I could just scream. You know, people e-mail me and say "What do you mean, he's a former German U-Boat commander?" Look - if you don't get it, you don't get it. But every movie made in the 40's about the German U-Boats had a guy who looked just like Wolf Blitzer. And his name is, um… German.”

Mike Malloy (1942) American radio broadcaster

http://server7.whiterosesociety.org/content/malloy/MalloyShow-(09-01-2006).mp3
Beginning of the show
On Wolf Blitzer

People, Guy, Wolf

“Sir Wilfred Laurier (Prime Minister) – “one of the truest and strongest characters to be met within Canadian history. He was endowed with a warm heart and a copious and rich fancy, though veiled by a somewhat reticent exterior, and he was of friends the most tender and true.””

Alexander Mackenzie (1822–1892) 2nd Prime Minister of Canada

Buckingham and Ross 1892, p.633
His Character

History, Heart

“I had offers from Dodgers, Giants and Braves. Braves offer same amount as Dodgers but I have many friends on Brooklyn team. I feel more at home there and I sign.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "The Scoreboard" by Les Biederman, in The Pittsburgh Press (Tuesday, May 10, 1955), p. 31
Baseball-related, <big><big>1950s</big></big>

Feeling, Home

“Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend — or a meaningful day.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

As quoted in "Tibet's Living Buddha" by Pico Iyer, p. 32.
The Dalai Lama: A Policy of Kindness (1990)

Appearance

“Yo…on the amen, corner I stood lookin' at my former hood
Felt the spirit in the wind, knew my friend was gone for good
Threw dirt on the casket, the hurt, I couldn't mask it
Mixin down emotions, struggle I hadn't mastered
I choreographed seven steps to heaven
and hell, waiting to exhale and make the bread leavened
Veteran of a cold war its Chica-i-go for
What I know or, whats known”

Common (rapper) (1972) American rapper, actor and author from Illinois

"Respiration", Black Star (1998)
Albums, Compilations, Singles, and Cameos

War, Hell, Waiting, Hurt

“I'm not one of those who wants to stop Christian traditions. This is historically a Christian country. I'm a cultural Christian the same way as many of my friends call themselves cultural Jews or cultural Muslims. So, yes, I love singing carols along with everybody else. I'm not one of those who wants to purge our society of our Christian history.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

BBC's Have Your Say (December 2007)

Love, Way, History, Singing

“But it is one thing to keep your adversaries or your "near-peer" competitors off balance with strategic unpredictability and quite another to keep the American people themselves similarly at a loss as to what exactly is going on, which is now a daily occurrence, to say nothing at all about the vexation on the part of many of our traditional allies all over the world. I began writing this book after returning from a trip to Mexico City on a one-senator diplomatic mission to calm and reassure the nation to our south- a vitally important friend and trading partner- that all will be well, that America is still America. But is it?”

Jeff Flake (1962) American politician

Source: Conscience of a Conservative (2017), p. 6

People, Books, World, Loss

“Relationships are the most important thing in life, and friends are part of that.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Micah Sparks, Chapter 9, p. 132
2000s, Three Weeks with My Brother (2004)

Life, Parting

“That prudent Hero's wandering, Muse, rehearse,
Who (Troy b'ing sack'd) coasting the Universe,
Saw many Cities, and their various Modes;
Much suffering, tost by Storms on raging Floods,
His Friends conducting to their Native Coast:
But all in vain, for he his Navy lost,
And they their Lives, prophanely feasting on
Herds consecrated to the glorious Sun;
Who much incens'd obstructed so their way,
They ne'er return'd: Jove's Daughter this display.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

Book I, opening lines
Homer His Odysses Translated (1665)

Way, Suffering, Universe, Rage

“Count me not your friend but the enemy of your enemies.”

