Quotes about hold
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As quoted in God’s Laughter (1992) by Gerhard Staguhn, p. 152

1964 Memorial Edition, p. 265 http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations/Profiles-in-Courage-quotations.aspx
Pre-1960, Profiles in Courage (1956)

“Anyone who holds a true opinion without understanding is like a blind man on the right road.”
Plato, Republic, 506c
Plato, Republic

12 July 1942, p. 488-89
Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943

T 2760 (January 1892); as quoted in Edvard Much – behind the scream, Sue Prideaux; Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2007, p. 119
1880 - 1895

“Now always be the best, my boy, the bravest,
and hold your head up high above the others.”
VI. 208 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

The Renaissance in India (1918)

“For as children tremble and fear everything in the blind darkness, so we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things that children in the dark hold in terror and imagine will come true. This terror, therefore, and darkness of mind must be dispelled not by the rays of the sun and glittering shafts of daylight, but by the aspect and law of nature.”
Nam veluti pueri trepidant atque omnia caecis
in tenebris metuunt, sic nos in luce timemus
interdum, nilo quae sunt metuenda magis quam
quae pueri in tenebris pavitant finguntque futura.
hunc igitur terrorem animi tenebrasque necessest
non radii solis neque lucida tela diei
discutiant sed naturae species ratioque.
Book II, lines 55–61 (tr. Rouse)
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)

Vol 2, Ch. 25 "Has History any Meaning?" Variant: There is no history of mankind, there are only many histories of all kinds of aspects of human life. And one of these is the history of political power. This is elevated into the history of the world.
The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945)
Context: There is no history of mankind, there is only an indefinite number of histories of all kinds of aspects of human life. And one of these is the history of political power. This is elevated into the history of the world. But this, I hold, is an offence against every decent conception of mankind. It is hardly better than to treat the history of embezzlement or of robbery or of poisoning as the history of mankind. For the history of power politics is nothing but the history of international crime and mass murder (including it is true, some of the attempts to suppress them). This history is taught in schools, and some of the greatest criminals are extolled as heroes.

Original preface to Animal Farm; as published in George Orwell: Some Materials for a Bibliography (1953) by Ian R. Willison

“How divine scripture should be interpreted,” On First Principles, book 4, chapter 2, § 2, Readings in World Christian History (2013), p. 69
On First Principles
Context: The reason why all those we have mentioned hold false opinions and make impious or ignorant assertions about God appears to be nothing else but this, that scripture is not understood in its spiritual sense, but is interpreted according to the bare letter.

Source: The Beloved Returns (1939), Ch. 7
Context: Hold fast the time! Guard it, watch over it, every hour, every minute! Unregarded it slips away, like a lizard, smooth, slippery, faithless, a pixy wife. Hold every moment sacred. Give each clarity and meaning, each the weight of thine awareness, each its true and due fulfillment.

“The pure, frank sentiments we hold in our hearts are the only truthful sources of art.”
Quote in 'Culture: Caspar D. Friedrich and the Wasteland', by Gjermund E. Jansen in Bits of News (3 March 2005) http://www.bitsofnews.com/content/view/154/42/
Variant translation: The heart is the only true source of art, the language of a pure, child-like soul. Any creation not sprung from this origin can only be artifice. Every true work of art is conceived in a hallowed hour and born in a happy one, from an impulse in the artist's heart, often without his knowledge. (as quoted in the article 'Caspar David Friedrich's Medieval Burials', Karl Whittington - http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/spring12/whittington-on-caspar-david-friedrichs-medieval-burials)
undated
Context: The pure, frank sentiments we hold in our hearts are the only truthful sources of art. A painting which does not take its inspiration from the heart is nothing more than futile juggling. All authentic art is conceived at a sacred moment and nourished in a blessed hour; an inner impulse creates it, often without the artist being aware of it.

Letter Seven (14 May 1904)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)
Context: People have (with the help of conventions) oriented all their solutions toward the easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must hold to what is difficult; everything alive holds to it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself in its own way and is characteristically and spontaneously itself, seeks at all costs to be so and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must hold to what is difficult is a certainty that will not forsake us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it.
To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

Source: Ulysses (1842), l. 54-62
Context: The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices.
Come, my friends.
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.

“We, holding Art in our hands, confidently consider ourselves to be its masters”
Nobel lecture (1970)
Context: We, holding Art in our hands, confidently consider ourselves to be its masters; boldly we direct it, we renew, reform and manifest it; we sell it for money, use it to please those in power; turn to it at one moment for amusement — right down to popular songs and night-clubs, and at another — grabbing the nearest weapon, cork or cudgel — for the passing needs of politics and for narrow-minded social ends. But art is not defiled by our efforts, neither does it thereby depart from its true nature, but on each occasion and in each application it gives to us a part of its secret inner light.

“It's like a bar of soap in the bathtub — you have it in your hand until you hold on too tight.”

1930s, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932)

“Confidence is similar to luck. You can't hold it forever at your service!”

“To "catch" a husband is an art; to "hold" him is a job.”
Bk. 2, part 5, Ch. 1: The Married Woman, p. 468
Source: The Second Sex (1949)

“Everyone has his own philosophy that doesn't hold good for anybody else.”
Source: The Woman in the Dunes
“You never lose by loving, you lose by holding back.”
Variant: You never lose by loving. You always lose by holding back.
Source: Chicken Soup for the Couple's Soul

“We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.”

“It is not, nor it cannot, come to good,
But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.”
Variant: But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.
Source: Hamlet

Source: The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom

Variant: Alone. Yes, that’s the key word, the most awful word in the English tongue. Murder doesn’t hold a candle to it and hell is only a poor synonym…
Source: 'Salem's Lot

“Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.”
Variant: nobody hαs ever meαsured, not even poets, how much the heαrt cαn hold.

“Books hold no passports. There's only one true literary tradition: the human.”
Source: The Shadow of the Wind

“Holding onto something that's gone only makes a sickness inside.”

“What the future holds for you depends on your state of consciousness now.”
Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“There is love in holding and there is love in letting go.”
Variant: There is love in holding, and there is love in letting go.
Source: The Year of Pleasures


then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
"When I have fears that I may cease to be" (1817)
Source: The Complete Poems

Source: Translations from the Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke

“Sometimes the darkest challenges, the most difficult lessons, hold the greates gems of light.”
Source: Family of Light: Pleiadian Tales and Lessons in Living

Variant: The worse part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.
Source: The Giver

“I hold that a strongly marked personality can influence descendants for generations.”
Source: Shantaram

“You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.”
As quoted in The Great Quotations (1971) edited by George Seldes, p. 641

Source: Intimacy: das Buch zum Film von Patrice Chéreau

“The heart surrenders everything to the moment. The mind judges and holds back.”

“How long have you been holding those words in your head, hoping to use them?”
Source: Lethal People

“Too many things are occurring for even a big heart to hold.”