Quotes about gift
page 12

“The three theological virtues of faith, hope and charity, aided by the highest and most sublime gifts of the Holy Spirit, such as understanding, wisdom, knowledge, and counsel, unite the creature, the human spirit, with his God, the souls with the Word of God. It is this sacred union that you must seek, hold and possess; in it lie the spiritual life, health and strength, and from it originate all the other virtues.”

Francisco Palau (1811–1872) Beatified Spanish Discalced Carmelite friar and priest

Letter to Juana Gratia (1857)

Life, Wisdom, God, Health

“No gifts this year. I have given gifts on the Tour de France and very rarely has it ever come back to help me. This is the biggest bike race in the world and it means more than any bike race in the world. It means more to me than any bike race in the world. I want to win … no gifts.”

Lance Armstrong (1971) professional cyclist from the USA

As quoted in "Score another for Armstrong" in VeloNews (22 July 2004)

World, Help

“There are a thousand fanciful things
Linked round the young heart's imaginings.
In its first love-dream, a leaf or a flower
Is gifted then with a spell and a power:
A shade is an omen, a dream is a sign,
From which the maiden can well divine
Passion's whole history.”

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

Title Poem
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Love, Dreams, Imagination, History

“No woman who builds a career on hard work and talent will ever compliment a much younger one who uses the shallow gift of her looks.”

Lindsey Davis book The Third Nero

The Third Nero

“And the water below gives a gift to the sky
And the clouds give back every time that they cry
And make the grass grow green beneath my toes.”

Jack Johnson (musician) (1975) American musician

Talk of the Town.
Song lyrics, Sing-A-Longs and Lullabies for the Film Curious George (2006)

Grass, Water, Time, Cry

“In time, we shall be in a position to bestow on South Africa the greatest possible gift—a more human face.”

Steve Biko (1946–1977) anti-apartheid activist in South Africa

White Racism and Black Consciousness
I Write What I Like (1978)

Time

“But, as sculpture and painting are gifts of God, what I insist on is, that both shall be used purely and lawfully, that gifts which the Lord has bestowed upon us, for His glory and our good, shall not be preposterously abused, nay, shall not be perverted to our destruction.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

As quoted in The Visual Theology of the Huguenots: Towards an Architectural Iconology of ...y Randal Carter Working Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.11.12 p.101

God, Painting

“I did not choose my gift: too soon my heart,
Watch-like, had pointed to a later hour
Than time had reach'd: and as my years pass'd on,
Shadows and floating visions grew to thoughts,
And thoughts found words, the passionate words of song,
And all to me was poetry.”

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

A History of the Lyre
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

Passion, Time, Heart

“Even to a wicked man a divinity gives wealth, Cyrus, but to few men comes the gift of excellence.”

Theognis of Megara (-570–-485 BC) Greek lyric poet active in approximately the sixth century BC

Source: Elegies, Line 149-150

Men, Wealth

“I sing the Man who Judahs Scepter bore
In that right hand which held the Crook before;
Who from best Poet, best of Kings did grow;
The two chief gifts Heav'n could on Man bestow.”

Abraham Cowley (1618–1667) British writer

Book I, lines 1-4
Davideis (1656)

Singing

“My God! The English language is a form of communication! Conversation isn’t just crossfire where you shoot and get shot at! Where you’ve got to duck for your life and aim to kill! Words aren’t only bombs and bullets — no, they’re little gifts, containing meanings!”

Philip Roth book Portnoy's Complaint

Source: Portnoy's Complaint (1969), Ch. 4: "The Most Prevalent Form of Degradation in Erotic Life"

Life, God, Communication

“The fact that certain composers have been able to create first-class music within the medium of film proves that film music can be as good as the composer is gifted.”

Jerry Goldsmith (1929–2004) film composer

ibid., p. 209

Music

“O gracious God! how far have we
Profaned thy heavenly gift of poesy!”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

To the Pious Memory of Mrs. Anne Killegrew (1686), lines 56–57.

God

“Now I have been raped.
It happened twice. Once on Monday, and again yesterday. It is my Christmas gift from Christian America.”

Octavia E. Butler book Parable of the Talents

Source: Parable of the Talents (1998), Chapter 13 (p. 253)

Christmas

“As my parents taught me by both words and deeds, a life of public service is as much a gift to the person who serves as it is to those he is serving. And for me, there could be no higher public service than serving as a member of the United States Supreme Court.”

Merrick Garland (1952) American judge

[Remarks by the President Announcing Judge Merrick Garland as his Nominee to the Supreme Court, Merrick, Garland, w:Merrick Garland, The White House, March 16, 2016, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Remarks_by_the_President_Announcing_Judge_Merrick_Garland_as_his_Nominee_to_the_Supreme_Court#Remarks_by_Judge_Garland]; quote then excerpted in:
[March 18, 2016, http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2016/03/16/obama-taps-chicago-native-merrick-garland-supreme-court, Obama Taps Chicago Native Merrick Garland for Supreme Court, Paris Schutz, March 16, 2016, WTTW]; and also quote excerpted in:
[March 18, 2016, http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2016/03/16/President-Obama-to-reveal-Supreme-Court-nominee/7221458128542/, United Press International, Merrick Garland: Supreme Court nomination 'greatest honor of my life', March 16, 2016, Andrew V. Pestano]; and quote again also excerpted in:
[March 18, 2016, http://www.npr.org/2016/03/16/470684460/will-garlands-nomination-prompt-senate-to-act, Morning Edition, National Public Radio, March 16, 2016, Renee Montagne, Judge Garland Has Ability To 'Assemble Unlikely Coalitions,' Obama Says]
Remarks by Judge Garland upon nomination to Supreme Court of the United States (2016)

Life, Parent, Personality

“The soul looks to God under two aspects or forms: First as the object of all its affections, or as an infinitely good and lovable being, and this imagine robs the heart; and insofar as he is good, infinitely beautiful, this is, infinitely perfect, he captures our intellectual vision, our thoughts and meditations.
In this regard, the theological virtues and their gifts cause God and the soul to become on single thing through love and purity of thoughts. While this divine union takes place primarily and mainly in the soul, all the other virtues are like aids, attendants and armies of that guard, assist and protect this work. This is the love of God for the soul and the love of the soul for God.”

Francisco Palau (1811–1872) Beatified Spanish Discalced Carmelite friar and priest

Letter to Juana Gratia (1857)

Love, God, Beauty, Soul

“The professional military mind is by necessity an inferior and unimaginative mind; no man of high intellectual quality would willingly imprison his gifts in such a calling.”

H. G. Wells book The Outline of History

Source: The Outline of History (1920), Ch. 40

“Blessed are they who have the gift of making friends, for it is one of God's best gifts. It involves many things, but, above all, the power of going out of one's self and appreciating whatever is noble and loving in another.”

Thomas Hughes book Tom Brown at Oxford

Source: Tom Brown at Oxford (1861), Ch. 7

Love, God

“LISP has been jokingly described as "the most intelligent way to misuse a computer". I think that description a great compliment because it transmits the full flavor of liberation: it has assisted a number of our most gifted fellow humans in thinking previously impossible thoughts.”

Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930–2002) Dutch computer scientist

1970s, The Humble Programmer (1972)

Way, Intelligence, Thinking

“To the virtue of temperance as the preserving and defending realization of man's inner order, the gift of beauty is particularly co-ordinated. Not only is temperance beautiful in itself, it also renders men beautiful. Beauty, however, must here be understood in its original meaning: as the glow of the true and the good irradiating from every ordered state of being, and not in the patent significance of immediate sensual appeal. The beauty of temperance has a more spiritual, more austere, more virile aspect. It is of the essence of this beauty that it does not conflict with true virility, but rather has an affinity to it. Temperance, as the wellspring and premise of fortitude, is the virtue of mature manliness.
The infantile disorder of intemperance, on the other hand, not only destroys beauty, it also makes man cowardly; intemperance more than any other thing renders man unable and unwilling to 'take heart' against the wounding power of evil in the world”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

The Four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance (1965)

Men, World, Beauty, Evil

“Faith then, in its relation to salvation, is that confidence by which we accept it as a free gift from the Saviour, and is the only possible way in which the gift of God could be appropriated.”

Mark Hopkins (educator) (1802–1887) American educationalist and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 225.

God, Faith, Way, Confidence

“How glad I was to paint that for the soldiers it is very beautiful, how much respect and even love for art there is in human beings, in spite of everything, and who would have thought that my style, which seemed so modern and incomprehensible to critics and public at rotten exhibitions in the cities, would now be able to speak and convey something to men to whom I make a gift of it.”

Erich Heckel (1883–1970) German artist

In a letter to de:Gustave Schiefler, from Flanders, at Christmas 1915; as quoted by de:Wolf-Dieter Dube, in Expressionism, de:Wolf-Dieter Dube; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 62 Heckel wrote Schiefler about his 'Madonna'-painting, he painted in Ostende, Flander in 1915. Heckel was a medical orderly in Flanders together with Max Beckmann, in World War 1. Both artists got a lot of free time in the army for their artistic activities. The 'Madonna' got destroyed in World War 2. https://www.bildindex.de/document/obj00001491

Love, Men, Beauty, Art

“But the old man had provided his kids with one priceless gift: He’d encouraged them to read, and he didn’t bother too much about the content, subscribing to the theory that good books ultimately speak for themselves.”

Jack McDevitt book Ancient Shores

Source: Ancient Shores (1996), Chapter 16 (p. 168)

Books, Reading

“I had hoped for something much better… [T]he poor in this country have not benefited at all from the ANC. This government spends "like a drunken sailor". Instead of investing in projects to give people jobs, they spend millions buying weapons and private jets, and sending gifts to Haiti.”

Helen Suzman (1917–2009) South African politician

As quoted in "Democracy? It was better under apartheid, says Helen Suzman" https://web.archive.org/web/20120901223952/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1462042/Democracy-It-was-better-under-apartheid-says-Helen-Suzman.html (15 May 2004), by Jane Flanagan, The Telegraph 2000s

People, Hope, Country

“I think [one eco tip is] just giving a little present to someone who might be a little close-minded or stubborn about being green. Last year in all of my gifts I gave an environmentally-friendly light bulb. I thought that was such a great little gift to ease certain people into it. You know there are certain people, maybe family members, who are a little old fashion, or certain people that you work with that don’t really think about things like that. So you have to put it in front of them. And everyone needs a light bulb eventually. So the next time their light bulb goes out they’re gonna reach for it and they’ll see how great it is.”

Alison Becker (1977) American actress and comedian

" Farm Sanctuary Exclusive: Alison Becker Heads To LA With Dreams Of Electric Cars http://www.ecorazzi.com/2008/12/10/farm-sanctuary-exclusive-alison-becker-heads-to-la-with-dreams-of-electric-cars/", interview with Ecorazzi (10 December 2008).

People, Family, Fashion, Thinking

“If we experience our power of awareness, feel something to be conscious right here and now, know that there is something between and behind the thoughts that perceives and understands, then everything is free play and a gift.”

Lama Ole Nydahl (1941) Danish lama

Knowing Our Experiencing Mind, Buddhism Today Issue 21, Spring/Summer 2008.

Feeling, Understanding

“Freud taught that for any human being kindness or cruelty, having a sense of justice or lacking it, depend on the accidents of childhood. We all know this to be true, but it goes against much of what we say we believe. We cannot give up the pretence that being good is something anyone can achieve. If we did, we would have to admit that, like beauty and intelligence, goodness is a gift of fortune. We would have to accept that, in the parts of our lives where we are most attached to it, freedom of the will is an illusion.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Vices of Morality: Psychoanalysis and moral luck (p. 104)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

Justice, Beauty, Intelligence, Sense

“There are no excuses for my extremist past, for the suffering I caused to loved ones, to family, to friends, to those many more, those far more, 'unknown others' who were or who became the 'enemies' posited by some extremist ideology. No excuses because the extremism, the intolerance, the hatred, the violence, the inhumanity, the prejudice were mine; my responsibility, born from and expressive of my character; and because the discovery of, the learning of, the need to live, to regain, my humanity arose because of and from others and not because of me. Thus what exposed my hubris - what for me broke down that certitude-of-knowing which extremism breeds and re-presents - was not something I did; not something I achieved; not something related to my character, my nature, at all. Instead, it was a gift offered to me by two others - the legacy left by their tragic early dying. That it took not one but two personal tragedies - some thirteen years apart - for me to accept and appreciate the gift of their love, their living, most surely reveals my failure, the hubris that for so long suffused me, and the strength and depth of my so lamentable extremism.”

David Myatt (1950) British writer

Source: Pathei-Mathos – Genesis of My Unknowing (2012) http://www.davidmyatt.info/genesis-of-my-unknowing.html

Love, Family, Failure, Nature

“If God has bestowed on us any excellent gift, we imagine it to be our own achievement; and we swell and even burst with pride.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Page 32.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)

God, Imagination

“It lies deep in our habits, confirmed by all manner of educational and other arrangements for several centuries back, to consider human talent as best of all evincing itself by the faculty of eloquent speech. Our earliest schoolmasters teach us, as the one gift of culture they have, the art of spelling and pronouncing, the rules of correct speech; rhetorics, logics follow, sublime mysteries of grammar, whereby we may not only speak but write. And onward to the last of our schoolmasters in the highest university, it is still intrinsically grammar, under various figures grammar. To speak in various languages, on various things, but on all of them to speak, and appropriately deliver ourselves by tongue or pen,—this is the sublime goal towards which all manner of beneficent preceptors and learned professors, from the lowest hornbook upwards, are continually urging and guiding us.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Stump Orator (May 1, 1850)