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), The Green Pearl (1985), Chapter 8, section 3 (p. 480)

“My first stop in Rome was a call on an old friend, Foreign Minister Susanna Agnelli. Universally known as Sunni, she had been appointed to the post by the government of Lamberto Dini in part because of her personal stature. A former mayor and senator, the sister of Italy's most famous businessman, Gianni Agnelli, and the author of a best-selling memoir with the delightful title We always wore sailor suits, Sunni Agnelli combined aristocratic bearing with casual informality. Her giant white mane of hair and her imposing height added to her presence. She approached her job as she had probably approached everything else: with a relaxed confidence in her own intuition. She conveyed an impression of great amusement at the passing parade of overly intense men formulating policy. We had known each other for years, but only socially.”

Richard Holbrooke (1941–2010) American diplomat

Source: 1990s, To End a War (1998), p. 136

Men, Confidence, Sister, Universe

“I never asked for nothin' I don't demand of myself / Honesty, loyalty, friends and then wealth / Death before dishonor and I tell you what else / I tighten my belt 'fore I beg for help / Foolish pride is what held me together through the years / I wasn't felt which is why I ain't never played myself / I just play the hand I'm dealt, I can't say I've never knelt / Before God and asked for better cards at times to no avail / But I never sat back feelin sorry for myself / If you don't give me heaven I'll raise hell”

Jay-Z (1969) American rapper, businessman, entrepreneur, record executive, songwriter, record producer and investor

'Til it's heaven
Justify My Thug
The Black Album (2003)

Death, God, Hell, Time

“Mother Teresa was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction.”

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

2000s, 2003

Life, Women, God, Suffering

“Sing a song of love and truth
We’ll soon remember if you do
When all things were tall
And our friends were small
And the world was new”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

Silent Sunlight
Song lyrics, Catch Bull at Four (1972)

Love, Truth, World, Singing

“Our young people are faced by a series of different groups which believe different things and advocate different practices, and to each of which some trusted friend or relative may belong. So a girl's father may be a Presbyterian, an imperialist, a vegetarian, a teetotaller, with a strong literary preference for Edmund Burke, a believer in the open shop and a high tariff, who believes that women's place is in the home, that young girls should wear corsets, not roll their stockings, not smoke, nor go riding with young men in the evening. But her mother's father may be a Low Episcopalian, a believer in high living, a strong advocate of States' Rights and the Monroe Doctrine, who reads Rabelais, likes to go to musical shows and horse races…”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1920s, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), p. 161

Women, Men, People, Music

“A friend called on me when I was ill, to settle some business. My head was too much confused by my indisposition to understand fully what he said, but I had such unlimited confidence in him, that I did whatever he bid me, in the fullest assurance that it was right. How simply I can trust in man, and how little in God! How unreasonable is a pure act of faith in one like ourselves, if we cannot repose the same faith in God.”

Richard Cecil (clergyman) (1748–1810) British Evangelical Anglican priest and social reformer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 598.

God, Faith, Confidence, Understanding

“We [his art-friend & painter Morris Louis and Noland himself] were interested in Pollock but could gain no lead from him. He was too personal. But Frankenthaler showed us a way – a way to think about and use, color..”

Kenneth Noland (1924–2010) American artist

from: Abstract Art, Anna Moszynska; Thames and Hudson 1990, p. 194

Art, Color, Way, Thinking

“Small town people assume you are a friend if you simply remember their names.”

Randal Marlin (1938) Canadian academic

Source: Propaganda & The Ethics Of Persuasion (2002), Chapter Two, History Of Propaganda, p. 50

People

“I believe more and more that this business is about people. People, people. The idea is to make friends at the retail level, the warehouse level, let people see you exist, can form sentences and have an interest in something other than yourself.”

David Lee Roth (1954) Rock vocalist; lead singer with Van Halen

Jim White (February 17, 1994) "POP / Hi, I'm Dave - lovely to see you: Last week, David Lee Roth went to Wembley to promote his new album - not at the stadium but at the distribution factory, saying hello to the packers and the pressers, 'making friends at the retail level'. Jim White jumped into the limo to discover where people fit in with 'this rock'n'roll thing'" The Independent, p. 27.

