Quotes about hold
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“the world is not a pleasant place to be without someone to hold and be held by.”

Nikki Giovanni (1943) American writer and academic

“I don't see why I should bow my head when I could hold it high, or place it in the hands of my enemies when I can defeat them.”

José Rizal (1861–1896) Filipino writer, ophthalmologist, polyglot and nationalist

“The truth isn't easily pinned to a page. In the bathtub of history the truth is harder to hold than the soap and much more difficult to find.”

Terry Pratchett book Sourcery

Source: Sourcery

Truth, History

“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.”

Hunter S. Thompson book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Source: 1970s, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971)
Context: We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive..." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: "Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?"

“Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism. Only love can touch and hold them and be fair to them.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Love, Art, Solitude

“May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Children, Way

“The past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation. … Both are illusions.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

The Power of Now (1997)
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

Past, Future

“I grabbed a pile of dust, and holding it up, foolishly asked for as many birthdays as the grains of dust, I forgot to ask that they be years of youth.”

Ovid Metamorphoses

Source: Metamorphoses

Youth, Birthday, Birthday

“This is Art holding a Mirror up to Life. That’s why everything is exactly the wrong way around.”

Terry Pratchett book Wyrd Sisters

Source: Wyrd Sisters

Life, Art, Way

“It's hard to hold the hand of anyone who is reaching for the sky just to surrender”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

“‎All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.”

H. Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) British physician, writer, and social reformer

Art, Life, Moving On

“I'm holding up, Lord willing and the creek don't rise.”

Sara Evans (1971) American country singer and songwriter

Source: Softly and Tenderly

“Life is like crossing a river. If you take a huge step-aim for too bigger dreams-then the current will knock you off your feet and carry you away.
The way to do it is small steps, you will take hold of life. You will get there in the end.”

Louis Sachar (1954) American writer of children's books

Life, Dreams, Way

“Things fall apart;
the center cannot hold…”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Source: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

“In this world the only opinion that holds court is prejudice.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

World

“Sometimes it was hard to express how much you loved someone. You said the words, but you could never quite capture the depth of it. You could never quite hold someone tightly enough.”

Diane Chamberlain (1950) American writer

Source: The Midwife's Confession

Love

“Strength enough to build a home,
Time enough to hold a child,
Love enough to break a heart”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Love, Home, Time, Heart

“I made up my mind that I would hold onto nothing, that I would expect nothing.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer

“It seems to me a fundamental dishonesty, and a fundamental treachery to intellectual integrity to hold a belief because you think it's useful and not because you think it's true.”

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

Thinking

“She leaned into me, and when I closed my eyes, I knew I wanted nothing more than to hold her this way forever.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

Way

“She was still waiting for him to come back to her, even though he wasn't going to. She was still holding out for something that wasn't going to happen. She was good at waiting. That seemed like a sad thing to be good at.”

Ann Brashares book Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood

Source: Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood

Sadness, Waiting

“I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy.”

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

1790s, Farewell Address (1796)
Context: Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.

“Nothing goes perfectly for us. But… being incomplete is what pushes us onward to the next something… If we were even perfectly satisfied, what meaning would the rest of our lives hold, right?”

Takehiko Inoue (1967) Japanese artist

“… the truth holds the greatest magic, the greatest beauty, and sometimes the greatest danger….”

Esther M. Friesner (1951) American writer

Source: Sphinx's Princess

Truth, Beauty

“He has chosen not to heal me, but to hold me. The more intense the pain, the closer His embrace.”

Joni Eareckson Tada (1949) American artist

Source: A Place of Healing: Wrestling with the Mysteries of Suffering, Pain, and God's Sovereignty

Pain

“The idea of atomic energy is illusionary but it has taken so powerful a hold on the minds, that although I have preached against it for twenty-five years, there are still some who believe it to be realizable.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

Quoted in 'Tesla, 75, Predicts New Power Source', New York Times (5 Jul 1931), Section 2, 1.

Idea

“The absence of effective State, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need to is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which it is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise.”

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

1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)

Men, Money, Exercises, Change

“There exists no more repulsive and desolate creature in the world than the man who has evaded his genius and who now looks furtively to left and right, behind him and all about him. In the end such a man becomes impossible to get hold of, since he is wholly exterior, without kernel: a tattered, painted bag of clothes; a decked-out ghost that cannot inspire even fear and certainly not pity.”

Friedrich Nietzsche Untimely Meditations

Es gibt kein öderes und widrigeres Geschöpf in der Natur als den Menschen, welcher seinem Genius ausgewichen ist und nun nach rechts und nach links, nach rückwärts und überallhin schielt. Man darf einen solchen Menschen zuletzt gar nicht mehr angreifen, denn er ist ganz Außenseite ohne Kern, ein anbrüchiges, gemaltes, aufgebauschtes Gewand.
“Schopenhauer as educator,” § 3.1, R. Hollingdale, trans. (1983), p. 128
Untimely Meditations (1876)

World, Fear, Painting, Clothes

“As these people are not convicted of forfeiting freedom, they have still a natural, perfect right to it; and the Governments whenever they come should, in justice set them free, and punish those who hold them in slavery.”