Education, Art, Learning, Universe

“All sultans were keen on making slaves, but Muhammad Tughlaq became notorious for enslaving people. He appears to have outstripped even Alauddin Khalji and his reputation in this regard spread far and wide. Shihabuddin Ahmad Abbas writes about him thus:
“The Sultan never ceases to show the greatest zeal in making war upon infidels… Everyday thousands of slaves are sold at a very low price, so great is the number of prisoners”. Muhammad Tughlaq did not only enslave people during campaigns, he was also very fond of purchasing and collecting foreign and Indian slaves. According to Ibn Battuta one of the reasons of estrangement between Muhammad Tughlaq and his father Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq, when Muhammad was still a prince, was his extravagance in purchasing slaves. Even as Sultan, he made extensive conquests. He subjugated the country as far as Dwarsamudra, Malabar, Kampil, Warangal, Lakhnauti, Satgaon, Sonargaon, Nagarkot and Sambhal to give only few prominent place-names. There were sixteen major rebellions in his reign which were ruthlessly suppressed. In all these conquests and rebellions, slaves were taken with great gusto. For example, in the year 1342 Halajun rose in rebellion in Lahore. He was aided by the Khokhar chief Kulchand. They were defeated. “About three hundred women of the rebels were taken captive, and sent to the fort of Gwalior where they were seen by Ibn Battutah.” Such was their influx that Ibn Battutah writes: “At (one) time there arrived in Delhi some female infidel captives, ten of whom the Vazir sent to me. I gave one of them to the man who had brought them to me, but he was not satisfied. My companion took three young girls, and I do not know what happened to the rest.” Iltutmish, Muhammad Tughlaq and Firoz Tughlaq sent gifts of slaves to Khalifas outside India….. Ibn Battutah’s eye-witness account of the Sultan’s gifting captured slave girls to nobles or arranging their marriages with Muslims on a large scale on the occasion of the two Ids, corroborates the statement of Abbas. Ibn Battutah writes that during the celebrations in connection with the two Ids in the court of Muhammad bin Tughlaq, daughters of Hindu Rajas and those of commoners, captured during the course of the year were distributed among nobles, officers and important foreign slaves. “On the fourth day men slaves are married and on the fifth slave-girls. On the sixth day men and women slaves are married off.” This was all in accordance with the Islamic law. According to it, slaves cannot many on their own without the consent of their proprietors. The marriage of an infidel couple is not dissolved by their jointly embracing the faith. In the present case the slaves were probably already converted and their marriages performed with the initiative and permission the Sultan himself were valid. Thousands of non-Muslim women were captured by the Muslims in the yearly campaigns of Firoz Tughlaq, and under him the id celebrations were held on lines similar to those of his predecessor. In short, under the Tughlaqs the inflow of women captives never ceased.”

Muhammad bin Tughluq (1290–1351) Turkic Sultan of Delhi

Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 5 (quoting Masalik-ul-Absar, E.D., III, 580., Battutah)

Women, Men, Marriage, War

“Sir John Mandeville [was] an encyclopedist whose mostly invented stories still ring true, thanks to his gift for writing the first realistic Western fiction since Petronius. We do not know who this man was or even what language he wrote in, but modern textual analysis suggests that he rarely left his study. Rather than travel, he scavenged and plagiarized the works of others, improving their prose as he claimed their discoveries. In a period of continental isolation, Mandeville satisfied Europe's appetite for news by making up an East that sounded real. In expanding editions and translations, his Voyages and Travels became the most popular prose book of the Middle Ages.”

John Mandeville (1300–1372) writer

Michael Wolfe One Thousand Roads to Mecca (New York: Grove Press, 1999) p. 75.
Criticism

Books, Age, Travel, Study

“Through endless time God's greatest gift is continuously given in silence. But whenmankind becomes completely deaf to the thunder of His Silence God incarnates as Man.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

44 : God Alone Is, p. 74.
The Everything and the Nothing (1963)

God, Silence, Time

“My cry could only waken him. And what
a poor gift: I, confined to my own form,
when I used to be a birch, a lizard
shedding times and satin skins
in many shimmering hues.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

"I Am Too Close..."
Poems New and Collected (1998), Salt (1962)

Time, Cry

“What then? For all my sins, His pardoning grace; For all my wants and woes, His loving-kindness; For darkest shades, the shining of God's face; And Christ's own hand to lead me in my blindness. When Caesar gave one a great reward, "This," said he, "is too great a gift for me to receive;" but said Caesar, "It is not too great a gift for me to give." So, though the least gift that Christ gives, in one sense, is too much for us to receive, yet the greatest gifts are not too great for Christ to give.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

Source: Quotes from secondary sources, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers, 1895, P. 95.

Love, God, Sense, Christ

“When a gifted team dedicates itself to unselfish trust and combines instinct with boldness and effort, it is ready to climb.”

Patañjali (-200–-150 BC) ancient Indian scholar(s) of grammar and linguistics, of yoga, of medical treatises

The Mahābhāṣya

Effort

“Not to paint is the highest ambition of the painter but God who gives the gift requires that it be honoured. It is in the gesture that it lives. There is no escape.”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

Portuguese Notes (Gandon Editions Biography 1993).
Context: Not to paint is the highest ambition of the painter but God who gives the gift requires that it be honoured. It is in the gesture that it lives. There is no escape. Picture-making is ludicrous in the light of the awful times we must endure. It is sufficient to contemplate the nature of composition to see that the picture itself is impossible. Each square inch of Titian contains the whole pointless — between the cradle and the grave. My paintings are merely signs that the activity was engaged in.

God, Painting

“One man can spin, another can make shoes, and all these are gifts of the Holy Spirit. I tell you, if I were not a priest, I should esteem it a great gift that I was able to make shoes, and I would try to make them so well as to be a pattern to all”

Johannes Tauler (1300–1361) German theologian

Quoted in Ursula King, in "Christian Mystics: Their Lives and Legacies Throughout the Ages" (2001)

Shoe

“Now I see there is a people risen that I cannot win with gifts or honours, offices or places; but all other sects and people I can.”

Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) English military and political leader

On the Quakers, after meeting with George Fox, as quoted in Autobiography of George Fox (1694)

People

“Shall we say, for example, that Science and Art are indebted principally to the founders of Schools and Universities? Did not Science originate rather, and gain advancement, in the obscure closets of the Roger Bacons, Keplers, Newtons; in the workshops of the Fausts and the Watts; wherever, and in what guise soever Nature, from the first times downwards, had sent a gifted spirit upon the earth? Again, were Homer and Shakspeare members of any beneficed guild, or made Poets by means of it? Were Painting and Sculpture created by forethought, brought into the world by institutions for that end? No; Science and Art have, from first to last, been the free gift of Nature; an unsolicited, unexpected gift; often even a fatal one.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

World, School, Art, Nature

“Beloved-of-the-Gods, King Piyadasi, desires that all religions should reside everywhere, for all of them desire self-control and purity of heart. But people have various desires and various passions, and they may practice all of what they should or only a part of it. But one who receives great gifts yet is lacking in self-control, purity of heart, gratitude and firm devotion, such a person is mean.”

Ashoka (-304–-232 BC) Indian emperor of the Maurya Dynasty

Edicts of Ashoka (c. 257 BC)

God, People, Religion, Passion

“The future announces itself from afar. But most people are not listening. The noisy clatter of the present drowns out the tentative sound of things to come. The sound of the new does not fit old perceptual patterns and goes unnoticed by most people. And of the few who do perceive something coming, most lack the energy, initiative, courage or will to do anything about it. Leaders who have the wit to perceive and the courage to act will be credited with a gift of prophecy that they do not necessarily have.”

John W. Gardner (1912–2002) American politician

On Leadership (1981) p. 131

People, Courage, Future

“Getting a man to love you is easy Only be honest about your wants as Woman. Stand nude before the glass with him So that he sees himself the stronger one And believes it so, and you so much more Softer, younger, lovelier. Admit your Admiration. Gift him all, Gift him what makes you woman, the scent of Long hair, the musk of sweat between the breasts, The warm shock of menstrual blood, and all your Endless female hungers. Oh yes, getting A man to love is easy, but living Without him afterwards may have to be Faced.”

