Quotes about goodness
page 16

“No one ever lacks a good reason for suicide.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

“For lack of empirical data I have neither knowledge nor understanding of such forms of being, which are commonly called spiritual. …Nevertheless, we have good reason to suppose that behind this veil there exists the uncomprehended absolute object which affects and influences us—and to suppose it even, or particularly, in the case of psychic phenomena about which no verifiable statements can be made.”

C.G. Jung book Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Source: Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1963), pp.351 f.

Understanding, Knowledge

“Well, good-by, Uncle Tom; keep a stiff upper lip.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe book Uncle Tom's Cabin

Ch 10 The Property Is Carried Off
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)

“I do oppose the extension of slavery, because my judgment and feelings so prompt me; and I am under no obligation to the contrary. If for this you and I must differ, differ we must. You say if you were President, you would send an army and hang the leaders of the Missouri outrages upon the Kansas elections; still, if Kansas fairly votes herself a slave state, she must be admitted, or the Union must be dissolved. But how if she votes herself a slave State unfairly — that is, by the very means for which you say you would hang men? Must she still be admitted, or the Union be dissolved? That will be the phase of the question when it first becomes a practical one. In your assumption that there may be a fair decision of the slavery question in Kansas, I plainly see you and I would differ about the Nebraska-law. I look upon that enactment not as a law, but as violence from the beginning. It was conceived in violence, passed in violence, is maintained in violence, and is being executed in violence. I say it was conceived in violence, because the destruction of the Missouri Compromise, under the circumstances, was nothing less than violence. It was passed in violence, because it could not have passed at all but for the votes of many members in violence of the known will of their constituents. It is maintained in violence because the elections since, clearly demand it's repeal, and this demand is openly disregarded. You say men ought to be hung for the way they are executing that law; and I say the way it is being executed is quite as good as any of its antecedents. It is being executed in the precise way which was intended from the first; else why does no Nebraska man express astonishment or condemnation? Poor Reeder is the only public man who has been silly enough to believe that any thing like fairness was ever intended; and he has been bravely undeceived.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1850s, Letter to Joshua F. Speed (1855)

Men, Law, Way, Feeling

“I had always dreamt of participating in a beauty pageant and I got a chance to live my dream. It was a very good learning experience. However, due to my hectic schedule, I did not get enough time to prepare for the Talent round. But I am happy as I won the Miss Bollywood Diva.”

Sukirti Kandpal (1987) Indian actress

Beauty, Dreams, Learning, Chance

“If then we would indeed be “filled with wisdom and spiritual understanding;” if we would “walk worthy of the Lord unto all well pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God;” here let us fix our eyes! “Laying aside every weight, and the sin that does so easily beset us; let us run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Here best we may learn the infinite importance of Christianity. How little it can deserve to be treated in that slight and superficial way, in which it is in these days regarded by the bulk of nominal Christians, who are apt to think it may be enough, and almost equally pleasing to God, to be religious in any way, and upon any system. What exquisite folly it must be to risk the soul on such a venture, in direct contradiction to the dictates of reason, and the express declaration of the word of God! “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?”
LOOKING UNTO JESUS!
Here we shall best learn the duty and reasonableness of an absolute and unconditional surrender of soul and body to the will and service of God.—“We are not our own; for we are bought with a price,” and must “therefore” make it our grand concern to “glorify God with our bodies and our spirits, which are God’s.” Should we be base enough, even if we could do it with safety, to make any reserves in our returns of service to that gracious Saviour, who “gave up himself for us?” If we have formerly talked of compounding by the performance of some commands for the breach of others; can we now bear the mention of a composition of duties, or of retaining to ourselves the right of practising little sins! The very suggestion of such an idea fills us with indignation and shame, if our hearts be not dead to every sense of gratitude.
LOOKING UNTO JESUS!
Here we find displayed, in the most lively colours, the guilt of sin, and how hateful it must be to the perfect holiness of that Being, “who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity.” When we see that, rather than sin should go unpunished, “God spared not his own Son,” but “was pleased[99], to bruise him and put him to grief” for our sakes; how vainly must impenitent sinners flatter themselves with the hope of escaping the vengeance of Heaven, and buoy themselves up with I know not what desperate dreams of the Divine benignity!
Here too we may anticipate the dreadful sufferings of that state, “where shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth;” when rather than that we should undergo them, “the Son of God” himself, who “thought it no robbery to be equal with God,” consented to take upon him our degraded nature with all its weaknesses and infirmities; to be “a man of sorrows,” “to hide not his face from shame and spitting,” “to be wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities,” and at length to endure the sharpness of death, “even the death of the Cross,” that he might “deliver us from the wrath to come,” and open the kingdom of Heaven to all believers.
LOOKING UNTO JESUS!
Here best we may learn to grow in the love of God! The certainty of his pity and love towards repenting sinners, thus irrefragably demonstrated, chases away the sense of tormenting fear, and best lays the ground in us of a reciprocal affection. And while we steadily contemplate this wonderful transaction, and consider in its several relations the amazing truth, that “God spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all;” if our minds be not utterly dead to every impulse of sensibility, the emotions of admiration, of preference, of hope, and trust, and joy, cannot but spring up within us, chastened with reverential fear, and softened and quickened by overflowing gratitude. Here we shall become animated by an abiding disposition to endeavour to please our great Benefactor; and by a humble persuasion, that the weakest endeavours of this nature will not be despised by a Being, who has already proved himself so kindly affected towards us. Here we cannot fail to imbibe an earnest desire of possessing his favour, and a conviction, founded on his own declarations thus unquestionably confirmed, that the desire shall not be disappointed. Whenever we are conscious that we have offended this gracious Being, a single thought of the great work of Redemption will be enough to fill us with compunction. We shall feel a deep concern, grief mingled with indignant shame, for having conducted ourselves so unworthily towards one who to us has been infinite in kindness: we shall not rest till we have reason to hope that he is reconciled to us; and we shall watch over our hearts and conduct in future with a renewed jealousy, [Pg 243] lest we should again offend him. To those who are ever so little acquainted with the nature of the human mind, it were superfluous to remark, that the affections and tempers which have been enumerated, are the infallible marks and the constituent properties of Love. Let him then who would abound and grow in this Christian principle, be much conversant with the great doctrines of the Gospel.
It is obvious, that the attentive and frequent consideration of these great doctrines, must have a still more direct tendency to produce and cherish in our minds the principle of the love of Christ.”