People, Idea, Business

“Q: You seem relatively upbeat and sociable. It’s funny, because I’ve always had this idea of you, like, always crying in the dark.
A: Most people do.
Q: Do you care about that?
A: Oh, no. It doesn’t bother me. Whatever people think of me is fine, however they want to envision me. I find it curious. I’m always intrigued by who people think I am and the persona they have created for me, what they think I’m into, what they think I’m not into. But I certainly understand that consideration, that I would be a bleak and miserable person, because a lot of my lyrics are very despondent. Luckily, I have the music to use as catharsis. If I didn’t, I might spend more time sitting and crying in a corner than I need to. Also, I think manners are very important. To be a sullen rain cloud when conversing with someone, be they your friends or a journalist, I think is inappropriate.”

Davey Havok (1975) American singer

Fly magazine, November 2009

People, Music, Idea, Understanding

“In the 78 years since I was born in what I hope I am still entitled to call Calcutta - not Tollygunge - all this has rightly been swept aside, and my life bears no resemblance to my childhood. Almost all my friends in India are Indian. I have an Indian son-in-law and an Indian daughter-in-law. I do know an Indian language, although I would know it a lot better if more people would speak to me in Hindi rather than English.”

Mark Tully (1935) British journalist

Why Mark Tully needs a Calcutta birth certificate at 78, 2013

Life, People, Law, Hope

“What I would say to all my leftwing friends in Europe: don’t try to fake the populace. Stand for your principles. Be straight. Be pro-refugee. Be pro-European. We’re gaining momentum in the polls. And I think that’s the message we have to send to Europe. You can stop populism.”

Jesse Klaver (1986) Dutch politician and trade union leader

a statement during electoral campaign in 2017, quoted by The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/15/dutch-elections-greenleft-jesse-klaver

Thinking

“Put your arm around the buddy next to you. And if you don't have any friends, I'll be your best friend in the whole world.”

Bert McCracken (1982) American musician

Statement to the audience at a concert, reported in Patrick Donovan (June 3, 2005) "Scream it out loud: Cover Story", The Age, p. 2.

World

“For a long time I've been walking down life's road with my two pals, Bad Luck and Bad Choices. Fortunately I'm a big believer in new beginnings, new friends, and running from my problems. So one day I decided to head for the island. Aloha, my name is Jack.”

Elmore Leonard book The Big Bounce

Jack Ryan, The Big Bounce (1969)

Life, Bad luck, Problem, Time

“What shall a man say when a friend has vanished behind the doors of Death? A mere tangle of barren words, only words.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

From a letter to Tevis Clyde Smith (c. May 1928)
Letters

Death

“With respect to the homosocial/homosexual style, it seems to be possible to divide Victorian men among three rough categories according to class. The first includes aristocratic men and small groups of their friends and dependents, including bohemians and prostitutes; for these people, by 1865, a distinct homosexual role and culture seem already to have been in existence in England… It seems to have constituted a genuine subculture, facilitated in the face of an ideologically hostile dominant culture by money, privilege, internationalism, and for the most part, the ability to command secrecy… This role is closely related to — is in fact, through Oscar Wilde, the antecedent of — the particular stereotype that at least until recently has characterized American middle-class gay homosexuality; its strongest associations, as we have noted, are with effeminacy, transvestism, promiscuity, prostitution, continental European culture, and the arts.”

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1950–2009) American academic

Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial desire (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), pp. 172-173

Men, Money, Hostility, People

“Welcome, with your lovely greenwood choir, summery month of May for which I long! Like a potent knight, an amorous boon, the green-entangled lord of the wildwood, comrade of love and of the birds, whom lovers remember, and their friend, herald of nine score trysts, fond of exalted colloquies.”