Kamala Surayya (1934–2009) Indian author

Kamala Suraiyya Das

Love, Hunger

“A new generation of Christians is being called to help build a world in which God's gift of life is welcomed, respected and cherished-not rejected, feared as a threat and destroyed. A new age in which love is not greedy or self-seeking, but pure, faithful and genuinely free, open to others, respectful of their dignity, seeking their good, radiating joy and beauty - a new age in which hope liberates us from the shallowness, apathy and self-absorption that deaden our souls and poison our relationships.”

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

2008, Closing Mass (19 July 2008)

Love, Life, God, Age

“I am startled, occasionally, to find “intelligence” used as the antithesis of “feeling”, as though the two played against each other. Nothing could be further from the truth. No intelligent interpretation is lacking in emotional values. What this probably means is that, depending on gifts and degree of maturity, some natures emphasize brain over heart. Where such an imbalance occurs, it must be corrected by conscious and concentrated application to emotional content. If an interpretation is unduly cerebral, liveness and color can be infused into it by attention to whether the theme is now in the right hand, now in the left; whether it is supported by an accompaniment which has significance of its own, or merely hums along.”

Benno Moiseiwitsch (1890–1963) British musician

Playing in the Grand Style (1950)

Truth, Color, Feeling, Intelligence

“Architecture was my way of expressing my ideals: to be simple, to create a world equal to everyone, to look at people with optimism, that everyone has a gift. I don’t want anything but general happiness. Why is that bad?”

Oscar Niemeyer (1907–2012) Brazilian architect

Quoted in "Why Oscar Niemeyer is king of curves", Tom Dyckhoff, The Times Online (London, 2007-12-12).

People, World, Way, Optimism

“All the efforts of several hundred thousand people, crowded in a small space, to disfigure the land on which they lived; all the stone they covered it with to keep it barren; how so diligently every sprouting blade of grass was removed; all the smoke of coal and naphtha; all the cutting down of trees and driving off of cattle could not shut out the spring, even from the city. The sun was shedding its light; the grass, revivified, was blooming forth, where it was left uncut, not only on the greenswards of the boulevard, but between the flag-stones, and the birches, poplars and wild-berry trees were unfolding their viscous leaves; the limes were unfolding their buds; the daws, sparrows and pigeons were joyfully making their customary nests, and the flies were buzzing on the sun-warmed walls. Plants, birds, insects and children were equally joyful. Only men—grown-up men—continued cheating and tormenting themselves and each other. People saw nothing holy in this spring morning, in this beauty of God's world—a gift to all living creatures—inclining to peace, good-will and love, but worshiped their own inventions for imposing their will on each other.”

Leo Tolstoy book Resurrection

Source: Resurrection (1899), Ch. 1

Love, Men, God, Children

“It seemed a wonderful thing to me to be a member of a great Faculty whose history and traditions went back to the earliest times and to be entitled to exercise a profession which I then thought and still think to require the highest gifts of mind and character for its worthy pursuit.”

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan (1873–1952) British judge

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), At the Scottish bar, p. 33

Exercises, History, Thinking, Time

“Last year a Dutch animal breeding centre sent me two chimpanzees as a gift. I killed one and cut its heart out. The other wept bitterly and was inconsolable. The sad chimp has long since happily mated again and lives with lots of other animals on a pleasant game farm near Villiersdorp. I vowed never again to experiment with such sensitive creatures, but the memory of that weeping chimp has remained with me. It was taken for granted, of course, that he was weeping for his mate but I've since had some thoughts on the subject which made me wonder whether perhaps he was weeping for the human race. The idea is not as silly as it sounds. In our doings there is much to weep over and even a chimpanzee would never behave in some of the contradictory ways we think of as normal.”

Christiaan Barnard (1922–2001) South-African physician

The Best Medicine (Cape Town: Tafelberg Publishers, 1979), p. 38.

Sadness, Way, Game, Idea

“All the gifted souls, of every rank, who are born to you in this generation. These are appointed, by the true eternal "divine right" which will never become obsolete, to be your governors and administrators; and precisely as you employ them, or neglect to employ them, will your State be favored of Heaven or disfavored. This noble young soul, you can have him on either of two conditions; and on one of them, since he is here in the world, you must have him. As your ally and coadjutor; or failing that, as your natural enemy: which shall it be? I consider that every Government convicts itself of infatuation and futility, or absolves and justifies itself before God and man, according as it answers this question.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), The New Downing Street (April 15, 1850)

God, World, Soul, Question

“The denizens of Citizens Service Houses are not, as a rule, gifted with a lot of common sense, but they often make up for that by being extremely argumentative and vindictive.”

Robert Silverberg (1935) American speculative fiction writer and editor

Source: Short fiction, Hot Times in Magma City (1995), p. 56

Sense, Housing

“A spurious democracy has influenced both our research methods (I am sometimes tempted to define “validity” as part of the context of an experiment demanding so little in the way of esoteric gift that any number can play at it, provided they have taken a certain number of courses) and our research subjects”

David Riesman (1909–2002) American Sociologist

it would be deemed snobbish to investigate only the best people
“Clinical and Cultural Aspects of the Aging Process,” p. 485
Individualism Reconsidered (1954)

People, Way, Democracy, Parting

“Life, Tavi reflected, seldom makes a gift of what one expects or plans for.”

Jim Butcher Codex Alera

Codex Alera, First Lord's Fury (2009)

Life

“Power consists in one's capacity to link his will with the purpose of others, to lead by reason and a gift of cooperation.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

From a letter to Mary A. Hulbert (21 September 1913)
1910s

“Callous, adj. Gifted with great fortitude to bear the evils afflicting another.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

Affliction, Evil

“Instead of insight, maybe all a man gets is strength to wander for a while. Maybe the only gift is a chance to inquire, to know nothing for certain. An inheritance of wonder and nothing more.”

William Least Heat-Moon book Blue Highways

Part Six, Chapter 9.
Blue Highways (1982)

Chance

“I had to develop a sense of humor I'm sure it's a defense mechanism. It was, 'Before they make fun of me, I'll make a joke.' Being funny is just a point of view about life in general. Sometimes it's born out of difficult childhoods, where you have to develop a sense of humor. Ultimately, it's a gift.”

Nathan Lane (1956) American actor

Marshall Fine (January 24, 2000) "Nathan the 'Great'", The Journal News, p. 1E.

Life, Sense, Childhood

“I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the City of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty guns and plenty of ammunition, also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton.”

William T. Sherman (1820–1891) American General, businessman, educator, and author.

Telegraph to Abraham Lincoln (December 1864), as quoted in Southern Storm: Sherman's March to the Sea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0940450658 (2008), by Noah Andre Trudeau, New York: HarperCollins, p. 508. 1860s, 1864, Telegram to Abraham Lincoln (December 1864)

Christmas

“I who am blind can give one hint to those who see - one admonition to those who would make full use of the gift of sight: Use your eyes as if tomorrow you would be stricken blind. And the same method can be applied to other senses. Hear the music of voices, the song of a bird, the mighty strains of an orchestra, as if you would be stricken deaf to-morrow. Touch each object you want to touch as if tomorrow your tactile sense would fail. Smell the perfume of flowers, taste with relish each morsel, as if tomorrow you could never smell and taste again. Make the most of every sense; glory in all the facets of pleasure and beauty which the world reveals to you through the several means of contact which Nature provides.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Three Days to See (1933)

Pleasure, World, Beauty, Music

“I have found out a gift for my fair;
I have found where the wood-pigeons breed.”