William Wilberforce (1759–1833) English politician

Source: Real Christianity (1797), p. 240-243.

Love, Death, Wisdom, God

“Jarir ibn 'Abdullah said, "I heard the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, say, "Whoever is deprived of kindness is deprived of all good."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 4, hadith number 638
Sunni Hadith

Peace

“The softer you find your child is, the more you are to seek occasions, at fit times, thus to harden him. The great art in this is, to begin with what is but very little painful, and to proceed by insensible degrees, when you are playing, and in good humour with him, and speaking well of him: and when you have once got him to think himself made amends for his suffering by the praise is given him for his courage; when he can take pride in giving such marks of his manliness, and can prefer the reputation of being brave and stout, to the avoiding a little pain, or the shrinking under it; you need nor despair in time and by the assistance of his growing reason, to master his timorousness, and mend the weakness of his constitution.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 115
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

Pain, Art, Courage, Thinking

“The good thing is that I have always had wonderful people around me. It's dangerous when you start earning a lot of money and you become famous when you are too young.”

Penélope Cruz (1974) Spanish actress

Cinema.com interview (2001)

Money, People

“Some twelve thousand voters in the heretofore slave-state of Louisiana have sworn allegiance to the Union, assumed to be the rightful political power of the State, held elections, organized a State government, adopted a free-state constitution, giving the benefit of public schools equally to black and white, and empowering the Legislature to confer the elective franchise upon the colored man. Their Legislature has already voted to ratify the constitutional amendment recently passed by Congress, abolishing slavery throughout the nation. These twelve thousand persons are thus fully committed to the Union, and to perpetual freedom in the state — committed to the very things, and nearly all the things the nation wants — and they ask the nations recognition and it's assistance to make good their committal. Now, if we reject, and spurn them, we do our utmost to disorganize and disperse them. We in effect say to the white men "You are worthless, or worse — we will neither help you, nor be helped by you." To the blacks we say "This cup of liberty which these, your old masters, hold to your lips, we will dash from you, and leave you to the chances of gathering the spilled and scattered contents in some vague and undefined when, where, and how." If this course, discouraging and paralyzing both white and black, has any tendency to bring Louisiana into proper practical relations with the Union, I have, so far, been unable to perceive it. If, on the contrary, we recognize, and sustain the new government of Louisiana the converse of all this is made true. We encourage the hearts, and nerve the arms of the twelve thousand to adhere to their work, and argue for it, and proselyte for it, and fight for it, and feed it, and grow it, and ripen it to a complete success. The colored man too, in seeing all united for him, is inspired with vigilance, and energy, and daring, to the same end. Grant that he desires the elective franchise, will he not attain it sooner by saving the already advanced steps toward it, than by running backward over them? Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only to what it should be as the egg is to the fowl, we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it? Again, if we reject Louisiana, we also reject one vote in favor of the proposed amendment to the national Constitution. To meet this proposition, it has been argued that no more than three fourths of those States which have not attempted secession are necessary to validly ratify the amendment. I do not commit myself against this, further than to say that such a ratification would be questionable, and sure to be persistently questioned; while a ratification by three-fourths of all the States would be unquestioned and unquestionable.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Last public address (1865)

Men, School, Color, Question

“You have demonstrated that when young people have the tools to succeed -- good schools, education in math and science, an economy that nurtures creativity and entrepreneurship -- then societies will flourish. […] Where women are full participants in a country’s politics or economy, societies are more likely to succeed. […] If young people live in places where the only option is between the dictates of a state, or the lure of an extremist underground, then no counterterrorism strategy can succeed. But where a genuine civil society is allowed to flourish -- where people can express their views, and organize peacefully for a better life -- then you dramatically expand the alternatives to terror.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Address to the United Nations (September 2014)

Life, Women, People, Education

“In either case the orator should bear clearly in mind throughout his whole speech what the fiction is to which he has committed himself, since we are apt to forget our falsehoods, and there is no doubt about the truth of the proverb that a liar should have a good memory.”
Vtrubique autem orator meminisse debebit actione tota quid finxerit, quoniam solent excidere quae falsa sunt: verumque est illud quod vulgo dicitur, mendacem memorem esse oportere.

Quintilian (35–96) ancient Roman rhetor

Book IV, Chapter II, 91; translation by H. E. Butler
Compare: "Liars ought to have good memories", Algernon Sidney, Discourses on Government, chapter ii, section xv.
Alternate translation for "solent excidere quae falsa sunt": False things tend to be forgotten
De Institutione Oratoria (c. 95 AD)

Truth, Memory, Forgetting

“The good and eatable fish are separated by the fishers' skill from the bad and poisonous fish, so that the enjoyment of the good should not be spoilt by any of the bad getting into the "vessels" with them. The work of true sobriety is the same; from all pursuits and habits to choose that which is pure and improving, rejecting in every case that which does not seem likely to be useful, and letting it go back into the universal and secular life, called "the sea" (Matthew 13:47-48), in the imagery of the Parable.”

Gregory of Nyssa (335–395) bishop of Nyssa

On Virginity, Chapter 18

Life, Fish, Universe, Sea

“While we are zealously performing the duties of good citizens and soldiers, we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

General Orders (2 May 1778); published in Writings of George Washington (1932), Vol.XI, pp. 342-343
1770s

Religion

“How good is man's life, the mere living!
How fit to employ
All the heart and the soul and the senses
Forever in joy!”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

"Saul", ix.
Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845)

Life, Soul, Sense, Heart

“An act of goodness is of itself an act of happiness. No reward coming after the event can compare with the sweet reward that went with it.”

Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949) Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist

As quoted in The New Dictionary of Thoughts: A Cyclopedia of Quotations (1960) by Tryon Edwards and C. N. Catrevas, p. 259

Happiness

“Yeah. I want to keep heading in that direction so the games are a tool for family bonding. However, I want the games to be a tool for expanding upon previously existing good elements rather than for making something different.”

Takashi Tezuka (1960) video game designer

Source: Iwata Asks : Super Mario Bros. 25th Anniversary http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/wii/mario25th/4/6,Nintendo. Quote

Family, Game

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones.”

William Shakespeare Julius Caesar

Antony, Act III, scene ii.
Julius Caesar (1599)

Men, Evil

“A mother-complex is not got rid of by blindly reducing the mother to human proportions. Besides that we run the risk of dissolving the experience "Mother" into atoms, thus destroying something supremely valuable and throwing away the golden key which a good fairy laid in our cradle. That is why mankind has always instinctively added the pre-existent divine pair to the personal parents-the "god"father and "god"-mother of the newborn child-so that, from sheer unconsciousness or shortsighted rationalism, he should never forget himself so far as to invest his own parents with divinity.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

"Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype" (1939) In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious P.172

God, Parent, Personality, Forgetting

“With that truncheon thou hast slain a good knight, and now it sticketh in thy body.”

