Quotes about hold

A collection of quotes on the topic of hold, doing, use, other.

Joseph Campbell quote: “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”

Quotes about hold

“This life is what you make it. No matter what, you're going to mess up sometimes, it's a universal truth. But the good part is you get to decide how you're going to mess it up. Girls will be your friends - they'll act like it anyway. But just remember, some come, some go. The ones that stay with you through everything - they're your true best friends. Don't let go of them. Also remember, sisters make the best friends in the world. As for lovers, well, they'll come and go too. And baby, I hate to say it, most of them - actually pretty much all of them are going to break your heart, but you can't give up because if you give up, you'll never find your soulmate. You'll never find that half who makes you whole and that goes for everything. Just because you fail once, doesn't mean you're gonna fail at everything. Keep trying, hold on, and always, always, always believe in yourself, because if you don't, then who will, sweetie? So keep your head high, keep your chin up, and most importantly, keep smiling, because life's a beautiful thing and there's so much to smile about.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Heartbreaking, Inspirational, love, Life

“You may not be her first, her last, or her only. She loved before she may love again. But if she loves you now, what else matters? She's not perfect—you aren't either, and the two of you may never be perfect together but if she can make you laugh, cause you to think twice, and admit to being human and making mistakes, hold onto her and give her the most you can. She may not be thinking about you every second of the day, but she will give you a part of her that she knows you can break—her heart. So don't hurt her, don't change her, don't analyze and don't expect more than she can give. Smile when she makes you happy, let her know when she makes you mad, and miss her when she's not there.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

Variant: You may not be her first, her last, or her only. She loved before she may love again. But if she loves you now, what else matters? She's not perfect — you aren't either, and the two of you may never be perfect together but if she can make you laugh, cause you to think twice, and admit to being human and making mistakes, hold onto her and give her the most you can. She may not be thinking about you every second of the day, but she will give you a part of her that she knows you can break — her heart. So don't hurt her, don't change her, don't analyze and don't expect more than she can give. Smile when she makes you happy, let her know when she makes you mad, and miss her when she's not there.

love, Love, Smile, Thinking

“Hold me, I can't breathe I don't wanna die, I don't wanna OD Cup full of lean, pure codeine Ten lines deep, now I can't see”

Lil Peep (1996–2017) American rapper

Song Falling 4 Me, Album: Crybaby

“The Sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.”

Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910–1997) French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and …

Sea

“Percy, let me go" she croaked. "You can't pull me up."
His face was white with effort. She could see in his eyes that he knew it was hopeless.
"Never," he said. He looked up at Nico, fifteen feet above.
"The other side, Nico! We'll see you there. Understand?"
Nico's eyes widened. "But-"
"Lead them!" Percy shouted. "Promise me!"
"I-I will."
Below them, the voice laughed in the darkness. Sacrifices. Beautiful sacrifices to wake the goddess.
Percy tightened his grip on Annabeth's wrist. His face was gaunt, scraped and bloody, his hair dusted with cobwebs, but when he locked eyes with her, she thought he had never looked more handsome.
"We're staying together," he promised. "You're not getting away from me. Never again."
Only then did she understand what would happen. A one-way trip. A very hard fall.
"As long as we're together," she said.
She heard Nico and Hazel still screaming for help. She saw sunlight far, far above- maybe the last sunlight she would ever see.
Then Percy let go of his ledge, and together, holding hands, he and Annabeth fell into the endless darkness.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

Beauty, Way, Understanding, Effort

“But it is a well-known maxim of war that whoever tries to hold on to everything at once, finishes up by holding nothing at all.”

Erich von Manstein (1887–1973) German general

Lost Victories, The Winter Campaign In South Russia

War

“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Fear

“Hold everything in your hands lightly, otherwise it hurts when God pries your fingers open.”

Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) Dutch resistance hero and writer

Hurtful, God, Hurt

“Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes, it is letting go.”

Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) German writer

Thinking, Strong, Heartbreaking, Inspirational

“When kids hit 1 year old, it's like hanging out with a miniature drunk. You have to hold onto them. They bump into things. They laugh and cry. They urinate. They vomit.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

Cry

“All the loving acts that two human beings are capable of, the simple act of holding hands can often become the most intimate. Why is this so? Basically, because the nature of the hands and feet is such that the energy system finds expression in these two parts of the body in a very singular way. Two palms coming together have far more intimacy than the contact between any other parts of the body. You can try this with yourself. You don’t even need a partner. When you put your hands together, the two energy dimensions within you (right-left, masculine-feminine, solar-lunar, yin-yang, etc.) are linked in a certain way, and you begin to experience a sense of unity within yourself. This is the logic of the traditional Indian namaskar. It is a means of harmonizing the system. So, the simplest way to experience a state of union is to try this simple namaskar yoga. Put your hands together, and pay loving attention to any object you use or consume, or any form of life that you encounter. When you bring this sense of awareness into every simple act, your experience of life will never be the same again. There is even a possibility that if you put your hands together, you could unite the world!”

Sadhguru book Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Love, Life, World, Way

“Never bend your head. Hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.”

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

Inspirational, Courageous, Motivational, Wise

“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Graduation, New Year, Star

“For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love.”

John Donne The Canonization

The Canonization, stanza 1

Love, God

“So many people are most miserable these days.
The reason they find it so difficult to be happy is that they always view the past to be better than it was, the present dramatically worse than it is, and the future less resolute than it will be.
The idea of happiness is foreign to them.
Is this not something that is innate because babies are born with
"tabula rasa" which refers to the epistemological idea that individuals are born without built-in mental content and that therefore all knowledge comes from experience or perception. However I don't disagree with the doctrine of Innatism which holds that the mind is born already in possession of certain knowledge.
A smile, for instance is natural and innate!
So it is a combination of the two schools of thought.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Baby, Idea, Nature, Knowledge

“Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor.”

Stan Lee (1922–2018) American comic book writer

“To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

"In Blackwater Woods"
American Primitive (1983)
Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1

Sad, Heartbreaking, Relationship, Love

“When you're at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on.”

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

“Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together.”

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

Red Cross Speech http://books.google.com/books?id=f6l-dsvnjhEC&pg=PA406&dq=%22Friendship+is+the+only+cement%22, New York (18 May 1918) <br class="br">1910s

Friendship, Cute, For Friend, For Bestfriend

“(on the perceived need for cautious political development): "We are the High Chiefs of these islands. We are the leaders of the people. On us is the duty of pointing out to them the right course. Bear this in mind. We have to lead on two points- hold back those who advocate radical changes (for which we are not sufficiently educated) and enliven the laggards before their ignorance destroys us."”

Lala Sukuna (1888–1958) Chief of Lau and civil servant in Fiji

1936 speeches to the Great Council of Chiefs

People, Education, Change

“And before the stars were born.
The greatest gift you can offer anyone is their complete freedom.
Freedom to love, to laugh, to cry, to feel scared, angry, insecure, full of doubt or full of joy.
To hold them in that safe and sacred space.
You don't exist to make anyone else happy.
But you can be present.
Present to their unhappiness, their excitement.
Present to the life that moves in them.
And you can invite them to a deeper Happiness.
The Happiness of Being itself.
The Happiness that holds them exactly as they are.
The way you hold them now.
The way the ground holds the flowers, the trees, the great mountain ranges.
The way you were held as a little one.
And before the stars were born.”

Джефф Фостер (1977) American basketball player

Love, Life, Way, Feeling

“If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever.”

Dan Millman (1946) American self help writer

Source: Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives

Suffering

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.”

William Blake Auguries of Innocence

Variant: To see a World in a grain of sand,
And a Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.
Source: 1800s, Auguries of Innocence (1803), Line 1

Peaceful, World, Flowers

“Libertarianism holds that the only proper role of violence is to defend person and property against violence, that any use of violence that goes beyond such just defense is itself aggressive, unjust, and criminal”

Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995) American economist of the Austrian School, libertarian political theorist, and historian

Personality

“Loving life is easy when you are abroad. Where no one knows you and you hold your life in your hands all alone, you are more master of yourself than at any other time”

Hannah Arendt book Rahel Varnhagen

Source: Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess

Love, Life, Time

“Hold fast to dreams
for if dreams die
life is a broken-winged bird
that can not fly.

Hold fast to dreams
for when dreams go
life is a barren field
frozen with snow.”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

Source: The Collected Poems

Life, Dreams, Bird, Flying

“A body of men, holding themselves accountable to nobody, ought not to be trusted by any body.”

Thomas Paine book Rights of Man

Part 1.3 Rights of Man
1790s, Rights of Man, Part I (1791)

Men

“Getting rid of a delusion makes us wiser than getting hold of a truth.”

Ludwig Börne (1786–1837) German writer

Variant: Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth.

