Quotes about last
page 42

“I give all my printed books to Samuel Peach, son of Samuel Peach, in my Will named, and desire that this may be a codicil to my last Will and Testament, and taken as part thereof, as witness my hand, this third day of December. in the year of our Lord 1761.”

James Bradley (1693–1762) English astronomer; Astronomer Royal

Miscellaneous Works and Correspondence (1832), Memoirs of Mr. Bradley

Books, Parting

“The global role of the United States is perhaps the ultimate chapter in that long period of European expansion which had begun in western Europe, and especially on the Atlantic seaboard, during the 15th century. Europe slowly had outgrown its homeland. Its cultural empire eventually formed a long band traversing most of the Northern Hemisphere and dipping far into the Southern. The modern hub of the peoples and ideas of European origin is now New York as much as Paris, or Los Angeles as much as London. In the history of the European peoples the city of Washington is perhaps what Constantinople - the infant city of Emperor Constantine - was to the last phase of the Roman Empire; for it is unlikely that Europeans, a century hence, will continue to stamp the world so decisively with their ideas and inventions.”

Geoffrey Blainey book A Short History of the World

A Short History of the World (2000)

People, World, Angels, History

“Everybody thinks that this civilization has lasted a very long time but it really does take very few grandfathers’ granddaughters to take us back to the dark ages.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

Source: Everybody’s Autobiography (1937), Ch. 3

Age, Thinking, Time

“We are taught to consume. And that's what we do. But if we realized that there really is no reason to consume-that it's just a mind set, that it's just an addiction, then we wouldn't be out there stepping on people's hands climbing the corporate ladder of success. I have my reasons why I want to be filthy rich. It's so I can buy the last first growth forest and turn it into a permanent national park. I just bought 800 acres on the border of Panama and Costa Rica.”

River Phoenix (1970–1993) American actor, musician, and activist

Detour, (1993)

People, Success

“Last night I saw the grass
Slowly divide (it was the same scene
But now it glowed a fierce and mortal green)
And saw the dog emerging.”

Richard Wilbur (1921–2017) American poet

The Pardon

Dogs, Grass, Night

“Lorian Press could have simply reprinted the first edition of New Age Politics, from 1976. I liked its length (only 50,000 words), it covered almost all the ground I do here, and I wanted to prove to you that the perspective I synthesized – the perspective of many people in the social change movements of today – goes back to the Nixon-Ford era, when the traditional left and right both lost their way. It was not spontaneously generated by any single social movement of the last 40 years. Rather, all our movements have been re-inventing, adding to, and deepening a perspective that already in the 1970s stood as our only real alternative to More Of The Same.”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

Page 18.
New Age Politics: Our Only Real Alternative (2015)

People, Age, Way, Change

“Gentlemen, when I consider the objections put forward to the grant of self-government I can hardly keep my patience. What is it that they say? They say that we are not educated enough to get self-government. My answer is: whose fault is it? For the last 150 years you have been governing this country and yet you have not succeeded in educating the people of this country to such an extent that they may be fit for governing themselves.”

Chittaranjan Das (1870–1925) Indian politician and leader of the Swaraj Party

Speech delivered on 18th March 1918, at Rammurti’s pavilion at a meeting held to support the deputation to England. Source: Collected Works of Deshbandhu.
1918

People, Education, Patience, Country

“Imagine a person who has been and is addicted to a passion. There comes a moment (as it does to everyone, perhaps many times – alas, perhaps many times in vain!), a moment he seems to be brought to a halt: a good resolution is awakening. Imagine that one morning he said to himself (let us suppose him to be a gambler), “I solemnly vow that I will nevermore have anything to do with gambling, never – tonight will be the last time” – ah, my friend, he s lost! I would rather bet on the opposite, however strange that may seem. If there was a gambler who said to himself, “Well, now, you may gamble every blessed day all the rest of your life – but tonight you are going to leave it alone,” and he did – ah, my friend, he is saved for sure! The first gambler’s resolution is a trick by the craving, and the second gambler’s is to fool the craving.”

Sören Kierkegaard book For Self-Examination

Soren Kierkegaard, For Self-Examination, Hong p. 45
1850s, For Self-Examination (1851), What is Required in Order to Look at Oneself with True Blessing in the Mirror of the Word?

Life, Fools, Imagination, Passion

“I believe any philosophizing about art is absurd and empty. Unfortunately, in the last century a phenomenon has emerged in which the status of “work of art” were granted to many foolish, tacky, and distasteful works as long as they were accompanied by ten or twelve pages of philosophizing justification.”