Dafydd ap Gwilym (1320–1380) Welsh poet

Hawddamor, glwysgor glasgoed,
Fis Mai haf, canys mau hoed.
Cadarn farchog serchog sâl,
Cadwynwyrdd feistr coed anial;
Cyfaill cariad ac adar,
Cof y serchogion a'u câr;
Cennad nawugain cynnadl,
Caredig urddedig ddadl.
"Mis Mai a Mis Ionawr" (To May and January), line 1; translation from Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson (ed. and trans.) A Celtic Miscellany (Harmondsworth: Penguin, [1951] 1975) p. 75.

Love, Lovers, Bird

“" Tis plain to me
As A B C,
My dear friend, Mr. Neff!"
"Oh, yes! but then,"
Says Mr. N,
"You know I'm D E F!"”

Charles Follen Adams (1842–1918) American poet

"Yawcob Strauss", in Yawcob Strauss, and Other Poems (1876), p. 69.

“No-one in their senses wants nuclear weapons for their own sake, but equally, no responsible prime minister could take the colossal gamble of giving up our nuclear defences while our greatest potential enemy kept their's. Policies which would throw out all American nuclear bases…would wreck NATO and leave us totally isolated from our friends in the United States, and friends they are. No nation in history has ever shouldered a greater burden nor shouldered it more willingly nor more generously than the United States. This Party is pro-American. And we must constantly remind people what the defence policy of the [Labour] Party would mean. Their idea that by giving up our nuclear deterrent, we could somehow escape the result of a nuclear war elsewhere is nonsense, and it is a delusion to assume that conventional weapons are sufficient defence against nuclear attack. And do not let anyone slip into the habit of thinking that conventional war in Europe is some kind of comfortable option. With a huge array of modern weapons held by the Soviet Union, including chemical weapons in large quantities, it would be a cruel and terrible conflict. The truth is that possession of the nuclear deterrent has prevented not only nuclear war but also conventional war and to us, peace is precious beyond price. We are the true peace party.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Conservative Party Conference (12 October 1984) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105763 Second term as Prime Minister

War, People, Truth, Peace

“I have a friend, he's a very, very substantial guy. He loves the city of lights, he loves Paris. For years, every year during the summer, he would go to Paris, was automatic with his wife and his family. Hadn't seen him in a while and I said, Jim, let me ask you a question, how's Paris doing? "Paris? I don't go there anymore, Paris is no longer Paris."”

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

Trump speaking at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference http://time.com/4682023/cpac-donald-trump-speech-transcript/ (24 February 2017) 2010s, 2017, February

Love, Family, Guy, Question

“I helped Stephen with the story and then I auditioned for SpongeBob, I used my Plankton voice, which sounds like a mix of Tony the Tiger and Gregory Peck. It’s actually an imitation of a friend from high school that had a really deep voice.”

Mr. Lawrence (1969) American voice actor, comedian, writer, storyboard artist, animator and director

School, Help

“Yeah. ‘Environment’ was very big for a while. Ecology Now stickers on the windshields of cars belonging to hairy young men—cars which dripped oil wherever they parked and took off in clouds of smoke thicker than your pipe can produce…Before long, the fashionable cause was something else, I forget what. Anyhow, that whole phase—the wave after wave of causes—passed away. People completely stopped caring…
I feel a moral certainty that a large part of the disaster grew from this particular country, the world’s most powerful, the vanguard country for things both good and ill…never really trying to meet the responsibilities of power.
We’ll make halfhearted attempts to stop some enemies in Asia, and because the attempts are halfhearted we’ll piss away human lives—on both sides—and treasure—to no purpose. Hoping to placate the implacable, we’ll estrange our last few friends. Men elected to national office will solemnly identify inflation with rising prices, which is like identifying red spots with the measles virus, and slap on wage and price controls, which is like papering the cracks in a house whose foundations are sliding away. So economic collapse brings international impotence…As for our foolish little attempts to balance what we drain from the environment against what we put back—well, I mentioned that car carrying the ecology sticker.
At first Americans will go on an orgy of guilt. Later they’ll feel inadequate. Finally they’ll turn apathetic. After all, they’ll be able to buy any anodyne, any pseudo-existence they want.”