Truth

“These are the intensities that one cannot live with, that he has to outgrow if he wants to survive. But who can help grieving for them? If the blood vessels could hold them, how much better to keep those early loves with us?”

Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) American playwright

Source: Collected Stories

Love, Help

“The Librarian was not familiar with love, which had always struck him as a bit ethereal and soppy, but kindness, on the other hand, was practical. You knew where you were with kindness, especially if you were holding a pie it had just given you.”

Terry Pratchett book Unseen Academicals

Source: Unseen Academicals

Love

“If I had to tell you how humans made their way to Earth, it would go like this: In the beginning, there was nothing at all but the moon and the sun. And the moon wanted to come out during the day, but there was something so much brighter that seemed to fill up all those hours. The moon grew hungry, thinner and thinner, until she was just a slice of herself, and her tips were as sharp as a knife. By accident, because that is the way most things happen, she poked a hole in the night and out spilled a million stars, like a fountain of tears.

Horrified, the moon tried to swallow them up. And sometimes this worked, because she got fatter and rounder.. But mostly it didn't, because there were just so many. The stars kept coming, until they made the sky so bright that the sun got jealous. He invited the stars to his side of the world, where it was always bright. What he didn't tell them, though, was that in the daytime, they'd never be seen. So the stupid ones leaped from the sky to the ground, and they froze under the weight of their own foolishness.

The moon did her best. She carved each of these blocks of sorrow into a man or a woman. She spent the rest of her time watching out so that her other stars wouldn't fall. She spent the rest of her time holding onto whatever scraps she had left.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Stupidity, World, Way, Star

“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Dawn

Man verdirbt einen Jüngling am sichersten, wenn man ihn anleitet, den Gleichdenkenden höher zu achten, als den Andersdenkenden.
The Dawn, Sec. 297

Youth, Way, Thinking

“Everything interests me, but nothing holds me.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

“Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Interview http://www.rationalrevolution.net/special/library/cc835_44.htm with H. G. Wells (September 1937) <br class="br">Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

Education, Dependency

“Generous love, the glue that holds everything together in a healthy relationship, aims for shared happiness through the fulfillment of one’s partner.”

Lama Ole Nydahl (1941) Danish lama

Buddha & Love: Timeless Wisdom for Modern Relationships (2012)

Love, Happiness

“Everyone has got to realise you can't hold onto the past if you want any future. Each second should lead to the next one.”

Joe Strummer (1952–2002) British musician, singer, actor and songwriter

Interview for Sounds Magazine on 17 July 1982. [Armed Combat, Sounds Magazine, 17 July 1982]

Past, Future

“What men and women need is encouragement. Their natural resisting powers should be strengthened, not weakened…. Instead of always harping on a man's faults, tell him of his virtues. Try to pull him out of his rut of bad habits. Hold up to him his better self, his REAL self that can dare and do and win out!… The influence of a beautiful, helpful, hopeful character is contagious, and may revolutionize a whole town…. People radiate what is in their minds and in their hearts. If a man feels kindly and obliging, his neighbors will feel that way, too, before long. But if he scolds and scowls and criticizes — his neighbors will return scowl for scowl, and add interest!… When you look for the bad, expecting it, you will get it. When you know you will find the good — you will get that…. Tell your son Tom you KNOW he'll be glad to fill that woodbox — then watch him start, alert and interested!”

Eleanor H. Porter (1868–1920) American novelist

Works, Pollyanna (1913)

Women, Men, People, Beauty

“Try me. Try me.
And your love will always be true.
Oh I need you (I need you).
Hold me. Hold me.
I want you right here by my side.
Hold me. Hold me.
And your love we won't hide.”

James Brown (1933–2006) American singer, songwriter, musician, and recording artist

Try Me, from Please Please Please (album) (1959)
Song lyrics

Love

“Moses … takes one form of desire, that one whose field of activity is the belly, and admonishes and disciplines it as the first step, holding that the other forms will cease to run riot as before and will be restrained by having learnt that their senior and as it were the leader of their company is obedient to the laws of temperance.”