Thomas Malory book Le Morte d'Arthur

Book II, ch. 14
Le Morte d'Arthur (c. 1469) (first known edition 1485)

“Beauty is indeed a good gift of God; but that the good may not think it a great good, God dispenses it even to the wicked.”

Aurelius Augustinus book The City of God

XV, 22
The City of God (early 400s)

God, Beauty, Thinking

“I react like everyone else, even like those I most despise; but I make up for it by deploring every action I commit, good or bad.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

“If a robin can sing like that for a worm surely I can work like a father for my good wife and my four fine children!”

Smith Wigglesworth (1859–1947) British evangelist

Page 8 The Complete Story: A New Biography on the Apostle of Faith By Julian Wilson http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=e2RWZpOHfmoC|Wigglesworth:

Children, Singing

“Look these bastards in the eyes, and if anyone attacks you, already decide who will be the one to disconnect the railing where you are, and beat the hell out of them, the no-good bastards! And if you don't have a gun, every one of them has one gun, two guns, maybe three guns. In self-defense, if they attack you, take their goddamn guns from them and use their guns on them! In self-defense. Giuliani is known for taking his police and sending them off in riots. If any one of these bastards riots here today, you take their nightstick the way they did brother Abner Louima and ram it up their behind and jam it down their damn throats!”

Khalid Abdul Muhammad (1948–2001) American activist

Million Youth March (5 September 1998), quoted in The Village Voice (13 October 1998) "The Hunt for Khallid Abdul Muhammad" by Peter Noel

Way, Hell

“I went into physics to hang around with the bright kids. I wasn't doing anything else and I didn't want to look dumb, so I thought I'd pretend to be a physicist, just like the others. It was five or ten years after my Ph. D. before I realized I was pretty good.”

Leon M. Lederman (1922–2018) American mathematician and physicist

From Subatomic World Explorer, as noted on American Academy of Achievement web site http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/led0pro-1 (URL accessed on October 20, 2008)

“America, this is our moment. This is our time, our time to turn the page on the policies of the past, our time to bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face, our time to offer a new direction for this country that we love. The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. I face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people. Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth. This was the moment - this was the time - when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves, and our highest ideals.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Barack Obama’s Remarks in St. Paul http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/us/politics/03text-obama.html (3 June 2008) 2008

Love, War, Children, People

“A good sketch is better than a long speech.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Un bon croquis vaut mieux qu'un long discours.
Quoted in L'Arche de Noé (1968) by Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, p. 48; this has sometimes also been translated as "A picture is worth a thousand words", though it is not known to be the origin of that English expression.
Attributed

“It is good to live and learn.”

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

Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part II (1615), Book III, Ch. 32.

Learning

“The saloon is a liar. It promises good cheer and sends sorrow.”

Billy Sunday (1862–1935) American evangelist and baseball player

Source: Billy Sunday Quotes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAfeTcqGTJA / www.famousquotes.com

“It is a mistake to classify the passions as lawful and unlawful, so as to yield to the one and refuse the other. All alike are good if we are their masters; all alike are bad if we abandon ourselves to them. Nature forbids us to extend our relations beyond the limits of our strength; reason forbids us to want what we cannot get, conscience forbids us, not to be tempted, but to yield to temptation. To feel or not to feel a passion is beyond our control, but we can control ourselves. Every sentiment under our own control is lawful; those which control us are criminal. A man is not guilty if he loves his neighbour's wife, provided he keeps this unhappy passion under the control of the law of duty; he is guilty if he loves his own wife so greatly as to sacrifice everything to that love.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau book Emile, or On Education

Emile, or On Education (1762), Book V

Love, Law, Feeling, Nature

“Ever make fun of someone so much that you feel you should thank them for all the good times you've had? I've got a midget friend, an albino friend, and another friend who thinks "Lord of the Rings" is real. Together we call ourselves "the Unfuckables."”

Dave Attell (1965) comedian

"Skanks for the Memories"

Feeling, Thinking, Time

“The Word is the equivalent to the spoken Truth. If things are spoken into Being through Truth, then they are good. Then what you have to decide is: if you speak the Truth, then what happens is Good, regardless of what happens. And that's faith.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

Truth, Faith

“But you know, we — when we feel stress, when we feel pressure, when we’re just fed information that encourages some of our worst instincts, we tend to fall back into some of the old racial fears and racial divisions and racial stereotypes, and it’s very hard for us to break out of those and to listen and to think about people as people and to imagine being in that person’s shoes. And by the way, it’s no longer a black and white issue alone. You got Hispanic folks and you got Asian folks, this is not just the same old battles that — we’ve got this stew that’s bubbling up from people everywhere and we’re going to have to make sure that we in our own lives and our own families and work places do a better job of treating everybody with basic respect and understanding that not everybody starts off in the same situation and imaging what would it be like if you were born in an inner city and had no job prospects anywhere within a 20 mile radius or how does it feel being born in some rural county where there’s no job opportunities within in a 20 mile radius and seeing those two things as connected as opposed to separate. So, you know, we got work to do, but overall, I think on this front, the trend lines, ultimately, I think will be good.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2017, Final News Conference as President (January 2017)

People, Fear, Family, Shoe

“A cheerful temper joined with innocence will make beauty attractive, knowledge delightful and wit good-natured.”

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

No. 192.
The Tatler (1711–1714)

Beauty, Nature, Knowledge

“Furthermore, thanks to the Marxist religion, they (the Russians) have everything required to make them patient. They have been promised happiness on earth (a feature which distinguishes Marxism from the Christian religion)— but in the future. The Jew, Mardochee Marx, like the good Jew that he was, was awaiting the coming of the Messiah. He has placed the Messiah conception in a setting of historic materialism by asserting that terrestrial happiness is a factor in an almost endless process of evolution. "Happiness is within your reach," he says, "that I promise you. But you must let evolution take its course and not try to hurry matters." Mankind always falls for a specious trick of that sort… Lenin did not have the time, but Stalin will carry on the good work, and so on and so on… Marxism is a very powerful force. But how shall we assess Christianity, that other child of Judaism, which will not commit itself further than to promise the faithful happiness in another world? Believe me, it is incomparably stronger!”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

25 February 1945.
Disputed, The Testament of Adolf Hitler (1945)

World, Faith, Religion, Time

“Good frend for Jesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased heare
Blese be the man that spares these stones
And curst be he that moves my bones”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Shakespeare's epitaph

“Good soldiers, bad officers; however don't forget that without them we would not have any Civilization.”