Guity Novin (1944) artist

Dialogues on enlightenment and reason (2013)

Art

“Just make the point we come from the water. It's the most natural medium in the world. It's the only sport you can do from your first bath to your last without hurting yourself.”

Esther Williams (1921–2013) competitive American swimmer and actor

Tale of a Mermaid: Swimmimg regimen still suits Ester Williams at age 75 https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=_-kNAAAAIBAJ&sjid=K28DAAAAIBAJ&pg=6146,4767773&dq=esther+williams&hl=en (July 23, 1997)

World, Nature, Sport, Water

“Disappointed we didn't win it for Sanga. We promised him we would play our best cricket, but we didn't. On behalf of the team, we can't thank Sanga enough for his services over the last 15 years.”

Kumar Sangakkara (1977) Sri Lankan cricketer

Sri Lanka captain Angelo Mathews said that he was disappointed that the team could not gift a farewell win to batting great Kumar Sangakkara, who retired from cricket at the P Sara Oval, quoted on sports.ndtv, "Angelo Mathews Unhappy Sri Lanka Did Not Win it for Kumar Sangakkara" http://sports.ndtv.com/sri-lanka-vs-india-2015/news/247472-angelo-mathews-unhappy-sri-lanka-did-not-win-it-for-kumar-sangakkara, August 24, 2015. About

Disappointment

“What we saw in Syria last week should shock the conscience of the world. It defies any code of morality. Make no mistake, President Obama believes there must be accountability for those who would use the world's most heinous weapons against the world's most vulnerable people.”

John F. Kerry (1943) politician from the United States

Syria chemical attack undeniable, says John Kerry, August 26, 2013 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23844643

People, World

“I am particularly grateful to Nozick for his unfailing help and encouragement during the last stages.”

John Rawls book A Theory of Justice

Preface, pg. xii
A Theory of Justice (1971; 1975; 1999)

Help

“I had come back at last, come back to my spiritual home from which I had wandered away in self forgetfulness. But this coming back was no atavistic act. On the contrary, it was a reawakening to my ancestral heritage which was waiting all along for me to lay my claim on its largesses. It was also the heritage of all mankind as proved by the seers, sages and mystics of many a time and clime. It spoke in different languages to different people. To me it spoke in the language of Hindu spirituality and Hindu culture at their highest.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

How I became a Hindu (1982)

People, Home, Time, Waiting

Rob Pike (1956) software engineer

Rob Pike (2004) in interview http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/18/1153211&tid=189 at slashdot.com, Oct 18 2004

Beauty, Way, Nature, Problem

“The computer makes it posible to create a central information centre of all human achievements; and for any individual, from the comfort of his own home, to interrogate that information. For example, you would like to see a picture of the tallest horse? Then before your last finger clicks the last button that photograph will be up on your screen, in your own home.”

Owain Owain (1929–1993) Welsh novelist, short story writer and poet

Home, Horse

“Rainer [protagonist in the novel], who is reading The Outsider by Camus, says he would like to put the hostility of the world behind him. Once your hope for something better is taken from you, then at last you have the present all in your hand. Then you yourself are reality. Others are extras. When Rainer contemplated san evening he says that evening is melancholy ceasefire where all life has come to and end.”

Elfriede Jelinek book Wonderful, Wonderful Times

53
Wonderful, Wonderful Times (1990)

Life, Hostility, World, Hope

“The secret of Hegel's dialectic lies ultimately in this alone, that it negates theology through philosophy in order then to negate philosophy through theology. Both the beginning and the end are constituted by theology; philosophy stands in the middle as the negation of the first positedness, but the negation of the negation is again theology. At first everything is overthrown, but then everything is reinstated in its old place, as in Descartes. The Hegelian philosophy is the last grand attempt to restore a lost and defunct Christianity through philosophy, and, of course, as is characteristic of the modern era, by identifying the negation of Christianity with Christianity itself.”

Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872) German philosopher and anthropologist

Part II, Section 21 Principles of Philosophy of the Future http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/feuerbach/works/future/index.htm (1843)

Secret

“Sarkozy was elected last year by insisting on immigrants speaking French and insisting that they integrate into the French culture…Obama’s call for Americans to learn Spanish to accommodate the onslaught of Mexican immigrants makes the French government sound like Rush Limbaugh.”