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

1770s, African Slavery in America (March 1775)

People, Justice, Nature, Freedom

“[In what way would you have us bury you? ] In any way that you like; only you must get hold of me, and take care that I do not walk away from you. …I cannot make Crito believe that I am the same Socrates who have been talking and conducting the argument; he fancies that I am the other Socrates whom he will soon see, a dead body… And though I have spoken many words in the endeavor to show that when I have drunk the poison I shall leave you and go to the joys of the blessed—these words of mine, with which I comforted you and myself, have had, I perceive, no effect upon Crito. …you should be my surety to him that I shall not remain, but go away and depart; and then he will suffer less at my death, and not be grieved when he sees my body being burned or buried.”

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

Plato, Phaedo

Death, Way, Suffering, Joy

“It offends reason to believe that a well-established natural law can admit of exceptions. A natural law must hold everywhere and always, or be invalid. I cannot believe, for example, that the universal law of gravitation, which governs the physical world, is ever suspended in any instance or at any point of the universe. Now I consider economic laws comparable to natural laws, and I have just as much faith in the principle of the division of labor as I have in the universal law of gravitation. I believe that while these principles can be disturbed, they admit of no exceptions.”

Gustave de Molinari (1819–1912) Belgian political economist and classical liberal theorist

Source: The Production of Security (1849), p. 25

World, Faith, Law, Nature

“Scientology, how about that? You hold on to the tin cans and then this guy asks you a bunch of questions, and if you pay enough money you get to join the master race. How's that for a religion?”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

Concert address to audience at the Rockpile, Toronto (May 1969).

Money, Religion, Guy, Question

“Treating women as second-class citizens is a bad tradition. It holds you back. There’s no excuse for sexual assault or domestic violence. There’s no reason that young girls should suffer genital mutilation. There’s no place in civilized society for the early or forced marriage of children. These traditions may date back centuries; they have no place in the 21st century. These are issues of right and wrong -- in any culture. But they’re also issues of success and failure. Any nation that fails to educate its girls or employ its women and allowing them to maximize their potential is doomed to fall behind in a global economy.”

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

2015, Remarks to the Kenyan People (July 2015)

Women, Marriage, Children, Education

“Some forms of Kantianism put great weight on “what we can imagine” holding that this can be a source of insight into necessary connections. Thus various of Kant’s arguments about space and time depend on the purported fact that it is impossible for us to imagine certain things: we can know, Kant claims, a priori that space has only three dimensions because we cannot imagine it as having more than three dimensions. History in the form of non-Euclidean geometry and modern physics has put paid to that particular line of argument, but in general we should beware of depending too much on “What we can imagine?,” especially in politics. As Nietzsche puts it somewhere, sometimes the fact that you can’t imagine a situation in which things are very different from the way they are now is not an especially good argument for the claim that they must be as they now are, but, rather, represents a failure of your powers about which you should feel mildly apologetic.”

Raymond Geuss book Philosophy and Real Politics

Source: Philosophy and Real Politics (2008), pp. 48-49.

Way, Feeling, Imagination, History

“In any case I hold that there must arise a science of the development of economic forms and relations.”

William Stanley Jevons The Theory of Political Economy

Preface To The Second Edition, p. 9.
The Theory of Political Economy (1871)

Science

“Humor is a way of holding off how awful life can be.”

Kurt Vonnegut book A Man Without a Country

A Man Without a Country (2005)

Life, Way

“Me still alone, me sip on the rum
Me wonder when the boat she come
To bring me love, oh sweet little thing
She rock 'n' roll, she dance and sing
She hold me tight, she touch me lips
Me eyes they close, me heart she flip
Havana moon, Havana moon”

Chuck Berry (1926–2017) American rock-and-roll musician

"Havana Moon" (1957)
Song lyrics

Love, Singing, Heart, Dance

“He holds aloft the banner of Islam and knocks down the infamous idols. He does away with people of infidelity and hostility”

Humayun (1508–1556) second Mughal Emperor

of Islam
Khwand Amir: Qanun-i Humayuni, M. Hidayat Hosain ed., Calcutta 1940. Cited in Harsh Narain, The Ayodhya Temple Mosque Dispute: Focus on Muslim Sources, p. 66-67

Hostility, People

“Blood will stream over Europe until the nations become aware of the frightful madness which drives them in circles. And then, struck by celestial music and made gentle, they approach their former altars all together, hear about the works of peace, and hold a great celebration of peace with fervent tears before the smoking altars.”

Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer

As quoted in the Fourth Leaflet of the White Rose (1942)

Peace, Music, Tear, Madness

“Polycarp replied to Marcion, who met him on one occasion, and said, "Do you know me?" "I do know thee, first-born of Satan." Such was the horror of the apostles and their disciples had against holding even verbal communication with any corrupters of the truth.”

Irenaeus (130–202) Bishop and saint

Book 3, Chapter 3. From Readings in World Christian History (2013), pp. 58-99.
Against Heresies

Truth, Communication

“Men did not make the earth… It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property… Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds.”

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

1790s, Agrarian Justice (1797)

Men, Communication

“Whoever is completely and wholly an artist is to all eternity separated from the "real," the actual; on the other hand, one can understand how he may sometimes weary to the point of desperation of the eternal "unreality" and falsity of his innermost existence- and that then he may well attempt what ia most forbidden him, to lay hold of actuality, for once actually to be.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book On the Genealogy of Morality

Third Essay, Section 4
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)

Understanding

“What's a man's age? He must hurry more, that's all;
Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold:”

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

"The Flight of the Duchess", line 881.
Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845)

Youth, Age

“Some more in this convention came from Kentucky to Illinois (instead of going to Missouri), not only to better their conditions, but also to get away from slavery. They have said so to me, and it is understood among us Kentuckians that we don't like it one bit. Now, can we, mindful of the blessings of liberty which the early men of Illinois left to us, refuse a like privilege to the free men who seek to plant Freedom's banner on our Western outposts? Should we not stand by our neighbors who seek to better their conditions in Kansas and Nebraska? Can we as Christian men, and strong and free ourselves, wield the sledge or hold the iron which is to manacle anew an already oppressed race? "Woe unto them," it is written, "that decree unrighteous decrees and that write grievousness which they have prescribed."”