Erwin Rommel (1891–1944) German field marshal of World War II

On Italians, sometimes cited to The Rommel Papers (1953) edited by Basil Henry Liddell Hart, but without specific chapter or page citations; it seems to summarize an attitude indicated by Rommel in Ch. 11 of that work, but no published occurrence of this has actually been located.
Disputed

Forgetting

“That bad manners are so prevalent in the world is the fault of good manners.”

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) Austrian writer

Dass soviel Ungezogenheit gut durch die Welt kommt, daran ist die Wohlerzogenheit schuld.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 72.

World

“The duty of the moment is what you should be doing at any given time, in whatever place God has put you. You may not have Christ in a homeless person at your door, but you may have a little child. If you have a child, your duty of the moment may be to change a dirty diaper. So you do it. But you don’t just change that diaper, you change it to the best of your ability, with great love for both God and that child…. There are all kinds of good Catholic things you can do, but whatever they are, you have to realize that there is always the duty of the moment to be done. And it must be done, because the duty of the moment is the duty of God.”

Catherine Doherty (1896–1985) Religious order founder; Servant of God

Dear Parents (1997)

Love, God, Change, Time

“I don’t see anyone better than me. No player does things that I cannot do myself, but I see things others can’t do. There’s no more complete player than me. I’m the best player in history — in the good and the bad moments.”

Cristiano Ronaldo (1985) Portuguese association football player

[Dev, Sarthak, Football Paradise, The Ballon d’Or: It’s time football stopped trying to be Hollywood, 15 December 2017, 4 February 2018, https://www.footballparadise.com/ballon-dor/]
In the wake of winning his fifth Ballon d’Or in December 2017.

History

“If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.”

Jack Handey (1949) American comedian

Deep Thoughts: Inspiration for the Uninspired (1992), Berkley Books, ISBN 0-425-13365-6

Tree, Time

“He was a boy, she was girl. Can I make it any more obvious? He was a punk; she did ballet. What more can I say? He wanted her, she'd never tell secretly she wanted him as well. All of her friends stuck up their nose, they had a problem with his baggy clothes. He was a skater boy. She said: 'see you later, boy'. He wasn't good enough for her. She had a pretty face, but her head was up in space. She needed to come back down to Earth!”

Avril Lavigne (1984) Canadian singer-songwriter and actress

"Sk8er Boi"
Let Go (2002)

Girl, Boy, Problem, Clothes

“Dragon is the category of primate predator. Predator is a weird category, right? Because there's crocodiles in it, and then there's lions. And they don't have much in common except that they eat you. So it's a functional category. So the dragon is the imagistic representation of the functional category of predator. It's like this: If you're a monkey, then a bird will pick you off, like an eagle. That's the wings. If it wasn't an eagle, then it was a cat (dragon claws), because they climb trees and give you a good chomping. And if it wasn't a cat, then you go down to the ground and a snake would get you, or maybe the snake would climb up the tree. So a dragon is a cat-snake-bird. And that's the thing that you really want to avoid. An the other thing is that it breathes fire, which is interesting because fire was both greatest friend and greatest enemy of humanity.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Concepts

Cats, Bird, Tree

“One whose intentions and thoughts are cultivated will disregard wealth and nobility. One whose greatest concern is for the Way and righteousness will take lightly kings and dukes. It is simply that when one examines oneself on the inside, external goods carry little weight. A saying goes, "The gentleman makes things his servants. The petty man is servant to things."”

Xun Zi (-313–-238 BC) Ancient Chinese philosopher

Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy (2001), p. 263 A similar phrase to the saying is found in the 3rd millennium BCE Sumerian text Instructions of Shuruppak by Šuruppak: "You should not serve things; things should serve you." http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section5/tr561.htm "Cultivating oneself"

Way, Wealth

“The object of government is the welfare of the people. The material progress and prosperity of a nation are desirable chiefly so long as they lead to the moral and material welfare of all good citizens.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)

People

“People get annoyed with you if you treat them like they're automatons that lack free will. It's something that people find very constraining. There's something slave-like about that even. The demand that you don't have actual autonomy and, even worse, that you're not responsible for your choices – it's an insult to someone to suggest to them that they're not responsible for their decisions. To do that to someone, from a legal perspective, you have to argue something like diminished capacity. You are mentally ill, or you don't have the intellectual capacity, or you were under some substance, or you had a brain injury, and that's why you're not responsible for your actions. Part of the respect that you give other human beings is that you acknowledge that they are responsible for their actions. Part of that, too, is that if you do something good, you're also responsible for that. It's got to be more annoying than anything else to strive virtuously, to produce something of extreme value, and then to be treated as if it is a mere deterministic outcome, and that your actual choices had nothing to do with that. It can be extraordinarily punishing.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

People, Decision, Parting

“Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know that this is of a truth — that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. …For which reason also, I am not angry with my accusers, or my condemners; they have done me no harm, although neither of them meant to do me any good; and for this I may gently blame them.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

41c–e
Plato, Apology

Life, Death, Truth, Evil

“The idea that paradise, the proper habitat of a human being, is a walled garden – is a good one. It's an echo back to the chaos/order idea. Walls: culture. Garden: nature. The proper human habitat is a properly tended garden.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ifi5KkXig3s "Biblical Series IV: Adam and Eve: Self-Consciousness, Evil, and Death"

Idea, Nature

“In scientific subjects, the natural remedy for dogmatism has been found in research. By temperament and training, the research worker is the antithesis of the pundit. What he is actively and constantly aware of is his ignorance, not his knowledge; the insufficiency of his concepts, of the terms and phrases in which he tries to excogitate his problems: not their final and exhaustive sufficiency. He is, therefore, usually only a good teacher for the few who wish to use their mind as a workshop, rather than a warehouse.”