Rachel Marsden (1974) journalist

Contrasting Barack Obama with French President Nicolas Sarkozy Barack Obama Has Little In Common With Europe http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=27669

Learning

“The ancient empires fall, the dark-skinned peoples fade and even the demons of antiquity gasp their last, but over all stands the Aryan barbarian, white-skinned, cold-eyed, dominant, the supreme fighting man of the earth.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"Wings in the Night" (1932)

People, Fight

“Religion finally severed the unity which all willed but none could trust. An heroic nation of monotheists sought to impose its faith on a vaguely pantheist world. For the first and last time the Second Men stumbled into a world-wide civil war; and just because the war was religious it developed a brutality hitherto unknown.”

Olaf Stapledon book Last and First Men

Source: Last and First Men (1930), Chapter VII: The Rise of the Second Men; Section 3, “The Zenith of the Second Men” (p. 110)

Men, War, World, Faith

“After all, what new insights has religion produced in the last century?”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 17

Religion

“The journalists at Charlie Hebdo are now rightly being celebrated as martyrs on behalf of freedom of expression, but let’s face it. If they had tried to publish their satirical newspaper on any American university campus over the last two decades it wouldn't have lasted 30 seconds. Student and faculty groups would have accused them of hate speech. The administration would have cut financing and shut them down.”

David Brooks (1961) American journalist, commentator and editor

David Brooks. "I Am Not Charlie Hebdo" http://archive.li/nlsvG The New York Times (January 2015) 2010s

Hate, Freedom, Universe

“There is no tie
Like that last holiest link of love, which binds
The lonely child to its more lonely parent.”

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

(5th July 1823) A Tale Founded on Fact
12th July 1823) Glencoe see The Vow of the Peacock (1835
(19th July 1823) Execution of Crescentius see The Improvisatrice (1824) Crescentius
The London Literary Gazette, 1823

Love, Parent

“Not with dreams, but with blood and with iron,
Shall a nation be moulded at last.”

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic

A Word for the Country.
Undated

Dreams

“And come he slow, or come he fast,
It is but Death who comes at last.”

Walter Scott Marmion

Canto II, introduction, st. 30.
Marmion (1808)

Death

“13 Proposition. Every one of the first three thundering Angels containeth a Jubelee, and then the last foure al at once compleateth the day of judgement.”

John Napier (1550–1617) Scottish mathematician

A Plaine Discovery of the Whole Revelation of St. John (1593), The First and Introductory Treatise

Angels

“Many a head that down had lain,
Impatient with its twelve hours' pain,
And wishing that the bed it prest,
Were, as the grave's, a long last rest,
Has sprung again at morning's call,
Forgiving, or forgetting all;
Lighting the weary weight of thought
With colours from the day-break brought,
Reading new promise in the sky,
And hearing Hope, the lark on high.”

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

The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Pain, Hope, Forgiveness, Light

“We may be damned at last, by God or our consciences; and though I've met a good many people who profess to credit no God, I've never met one who believed he had no conscience—this though he could no more produce it for my inspection than I could point out the God he demanded to see.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

Introduction for R. A. Lafferty, Episodes of the Argo (1990), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Castle of Days (1992)
Nonfiction

God, People

“Conversation is imperative if gaps are to be filled, and old age, it is the last gap but one.”

Patrick White book The Tree of Man

The Tree of Man (1955)

Age

“The good people of Iowa have debated issues ranging from nuclear Armageddon to universal health care. And then there’s 2016, when the top two Republican candidates in the dwindling hours before caucusgoers pick a nominee are throwing around this question: “How stupid are the people of Iowa?” It was Donald Trump who first raised the issue of Hawkeye State imbecility, in a mocking reference to a crush that Iowans had on Ben Carson last fall. And it’s the odious Ted Cruz who has been using Trump’s very words to goad Iowans into proving that they are not, in fact, so stupid as to back an ego-inflamed reality television star who makes fun of them.”

Timothy Egan (1954) American writer

How Stupid Is Iowa? (2016)

People, Health, Stupidity, Star

“When our sailors were captured last week, I said that's one of the saddest things that I have seen when those young people were on their hands and knees in a begging position with their hands up and thugs behind them with guns, and then we talk like it's OK. It's not OK. It's lack of respect. We can't let that happen to this country. It's lack of respect.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, January, Speech at (18 January 2016)

People, Country

“The last sort I shall mention are verbal critics — mere word-catchers, fellows that pick out a word in a sentence and a sentence in a volume, and tell you it is wrong. The title of Ultra-Crepidarian critics has been given to a variety of this species.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On Criticism" Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

“Women, to be very attractive to all sorts of different people, must have great readiness of sympathy. Many have it naturally, and many work hard in acquiring a good imitation of it. In the first case it is against the nature of such persons to be monopolized for more than a very short time; in the second all their trouble would be thrown away if they allowed themselves to be monopolized. Once in their lives, indeed, they will be, and ought to be, and that monopoly lasts, or should last for ever; but instead of destroying in them that which was their great charm, it only deepens and widens it, and the sympathy which was before fitful, and, perhaps, wayward, flows on in a calm and healthy stream, blessing and cheering all who come within reach of its exhilarating and life-giving waters.”