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

Can we afford to sin any more deeply against human liberty? From the Speech Delivered Before the First Republican State Convention of Illinois, Held at Bloomington (1856); found in Speeches & Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1865 (1894), J. M. Dent & Company, p. 56. Also quoted by Ida Minerva Tarbell, The Life of Abraham Lincoln: Drawn from Original Sources and Containing Many Speeches, Letters, and Telegrams Hitherto Unpublished, and Illustrated with Many Reproductions from Original Paintings, Photographs, etc, Volume 4 (1902), Lincoln History Society http://lincolnhistoricalsociety.org/; and by William C. Whitney; in The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, v. 2' . (1905) Lapsley, Arthur Brooks, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons 1850s

Men, Freedom, Strong

“When the war started in Abyssinia all Negro nationalists looked with hope to Haile Selassie. They spoke for him, they prayed for him, they sung for him, they did everything to hold up his hands, as Aaron did for Moses; but whilst the Negro peoples of the world were praying for the success of Abyssinia this little Emperor was undermining the fabric of his own kingdom by playing the fool with white men, having them advising him[, ] having them telling him what to do, how to surrender, how to call off the successful thrusts of his [Race] against the Italian invaders. Yes, they were telling him how to prepare his flight, and like an imbecilic child he followed every advice and then ultimately ran away from his country to England, leaving his people to be massacred by the Italians, and leaving the serious white world to laugh at every Negro and repeat the charge and snare - "he is incompetent," "we told you so." Indeed Haile Selassie has proved the incompetence of the Negro for political authority, but thank God there are Negroes who realise that Haile Selassie did not represent the truest qualities of the Negro race. How could he, when he wanted to play white? How could he, when he surrounded himself with white influence? How could he, when in a modern world, and in a progressive civilization, he preferred a slave State of black men than a free democratic country where the black citizens could rise to the same opportunities as white citizens in their democracies?”

Marcus Garvey (1887–1940) Jamaica-born British political activist, Pan-Africanist, orator, and entrepreneur

The Failure of Haile Selassie as Emperor in The Blackman, April, 1937.

Men, God, War, People

“[Messrs Ogden and Richards] will reply that they are considering the meaning of a "thought," not of a word. A "thought" is not a social phenomenon, like speech, and therefore does not have the two sides, active and passive, which can be distinguished in speech. I should urge, however, that all the reasons which led our authors to avoid introducing images in explaining meaning should have also led them to avoid introducing "thoughts." If a theory of meaning is to be fitted into natural science as they desire, it is necessary to define the meaning of words without introducing anything "mental" in the sense in which what is "mental" is not subject to the laws of physics. Therefore, for the same reasons for which I now hold that the meaning of words should be explained without introducing images – which I argued to be possible in the above-quoted passage – I also hold that meaning in general should be treated without introducing "thoughts," and should be regarded as a property of words considered as physical phenomena. Let us therefore amend their theory. They say: "'I am thinking of A' is the same thing as 'My thought is being caused by A.'" Let us substitute: "'I am speaking of A' is the same thing as 'My speech is being caused by A.'" Can this theory be true?”

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

1920s, Review of The Meaning of Meaning (1926)

Law, Quotes, Nature, Thinking

“The dreary alternative of agnosticism, which the young students are taught to accept as the final word of science on the grave mysteries of life and thought, and man’s hopes of personal communion with God are laughed away to make room for an inane faith in evolution and the law of collective development and progress…. Hindu students especially need the strengthening influence which faith in God, and in Conscience as His voice in the human heart alone, can give. The national mind can not live in agnosticism. The experiment was tried once on a large scale by the greatest moral teacher of this or any other age. The failure of Buddhism is a warning that such teaching can have no hold on the national thought.”

Mahadev Govind Ranade (1842–1901) Indian scholar, social reformer and author

Religion had important place in his life is indicated in his admonishing Professor Selby (also a professor in the Deccan College) notes on a published ”Notes of Lectures on Butelr’s Anaology and Sermons" quoted in pages=105-106

Life, God, Age, Faith

“The duty of holding a neutral conduct may be inferred, without any thing more, from the obligation which justice and humanity impose on every nation, in cases in which it is free to act, to maintain inviolate the relations of peace and amity towards other nations.”

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

1790s, Farewell Address (1796)

Peace, Justice

“I have been accused of a habit of changing my opinions … I am not myself in any degree ashamed of having changed my opinions. What physicist who was already active in 1900 would dream of boasting that his opinions had not changed during the last half century? In science men change their opinions when new knowledge becomes available; but philosophy in the minds of many is assimilated rather to theology than to science. … The kind of philosophy that I value and have endeavoured to pursue is scientific, in the sense that there is some definite knowledge to be obtained and that new discoveries can make the admission of former error inevitable to any candid mind. For what I have said, whether early or late, I do not claim the kind of truth which theologians claim for their creeds. I claim only, at best, that the opinion expressed was a sensible one to hold at the time when it was expressed. I should be much surprised if subsequent research did not show that it needed to be modified. I hope, therefore, that whoever uses this dictionary will not suppose the remarks which it quotes to be intended as pontifical pronouncements, but only as the best I could do at the time towards the promotion of clear and accurate thinking. Clarity, above all, has been my aim.”