Ronald Fisher (1890–1962) English statistician, evolutionary biologist, geneticist, and eugenicist

Eugenics, academic and practical. Eugenics Review, 27, 95-100, 1935.
The original has ‘to store it as’ inserted before the final words ‘a warehouse’, likely a mistake left from an earlier draft.
1930s

Nature, Knowledge, Problem, Teachers

“The problem with aging is not that it’s one damn thing after another—it’s every damn thing, all at once, all the time.
You can’t stop aging. Gene therapies and replacement organs and plastic surgery give it a good fight. But it catches up with you anyway. Get a new lung, and your heart blows a valve. Get a new heart, and your liver swells up to the size of an inflatable kiddie pool. Change out your liver, a stroke gives you a whack. That’s aging’s trump card; they still can’t replace brains.”

John Scalzi (1969) American science fiction writer

Source: Old Man’s War (2005), Chapter 1 (p. 14)

Age, Problem, Change, Time

“If death had only been the end of all, the wicked would have had a good bargain in dying, for they would have been happily quit not only of their body, but of their own evil together with their souls. But now, as the soul plainly appears to be immortal, there is no release or salvation from evil except the attainment of the highest virtue and wisdom. For the soul when on her progress to the world below takes nothing with her but nurture and education…”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Death, Wisdom, World, Education

“We’re neither good nor evil. We’re simply interested in things as they are.”

Lloyd Alexander The Chronicles of Prydain

Source: The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book II: The Black Cauldron (1965), Chapter 14

Evil

“TV's not the same buzz. If someone tells you three million people watched the show last week, that's good but, when you walk out in front of 1,000, you think, 'Oh my God, this had better be good.”

Jimmy Carr (1972) British comedian and humourist

Paddy Hoey (July 15, 2005) "Carr's a comic with universal appeal", Daily Post.

God, People, Thinking

“Too much SALT isn’t good for you.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Remark about the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks in Reykjavík, Iceland, quoted by James Reston, 'The New York Times (6 July 1986)
1980s, Second term of office (1985–1989)

“And now, ladies and gentlemen, that we've enjoyed some good times this evening, and enjoyed some laughter together, I feel it is my obligation to remind you of some of the negative, depressing, dangerous, life-threatening things that life is really all about; things you have not been thinking about tonight, but which will be waiting for you as soon as you leave the theater or as soon as you turn off your television sets. Anal rape, quicksand, body lice, evil spirits, gridlock, acid rain, continental drift, labor violence, flash floods, rabies, torture, bad luck, calcium deficiency, falling rocks, cattle stampedes, bank failure, evil neighbors, killer bees, organ rejection, lynching, toxic waste, unstable dynamite, religious fanatics, prickly heat, price fixing, moral decay, hotel fires, loss of face, stink bombs, bubonic plague, neo-Nazis, friction, cereal weevils, failure of will, chain reaction, soil erosion, mail fraud, dry rot, voodoo curse, broken glass, snake bite, parasites, white slavery, public ridicule, faithless friends, random violence, breach of contract, family scandals, charlatans, transverse myelitis, structural defects, race riots, sunspots, rogue elephants, wax buildup, killer frost, jealous coworkers, root canals, metal fatigue, corporal punishment, sneak attacks, peer pressure, vigilantes, birth defects, false advertising, ungrateful children, financial ruin, mildew, loss of privileges, bad drugs, ill-fitting shoes, widespread chaos, Lou Gehrig's disease, stray bullets, runaway trains, chemical spills, locusts, airline food, shipwrecks, prowlers, bathtub accidents, faulty merchandise, terrorism, discrimination, wrongful cremation, carbon deposits, beef tapeworm, taxation without representation, escaped maniacs, sunburn, abandonment, threatening letters, entropy, nine-mile fever, poor workmanship, absentee landlords, solitary confinement, depletion of the ozone layer, unworthiness, intestinal bleeding, defrocked priests, loss of equilibrium, disgruntled employees, global warming, card sharks, poisoned meat, nuclear accidents, broken promises, contamination of the water supply, obscene phone calls, nuclear winter, wayward girls, mutual assured destruction, rampaging moose, the greenhouse effect, cluster headaches, social isolation, Dutch elm disease, the contraction of the universe, paper cuts, eternal damnation, the wrath of God, and PARANOIAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Playing With Your Head (1986)

Life, God, Bad luck, Children

“I've always been impulsive. My thinking is usually pretty good, but I always seem to do it after I do my talking—by which time I've generally destroyed all basis for further conversation.”

Roger Zelazny book This Immortal

Source: This Immortal (1965), pp. 9-10

Thinking, Time

“Free will without fate is no more conceivable than spirit without matter, good without evil.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Freier Wille ohne Fatum ist ebenso wenig denkbar, wie Geist ohne Reelles, Gutes ohne Böses.
"Fatum und Geschichte," April 1862

Fate, Evil

“The Declaration of Independence was formed by the representatives of American liberty from thirteen States of the confederacy; twelve of which were slaveholding communities. We need not discuss the way or the reason of their becoming slaveholding communities. It is sufficient for our purpose that all of them greatly deplored the evil and that they placed a provision in the Constitution which they supposed would gradually remove the disease by cutting off its source. This was the abolition of the slave trade. So general was conviction, the public determination, to abolish the African slave trade, that the provision which I have referred to as being placed in the Constitution, declared that it should not be abolished prior to the year 1808. A constitutional provision was necessary to prevent the people, through Congress, from putting a stop to the traffic immediately at the close of the war. Now, if slavery had been a good thing, would the Fathers of the Republic have taken a step calculated to diminish its beneficent influences among themselves, and snatch the boon wholly from their posterity? These communities, by their representatives in old Independence Hall, said to the whole world of men: "We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." This was their majestic interpretation of the economy of the Universe. This was their lofty, and wise, and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to His creatures… Yes, gentlemen, to all His creatures, to the whole great family of man. In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on, and degraded, and imbruted by its fellows. They grasped not only the whole race of man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the farthest posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their children and their children's children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages. Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began, so that truth, and justice, and mercy, and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land; so that no man would hereafter dare to limit and circumscribe the great principles on which the temple of liberty was being built…”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1850s, Speech at Lewistown, Illinois (1858)

Life, Men, War, Children

“The story of Adam and Eve represents the fruit as producing a psychological transformation. So the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is an abstraction across trees, and it's trying to say: 'Here's something that's common across trees, it's a fruit that's common across trees.' The fruit that's common across trees is something that you might call food, fair enough. But here's something that's even more cool: food that's stable across the entire domain of food, isn't food – it's information. We use the same bloody circuits in our brain to forage for information, that animals use to forage for information. Why is that? Because we figured out knowing where the food is, is more important than having the food… That's why we're information foragers.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Biblical Series IV: Adam and Eve: Self-Consciousness, Evil, and Death https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ifi5KkXig3s