William Shenstone (1714–1763) English gardener

A Pastoral, part I

“Every girl asked me, "What makes you god's gift to women?" Some answers:
13 inches. Who ever thought it could be too big?
I have 20 million dollars and terminal cancer.
I like to listen.
I'm a convicted sex offender.
Have you seen this face? Look at how hot I am!
I like to cut up hookers.
Bend over and I'll show you.”

Tucker Max (1975) Internet personality; blogger; author

The Tucker Max Stories

Women, God, Sex, Girl

“It was just like some ancient electricity-powered computer; it didn't matter how fast, error-free, and tireless it was, it didn't matter how great a labor-saving boon it was, it didn't matter what it could do or how many different ways it could amaze; if you pulled its plug out, or just hit the off button, all it became was a lump of matter; all its programs became just settings, dead instructions, and all its computations vanished as quickly as they'd moved.
It was, also, like the dependency of the human-basic brain on the human-basic body; no matter how intelligent, perceptive and gifted you were, no matter how entirely you lived for the ascetic rewards of the intellect and eschewed the material world and the ignobility of the flesh, if your heart just gave out…
That was the Dependency Principle; that you could never forget where your off switches were located, even if it was somewhere tiresome.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Excession (1996), Chapter 4 “Dependency Principle” section III (p. 122).

World, Way, Error, Intelligence

“Here comes Jesus, and sees the man, and shows to him, in the light of faith, that He is according to His Godhead immeasurable and incomprehensible and inaccessible and abysmal, transcending every created light and every finite conception. And this is the highest knowledge of God which any man may have in the active life: that he should confess in this light of faith that God is incomprehensible and unknowable. And in this light Christ says to man’s desire: Make haste and come down, for to-day I must abide at thy house. This hasty descent, to which he is summoned by God, is nothing else than a descent through desire and through love into the abyss of the Godhead, which no intelligence can reach in the created light. But where intelligence remains without, desire and love go in. When the soul is thus stretched towards God, by intention and by love, above everything that it can understand, then it rests and dwells in God, and God in it. When the soul climbs with desire above the multiplicity of creatures, and above the works of the senses, and above the light of nature, then it meets Christ in the light of faith, and becomes enlightened, and confesses that God is unknowable and incomprehensible. When it stretches itself with longing towards this incomprehensible God, then it meets Christ, and is filled with His gifts. And when it loves and rests above all gifts, and above itself, and above all creatures, then it dwells in God, and God dwells in it.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

From Evelyn Underhill, http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/asm/index.htm Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage The Spiritual Espousals (c. 1340)

Love, Life, God, Faith

“Within ourselves we all have the gifts and talents we need to fulfill the purpose we've been blessed with.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 26

“'A woman's wisdom is her gift to women,'" Peggy quoted. "'Her beauty is her gift to men. Her love is her gift to God.'”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Prentice Alvin (1989), Chapter 10.

Love, Wisdom, Women, Men

“Fortunately, a sculptor's style and aim are, to a great extent, dictated to him by his materials. To make a sculpture seem at all moving or inspiring, an artist must, of course, be gifted with a certain personality that speaks movingly through the subject and materials of his work. But he must select appropriate materials, and use them appropriately, too... My materials often dictate my change of aims, and I choose to work in a different material much as a man may suddenly feel an appetite for a change in diet.”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

c. 1960
Source: 1960 - 1968, Dialogues – conversations with.., quotes, c. 1960, pp. 154-155

Feeling, Change, Personality

“Thoughtfully, just as Jabscreen owners everywhere were running out of apps to compare – and, by extension, anything to talk about – the nice droids at Apple Castle gifted them a whole new branch of conversation: the launch of the Jabscreen 4, which apparently is miles better than a regular Jabscreen, although no one can really explain why. Its most impressive feature is this: simply by existing, it suddenly makes your existing Olde Worlde vanilla Jabscreen seem rubbish. How can you enjoy sliding the little icons around on your Jabscreen 3 when you know that if you had a Jabscreen 4, those very same icons would be slightly sharper? The answer is you can't.”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

Guardian columns

World

“The king's majesty desires nothing more than concord…; he knows there are those who would stir up strife, and that in many places in his field tares have sprongen to harm the wheat. The forwardness and carnal lust of some, the inveterate corruption and superstitious tenacity of opinion of others, excite disputation and quarrels most horrible to good Christian men; one side calls the other papists, and the other again calls them heretics, both naughty and not to be borne; and that the less so because they miserably abuse the Holy Word of God and the Scriptures which the same most noble prince of his gentleness and for the salvation and consolation of his people has permitted them to read in the vulgar tongue. They twist God's sacred gift, now into heresy and now into superstition. [The king] favours nor one side nor the other but, as becometh a Christian prince, profess the true Christian faith [therefore the king desires the] true doctrine and rule of the Gospel shall be published clear and established [and] the pious observation of ceremonies shall be distinguished from the impious, their use taught and their abuse abolished.”

Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex (1485–1540) English statesman and chief minister to King Henry VIII of England

Speech to the reassmbled Parliament, 12 April 1540. (Journal of the House of Lords: I, pp. 128-9.)

Men, God, People, Faith

“I do understand. I understand that you are offered a loveliness and you vomit on it, that you have the gift of love given you such as few men have ever known and you throw on it the acid of your pride, your ugly twisted sense of importance.”

John Steinbeck book Burning Bright

Friend Ed to Joe Saul in Act Three, Scene I: The Sea
Burning Bright (1950)

Love, Men, Understanding, Sense

“I can't make real-life workplaces safer and more fair for women just by showing them with briefcases or crossbows. But I can try to grant my characters the quirky gift of humanity — whether they're adjudicating torts or dishing tortes or saving the world. And hope the little girls watching do the rest.”

Jane Espenson (1964) American television writer and producer

How to Succeed at Vampire Slaying and Keep Your Soul (2005)

Life, Women, World, Hope

“It is very natural that clever young men should be rather odious. They are conscious of gifts that they do not know how to use. They are exasperated with the world that will not recognize their merit. They have something to give, and no hand is stretched out to receive it. They are impatient for the fame they regard as their due.”

W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British playwright, novelist, short story writer

"The voice of the turtle", p. 250
Short Stories, Collected short stories 1

Men, World, Nature

“Aviation seems almost a gift from heaven to those Western nations who were already the leaders of their era, strengthening their leadership, their confidence, their dominance over other peoples. It is a tool specially shaped for Western hands, a scientific art which others only copy in a mediocre fashion; another barrier between the teeming millions of Asia and the Grecian inheritance of Europe — one of those priceless possessions which permit the White race to live at all in a pressing sea of Yellow, Black, and Brown.”