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

Preface to The Bertrand Russell Dictionary of Mind, Matter and Morals (1952) edited by Lester E. Denonn
1950s

Men, Truth, Dreams, Hope

“1953. Learn the art of Silence; the wise Man that holds his Tongue, says more than the Fool who speaks.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727)

Fools, Art, Silence, Learning

“Well, so around the world, there is a tradition of repressing women and treating them differently, and not giving them the same opportunities, and husbands beating their wives, and children not being sent to school. Those are traditions. Treating women and girls as second-class citizens, those are bad traditions. They need to change. They’re holding you back.”

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

2015, Remarks to the Kenyan People (July 2015)

Women, Children, World, School

“If the public thought elevates you above the generality of men, let the other humble you, and hold you in a perfect equality with all mankind, for this is your natural condition.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

Discourses on the Condition of the Great

Men, Nature, Perfection

“The corporate manager who achieves success by honest efficiency in giving the best service to the public should be favored because we all beneﬁt by his efficiency. […] he should be helped by the Government because his success is good for the National welfare. But a man who, grasps and holds business power by breaking the industrial efficiency of others, who wins success by methods which are against‘ the public interest and degrading to the public morals, should not be permitted to ‘ exercise such power. Instead of punishing him by a long and doubtful process of the law after the wrong has been com- mitted, there should be such effective Government regulation as to check the evil tendencies at the moment that they start do develop.”

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

1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)

Law, Exercises, Business, Evil

“To hold a pen is to be at war.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

Qui plume a, guerre a.
Letter to Jeanne-Grâce Bosc du Bouchet, comtesse d'Argental (4 October 1748)
This remark also appears in a letter to Marie-Louise Denis (22 May 1752): To hold a pen is to be at war. This world is one vast temple consecrated to discord [Qui plume a, guerre a. Ce monde est un vaste temple dédié à la discorde].
Citas

War

“To build up a community, not upon Liberal opinions, which any man may fashion to his fancy, but upon popular principles, which assert equal rights, civil and religious; to uphold the institutions of the country because they are the embodiment of the wants and wishes of the nation, and protect us alike from individual tyranny and popular outrage; equally to resist democracy and oligarchy; and favour that principle of free aristocracy which is the only basis and security for constitutional government; to be vigilant to guard and prompt to vindicate the honour of the country, but to hold aloof from that turbulent diplomacy which only distracts the mind of a people from internal improvement; to lighten taxation; frugally but wisely to administer the public treasure; to favour popular education, because it is the best guarantee for public order; to defend local government; and to be as jealous of the rights of the working man as of the prerogatives of the Crown and the privileges of the Senate—these were once the principles which regulated Tory statesmen, and I for one have no wish that the Tory party should ever be in power unless they practise them.”

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

Source: Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1862/aug/01/the-administration-of-viscount in the House of Commons (1 August 1862).

People, Education, Democracy, Communication

“Don't be afraid of us, we are all the same. You can't get AIDS if you touch, hug, kiss, hold hands with someone who is infected.”

Nkosi Johnson (1989–2001) South African child AIDS activist

The Body: The Complete HIV/AIDS Resource http://www.thebody.com/content/news/art42594.html

Kiss

“We also know that our support for civil society is not just about what we’re against, but also what we’re for. Because we’ve noticed that governments that are more responsive and effective are typically governments where the people are free to assemble, and speak their minds, and petition their leaders, and hold us accountable.”

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

2015, Remarks at Panama Civil Society Forum (April 2015)

People, Support

“For democracy is more than just elections. True democracy, real prosperity, lasting security -- these are neither simply given, nor imposed from the outside. They must be earned and built from within. They must be earned and built from within. And in that age-old contest of ideas -- between freedom and authoritarianism, between liberty and oppression, between solidarity and intolerance -- Poland’s progress shows the enduring strength of the ideals that we cherish as a free people. Here we see the strength of democracy: Citizens raising their voices, free from fear. Here we see political parties competing in open and honest elections. Here we see an independent judiciary working to uphold the rule of law. Here in Poland we see a vibrant press and a growing civil society that holds leaders accountable -- because governments exist to lift up their people, not to hold them down.”

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

2014, 25th Anniversary of Polish Freedom Day Speech (June 2014)

People, Age, Fear, Law

“I don't see much future for the Americans … it's a decayed country. And they have their racial problem, and the problem of social inequalities … my feelings against Americanism are feelings of hatred and deep repugnance … everything about the behaviour of American society reveals that it's half Judaised, and the other half negrified. How can one expect a State like that to hold together?”

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

Statement in conversation (7 January 1942)
Disputed, Hitler's Table Talks (1941-1944) (published 1953)

Feeling, Problem, Future, Country

“We are now a mighty nation, we are thirty — or about thirty millions of people, and we own and inhabit about one‑fifteenth part of the dry land of the whole earth. We run our memory back over the pages of history for about eighty‑two years and we discover that we were then a very small people in point of numbers, vastly inferior to what we are now, with a vastly less extent of country, with vastly less of everything we deem desirable among men, we look upon the change as exceedingly advantageous to us and to our posterity, and we fix upon something that happened away back, as in some way or other being connected with this rise of prosperity. We find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as our fathers and grandfathers; they were iron men, they fought for the principle that they were contending for; and we understood that by what they then did it has followed that the degree of prosperity that we now enjoy has come to us. We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves of all the good done in this process of time of how it was done and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it; and we go from these meetings in better humor with ourselves — we feel more attached the one to the other, and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit. In every way we are better men in the age, and race, and country in which we live for these celebrations. But after we have done all this we have not yet reached the whole.”