Food, Knowledge, Tree, Evil

“We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them — this morning, as they prepared for their journey, and waved good-bye, and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God."”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Speech about the Space Shuttle disaster http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1986/12886b.htm(28 January 1986) 1980s, Second term of office (1985–1989)

God, Time, Forgetting

“God’s heart has a special place for the poor, so much so that he himself “became poor” (2 Cor 8:9). The entire history of our redemption is marked by the presence of the poor. Salvation came to us from the “yes” uttered by a lowly maiden from a small town on the fringes of a great empire. The Saviour was born in a manger, in the midst of animals, like children of poor families; he was presented at the Temple along with two turtledoves, the offering made by those who could not afford a lamb (cf. Lk 2:24; Lev 5:7); he was raised in a home of ordinary workers and worked with his own hands to earn his bread. When he began to preach the Kingdom, crowds of the dispossessed followed him, illustrating his words: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor” (Lk 4:18). He assured those burdened by sorrow and crushed by poverty that God has a special place for them in his heart: “Blessed are you poor, yours is the kingdom of God” (Lk 6:20); he made himself one of them: “I was hungry and you gave me food to eat”, and he taught them that mercy towards all of these is the key to heaven”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

cf. Mt 25:5ff.
Section 197
2010s, 2013, Evangelii Gaudium · The Joy of the Gospel

God, Children, Family, Food

“I have never believed that the securing of material resources ought to form the central interest of human life—but have instead maintained that personality is an independent flowering of the intellect and emotions wholly apart from the struggle for existence. Formerly I accepted the archaic dictum that only a few can be relieved of the engulfing waste of the material struggle in its bitterest form—a dictum which is, of course, true in an agricultural age having scanty resources. Therefore I adopted an aristocratic attitude; regretfully arguing that life, in any degree of fulness, is only for the fortunate few whose ancestors' prowess has given them economic security and leisure. But I did not take the bourgeois position of praising struggle for its own sake. While recognising certain worthy qualities brought out by it, I was too much impressed by its stultifying attributes to regard it as other than a necessary evil. In my opinion, only the leisured aristocrat really had a chance at adequate life—nor did I despise him because he was not forced to struggle. Instead, I was sorry that so few could share his good fortune. Too much human energy was wasted in the mere scramble for food and shelter. The condition was tolerable only because inevitable in yesterday's world of scanty resources. Millions of men must go to waste in order that a few might really live. Still—if those few were not upheld, no high culture would ever be built up. I never had any use for the American pioneer's worship of work and self-reliance for their own sakes. These things are necessary in their place, but not ends in themselves—and any attempt to make them ends in themselves is essentially uncivilised. Thus I have no fundamental meeting-ground with the rugged Yankee individualist. I represent rather the mood of the agrarian feudalism which preceded the pioneering and capitalistic phases. My ideal of life is nothing material or quantitative, but simply the security and leisure necessary for the maximum flowering of the human spirit.... Well—so much for the past. Now we live in an age of easy abundance which makes possible the fulfilment of all moderate human wants through a relatively slight amount of labour. What shall be the result? Shall we still make resources prohibitively hard to get when there is really a plethora of them? Shall we allow antique notions of allocation—"property," etc.—to interfere with the rational distribution of this abundant stock of resources among all those who require them? Shall we value hardship and anxiety and uncertainty so fatuously as to impose these evils artificially on people who do not need to bear them, through the perpetuation of a set of now irrelevant and inapplicable rules of allocation? What reasonable objection is there to an intelligent centralised control of resources whose primary object shall be the elimination of want in every quarter—a thing possible without removing comfortable living from any one now enjoying it? To call the allocation of resources something "uncontrollable" by man—and in an age when virtually all natural forces are harnessed and utilised—is simply infantile. It is simply that those who now have the lion's share don't want any fresh or rational allocation. It is needless to say that no sober thinker envisages a workless equalitarian paradise. Much work remains, and human capacities differ. High-grade service must still receive greater rewards than low-grade service. But amidst the present abundance of goods and minimisation of possible work, there must be a fair and all-inclusive allocation of the chances to perform work and secure rewards. When society can't give a man work, it must keep him comfortable without it; but it must give him work if it can, and must compel him to perform it when it is needed. This does not involve interference with personal life and habits (contrary to what some reactionaries say), nor is the absence of insecurity anything to deplore.... But of course the real need of change comes not from the mere fact of abundant resources, but from the growth of conditions making it impossible for millions to have any chance of getting any resources under the present outworn set of artificial rules. This development is no myth. Machines had displaced 900,000 men in the U. S. before the crash of '29, and no conceivable regime of "prosperity" (where by a few people will have abundant and flexible resources and successfully exchange them among one another) will ever make it possible to avoid the permanent presence of millions of unemployed, so long as old-fashioned laissez-faire capitalism is adhered to.... And so I have readjusted my ideas. … I have gone almost reluctantly—step by step, as pressed by facts too insistent to deny—and am still quite as remote from Belknap's naive Marxism as I am from the equally naive Republican orthodoxy I have left behind. I am as set as ever against any cultural upheaval—and believe that nothing of the kind is necessary in order to achieve a new and feasible economic equilibrium. The best of culture has always been non-economic.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Hitherto it has grown out of the secure, non-struggling life of the aristocrat. In future it may be expected to grow out of the secure and not-so-struggling life of whatever citizens are personally able to develop it. There need be no attempt to drag culture down to the level of crude minds. That, indeed, would be something to fight tooth and nail! With economic opportunities artificially regulated, we may well let other interests follow a natural course. Inherent differences in people and in tastes will create different social-cultural classes as in the past—although the relation of these classes to the holding of material resources will be less fixed than in the capitalistic age now closing. All this, of course, is directly contrary to Belknap's rampant Stalinism—but I'm telling you I'm no bolshevik! I am for the preservation of all values worth preserving—and for the maintenance of complete cultural continuity with the Western-European mainstream. Don't fancy that the dethronement of certain purely economic concepts means an abrupt break in that stream. Rather does it mean a return to art impulses typically aristocratic (that is, disinterested, leisurely, non-ulterior) rather than bourgeois.
Letter to Clark Ashton Smith (28 October 1934), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 60-64
Non-Fiction, Letters