Charles Lindbergh (1902–1974) American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist

Aviation, Geography, and Race (1939)

People, Art, Confidence, Fashion

“I am a believer and a conformist. Anyone can revolt; it is more difficult silently to obey our own interior promptings, and to spend our lives finding sincere and fitting means of expression for our temperaments and our gifts — if we have any. I do not say "neither God, nor Master," only in the end to substitute myself for the God I have excommunicated…"”

Georges Rouault (1871–1958) French painter

Rouault, Georges. "Climat pictural." La Renaissance. XX, no. 10-12. (1937)
Variant translation: Anybody can rebel. But to obey in silence, an inner calling to search lifelong without impatience for the means of expression adequate to us... that is much more difficult.
Quotes, 1930-1940

God, Sincerity

“Full of years, Sir Frank's body died. The diphtheria which carried him off caused him as much suffering as it would have done an ordinary man; dying was not eased by his unique gift. He slid out into the long darkness — but his consciousness continued unabated in eight other bodies.”

Brian W. Aldiss (1925–2017) British science fiction author

Let's Be Frank (1957)

Suffering

“If we both ignore the unique contribution of “male-style” parenting and jail a man who responsibly contributes it, fatherhood becomes another hazardous occupation. More precisely, it becomes the largest 100%-male hazardous occupation. And in the process, our children lose one of the greatest potential gifts of Stage II -- genuine fatherhood. That’s the bad news. The good news is that there are ways of creating a father and child reunion….”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 237.

Children, Way, Parent

“Marvellous is the power which can be exercised, almost unconsciously, over a company, or an individual, or even upon a crowd by one person gifted with good temper, good digestion, good intellects, and good looks.”

Anthony Trollope book Rachel Ray

Rachel Ray (1863), Ch. 11

Exercises, Personality

“The first was the classical line, which could be traced back to my early childhood and the Beethoven sonatas I heard my mother play. This line takes sometimes a neo-classical form (sonatas, concertos), sometimes imitates the 18th century classics (gavottes, the Classical symphony, partly the Sinfonietta). The second line, the modern trend, begins with that meeting with Taneyev when he reproached me for the “crudeness” of my harmonies. At first this took the form of a search for my own harmonic language, developing later into a search for a language in which to express powerful emotions (The Phantom, Despair, Diabolical Suggestion, Sarcasms, Scythian Suite, a few of the songs, op. 23, The Gambler, Seven, They Were Seven, the Quintet and the Second Symphony). Although this line covers harmonic language mainly, it also includes new departures in melody, orchestration and drama. The third line is toccata or the “motor” line traceable perhaps to Schumann’s Toccata which made such a powerful impression on me when I first heard it (Etudes, op. 2, Toccata, op. 11, Scherzo, op. 12, the Scherzo of the Second Concerto, the Toccata in the Fifth Concerto, and also the repetitive intensity of the melodic figures in the Scythian Suite, Pas d’acier[The Age of Steel], or passages in the Third Concerto). This line is perhaps the least important. The fourth line is lyrical; it appears first as a thoughtful and meditative mood, not always associated with the melody, or, at any rate, with the long melody (The Fairy-tale, op. 3, Dreams, Autumnal Sketch[Osenneye], Songs, op. 9, The Legend, op. 12), sometimes partly contained in the long melody (choruses on Balmont texts, beginning of the First Violin Concerto, songs to Akhmatova’s poems, Old Granny’s Tales[Tales of an Old Grandmother]). This line was not noticed until much later. For a long time I was given no credit for any lyrical gift whatsoever, and for want of encouragement it developed slowly. But as time went on I gave more and more attention to this aspect of my work. I should like to limit myself to these four “lines,” and to regard the fifth, “grotesque” line which some wish to ascribe to me, as simply a deviation from the other lines. In any case I strenuously object to the very word “grotesque” which has become hackneyed to the point of nausea. As a matter of fact the use of the French word “grotesque” in this sense is a distortion of the meaning. I would prefer my music to be described as “Scherzo-ish” in quality, or else by three words describing the various degrees of the Scherzo—whimsicality, laughter, mockery.”

Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953) Ukrainian & Russian Soviet pianist and composer

Page 36-37; from his fragmentary Autobiography.
Sergei Prokofiev: Autobiography, Articles, Reminiscences (1960)

Age, Dreams, Music, Search

“In the Spring of 1926 I made some toy animals of curtain rods, broom handles, etc., and wire. Later, a few dolls, which I animated…. in the winter of 1927–1928 I made some more toys for a friend to take home as gifts, and having shown them to De Creeft a Spanish sculptor with a very acute sense of humor, I was urged by him to make some more toys and to expose them at the ] of which animation is one of the chief characteristics.”

Alexander Calder (1898–1976) American artist

1920s, Statement on Wire Sculpture' (1929)

Home, Spring, Sense, Winter

“I remember a decade ago at my first annual meeting in St. Louis. After my banquet remarks to a packed house, they presented me with a very special gift. It was a splendid hand-crafted musket.
I admit I was overcome by the power of its simple symbolism. I looked at that musket and I thought of all of the lives given for that freedom. I thought of all of the lives saved with that freedom. It dawned on me that the doorway to all freedoms is framed by muskets.
So I lifted that musket over my head for all to see. And as flashbulbs popped around the room, my heart and a few tears swelled up, and I uttered five unscripted words. When I did, that room exploded in sustained applause and hoots and shouts that seemed to last forever. … So as we set out this year to defeat the divisive forces that would take freedom away, I want to say those words again for everyone within the sound of my voice to hear and to heed, and especially for you, Mr. Gore: From my cold dead hands!”

Charlton Heston (1923–2008) American actor

Speech at NRA Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina (20 May 2000)
referencing a slogan from a series of NRA bumper stickers, "I'll give you my gun when you take it from my cold, dead hands"

Tear, Freedom, Heart, Housing

“Our strongest gifts are usually those we are barely aware of possessing. They are a part of our God-given nature, with us from the moment we drew first breath, and we are no more conscious of having them than we are of breathing.”

Parker Palmer (1939) American theologian

Source: Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (1999), p. 52

God, Nature, Parting

“Gladness, in some instances, springs from a natural buoyancy of temperament, and is quite consistent with shallowness and superficiality of character. In other cases it is coincident with the swift flow of the currents of the blood, and ceases when the stream flows more slowly and begins to stagnate. Or it is due to gifts which an exceptional good fortune showers into the laps of favoured mortals. Gladness of this sort comes with happiness and departs with it.
But the purified gladness of which I speak is not dependent on these accidents. It is the mark of the ripest wisdom, and is based on the conviction, gained through experience, that life is worth living, that the victory is assured, and that the ends we pursue are of such excellence as to be incapable of ultimate defeat.”

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

Section 4 : Moral Ideals
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)

Life, Wisdom, Spring, Nature

“Don’t let me get grand with you; I’m not someone who was, from day one, turning himself into a philosophical academic or anything; I was, from day one, someone who was determined to survive, and to pay attention to what was going on around him, period, and when Elvis Presley came along, my heart stood still, to borrow the Larry Hart lyric. The first note I heard from him, I said, “Well, this is it, this is a sufferer like me, this is something new, this is what I want, this is who I am, in a way,” and Elvis had that gift. That’s why there are so many Elvis imitators.”