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

1850s, Speech at Chicago (1858)

Men, People, Age, Way

“Some drivers have already got out of their cars, prepared to push the stranded vehicle to a spot where it will not hold up the traffic, they beat furiously on the closed windows, the man inside turns his head in their direction, first to one side then to the other, he is clearly shouting something, to judge by the movements of his mouth he appears to be repeating some words, no one word but three, as turns out to be the case when someone finally manages to open the door, I am blind.”

José Saramago book Blindness

Source: Blindness (1995), p. 2

Cars, Appearance

“Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining.”

Saul Bellow book The Adventures of Augie March

Source: The Adventures of Augie March (1953), Ch. 1

“You get used to terrorist attacks. France will hold on. The French will hold on, without even needing a “sursaut national,” a national pushback reflex. They’ll hold on because there’s no other way, and because you get used to everything. No human force, not even fear, is stronger than habit.”

Michel Houellebecq (1956) writer

"The New York Times - The Opinion Pages", commentary about the November 2015 Paris attacks http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/21/opinion/how-frances-leaders-failed-its-people.html?_r=0 (21 November 2015)

Fear, Way

“Just as maniacs, who never enjoy tranquility, so also he who is resentful and retains an enemy will never have the enjoyment of any peace; incessantly raging and daily increasing the tempest of his thoughts calling to mind his words and acts, and detesting the very name of him who has aggrieved him. Do you but mention his enemy, he becomes furious at once, and sustains much inward anguish; and should he chance to get only a bare sight of him, he fears and trembles, as if encountering the worst evils, Indeed, if he perceives any of his relations, if but his garment, or his dwelling, or street, he is tormented by the sight of them. For as in the case of those who are beloved, their faces, their garments, their sandals, their houses, or streets, excite us, the instant we behold them; so also should we observe a servant, or friend, or house, or street, or any thing else belonging to those We hate and hold our enemies, we are stung by all these things; and the strokes we endure from the sight of each one of them are frequent and continual. What is the need then of sustaining such a siege, such torment and such punishment? For if hell did not threaten the resentful, yet for the very torment resulting from the thing itself we ought to forgive the offences of those who have aggrieved us. But when deathless punishments remain behind, what can be more senseless than the man, who both here and there brings punishment upon himself, while he thinks to be revenged upon his enemy!”

John Chrysostom (349–407) important Early Church Father

Homilies on the Statues http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf109/Page_474.html, Homily XX

Hate, Fear, Peace, Forgiveness

“It's true that all the men you knew were dealers
who said they were through with dealing
Every time you gave them shelter.
I know that kind of man
It's hard to hold the hand of anyone
who is reaching for the sky just to surrender.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

"The Stranger Song" (1966)
Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967)

Men, Time

“And that impulse to make the world better, to push back on those who try to make it worse, that’s something that your generation has to hold on to. And you have to remember, it’s never easy; there are no days off. But if there’s one thing that I know from my own life, it’s that with hard work and with hope, change is always within our reach.”

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

2015, Town Hall meeting with Young Leaders of the Americas (April 2015)

Life, World, Hope, Change

“No revolutionary movement is complete without its poetical expression. If such a movement has caught hold of the imagination of the masses they will seek a vent in song for the aspirations, the fears and the hopes, the loves and the hatreds engendered by the struggle. Until the movement is marked by the joyous, defiant, singing of revolutionary songs, it lacks one of the most distinctive marks of a popular revolutionary movement, it is the dogma of a few, and not the faith of the multitude.”

James Connolly (1868–1916) Irish republican and socialist leader

Songs of Freedom by Irish Authors (1907) Introduction. Revolutionary Song https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1907/xx/revsong.htm

Love, Fear, Faith, Hope

“What is meant here is that man should not become immersed in loving the world which will make him forget the responsibilities that Allah had ordered him to hold, but he has to look at the world in its reality, in which it represents a place for obeying Allah.”

Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah (1935–2010) Lebanese faqih

The mutual love between Allah and His servants http://english.bayynat.org.lb/Doctrines/Themutual1.htm

Love, World, Reality, Forgetting

“Cause maybe you're loveable.
Maybe you're my snowflake.
And your eyes turn from green to gray.
And in the winter I'll hold you in a cold place.
And you should never cut your hair,
'Cause I love the way you flick it off your shoulder.And you will never know
Just how beautiful you are to me.
But maybe I'm just in love
When you wake me up.”

Ed Sheeran (1991) English singer-songwriter and producer

Wake Me Up, written with Jake Gosling
Song lyrics, + (2011)

Love, Beauty, Way, Winter

“Faith has a saving connection with Christ. Christ is on the shore, so to speak, holding the rope, and as we lay hold of it with the hand of our confidence, He pulls us to shore; but all good works having no connection with Christ are drifted along down the gulf of fell despair.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 228.

Faith, Confidence, Christ, Despair

“Under each arm he carries an umbrella; one of them, with pictures on the inside, he spreads over the good children, and then they dream the most beautiful stories the whole night. But the other umbrella has no pictures, and this he holds over the naughty children so that they sleep heavily, and wake in the morning without having dreamed at all.”

Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet

Ole-Lukøie
Fairy Tales (1835)

Children, Beauty, Dreams, Sleep

“But we betray our most noble past as well if we were to deny the possibility of movement, the possibility of progress; if we were to let cynicism consume us and fear overwhelm us. If we lost hope. For however slow, however incomplete, however harshly, loudly, rudely challenged at each point along our journey, in America, we can create the change that we seek. All it requires is that our generation be willing to do what those who came before us have done: To rise above the cynicism and rise above the fear, to hold fast to our values, to see ourselves in each other, to cherish dignity and opportunity not just for our own children but for somebody else’s child. To remember that our freedom is bound up with the freedom of others -– regardless of what they look like or where they come from or what their last name is or what faith they practice. To be honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. To nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of Earth. To nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of Earth. That is our choice. Today, we affirm hope.”

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

2015, Commemoration of the 150th Anniversary of the 13th Amendment (December 2015)

Children, Fear, Faith, Hope

“I thought that my invincible power would hold the world captive, leaving me in a freedom undisturbed. Thus night and day I worked at the chain with huge fires and cruel hard strokes. When at last the work was done and the links were complete and unbreakable, I found that it held me in its grip.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

31 Gitanjali http://www.spiritualbee.com/gitanjali-poems-of-tagore/ (1912)

World, Freedom, Night

“A Loaf holds many grains of corn
And many myriad drops the Sea:
So is God's Oneness Multitude
And that great Multitude are we.”

Angelus Silesius (1624–1677) German writer

The Cherubinic Wanderer

God, Sea

“I can say with truth that I have never, even in times of greatest preoccupation with carnal, worldly and egotistic pursuits, seriously doubted that our existence here is related in some mysterious way to a more comprehensive and lasting existence elsewhere; that somehow or other we belong to a larger scene than our earthly life provides, and to a wider reach of time than our earthly allotment of three score years and ten…It has never been possible for me to persuade myself that the universe could have been created, and we, homo sapiens, so-called, have, generation after generation, somehow made our appearance to sojourn briefly on our tiny earth, solely in order to mount the interminable soap opera, with the same characters and situations endlessly recurring, that we call history. It would be like building a great stadium for a display of tiddly-winks, or a vast opera house for a mouth-organ recital. There must, in other words, be another reason for our existence and that of the universe than just getting through the days of our life as best we may; some other destiny than merely using up such physical, intellectual and spiritual creativity as has been vouchsafed us. This, anyway, has been the strongly held conviction of the greatest artists, saints, philosophers and, until quite recent times, scientists, through the Christian centuries, who have all assumed that the New Testament promise of eternal life is valid, and that the great drama of the Incarnation which embodies it, is indeed the master drama of our existence. To suppose that these distinguished believers were all credulous fools whose folly and credulity in holding such beliefs has now been finally exposed, would seem to me to be untenable; and anyway I'd rather be wrong with Dante and Shakespeare and Milton, with Augustine of Hippo and Francis of Assisi, with Dr. Johnson, Blake and Dostoevsky, than right with Voltaire, Rousseau, Darwin, the Huxleys, Herbert Spencer, H. G. Wells and Bernard Shaw.”

Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist

Confessions of a Twentieth-Century Pilgrim (1988)

Life, Truth, Fools, Way

“There is one alternative to dark matter, and that is the assumption that Newton's laws don't hold over distances as great as galaxies. But we know that Newton's laws hold over a very large domain. And virtually one hundred percent of the physics and astronomy community believes that there is matter in the universe that does not radiate.”

Vera Rubin (1928–2016) American astronomer

As quoted in [Astronomer Vera Rubin—The Doyenne of Dark Matter, Discover Magazine, http://discovermagazine.com/2002/jun/breakdialogue] (1 June 2002)

Law, Communication, Universe

“These rituals remind us of the principles that we hold in common, and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings.”

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

Ramadan Message http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-of-President-Barack-Obama-in-Ramadan-Message Washington, DC (21 August 2009) 2009

Justice

“Don’t hold yourselves cheap, seeing that the creator of all things and of you estimates your value so high, so dear, that he pours out for you every day the most precious blood of his only-begotten Son.”

Aurelius Augustinus (354–430) early Christian theologian and philosopher

216:3:1
Sermons

“If the courts have the final say-so on all legislative acts, and if no appeal can lie from them to the people, then they are the irresponsible masters of the people. In other words, those who take this position hold that the people have enough intelligence to frame and adopt a constitution but not intelligence to apply and interpret the constitution which they have themselves made.”

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

1910s, California's Policies Proclaimed (Feb. 21, 1911)

People, Lie, Intelligence

“Australians have made a lot of mistakes, we have treated Aboriginal people very badly, and we have our share of racists and bigots. But a lot of the agenda of the cultural Left in this country is basically that the past has been a disgrace, that we’ve achieved very little, we’ve become the most materialistic country in the world and that we’re mean-spirited. We’re pretty awful people and we should be ashamed of ourselves and start all over again. Well, I don’t hold that view, and the overwhelming majority of Australians don’t hold that view, and they reject it.”