Life, Men, People, Age

“I have that confidence in the common sense, I will say the common spirit of our countrymen, that I believe they will not long endure this huckstering tyranny of the Treasury Bench—these political pedlars that bought their party in the cheapest market, and sold us in the dearest. I know, Sir, that there are many who believe that the time is gone by when one can appeal to those high and honest impulses that were once the mainstay and the main element of the English character. I know, Sir, that we appeal to a people debauched by public gambling—stimulated and encouraged by an inefficient and shortsighted Minister. I know that the public mind is polluted with economic fancies; a depraved desire that the rich may become richer without the interference of industry and toil. I know, Sir, that all confidence in public men is lost. But, Sir, I have faith in the primitive and enduring elements of the English character. It may be vain now, in the midnight of their intoxication, to tell them that there will be an awakening of bitterness; it may be idle now, in the spring-tide of their economic frenzy, to warn them that there may be an ebb of trouble. But the dark and inevitable hour will arrive. Then, when their spirit is softened by misfortune, they will recur to those principles that made England great, and which, in our belief, can alone keep England great. Then, too, perchance they may remember, not with unkindness, those who, betrayed and deserted, were neither ashamed nor afraid to struggle for the "good old cause"—the cause with which are associated principles the most popular, sentiments the most entirely national—the cause of labour—the cause of the people—the cause of England.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1846/may/15/corn-importation-bill-adjourned-debate in the House of Commons (15 May 1846). 1840s

Men, People, Faith, Confidence

“I have sometimes amused myself by endeavouring to fancy what would be the fate of an individual gifted, or rather accursed, with an intellect very far superior to that of his race. Of course he would be conscious of his superiority; nor could he (if otherwise constituted as man is) help manifesting his consciousness. Thus he would make himself enemies at all points. And since his opinions and speculations would widely differ from those of all mankind — that he would be considered a madman is evident. How horribly painful such a condition! Hell could invent no greater torture than that of being charged with abnormal weakness on account of being abnormally strong.In like manner, nothing can be clearer than that a very generous spirit — truly feeling what all merely profess — must inevitably find itself misconceived in every direction — its motives misinterpreted. Just as extremeness of intelligence would be thought fatuity, so excess of chivalry could not fail of being looked upon as meanness in the last degree — and so on with other virtues. This subject is a painful one indeed. That individuals have so soared above the plane of their race is scarcely to be questioned; but, in looking back through history for traces of their existence, we should pass over all the biographies of the "good and the great," while we search carefully the slight records of wretches who died in prison, in Bedlam, or upon the gallows.”

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic

Marginalia http://www.easylit.com/poe/comtext/prose/margin.shtml (November 1844)

Pain, Fate, Feeling, History

“Clarity is the good faith of philosophers”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

La clarté est la bonne foi des philosophes
Maxim 729, Réflexions et maximes ("Reflections and Maxims") (1746).

Faith

“I have been shown a letter on this subject, supposed to be an able one, in which the writer expresses regret that my mind has not seemed to be definitely fixed on the question whether the seceding States, so called, are in the Union or out of it. It would perhaps, add astonishment to his regret, were he to learn that since I have found professed Union men endeavoring to make that question, I have purposely forborne any public expression upon it. As appears to me that question has not been, nor yet is, a practically material one, and that any discussion of it, while it thus remains practically immaterial, could have no effect other than the mischievous one of dividing our friends. As yet, whatever it may hereafter become, that question is bad, as the basis of a controversy, and good for nothing at all — a merely pernicious abstraction.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Last public address (1865)

Men, Question, Learning, Appearance

“It`s truly an honour and privilege to have played in the same era. He will remain an inspiration for the next generations. To become another Anil Kumble one will have to work really, really hard. I have not come across a greater cricketer, who is good so dedicated to his work.”

Anil Kumble (1970) Former Indian cricketer

By Sachin Tendulkar.
Kumble Calls it a Day: Quotes... For and By Kumble...

“Surely the test of a novel's characters is that you feel a strong interest in them and their affairs—the good to be successful, the bad to suffer failure. Well, in John Ward, you feel no divided interest, no discriminating interest—you want them all to land in hell together, and right away.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

About Margaret Deland's book John Ward, Preacher
Mark Twain's Notebook (1935)

Feeling, Failure, Hell, Strong

“Jealousy is the cause of erosion of good deeds, as well as the attracter of chastisement.”

Ali al-Hadi (829–868) imam

Muhsin al-Amīn, ‘Ayān ush-Shī‘ah, vol.2, p. 39.
Religious Wisdom

Jealousy

“The whole of moral philosophy, as it is now widely taught, rests on a contrast between statements of fact and evaluations. … If a man is given good evidence for a factual conclusion he cannot just refuse to accept the conclusion on the ground that in his scheme of things this evidence is not evidence at all. With evaluations, however, it is different. An evaluation is not connected logically with the factual statements on which it is based.”

Philippa Foot (1920–2010) British philosopher

"Moral Beliefs"

“My recollection is that Bob Lucas and Ed Prescott were initially very enthusiastic about rational expectations econometrics. After all, it simply involved imposing on ourselves the same high standards we had criticized the Keynesians for failing to live up to. But after about five years of doing likelihood ratio tests on rational expectations models, I recall Bob Lucas and Ed Prescott both telling me that those tests were rejecting too many good models.”

Thomas J. Sargent (1943) American economist

Thomas J. Sargent interviewed by George W. Evans & Seppo Honkapohja, Macroeconomic Dynamics, 9, 2005, 561–583.

“I'm very privileged. I've always had a very good life. But everything that I've gotten out of life was obtained through dedication and a tremendous desire to achieve my goals… a great desire for victory, meaning victory in life, not as a driver. To all of you who have experienced this or are searching now, let me say that whoever you may be in your life, whether you're at the highest or most modest level, you must show great strength and determination and do everything with love and a deep belief in God. One day, you'll achieve your aim and you'll be successful.”

Ayrton Senna (1960–1994) Brazilian racing driver

Interview, 1991 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nS8W3b3wvY

Love, Life, God, Search

“Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.”