Poul Anderson book There Will Be Time

Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 5 (pp. 53-54)

Men, People, World, Hope

“Had my lineage and rank been accompanied by only moderate success, I should have come to this city as friend rather than prisoner, and you would not have disdained to ally yourself peacefully with one so nobly born, the ruler of so many nations.”
Si quanta nobilitas et fortuna mihi fuit, tanta rerum prosperarum moderatio fuisset, amicus potius in hanc urbem quam captus venissem, neque dedignatus esses claris maioribus ortum, plurimis gentibus imperitantem foedere in pacem accipere.

Caratacus (15–54) British chieftain of the Catuvellauni tribe

Tacitus Annales, Bk. XII, ch. 37; translation from The Annals of Imperial Rome, trans. Michael Grant, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, [1956] 1971) p. 267.

Success

“In some way the Chicano movement strikes me as being revolutionary, but only in a pathetic way, because the genius of Mexico has always been assimilation. I tell Mexican American kids all the time—if I get a chance to talk to them without their teachers—that they come from a culture that violates borders. Kids are coming up every night across the border in violation of Protestant lines. These kids represent a force of anarchy in the world. We are not people of pure race. We are people of mixed race. We have violated those borders already. We are people whose identity assumes the continuousness of experience rather than the segregation of experience. I tell them to be proud of that experience. Don't say to the United States, "I want a separate math class in Spanish." That's not going to scare them. Instead, terrify America by saying, "I'm going to marry your daughter." Or see what happens to the Chicano movement when you announce to the blonde people next door, "I'm going to start dating your son," or "You're going to be my best friend," that "We're neighbors."”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Violating the Boundaries: An Interview with Richard Rodriguez (1999)

People, World, Way, Teachers

“Professionally he declines and falls, and as a friend he drops into poetry.”

Charles Dickens book Our Mutual Friend

Bk. I, Ch. 5
Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865)

“I am so thrilled to be involved with PETA and taking a stance that I would rather be naked than wear fur, because I've always grown up with animals and I consider them my best friends, and for us to put them through so much torture and cruelty just for fashion I think is so horrific, and we need to raise the awareness because a person needs to learn to be comfortable in their own skin, not the skin of another animal.”

Shandi Finnessey (1978) American beauty queen, model, and television hostess

"Miss USA Winners Bare All and Say NO to Fur" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGM9mDRd0Cs, PETA video (June 13, 2013).

Fashion, Thinking, Learning, Animals

“Dear friends, liberty is the most precious of gifts. My generation never had to fight for this freedom, it was offered to us on a silver platter, by people who fought for it with their lives. All throughout Europe American cemeteries remind us of the young boys who never made it home, and whose memory we cherish. My generation does not own this freedom; we are merely its custodians. We can only hand over this hard won liberty to Europe’s children in the same state in which it was offered to us. We cannot strike a deal with mullahs and imams. Future generations would never forgive us. We cannot squander our liberties. We simply do not have the right to do so.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

2000s, Speech at the Four Seasons, New York (25 September 2008)

Children, People, Home, Boy

“I was talking to a friend about it recently and I told him that the thing about making that film that upset me most was how cruel Lars is to the woman he is working with. Not that I can't take it, because I'm pretty tough and completely capable of defending myself, but because my ideals of the ultimate creator were shattered. And my friend said "What did you expect? All major directors are "sexist", a maker is not necessarily an expert in human rights or female/male equality!
My answer was that you can take quite sexist film directors like Woody Allen or Stanley Kubrick and still they are the one that provide the soul to their movies. In Lars von Trier's case it is not so and he knows it. He needs a female to provide his work soul. And he envies them and hates them for it. So he has to destroy them during the filming. And hide the evidence. What saves him as an artist, though, is that he is so painfully honest that even though he will manage to cover up his crime in the "real" world (he is a genius to set things up that everybody thinks it is just his female-actress-at-the-moment imagination, that she is just hysterical or pre-menstrual), his films become a documentation of this "soul-robbery.”