Thomas Hughes book Tom Brown at Oxford

Source: Tom Brown at Oxford (1861), Ch. 27

Life, Women, People, Nature

“Howitt says of the man who found the great nugget which weighed twenty-eight pounds, at the Bendigo diggings in Australia: — "He soon began to drink; got a horse, and rode all about, generally at full gallop, and, when he met people, called out to inquire if they knew who he was, and then kindly informed them that he was 'the bloody wretch that had found the nugget.' At last he rode full speed against a tree, and nearly knocked his brains out." I think, however, there was no danger of that, for he had already knocked his brains out against the nugget.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

People, Drink, Thinking, Tree

“I accept the fact that the important painting of the last hundred years was done in France. American painters have generally missed the point of modern painting from beginning to end... Thus the fact that good European moderns [European artists who lived in the U. S. because of the Nazi-regime] are now here is very important, for they bring with them an understanding of the problems of modern painting. I am particularly impressed with their concept of the source of art being the unconscious. These idea interests me more than these specific artists do, for the two artists I admire most, Picasso and Joan Miró, are still abroad.”

Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) American artist

As quoted in Abstract Expressionism: Creators and Critics, ed. Clifford Ross, Abrahams Publishers, New York, 1990, p. 138
1940's, Art and Architecture (1944)

Art, Idea, Understanding, Problem

“Since 1895, the media has alternated between global cooling and warming scares during four separate and sometimes overlapping time periods. From 1895 until the 1930’s the media peddled a coming ice age. From the late 1920's until the 1960's they warned of global warming. From the 1950's until the 1970's they warned us again of a coming ice age. This makes modern global warming the fourth estate's fourth attempt to promote opposing climate change fears during the last 100 years.”

James Inhofe (1934) American politician

" Hot & Cold Media Spin: A Challenge To Journalists Who Cover Global Warming http://epw.senate.gov/speechitem.cfm?party=rep&id=263759", Senate Floor speech ()

Age, Fear, Change, Time

“Last year in Florida, at Sea World Florida, an animal trainer was killed by a killer whale… HUH. Turns out, there's a reason why they didn't name them "ocean ponies." Some things are exactly as they seem, folks. Killer whales kill, pilot whales wear dark sunglasses. I'm not sure how the sperm whale got his name… but I'm not getting in the pool.”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

A Little Unprofessional

World, Animals, Sea

“Do not smile at my advice -- the advice of a dreamer who warns you against Kantians, Fichteans, and philosophers of nature. Do not smile at the visionary who anticipates the same revolution in the realm of the visible as has taken place in the spiritual. Thought precedes action as lightning precedes thunder. German thunder is of true Germanic character; it is not very nimble, but rumbles along ponderously. Yet, it will come and when you hear a crashing such as never before has been heard in the world's history, then you know that the German thunderbolt has fallen at last. At that uproar the eagles of the air will drop dead, and lions in the remotest deserts of Africa will hide in their royal dens. A play will be performed in Germany which will make the French Revolution look like an innocent idyll.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

"The History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany" (1834)

World, Smile, History, Nature

“I don’t know the why of anything, even when I pretend most diligently I do. The truth is the last time I had any idea why or what I was supposed to do I was lying in a shell hole, looking up at the sky. My mind was filled with a Bach keyboard sonata, which was one of the last I’d learned, I forget which one now. I absolutely knew I was about to die and I was completely happy and at peace, in a way I never was before or since, not even with you, in our best moments. It was so easy, you see, a kind of absolute joy and peace, because I knew it was all done and I was all square with life. Nothing left to do but let things take their course. And when I didn’t die, I didn’t know what to do. So I thought, I’ll take my revolver, go out and blow a hole through my head. Only I knew it wouldn’t work. I knew, I just knew you couldn’t do it that way. You couldn’t make it happen, not if you wanted to find peace. So, I thought, then, a sniper can do it for me. But no matter how I tried to let them no sniper ever found me. And all the other times I went out and lay in shell holes in No Man’s Land it wasn’t the same, and I knew I wouldn’t die this time, and of course I never did. I had this mad feeling I’d become some sort of Wandering Jew. And everything for so long afterwards was about dragging this living corpse of myself around, giving it things to do, because here it was, alive. And nothing made any sense and I didn’t even hope it would. I followed paths that were there to be followed, I did what others said to do.”