Philo (-15–45 BC) Roman philosopher

77.
On the Special Laws

Law

“May the men who hold the destiny of peoples in their hands, studiously avoid anything that might cause the present situation to deteriorate and become even more dangerous. May they take to heart the words of the Apostle Paul: "If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men." These words are valid not only for individuals, but for nations as well. May these nations, in their efforts to maintain peace, do their utmost to give the spirit time to grow and to act.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

The Problem of Peace (1954)

Men, People, Peace, Effort

“If you really come down to any large story that interests people – holds the attention for a considerable time … human stories are practically always about one thing, aren't they? Death. The inevitability of death.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) British philologist and author, creator of classic fantasy works

Tolkien in Oxford (1968) http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/writers/12237.shtml, a BBC 2 television documentary (at 21:49)

Death, People, Time

“As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clearheaded science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about the atoms this much: There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together…. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Spirit. This Spirit is the matrix of all matter.”

Max Planck (1858–1947) German theoretical physicist

Das Wesen der Materie [The Nature of Matter], a 1944 speech in Florence, Italy, Archiv zur Geschichte der Max&#8209; Planck&#8209; Gesellschaft, Abt. Va, Rep. 11 Planck, Nr. 1797; the German original is as quoted in The Spontaneous Healing of Belief https://archive.org/stream/GreggBradenTheSpontaneousHealingOfBelief/Gregg%20Braden/Gregg%20Braden%20-%20The%20Spontaneous%20Healing%20Of%20Belief#page/n1 (2008) by Gregg Braden, p. 212; Braden mistranslates intelligenten Geist as "intelligent Mind", which is an obvious tautology.

Life, Intelligence, Study, Science

“Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.”

Sun Tzu (-543–-495 BC) ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher from the Zhou Dynasty

Source: The Art of War, Chapter I · Detail Assessment and Planning

“...children are our treasures. They hold the promise of the future and therefore, it is only right that they should be given every opportunity to develop their physical, mental and spiritual potential to the fullest extent in an environment free of want and free of fear..."”

Jigme Singye Wangchuck (1955) King of Bhutan 1972–2006

Message during the international year of the child, 28 July 1979, quoted in The Talking Mountains (26 Oct 2015)

Future, Fear, Children

“Move on...holding on to any one experience will limit you.”

Swami Samarpanananda Monk, Author, Teacher

Tiya-A Parrot's Journey Home ( Page 20 )

“You initiate conflict to seek and obtain attention; kindness and love will deliver more significant returns than one can hold.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1983

Love, Making love

“The amount of money you have in you is the determinant factor of the nature of business you can do, not desires and emotions. Desires and Emotions will Cost you even the little capital you hold.”

Hamis Kiggundu (1984) Ugandan business magnate, Internet entrepreneur, philanthropist, and author

Quoted from his first book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Success_and_Failure_Based_on_Reason_and_Reality, "Success and Failure Based on Reason and Reality" https://www.amazon.co.uk/SUCCESS-FAILURE-BASED-REASON-REALITY/dp/9970983903/ on Amazon, P.36 (July 2018)

Money, Business, Nature

“Fear will hold you back from achieving happiness in life. Expectation is the mother of fear.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Fear, Happiness, Life

“Sometimes you seem to slip
and
don't know know what to do.
What a life…
what a life.
I keep holding on.
The heavier the load
the harder I fight.
No one
will
keep me down.
I keep holding on.
I keep holding on.
Until God decides.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

God, Fight, Life

“When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free.”

Catherine Ponder (1927) American priest

Relationship, Way, Forgiveness, Personality

“some people meet the way the sky meets the earth, inevitably, and there is no stopping or holding back their love. It exists in a finished world, beyond the reach of common sense.”

Louise Erdrich (1954) writer from the United States

Source: Tales of Burning Love

Love, People, World, Way

“Visible and mobile, my body is a thing among things; it's caught in the fabric of the world, and its cohesion is that of a thing. But, because it moves itself and sees, it holds things in a circle around itself.”

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) French phenomenological philosopher

World

“No matter how bad a state of mind you may get into, if you keep strong and hold out, eventually the floating clouds must vanish and the withering wind must cease.”

Dogen (1200–1253) Japanese Zen buddhist teacher

Strong

“Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.”

Jack London (1876–1916) American author, journalist, and social activist

As quoted in Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior (1991) by Dan Millman, p. 78
Life’s not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes playing a poor hand well.
As quoted in "They Came to Write in Hawai‘i" by Joseph Theroux, in Spirit of Aloha (March/April 2007)

Wise, Life, Life

“The sweetest smiles hold the darkest secrets…”

Sara Shepard book Flawless

Source: Flawless

Secret, Smile

“People who dream when they sleep at night know of a special kind of happiness which the world of the day holds not, a placid ecstasy, and ease of heart, that are like honey on the tongue. They also know that the real glory of dreams lies in their atmosphere of unlimited freedom. It is not the freedom of the dictator, who enforces his own will on the world, but the freedom of the artist, who has no will, who is free of will.”