Edgar Allan Poe The City in the Sea

St. 1.
The City in the Sea (1831)

Death, Lying

“The philosophy of nature must not be unduly terrestrial; for it, the earth is merely one of the smaller planets of one of the smaller stars of the Milky Way. It would be ridiculous to warp the philosophy of nature in order to bring out results that are pleasing to the tiny parasites of this insignificant planet. Vitalism as a philosophy, and evolutionism, show, in this respect, a lack of sense of proportion and logical relevance. They regard the facts of life, which are personally interesting to us, as having a cosmic significance, not a significance confined to the earth's surface. Optimism and pessimism, as cosmic philosophies, show the same naive humanism; the great world, so far as we know it from the philosophy of nature, is neither good nor bad, and is not concerned to make us happy or unhappy. All such philosophies spring from self-importance and are best corrected by a little astronomy.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1920s, What I Believe (1925)

Life, World, Way, Star

“We cannot, if we would, play the part of China, and be content to rot by inches in ignoble ease within our borders, taking no interest in what goes on beyond them, sunk in a scrambling commercialism; heedless of the higher life, the life of aspiration, of toil and risk, busying ourselves only with the wants of our bodies for the day, until suddenly we should find, beyond a shadow of question, what China has already found, that in this world the nation that has trained itself to a career of unwarlike and isolated ease is bound, in the end, to go down before other nations which have not lost the manly and adventurous qualities. If we are to be a really great people, we must strive in good faith to play a great part in the world.”

Theodore Roosevelt The Strenuous Life

1900s, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900), The Strenuous Life

Life, People, World, Faith

“If the soul has not reached the state of unitive love, it is necessary for it to make acts of love, as well in the active as in the contemplative life. But when it has reached it, it is not requisite it should occupy itself in other and exterior duties — unless they be matters of obligation — which might hinder, were it but for a moment, the life of love in God, though they may minister greatly to His service; because an instant of pure love is more precious in the eyes of God and the soul, and more profitable to the Church, than all other good works together, though it may seem as if nothing were done.”

John of the Cross (1542–1591) Spanish mystic and Roman Catholic saint

Note to Stanza 28 part 2
Spiritual Canticle of The Soul and The Bridegroom, Notes to the Stanzas

Love, Life, God, Soul

“A good teacher offers practice, a bad one offers theories.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Cultivation
One Minute Wisdom (1989)

Teachers

“Can we find nothing good to say about TV? Well, yes, it brings scattered solitaries into a sort of communion. TV allows your isolated American to think that he participates in the life of the entire country. It does not actually place him in a community, but his heart is warmed with the suggestion (on the whole false) that there is a community somewhere in the vicinity and that his atomized consciousness will be drawn back toward the whole.”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

"The Distracted Public" (1990), p. 159
It All Adds Up (1994)

Life, Communication, Thinking, Heart

“Jesus appeared to the disciples after the resurrection in various forms. He appeared to Mary Magdalene so that they might take him for a gardener. Very ingeniously these manifestation of Jesus is to our minds difficult to penetrate. (He appears) as a gardener. The gardener plants seedlings in prepared soil. The soil must exert a physical and chemical influence so that the seed of the plant can grow. Yet this is not sufficient. The warmth and light of the sun must be added, together with rain, in order that growth may result. The seed of supernatural life, of sanctifying grace, cleanses from sin, so preparing the soul of man, and man must seek to preserve this life by his good works. He still needs the supernatural food, the body of the Lord, which received continually, develops and brings to completion of the life. So natural and supernatural must unite to the realization of the holiness to the people. Man must contribute his minimum work of toil, and God gives the growth. Truly, the seed, the talent, the grace of God is there, and man has simply to work, take the seeds to bring them to the bankers. So that we "may have life, and abundantly."”

Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) Silesian scientist and Augustinian friar

Mendel makes several allusions to biblical verses, including John 20:15, Matthew 25:26 and John 10:10.
Sermon on Easter
Original: Jesus erschien den Jüngern nach der Auferstehung in verschiedener Gestalt. Der Maria Magdalena erschien er so, daß sie ihn für einen Gärtner halten mochte. Sehr sinnreich sind diese Erscheinungen Jesu und unser Verstand vermag sie schwer zu durchdringen. (Er erscheint) als Gärtner. Dieser pflanzt den Samen in den zubereiteten Boden. Das Erdreich muss physikalisch-chemisch Einwirkung ausüben, damit der Same aufgeht. Doch reicht das nicht hin, es muß noch Sonnenwärme und Licht hinzukommen nebst Regen, damit das Gedeihen zustandekommt. Das übernatürliche Leben in seinem Keim, der heiligmachenden Gnade wird in die von der Sünde gereinigte, also vorbereitete Seele des Menschen hineingesenkt und es muß der Mensch durch seine guten Werke dieses Leben zu erhalten suchen. Es muss noch die übernatürliche Nahrung dazukommen, der Leib des Herrn, der das Leben weiter erhält, entwickelt und zur Vollendung bringt. So muss Natur und Übernatur sich vereinigen, um das Zustandekommen der Heiligkeit des Menschen. Der Mensch muß sein Scherflein Arbeit hinzugeben, und Gott gibt das Gedeihen. Es ist wahr, den Samen, das Talent, die Gnade gibt der liebe Gott, und der Mensch hat bloß die Arbeit, den Samen aufzunehmen, das Geld zu Wechslern zu tragen. Damit wir »das Leben haben und im Überflusse haben.

Life, God, People, Food

“Fascism was born to inspire a faith not of the Right (which at bottom aspires to conserve everything, even injustice) or of the Left (which at bottom aspires to destroy everything, even goodness), but a collective, integral, national faith.”

José Antonio Primo de Rivera (1903–1936) Spanish noble and politician

Stanley G. Payne, Falange: A History of Spanish Fascism (1961), p. 31.

Faith

“Because monks come from the midst of purity, they consider as good and pure what does not arouse desire among other people.”

Dogen (1200–1253) Japanese Zen buddhist teacher

IV, 11
Shobogenzo Zuimonki (1238)

People

“Let me have none of your Popish stuff! Get away with you, good morning.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

Last words (June 1809), as quoted in The Fortnightly https://books.google.com/books?id=aCYzAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA398&lpg=PA398&dq=%22Let+me+have+none+of+your+Popish+stuff%22&source=bl&ots=D0WFax-dxc&sig=Ai90qOuOHYdsoVtR1tIIP_pwgUM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiii9momsrLAhWlmoMKHVxUBS0Q6AEIJDAE#v=onepage&q=%22Let%20me%20have%20none%20of%20your%20Popish%20stuff%22&f=false, Volume 25; Volume 31, p. 398 1800s

“What good would it be to possess the whole universe if one were its only survivor?”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher

A Lasting Peace Through the Federation of Europe (1756)

Universe

“Model for others. He who wants to set a good example must add a grain of foolishness to his virtue; then others can imitate and, at the same time, rise above the one being imitated - something which people love.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

Section IX, "Man Alone with Himself" / aphorism 561
Human, All Too Human (1878), Helen Zimmern translation

Love, People, Time