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

My Pilgrim’s Progress (1999)

Way, Suffering, Heart

“Ah son! compel me not to speak
The sorrows of our race!
That youth the Fates but just display
To earth, nor let him longer stay:
With gifts like these for aye to hold,
Rome's heart had e'en been overbold.
Ah! what a groan from Mars's plain
Shall o'er the city sound!
How wilt thou gaze on that long train,
Old Tiber, rolling to the main
Beside his new-raised mound!
No youth of Ilium's seed inspires
With hope as fair his Latian sires:
Nor Rome shall dandle on her knee
A nursling so adored as he.
O piety! O ancient faith!
O hand untamed in battle scathe!
No foe had lived before his sword,
Stemmed he on foot the war's red tide
Or with relentless rowel gored
His foaming charger's side.
Dear child of pity! shouldst thou burst
The dungeon-bars of Fate accurst,
Our own Marcellus thou!”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book VI, pp. 226–227

Fate, War, Youth, Faith

“The participation we have in the knowledge of truth, such as it is, is not acquired by our own force: God has sufficiently given us to understand that, by the witnesses he has chosen out of the common people, simple and ignorant men, that he has been pleased to employ to instruct us in his admirable secrets. Our faith is not of our own acquiring; 'tis purely the gift of another's bounty: 'tis not by meditation, or by virtue of our own understanding, that we have acquired our religion, but by foreign authority and command wherein the imbecility of our own judgment does more assist us than any force of it; and our blindness more than our clearness of sight: 'tis more by__ the mediation of our ignorance than of our knowledge that we know any thing of the divine wisdom. 'Tis no wonder if our natural and earthly parts cannot conceive that supernatural and heavenly knowledge: let us bring nothing of our own, but obedience and subjection; for, as it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that, in the wisdom of God, the world knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe."”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 12
Essais (1595), Book II

Wisdom, Men, God, People

“In 1966 there was a Scripture Rally in Trafalgar Square. A widower, Mr. Honick, went to it. He was about 63. A widow, Mrs. Rawnsley, also went. She was about 60. He went up to her and introduced himself. He was not much to look at. "He looked like a tramp," she said. "He has been picking up fag ends." They got on well enough, however, to exchange addresses. His was 36 Queen's Road, Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire. Hers was 74 Downton Avenue, Streatham Hill, London, S. W.2. Next day he went to her house with a gift for her. It was a rose wrapped in a newspaper. Afterwards their friendship grew apace. She was sorry for him, she said. She smartened him up with better clothes. She had him to meals. She went to his house: he went to hers. They wrote to one another in terms of endearment. We were not shown the letters, but counsel described them as love letters.”

Alfred Denning, Baron Denning (1899–1999) British judge

Burgess v. Rawnsley (1975) 30 P. & C.R. 221.
Judgments

Love, Friendship, Housing, Clothes

“I never saw love as luck, as that gift from the gods which put everything else in place, and allowed you to succeed. No, I saw love as reward. One could find it only after one's virtue, or one's courage, or self-sacrifice, or generosity, or loss, has succeeded in stirring the power of creation.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

Harry Hubbard, in Harlot's Ghost : A Novel (1991)

Love, God, Courage, Loss

“While autism is a developmental disorder, sometimes a devastating one, there is always within the autism a unique and sometimes strangely gifted individual. The great psychoanalyst Winicott used to feel that there was something like a tulip in every person and this was their essence and that this internal part of them was inaccessible to the person themselves and should not be meddled with or touched by psychoanalysis or anything else and one wonders if there is not some autistic essence like this tulip which needs to be respected and not meddled with.”

Oliver Sacks (1933–2015) British neurologist and writer

Rage For Order episode of Oliver Sacks: The Mind Traveller

Feeling, Parting, Personality

“The more gifted by nature is a man, the more is deplorable the abuse that he does by using them to shameful ends. A swindler (or crook) of higher condition is more blameworthy than a vulgar scoundrel; an intelligent eveil-doer, having benefited from a higher education, represent a more saddening phenomenon ("phénomène", Fr.) than an unfortune illiterate fellow having commited an offence.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 48.

Education, Intelligence, Nature

“Then we have Sūrat al-Sharḥ, also known as al-Inshirāḥ. I need to make mention of this because in it is a lot of comfort for myself and yourselves. We have a problem in life. When we have a problem Allah says, "Don't worry, with that difficulty, there is ease." You will never know what ease is all about unless you've been through difficulty. Those who have a beautiful life, sometimes they are still worried and depressed because they don't know what it is like to have suffered a little bit. So Allah's blessing, he makes us suffer slightly so that when there's a little bit of ease, mashallah. You know, a man who's always driven a Rolls-Royce will never know what it's like to ride a bicycle to work. Two ways of making them ride. One is, the doctor tells you you're about to die, Allahu Akbar, and you need to ride to work. Immediately everything is given up. Why? Because we're worried about dear life. That's why. If you see people – Subhan Allah – I've seen a man who had a carrot, and he was pretending like he's smoking this carrot and nibbling on it. And I told him, I said: "My brother, what made you nibble on this carrot?" He says: "My doctor told me I can't smoke, and a good replacement is a carrot." I said: "Allahu Akbar, you're stuffing your mouth with a carrot because of a doctor, but when Allah told you smoking is bad, then you didn't want to listen…" Allahu Akbar. May Allah make us from amongst those who eat carrots rather than smoking cigarettes. Really. So, my brothers and sisters, it's a reality. Whenever there is a person who has tasted goodness alone, and they don't know what difficulty is about, there comes a time when they do not appreciate what they have. So like I was saying, two ways. One is, Allah snatches it away from you, so you now have nothing. So many people have climbed the peak in terms of materialistic items, and then they've dropped down the mountain. They say it's easier to drop from the top than it is from the bottom. Allahu Akbar. When you arrive at the top, a small movement and you roll down, you're with the avalanche, one time. And when you're at the bottom, they can kick you – if you drop, you stand up again and you're walking – same level, masshalah, it's all about altitude. May Allah protect us. Another thing is, when you drop from the top, greater likelihood of breaking more bones. When you drop from the bottom, "Ah, I might have just hurt my head slightly", just say "Ouch" and carry on. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala protect us and grant us humbleness. So, remember, sometimes Allah wants you to go down, so that you appreciate the bicycle after you had nothing, yet ten years ago you had the Rolls-Royce. May Allah bless us. So Allah says, and I'm sure we know verses, verse number five and six:
فَإِنَّ مَعَ الْعُسْرِ يُسْرً
إِنَّ مَعَ الْعُسْرِ يُسْرًا
"Indeed, with every difficulty [or, with difficulty] there is ease.
And indeed, with the difficulty there is ease."
[…] May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala alleviate the suffering that we are all going through in our own little ways. Remember it's a gift of Allah. To keep you in check sometimes. To keep you calling out to Him. May Allah open our doors.”

Ismail ibn Musa Menk (1975) Muslim cleric and Grand Mufti of Zimbabwe.

" Do you have problems in life? Watch This! by Mufti Menk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgp2zbE9Ofg", YouTube (2013) Lectures

Life, People, Beauty, Way

“In the world of music, it is a rarity to find a person who is both a gifted composer and a top conductor. So it is in economics as well. Paul is that rarity. When Paul is writing, the sun is always out. His writing—ever eloquent, ever stirring—is done with the kind of verve that one seldom finds today.”