Karen Blixen book Out of Africa

Source: Out of Africa (1937)
Context: People who dream when they sleep at night know of a special kind of happiness which the world of the day holds not, a placid ecstasy, and ease of heart, that are like honey on the tongue. They also know that the real glory of dreams lies in their atmosphere of unlimited freedom. It is not the freedom of the dictator, who enforces his own will on the world, but the freedom of the artist, who has no will, who is free of will. The pleasure of the true dreamer does not lie in the substance of the dream, but in this: that there things happen without any interference from his side, and altogether outside his control. Great landscapes create themselves, long splendid views, rich and delicate colours, roads, houses, which he has never seen or heard of...

People, World, Dreams, Sleep

“Big Brother isn’t watching. He’s singing and dancing. He’s pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother’s busy holding your attention every moment you’re awake. He’s making sure you’re always distracted. He’s making sure you’re fully absorbed.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 3
Context: Old George Orwell got it backward. Big Brother isn't watching. He's singing and dancing. He's pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother’s busy holding your attention every moment you're awake. He's making sure you're always distracted. He's making sure you're fully absorbed. He's making sure your imagination withers. Until it's as useful as your appendix. He's making sure your attention is always filled. And this being fed, it's worse than being watched. With the world always filling you, no one has to worry about what's in your mind. With everyone's imagination atrophied, no one will ever be a threat to the world.

Business, Singing, Dance

“Prayer is not overcoming God's reluctance. It is laying hold of His willingness.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

God

“I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Variant: I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.

Way, Hell

“It is at moments like these that I know my what my purpose is in life. I am here to love you, to hold you in my arms, to protect you. I am here to learn from you and to receive your love in return. I am here because there is no other place to be.”

Nicholas Sparks book Message in a Bottle

Source: Message in a Bottle

Love, Life, Learning

“It is right that we should stand by and act on our principles; but not right to hold them in obstinate blindness, or retain them when proved to be erroneous.”

Michael Faraday (1791–1867) English scientist

“A true friend is the one who holds your hand and touches your heart”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

Variant: Friend is the person that holds your hand and touches your heart!

Heart

“My soul is impatient with itself, as with a bothersome child; its restlessness keeps growing and is forever the same. Everything interests me, but nothing holds me.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

Soul

“Art is not a mirror to hold up to society, but a hammer with which to shape it.”

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

Mistakenly attributed to Vladimir Mayakovsky in The Political Psyche (1993) by Andrew Samuels, p. 9; mistakenly attributed to Brecht in Paulo Freire: A Critical Encounter (1993) by Peter McLaren and Peter Leonard, p. 80; variant translation: "Art is not a mirror held up to society, but a hammer with which to shape it."
First recorded in Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution (1924; edited by William Keach (2005), Ch. 4: Futurism, p. 120): "Art, it is said, is not a mirror, but a hammer: it does not reflect, it shapes."
Disputed

Art

“It's always better to attack than to defend," Coram had told her when they talked about fencing late at night. "Always. Ye don't win with defense--ye only hold the other feller off, or wear him down. Attack and have done with it!”

Tamora Pierce book Alanna: The First Adventure

Source: Alanna: The First Adventure

Night

“Whatever truth we feel compelled to withhold, no matter how unthinkable it is to imagine ourselves telling it, not to is a way of spiritually holding our breath. You can only do it for so long.”

Mark Nepo (1951) American writer

Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

Truth, Way, Feeling, Imagination

“They are fools who kiss and tell'--
Wisely has the poet sung.
Man may hold all sorts of posts
If he'll only hold his tongue.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Fools, Kiss

“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“Everyone thinks that courage is about facing death without flinching. But almost anyone can do that. Almost anyone can hold their breath and not scream for as long as it takes to die.

True courage is about facing life without flinching. I don't mean the times when the right path is hard, but glorious at the end. I'm talking about enduring the boredom, the messiness, and the inconvenience of doing what is right.”

Robin Hobb book The Mad Ship

Source: The Mad Ship

Life, Death, Courage, Thinking

“I have looked upon all that the universe has to hold of horror, and even the skies of spring and the flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me. But I do not think my life will be long. As my uncle went, as poor Johansen went, so I shall go. I know too much, and the cult still lives.”