Björk (1965) Icelandic singer-songwriter

Breaking the Waves is the clearest example of that. bjork." From the www.bjork.com http://www.bjork.com 4um, posted by Björk in response to a question about her conflict with director Lars von Trier during the production of Dancer in the Dark. Other quotes

Hate, World, Soul, Imagination

“I knew more things in the first ten years of my life than I believe I have known at any time since. I knew everything there was to know about our house for a start. I knew what was written on the undersides of tables and what the view was like from the tops of bookcases and wardrobes. I knew what was to be found at the back of every closet, which beds had the most dust balls beneath them, which ceilings the most interesting stains, where exactly the patterns in wallpaper repeated. I knew how to cross every room in the house without touching the floor, where my father kept his spare change and how much you could safely take without his noticing (one-seventh of the quarters, one-fifth of the nickels and dimes, as many of the pennies as you could carry). I knew how to relax in an armchair in more than one hundred positions and on the floor in approximately seventy- five more. I knew what the world looked like when viewed through a Jell-O lens. I knew how things tasted—damp washcloths, pencil ferrules, coins and buttons, almost anything made of plastic that was smaller than, say, a clock radio, mucus of every variety of course—in a way that I have more or less forgotten now. I knew and could take you at once to any illustration of naked women anywhere in our house, from a Rubens painting of fleshy chubbos in Masterpieces of World Painting to a cartoon by Peter Arno in the latest issue of The New Yorker to my father’s small private library of girlie magazines in a secret place known only to him, me, and 111 of my closest friends in his bedroom.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

Source: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 36

Life, Women, Secret, World

“I only know that in our choice of friends and lovers and teachers who will change our lives, we are guided by forces which have nothing to do with the rationalizations we give.”

Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic

How to Save Your Own Life (1977)

Lovers, Teachers, Change

“Unfortunate is he who cannot gain a few sincere friends during his life and more unfortunate is the one who has gained them and then lost them”

Ali book Nahj al-Balagha

through his deeds
Nahj al-Balagha

Life, Sincerity

“a later confession to his friend, in Expressionism; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 76”

Emil Nolde (1867–1956) German artist

undated quotes

“I want to know what the devil you mean by keeping coming into my private apartment, taking up space which I require for other purposes and interrupting me when I am chatting with my personal friends. Really one gets about as much privacy in this house as a strip-tease dancer.”

P.G. Wodehouse book The Code of the Woosters

The Code of the Woosters (1938)

Housing, Personality

“Mr. Owen looked upon men through the spectacles of his own good-nature. He seldom took Lord Brougham's advice "to pick his men." He never acted on the maxim that the working class are as jealous of each other as the upper classes are of them. The resolution he displayed as a manufacturer he was wanting in as a founder of communities…. No leader ever took so little care as Mr, Owen in guarding his own reputation. He scarcely protested when others attached his name to schemes which were not his. The failure of Queenwood was not chargeable to him. When his advice was not followed he would say : "Well, gentlemen, I tell you what you ought to do. You differ from me. Carry out your own plans. Experience will show you who is right." When the affair went wrong then it was ascribed to him. Whatever failed under his name the public inferred failed through him. Mr. Owen was a general who never provided himself with a rear guard. While he was fighting in the front ranks priests might come up and cut off his commissariat. His own troops fell into pits against which he had warned them. Yet he would write his next dispatch without it occurring to him to mention his own defeat, and he would return to his camp without missing his army. Yet society is not so well served that it need hesitate to forgive the omissions of its generous friends. To Mr. Owen will be accorded the distinction of being a philosopher who devoted himself to founding a Science of Social Improvement and a philanthropist who gave his fortune to advance it. Association, which was but casual before his day, he converted into a policy and taught it as an art. He substituted Co-operation for coercion in the conduct ot industry and the willing co-operation of intelligence certain of its own reward, for sullen labour enforced by the necessity of subsistence, seldom to be relied on and never satisfied.”