John Howard (1939) 25th Prime Minister of Australia

2006 interview with Time

People, World, Past, Country

“Fortunate indeed is the man who has found wisdom and who is full of that discretion which is better than all the acquiring, trafficking, and possession of gold and silver. … I dwell (so says Wisdom) in good and salutary counsel, and am present at learned and wise cogitations. Therefore must a man seek this Wisdom and, having found it, take care to hold it well, that in its time and place it may be of help to him. The ensuing representation will set before your eyes the treatise which I have propounded.”

Philibert de l'Orme (1514–1570) French architect of the Renaissance.

Livre d'architecture as quoted by Edward Fenton, "Messer Philibert Delorme" The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin Vol. 13, No. 4, Dec., 1954

Wisdom, Learning, Time, Help

“I do not mean that it is not worthwhile to attempt a revision of the canon or that no success is possible. A few valuable minor changes have been made to our sense of the basic material of the history of music, and other alterations are still waiting to take hold. Gesualdo has not displaced Monteverdi or Palestrina but has won a permanent place; on the other hand, the attempt to convince us that Telemann is a major composer appears to have been abandoned. Alkan has not had the breakthrough his admirers had hoped for. Attacks on Tchaikovsky have not had much success in removing his music from the repertory; his credit with performers has not changed a bit.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Frontiers of Meaning: Three Informal Lectures on Music (1994), Ch. 2 : How to Become Immortal

Hope, Music, History, Sense

“As a rule the person found out in a betrayal of love holds, all the same, the superior position of the two. It is the betrayed one who is humiliated.”

Ada Leverson (1862–1933) British writer

Source: Love's Shadow (1908), Chapter xxxix.

Love, Betrayal, Personality

“I can't hold out any longer and am in a state of utter despair. After a few days of good weather, it's raining again and once again I have had to put the studies I started to one side. It's driving me to distraction and the unfortunate thing is that I take it out on my poor paintings. I destroyed a large picture of flowers which I'd just done along with three or four paintings which I not only scraped down but slashed. This is absurd... Please be kind enough to have some money forwarded to me.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

Quote in a letter from Pourville c. 1882, to his art-dealer Durand-Ruel; as cited in: K.E. Sullivan. Monet: Discovering Art, Brockhampton press, London (2004), p. 50
1870 - 1890

Money, Flowers, Study, Painting

“Forests in the day are friendly places. They remind you of Sunday walks, swooshing leaves, holding a parent's big, warm hand, or providing that hand yourself. At night the woods take the gloves off and remind you why you're nervous in the dark. Night forests say "Go find a cave, monkey-boy, this place is not for you."”

Michael Marshall Smith (1965) British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer

Source: The Lonely Dead (2004), Ch. 1

Boy, Parent, Night

“Come sit by my side, Lydia, on the bank of the river.
Calmly let us watch it flow, and learn
That life passes, and we are not holding hands.
(Let us hold hands)
…..
Let us hold hands no more: why should we tire ourselves?
For our pleasure, for our pain, we pass on like the river.
'Tis better to know how to pass on silently,
With no great disquiet.”

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

Vem sentar-te comigo, Lídia, à beira do rio.
Sossegadamente fitemos o seu curso e aprendamos
Que a vida passa, e não estamos de mãos enlaçadas.
(Enlacemos as mãos)
.....
Desenlacemos as mãos, porque não vale a pena cansarmo-nos.
Quer gozemos, quer não gozemos, passamos como o rio.
Mais vale saber passar silenciosamente
E sem desassossegos grandes.
Ricardo Reis (heteronym), ode translated by Peter Rickard.

Life, Pain, Pleasure, Learning

“There is a thing that happens when you are not as privileged and you start hanging out with a seedier crowd because you can afford to do the same things, […] And all of a sudden the big night out is sitting in somebody's trailer, smoking something or getting hold of something to put up to your nose.”

Eddie Vedder (1964) musician, songwriter, member of Pearl Jam

L.A. Times 5/1/94, "He Didn't Ask for All This".

Night

“She says we've got to hold on to what we've got”

Jon Bon Jovi (1962) American singer and musician

Livin' On A Prayer
Music, Slippery When Wet (1986)

“Direct interference in a person's life does not enter our scope of activity, nor, on the other, tralatitiously speaking, hand, is his destiny a chain of predeterminate links: some 'future' events may be linked to others, O. K., but all are chimeric, and every cause-and-effect sequence is always a hit-and-miss affair, even if the lunette has actually closed around your neck, and the cretinous crowd holds its breath.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Transparent Things

Transparent Things (1972), Ch. 24.

Life, Future, Personality

“I find poetic links, the logic of poetry in cinema, extraordinarily pleasing. They seem to me perfectly appropriate to the potential of cinema as the most truthful and poetic of art forms. Certainly I am more at home with them than with traditional theatrical writing which links images through the linear rigid logical development of plot. That sort of fussily correct way of linking events usually involves arbitrarily forcing them into sequence in obedience to some abstract notion of order. And even when this is not so, even when the plot is governed by the characters, one finds that the links which hold it together rest on a facile interpretation of life's complexities.”

Andrei Tarkovsky book Sculpting in Time

Sculpting in Time (1986)

Life, Truth, Art, Way

“There is nothing man will not attempt when great enterprises hold out the promise of great rewards.”