H.P. Lovecraft book The Call of Cthulhu

Source: Fiction, The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

Life, Spring, Flowers, Thinking

“If I hold her hand she says, ‘Don’t touch!’
If I hold her foot she says ‘Don’t touch!’
But when I hold her waist-beads she pretends not to know.”

Chinua Achebe book Things Fall Apart

Source: Things Fall Apart

“Too young to hold on and too old to just break free and run”

Jeff Buckley (1966–1997) American singer, guitarist and songwriter

“Control is illusory. No matter what university you go to, no matter what degree you hold, if your goal is to becomes master of your own destiny, you have more to learn.”

Michael J. Fox (1961) Canadian-American actor

Learning, Universe

“You just hold your head high and keep those fists down. No matter what anybody says to you, don't you let 'em get your goat. Try fightin' with your head for a change.
-Atticus Finch”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Change

“There is one irrefutable law of the universe: We are each responsible for our own life. If you’re holding anyone else accountable for your happiness, you’re wasting your time. You must be fearless enough to give yourself the love you didn’t receive.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

Source: What I Know For Sure

Love, Life, Law, Universe

“If you hold on to the handle, she said, it's easier to maintain the illusion of control. But it's more fun if you just let the wind carry you.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

“Bombardment, barrage, curtain-fire, mines, gas, tanks, machine-guns, hand-grenades - words, words, but they hold the horror of the world.”

Erich Maria Remarque book All Quiet on the Western Front

Source: All Quiet on the Western Front

World

“Hold your hands out over the earth as over a flame. To all who love her, who open to her the doors of their veins, she gives of her strength, sustaining them with her own measureless tremor of dark life. Touch the earth, love the earth, honour the earth, her plains, her valleys, her hills, and her seas; rest your spirit in her solitary places. For the gifts of life are the earth’s and they are given to all, and they are the songs of birds at daybreak, Orion and the Bear, and dawn seen over ocean from the beach.”

Henry Beston (1888–1968) American writer

Source: The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod

Love, Life, Bird, Sea

“In this present life, I reckon that we make the nearest approach to knowledge when we have the least possible concern or interest in the body, and are not saturated with the bodily nature, but remain pure until the hour when God himself is pleased to release us. And then the foolishness of the body will be cleared away and we shall be pure and hold converse with othe pure souls, and know of ourselves the clear light everywhere; and this is surely the light of truth. For no impure thing is allowed to approach the pure. These are the sort of words, Simmias, which the true lovers of wisdom cannot help saying to one another, and thinking.”

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

Plato, Phaedo

Life, Wisdom, God, Truth

“This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this presidential campaign: to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together — unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction — towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.”

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

2008, A More Perfect Union (March 2008)

Children, Hope, History, Understanding

“Stop to consider how the so-called owners of the land got hold of it. They simply seized it by force, afterwards hiring lawyers to provide them with title-deeds. In the case of the enclosure of the common lands, which was going on from about 1600 to 1850, the land-grabbers did not even have the excuse of being foreign conquerors; they were quite frankly taking the heritage of their own countrymen, upon no sort of pretext except that they had the power to do so.[http://alexpeak.com/twr/oateotc/]</sup”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

As I Please (1943–1947)

“In the name of Indian national life, in the name of religion, I appeal to all in each of the two countries who hold position…let them begin each in their own community to work untiringly towards this end: boldly to repudiate feelings of hatred and intolerance, actively to condemn and suppress acts of violence and aggression, earnestly to strive to exorcise suspicions…I appeal in the name of national life because communal tension is eating into it as a canker…I appeal in the name of religion because I can appeal to nothing nobler, and because religion is the language of the soul, and it is a change of soul that India needs today.”

Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) British politician

Speech as Viceroy of India (1926), quoted in Birkenhead, Halifax (Hamish Hamilton, 1965), pp. 223-234
Viceroy of India

Life, Religion, Feeling, Soul

“Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may rightfully be wiser today than he was yesterday — that he may rightfully change when he finds himself wrong. But can we, for that reason, run ahead, and infer that he will make any particular change, of which he, himself, has given no intimation?”

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

1850s, The House Divided speech (1858)

Change

“If tyranny is going to come in the United States, it's going to come from people who are so fearful of the liberty of Americans, that they believe that the government should shut down all sorts of freedoms that we hold dear.”