George Holyoake (1817–1906) British secularist, co-operator, and newspaper editor

George Jacob Holyoake in The History of Co-operation in England (1875; 1902).

Men, Art, Intelligence, Communication

“I think that comparisons are truly odious, I do not approve of this constant proud or envious to-do;
And furthermore, dear friends, I think that you and yours are delightful and I also think that me and mine are delightful too.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

Versus (1949), Possessions are Nine Points of Conversation

Thinking

“Murray held his daughter at arm’s length. “Does God…er, visit you?”
“She doesn’t even whisper to me. I listen, but she doesn’t talk. It’s not fair.”
God didn’t talk. The best news he’d heard since Gabriel Frostig announced his embryo. “Look Julie, it’s good she doesn’t talk. God asks her children to do crazy things. It’s good she doesn’t whisper. Understand?”
“I guess.”
“Really?”
“Uh-huh. Where’d the crab go? Is he looking for his friends?””

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

A profound weariness pressed upon Murray. “Yes. Right. His friends. It’s good God doesn’t whisper.”
Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 2 (p. 46)

God, Children, Understanding, Daughters

“If you want to get an idea of a friend's temperament, ethics, and personal elegance, you need to look at him under the tests of severe circumstances, not under the regular rosy glow of daily life. Can you assess the danger a criminal poses by examining only what he does on an ordinary day? Can we understand health without considering wild diseases and epidemics? Indeed the normal is often irrelevant.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst

Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007), p. xxix

Life, Health, Disease, Idea

“I think it will be felt by the community as a whole as if they had lost a relative. Certainly those who have been associated with him closely for years will feel a deep sense of personal bereavement. I have never met a great public figure since I have been in politics who so completely won the attachment and affection of the men who came into contact with him. He was not merely admired and respected; he was absolutely loved by us all. I really cannot trust myself to say more. The masses of the people of this country, especially the more unfortunate of them, have lost the best friend they ever had in the high places of the land. His sympathy in all suffering was real, deep, and unaffected. He was truly a great man—a great head and a great heart. He was absolutely the bravest man I ever met in politics. He was entirely free from fear. He was a man of supreme courage. Ireland has certainly lost one of her truest friends, and what is true of Ireland is true of every section of the community of this Empire which has a fight to maintain against powerful foes.”

Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1836–1908) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

David Lloyd George upon Campbell-Bannerman's death, quoted in The Times (23 April 1908), p. 5.
About

Love, Men, People, Fear

“…my friend Dr. Arno Gruen, author of The Insanity of Normality, has said an interesting thing. He said that culture, in recent decades, has taken on a life of its own, without reference to the people it is supposed to protect.”

George W. S. Trow (1943–2006) American writer

My Pilgrim’s Progress (1999)

Life, People

“[One of my friends] was in labor for 36 hours. (I don't even want to do anything that feels good for 36 hours.)”