Michael Szenberg (1934) American economist

10.Paul Samuelson is a Great Maestro.
Ten Ways to Know Paul A. Samuelson (2006)

World, Music, Sun, Personality

“A happy coincidence brought together [in Die Brücke ]the really talented men whose characters and gifts, even in human terms, left them with no other choice than the profession of artist. This form of living, of dwelling and working, though peculiar for a regular human being, was not a deliberate 'epater le bourgeois', but simply a very naive and pure necessity to harmonize art and life. And it was precisely this more than anything else that so tremendously influenced the forms of present-day art. Of course, it was mostly misunderstood and totally distorted, for there [the will] fashioned the form and gave it meaning, whereas here the unfamiliar form is affixed to habit, like a top hat on a cow.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

from Kirchner's Diary, 1923; as quoted in Expressionism, a German intuition, 1905-1920, Neugroschel, Joachim; Vogt, Paul; Keller, Horst; Urban, Martin; Dube, Wolf Dieter; (transl. Joachim Neugroschel); publisher: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 1980, p. 93
1920's

Life, Men, Art, Fashion

“Manhattan is not altogether felicitous for fiction. It is not a city of memory, not a family city, not the capital of America so much as the iconic capital of this century. It is grand and grandiose with its two rivers acting as a border to contain the restless. Its skyscrapers and bleak, rotting tenements are a gift for photographic consumption, but for the fictional imagination the city's inchoate density is a special challenge.”

Elizabeth Hardwick (1916–2007) Novelist, short story writer, literary critic

"Locations: An Introduction" (p. xvi)
American Fictions (1999)

Family, Imagination, Memory

“In the first stage, that of jubilatio, a person becomes intensely aware of the dear signs of his love that god has marvelously given us in the heavens and on earth, how marvelously much good he has done for us and all creatures, how everything blossoms, sprouts forth, and is filled with God, and how unimaginable the generosity of God has inundated all creatures with his great gifts and how God has gone searching for him, showered him with gifts, carried him, advised him, waited for him, cared for him…and to what inexpressible nearness he has invited him, and how the most Holy God has expectantly awaited him eternally so that he might be filled with joy forever. And when a person experiences this fully through loving insight, The Lord leads a person out of himself into himself there is born in him great genuine joy. The person who perceives these things with genuine love is so flooded with an interior joy that his frail body cannot contain this joy and erupts in its own way…And in this way our Lord showers him with great sweetness and gives him inwardly an embrace and palpable union. Thus does God lure, pull and yank a person, first of all out of himself, and then out of all dissimilarity to himself…”

Johannes Tauler (1300–1361) German theologian

Sermons, Sermon 3

Love, God, Way, Search

“As a condition of equal treatment, we homosexuals are expected to conform to the straight system, adopting its norms and aspirations. The end result is gay co-option and invisibilisation. We get equality, but the price we pay is the surrender of our unique, distinctive queer identity, lifestyle and values (the important insights and ethics that we have forged in response to exclusion and discrimination by a hostile straight world). […] Meanwhile, all the sex-repressive social structures, institutions and moralities remain intact, and the "bad gays" remain sexual outlaws.
This nouveau gay reformism involves the abandonment of any critical perspective on straight culture. In place of a healthy scepticism towards the heterosexual consensus, it substitutes naïve acquiescence. Discernment is abandoned in favour of compliance. We trade our souls for the 'gift' of equal rights.”

Peter Tatchell (1952) British gay rights activist

Equality is not Enough http://www.petertatchell.net/lgbt_rights/equality_not_enough/equality_is_not_enough.htm, Official Website

Hostility, World, Sex, Soul

“The study of economics does not seem to require any specialized gifts of an unusually high order. Is it not, intellectually regarded, a very easy subject compared with the higher branches of philosophy and pure science? Yet good, or even competent, economists are the rarest of birds. An easy subject, at which very few excel! The paradox finds its explanation, perhaps, in that the master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts. He must reach a high standard in several different directions and must combine talents not often found together. He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher – in some degree. He must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought. He must study the present in the light of the past for the purposes of the future. No part of man's nature or his institutions must lie entirely outside his regard. He must be purposeful and disinterested in a simultaneous mood; as aloof and incorruptible as an artist, yet sometimes as near the earth as a politician. Much, but not all, of this many-sidedness Marshall possessed. But chiefly his mixed training and divided nature furnished him with the most essential and fundamental of the economist's necessary gifts – he was conspicuously historian and mathematician, a dealer in the particular and the general, the temporal and the eternal, at the same time.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

Source: Essays In Biography (1933), Alfred Marshall, p. 170; as cited in: Donald Moggridge (2002), Maynard Keynes: An Economist's Biography, p. 424

Lie, Mood, Understanding, Nature

“Life is a gift that the humblest may boast of
And one that the humblest may well make the most of.
Get out and live it each hour of the day,
Wear it and use it as much as you may;
Don't keep it in niches and corners and grooves,
You'll find that in service its beauty improves.”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

Source: A Heap o' Livin' (1916), Life, stanza 2, p. 64.

Life, Beauty

“Only in truth does charity shine forth, only in truth can charity be authentically lived. Truth is the light that gives meaning and value to charity. That light is both the light of reason and the light of faith, through which the intellect attains to the natural and supernatural truth of charity: it grasps its meaning as gift, acceptance, and communion. Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way. In a culture without truth, this is the fatal risk facing love. It falls prey to contingent subjective emotions and opinions, the word “love” is abused and distorted, to the point where it comes to mean the opposite. Truth frees charity from the constraints of an emotionalism that deprives it of relational and social content, and of a fideism that deprives it of human and universal breathing-space.”

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

2009, Cartias in Vertitate (29 June 2009)

Love, Truth, Faith, Way

“It's this accursed science," I cried. "It's the very Devil. The medieval priests and persecutors were right and the Moderns are all wrong. You tamper with it—and it offers you gifts. And directly you take them it knocks you to pieces in some unexpected way. Old passions and new weapons—now it upsets your religion, now it upsets your social ideas, now it whirls you off to desolation and misery!”

H. G. Wells book The First Men in the Moon

Source: The First Men in the Moon (1901), Ch. 13: Mr. Cavor Makes Some Suggestions

Religion, Way, Idea, Passion

“With deepest veneration and fellow feeling, I clasp your hand on the occasion of your eightieth birthday. I know of no other person who combines such profound intellectual gifts with such self-renunciation while finding the whole meaning of his life in quiet service to the community. We -- all of us -- thank you not only for what you have accomplished and brought about, but also because we feel happy that such a man should exist at all in this time of ours, which is so lacking in genuine personalities.
With reverent greetings….”

Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) American Supreme Court Justice

Albert Einstein, letter to Justice Brandeis on 1936-11-10, ibid.
Dukas and Hoffman comment: "the handwritten original is among the Brandeis papers at the Law School of the University of Louisville."

Life, Feeling, Communication, Birthday

“Morpheus' gifts used to come to me in bottles, Beam and black Jack Daniel's, straight up with a frosted schooner of Jax on the side, while the rain poor down in the neon glow outside the window of an all-night bar not far from the Huey Long Bridge. In a half hour I could kick open a furnace door and fling into the flames all the snakes and squeaking bats that lived inside me. Except the next morning they would writhe with new life in the ashes and come back home, stinking and hungry.”

James Lee Burke (1936) Novelist, short story writer

A Morning for Flamingos (1990)

Life, Home, Night

Quotes about gift page 12

Quotes about gift
page 12