Livy (-59–17 BC) Roman historian

Book IV, sec. 35
History of Rome

“We have taller buildings but shorter tempers; wider freeways but narrower viewpoints; we spend more but have less; we buy more but enjoy it less; we have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, yet less time; we have more degrees but less sense; more knowledge but less judgment; more experts, yet more problems; we have more gadgets but less satisfaction; more medicine, yet less wellness; we take more vitamins but see fewer results. We drink too much; smoke too much; spend too recklessly; laugh too little; drive too fast; get too angry; stay up too late; get up too tired; read too seldom; watch TV too much and pray too seldom.
We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values; we fly in faster planes to arrive there quicker, to do less and return sooner; we sign more contracts only to realize fewer profits; we talk too much; love too seldom and lie too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life; we've added years to life, not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. We've conquered outer space, but not inner space; we've done larger things, but not better things; we've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul; we've split the atom, but not our prejudice; we write more, but learn less; plan more, but accomplish less; we make faster planes, but longer lines; we learned to rush, but not to wait; we have more weapons, but less peace; higher incomes, but lower morals; more parties, but less fun; more food, but less appeasement; more acquaintances, but fewer friends; more effort, but less success. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but have less communication; drive smaller cars that have bigger problems; build larger factories that produce less. We've become long on quantity, but short on quality.
These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion; tall men, but short character; steep in profits, but shallow relationships. These are the times of world peace, but domestic warfare; more leisure and less fun; higher postage, but slower mail; more kinds of food, but less nutrition. These are the days of two incomes, but more divorces; these quick trips, disposable diapers, cartridge living, throw-away morality, one-night stands, overweight bodies and pills that do everything from cheer, to prevent, quiet or kill. It is a time when there is much in the show window and nothing in the stock room.”

Bob Moorehead

"The Paradox of Our Age"; these statements were used in World Wide Web hoaxes which attributed them to various authors including George Carlin, a teen who had witnessed the Columbine High School massacre, the Dalai Lama and Anonymous; they are quoted in "The Paradox of Our Time" at Snopes.com http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/paradox.asp Words Aptly Spoken (1995)

Love, Life, Men, Lie

“I must no less commend the study of anatomy, which whosoever considers, I believe will never be an atheist; the frame of man's body and coherence of his parts, being so strange and paradoxal, that I hold it to be the greatest miracle of nature.”

Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury (1583–1648) Anglo-Welsh soldier, diplomat, historian, poet and religious philosopher

Source: The Autobiography, P. 31

Nature, Study, Parting

“I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it's just too much. The current's too strong. They've got to let go, drift apart. That's how it is with us. It's a shame, Kath, because we've loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can't stay together forever.”

Kazuo Ishiguro book Never Let Me Go

Source: Never Let Me Go (2005), Chapter 23, p. 282

Love, People, Thinking, Strong

“Five decades ago today, Americans came to this honored place to lay claim to a promise made at our founding: “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.” In 1963, almost 200 years after those words were set to paper, a full century after a great war was fought and emancipation proclaimed, that promise -- those truths -- remained unmet. And so they came by the thousands from every corner of our country, men and women, young and old, blacks who longed for freedom and whites who could no longer accept freedom for themselves while witnessing the subjugation of others. And so they came by the thousands from every corner of our country, men and women, young and old, blacks who longed for freedom and whites who could no longer accept freedom for themselves while witnessing the subjugation of others.”

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

2013, "Let Freedom Ring" Ceremony (August 2013)

Life, Women, Men, War

“To such a one my answer is that I have arrived at a nourishing kernel in that I have learnt that a man is not in any difficulty in making a reply according to his faith which he ought to make to those who try to defame our Holy Scripture. When they are able, from reliable evidence, to prove some fact of physical science, we shall show that it is not contrary to our Scripture. But when they produce from any of their books a theory contrary to Scripture, and therefore contrary to the Catholic faith, either we shall have some ability to demonstrate that it is absolutely false, or at least we ourselves will hold it so without any shadow of a doubt. And we will so cling to our Mediator, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,” that we will not be led astray by the glib talk of false philosophy or frightened by the superstition of false religion. When we read the inspired books in the light of this wide variety of true doctrines which are drawn from a few words and founded on the firm basis of Catholic belief, let us choose that one which appears as certainly the meaning intended by the author. But if this is not clear, then at least we should choose an interpretation in keeping with the context of Scripture and in harmony with our faith. But if the meaning cannot be studied and judged by the context of Scripture, at least we should choose only that which our faith demands. For it is one thing to fail to recognize the primary meaning of the writer, and another to depart from the norms of religious belief. If both these difficulties are avoided, the reader gets full profit from his reading."”

Aurelius Augustinus (354–430) early Christian theologian and philosopher

I, xxi, 41. Modern translation by J.H. Taylor
De Genesi ad Litteram

Wisdom, Books, Faith, Religion

“Marxist philosophy holds that the law of the unity of opposites is the fundamental law of the universe. This law operates universally, whether in the natural world, in human society, or in man's thinking. Between the opposites in a contradiction there is at once unity and struggle, and it is this that impels things to move and change. Contradictions exist everywhere, but they differ in accordance with the different nature of different things. In any given phenomenon or thing, the unity of opposites is conditional, temporary and transitory, and hence relative, whereas the struggle of opposites is absolute.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
Original: (zh-CN) 马克思主义的哲学认为，对立统一规律是宇宙的根本规律。这个规律，不论在自然界、人类社会和人们的思想中，都是普遍存在的。矛盾着的对立面又统一，又斗争，由此推动事物的运动和变化。矛盾是普遍存在的，不过按事物的性质不同，矛盾的性质也就不同。对于任何一个具体的事物说来，对立的统一是有条件的、暂时的、过渡的，因而是相对的，对立的斗争则是绝对的。

World, Law, Nature, Thinking