Rita Rudner (1953) American comedian

On childbirth
Essay 2, p. 7
Naked Beneath My Clothes (1992)

Feeling

“We are deeply unified in our support of basic principles: our belief in stability in our financial structure, in our determination we must have fiscal responsibility, in our determination not to establish and operate a paternalistic sort of government where a man's initiative is almost taken away from him by force. Only in the last few weeks, I have been reading quite an article on the experiment of almost complete paternalism in a friendly European country. This country has a tremendous record for socialistic operation, following a socialistic philosophy, and the record shows that their rate of suicide has gone up almost unbelievably and I think they were almost the lowest nation in the world for that. Now, they have more than twice our rate. Drunkenness has gone up. Lack of ambition is discernible on all sides.. Therefore, with that kind of example, let's always remember Lincoln's admonition. Let's do in the federal Government only those things that people themselves cannot do at all, or cannot so well do in their individual capacities. Now, my friends, I know that these words have been repeated to you time and time again until you're tired of them. But I ask you only this, to contemplate them and remember this--Lincoln added another sentence to that statement. He said that in all those things where the individual can solve his own problems the Government ought not to interfere, for all are domestic affairs and this comprehends the things that the individual is normally concerned with, because foreign affairs does belong to the President by the Constitution--and they are things that really require constant governmental action.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

July 27, 1960 Remarks at the Republican National Committee Breakfast, Morrison Hotel, Chicago, Illinois http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=11891#ixzz1fU73Watz 1960s

People, World, Support, Problem

“I have only [written the Water Margin] to fill up my spare time, and give pleasure to myself; […] I have written it so that the uneducated can read it as well as the educated […]. Alas! Life is so short that I shall not even know what the reader thinks about it, but still I shall be satisfied if a few of my friends will read it and be interested. Also I do not know what I may think of it in my future life after death, because then I may not able to even read it. So why think anything further about it?”

Shi Nai'an (1296–1372) Chinese writer

Variant translation by Pearl S. Buck: "Alas, I was born to die! How can I know what those who come after me and read my book will think of it? I cannot even know what I myself, born into another incarnation, will think of it. I do not even know if I myself afterwards can even read this book. Why therefore should I care?" (All Men are Brothers, 1933; p. xiii)
Preface to Water Margin

Life, Death, Pleasure, Education

“Fat men get knocked over by buses no earlier, nor later, than thin men. And I, for one, have buried most of my thin friends.”

Robert Morley (1908–1992) English actor

Explaining why he never tried to lose weight. Toledo Blade, Aug 20, 1978 http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1350&dat=19780820&id=UDBPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=fgIEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6371,746427

Men

“And here and there a human who saw the rightness of the proposition that Man could not, by mere self-assertion, be a special being; understanding that it was to his greater glory to take his place among the other things of life, as a simple thing of life, as a form of life that could lead and teach and be a friend rather than a thing that conquered and ruled and stood as one apart.”

Clifford D. Simak book Time and Again

Source: Time and Again (1951), Chapter XXXIX (p. 195)

Life, Understanding

“A cup of wine, under the flowering trees;
I drink alone, for no friend is near.
Raising my cup I beckon the bright moon,
For he, with my shadow, will make three men.
The moon, alas, is no drinker of wine;
Listless, my shadow creeps about at my side.
Yet with the moon as friend and the shadow as slave
I must make merry before the Spring is spent.
To the songs I sing the moon flickers her beams;
In the dance I weave my shadow tangles and breaks.
While we were sober, three shared the fun;
Now we are drunk, each goes his way.
May we long share our odd, inanimate feast,
And meet at last on the Cloudy River of the sky.”

Li Bai (701–762) Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty poetry period

"Drinking Alone by Moonlight" (月下獨酌), one of Li Bai's best-known poems, as translated by Arthur Waley in More Translations From the Chinese (1919)
Variant translation:
From a pot of wine among the flowers
I drank alone. There was no one with me—
Till, raising my cup, I asked the bright moon
To bring me my shadow and make us three.
Alas, the moon was unable to drink
And my shadow tagged me vacantly;
But still for a while I had these friends
To cheer me through the end of spring...
I sang. The moon encouraged me.
I danced. My shadow tumbled after.
As long as I knew, we were boon companions.
And then I was drunk, and we lost one another.
...Shall goodwill ever be secure?
I watch the long road of the River of Stars.
"Drinking Alone with the Moon" (trans. Witter Bynner and Kiang Kang-hu)