Ben Shapiro (1984) American journalist and attorney

2018-08-01
Is The Second Civil War Coming?
The Ben Shapiro Show
593
38:35
https://soundcloud.com/benshapiroshow/ep593
2018

People, Fear, Freedom

“I am rather inclined to silence, and whether that be wise or not, it is at least more unusual nowadays to find a man who can hold his tongue than to find one who cannot.”

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

Remarks at the Monogahela House (14 February 1861); as published in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953) by Roy P. Basler, vol. 4, p. 209
1860s

Silence

“I walked into the range, rented a handgun from the ugly old redneck cashier, and started to practice shooting at paper targets. As I fired my first few rounds, I felt so sick to the stomach. I questioned my whole life, and I looked at the gun in front of me and asked myself “What am I doing here? How could things have led to this?” I couldn’t believe my life was actually turning out this way. There I was, practicing shooting with real guns because I had a plan to carry out a massacre. Why did things have to be this way, I silently questioned myself as I looked at the handgun I was holding in front of me. I paid my fee and left the range within minutes, feeling as if I was going to be sick.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), 19-22, UC Santa Barbara, Building to Violence

Life, Way, Feeling, Question

“While I am not a believer in the orthodox sense, I commend religion, first, because every individual should have some ideal — religious, artistic, scientific, or humanitarian — to give significance to his life. Second, because all the great religions contain wise prescriptions relating to the conduct of life, which hold good now as they did when they were promulgated.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

A Machine to End War (1937)

Life, Religion, Sense

“As sheep come issuing forth from out the fold
By ones and twos and threes, and the others stand
Timidly, holding down their eyes and nostrils,
And what the foremost does the others do,
Huddling themselves against her, if she stop,
Simple and quiet and the wherefore know not.”

Dante Alighieri book Purgatorio

Canto III, lines 79–84 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Purgatorio

“If you see a man dedicated to his stomach, crawling on the ground, you see a plant and not a man; or if you see a man bedazzled by the empty forms of the imagination, as by the wiles of Calypso, and through their alluring solicitations made a slave to his own senses, you see a brute and not a man. If, however, you see a philosopher, judging and distinguishing all things according to the rule of reason, him shall you hold in veneration, for he is a creature of heaven and not of earth; if, finally, a pure contemplator, unmindful of the body, wholly withdrawn into the inner chambers of the mind, here indeed is neither a creature of earth nor a heavenly creature, but some higher divinity, clothed in human flesh.”
Si quem enim videris deditum ventri, humi serpentem hominem, frutex est, non homo, quem vides; si quem in fantasiae quasi Calipsus vanis praestigiis cecucientem et subscalpenti delinitum illecebra sensibus mancipatum, brutum est, non homo, quem vides. Si recta philosophum ratione omnia discernentem, hunc venereris; caeleste est animal, non terrenum. Si purum contemplatorem corporis nescium, in penetralia mentis relegatum, hic non terrenum, non caeleste animal: hic augustius est numen humana carne circumvestitum.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola book Oration on the Dignity of Man

8. 40-42; translation by A. Robert Caponigri
Oration on the Dignity of Man (1496)

Imagination, Sense, Clothes

“Upon the earth are animals and men, some in a middle region, others dwelling about the air as we dwell about the sea; others in islands which the air flows round, near the continent; and in a word, the air is used by them as the water and the sea are by us, and the ether is to them as the air is to us. Moreover, the temperament of their seasons is such that they have no disease, and live much longer than we do, and have sight and hearing and smell, and all the other senses, in far greater perfection, in the same degree that air is purer than water or the ether than air. Also they have temples and sacred places in which the gods really dwell, and they hear their voices and receive their answers and are conscious of them and hold converse with them, and they see the sun, moon, and stars as they really are, and their other blessedness is of a piece with this.”

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

Plato, Phaedo

Men, God, Disease, Star

“Those who try to make room for sex as mere casual enjoyment pay the penalty: they become shallow. At any rate the talk that reflects and commends this attitude is always shallow. They dishonour their own bodies; holding cheap what is naturally connected with the origination of human life.”

G. E. M. Anscombe (1919–2001) British analytic philosopher

Contraception and Chastity (1975)

Life, Penalty, Sex, Nature

“If you're cold I'll keep you warm
If you're low just hold on
Cause I will be your safety
Oh don't leave home.”

Dido (1971) English singer-songwriter

Don't Leave Home
Song lyrics, Life for Rent (2003)

Home

“I hold that we shall one day recognize in Freud’s life-work the cornerstone for the building of a new anthropology and therewith of a new structure, to which many stones are being brought up today, which shall be the future dwelling of a wiser and freer humanity.”

Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate

Freud and the Future (1937)

Life, Future

“For each of us as women, there is a dark place within where hidden and growing our true spirit rises, “Beautiful and tough as chestnut/stanchions against our nightmare of weakness” and of impotence. These places of possibility within ourselves are dark because they are ancient and hidden; they have survived and grown strong through darkness. Within these deep places, each one of us holds an incredible reserve of creativity and power, of unexamined and unrecorded emotion and feeling. The woman’s place of power within each of us is neither white nor surface; it is dark, it is ancient, and it is deep.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

"Poetry is Not a Luxury"
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

Women, Beauty, Feeling, Strong

“A work of art bears within itself its own verification: conceptions which are devised or stretched do not stand being portrayed in images, they all come crashing down, appear sickly and pale, convince no one. But those works of art which have scooped up the truth and presented it to us as a living force — they take hold of us, compel us, and nobody ever, not even in ages to come, will appear to refute them.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Nobel lecture (1970)

Truth, Age, Art, Appearance

“As a nation-state, Iran has no problems with anybody. As a vehicle for the Khomeinist ideology it has problems with everybody, starting with the Iranian people. The Khomeinist regime makes no secret of its intense hatred for Iranian culture, which it claims has roots in “the age of ignorance” (jahiliyyah). To admire this regime because of Iranian culture is like admiring Hitler for Goethe and Beethoven and praising Stalin for Pushkin and Tchaikovsky. This regime has executed tens of thousands of Iranians, driven almost 6 million into exile, and deprived the nation of its basic freedoms. It has also killed more Americans, often through surrogates, than al Qaeda did on 9/11. Not a single day has passed without this regime holding some American hostages. Iran as a nation is a solid friend of America. Iran as a vehicle for the Khomeinist revolution is an eternal enemy of “The Great Satan.” The only realistic strategy for the United States would be to help it stop being the Islamic Republic and become Iran again. President Obama’s policy, however, points in the opposite direction. He has made it harder for the Iranian people to regain their human rights.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

What US leaders have never understood about Iran http://nypost.com/2015/07/19/what-us-leaders-have-never-understood-about-iran/, New York Post (July 19, 2015). <br class="br">New York Post

People, Secret, Age, Problem

“It is often said that the Arabs fled, that they left the country voluntarily, and that they therefore bear the responsibility for losing their property and their land. It is true that in history there are some instances — in Rome and in France during the Revolutions when enemies of the state were proscribed and their property confiscated. But in general international law, the principle holds true that no citizen loses his property or his rights of citizenship; and the citizenship right is de facto a right to which the Arabs in Israel have much more legitimacy than the [European] Jews. Just because the Arabs fled? Since when is that punishable by confiscation of property and by being barred from returning to the land on which a people's forefathers have lived for generations? Thus, the claim of the Jews to the land of Israel cannot be a realistic political claim. If all nations would suddenly claim territories in which their forefathers had lived two thousand years ago, this world would be a madhouse. … I believe that, politically speaking, there is only one solution for Israel, namely, the unilateral acknowledgement of the obligation of the State towards the Arabs — not to use it as a bargaining point, but to acknowledge the complete moral obligation of the Israeli State to its former inhabitants of Palestine.”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

Jewish Newsletter [New York] (19 May 1959); quoted in Prophets in Babylon (1980) by Marion Woolfson, p. 13

People, World, Law, History

“I hold nothing as an article of my Religion, but what the highest evidence forced me to embrace.”

John Toland book Christianity not Mysterious

Christianity not Mysterious (1696), Preface

Religion

“I knew I wanted to wrestle when I was little kid. It took hold in me, captured my imagination. … I’m bigger now than I was eating meat. My lifts in the gym are better. I’m in better shape. … I’m healthier than everybody else. All the omega-3s make me smarter. … I’m pretty much friendly and compassionate to everybody. But not to people in the ring.”

Daniel Bryan (1981) American professional wrestler

"Meatless Monday: WWE Superstar Daniel Bryan Stomps On Meat" by Ellen Kanner, HuffPost (16 April 2012) https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-kanner/meatless-monday-wwe-super_b_1424303.html.

People, Imagination

“We always hold hands. If I let go, she shops.”

Henny Youngman (1906–1998) American comedian

"The Haunted Smile: The Story of Jewish Comedians in America" (2001)