Basil Rathbone (1892–1967) British actor

Letter https://thegreatbaz.wordpress.com/2013/03/18/fuller-text-of-letter-quoted-in-a-life-divided/

Life, Happiness, Truth, Peace

“Go away, image of my living mother, full of life, as I saw her in France for the last time. Go away! My mother's ghost.”

Albert Cohen (1895–1981) Swiss writer

Le livre de ma mère [The Book of My Mother] (1954)

Life, Time

“We the Chinese nation have the spirit to fight the enemy to the last drop of our blood, the determination to recover our lost territory by our own efforts, and the ability to stand on our own feet in the family of nations.”

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

“On Tactics Against Japanese Imperialism” (December 27, 1935)

Family, Effort, Fight

“There are certain great sentiments which simultaneously possess many minds and make what we call the spirit of the age. That spirit at the close of the last century was peculiarly humane. From the great Spanish Cardinal Ximenes, who refused the proposal of the Bishop Las Casas to enslave the Indians; from Milton, who sang, 'But man over man He made not Lord; such title to himself Reserving, human left from human free', from John Selden, who said, 'Before all, Liberty', from Algernon Sidney, who died for it, from Morgan Godwyn, a clergyman of the Established Church, and Richard Baxter, the Dissenter, with his great contemporary, George Fox, whose protest has been faithfully maintained by the Quakers; from Southern, Montesquieu, Hutcheson, Savage, Shenstone, Sterne, Warburton, Voltaire, Rosseau, down to Cowper and Clarkson in 1783 — by the mouths of all these and innumerable others Religion, Scepticism, Literature, and Wit had persistently protested against the sin of slavery. As early as 1705 Lord Holt had declared there was no such thing as a slave by the law of England. At the close of the century, four years before our Declaration, Lord Mansfield, though yearning to please the planters, was yet compelled to utter the reluctant 'Amen' to the words of his predecessor. Shall we believe Lord Mansfield, who lived in the time and spoke for it, when he declared that wherever English law extended — and it extended to these colonies — there was no man whatsoever so poor and outcast but had rights sacred as the king's; or shall we believe a judge eighty-four years afterwards, who says that at that time Africans were regarded as people 'who had no rights which the white man was bound to respect?”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

I am not a lawyer, but, for the sake of the liberty of my countrymen, I trust the law of the Supreme Court of the United States is better than its knowledge of history.
1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

People, Age, Religion, Law

“Many other cities could go the way that Los Angeles went last night unless the president is willing to step in and take some strong action in terms of letting people know that he cares about this issue.”

Maxine Waters (1938) U.S. Representative from California

San Francisco Chronicle (1 May 1992)

People, Angels, Way, Strong

“Owing to the neglect of our defences and the mishandling of the German problem in the last five years, we seem to be very near the bleak choice between War and Shame. My feeling is that we shall choose Shame, and then have War thrown in a little later on even more adverse terms than at present.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to Lord Moyne (September 1938), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 972
The 1930s

War, Problem

“Last year, I filed Senate Bill Number 123 which penalizes bus drivers who commit criminal negligence in road mishaps with 20 years of imprisonment. The existing preventive policies require more teeth to achieve safety benefits. There is no guarantee to prevent all road accidents because of many factors including human, mechanical and environmental. But regulators like the LTO and the LTFRB carry the weight of preventing fatal accidents before these happen by strictly implementing the road safety fundamentals of all public utility vehicles. They have the responsibility to make all public transportation reasonably safe to drive and to travel on. These regulators must do their jobs. Stern measures need to be strictly implemented to ensure road safety. Conscious efforts from all sectors of government and the society should be at high level to avoid further loss of lives and damage to person and property. ‪”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Escudero, F. [Francis]. (2014, February 10). Retrieved from Official Facebook Page of Francis Escudero https://www.facebook.com/senchizescudero/posts/10152238895305610/ 2014, Facebook

Travel, Effort, Loss, Personality

“Roper: So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law!
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you — where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man's laws, not God's — and if you cut them down — and you're just the man to do it — d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.”

Robert Bolt A Man for All Seasons

Act I
A Man for All Seasons (1960)

God, Law, Thinking, Country

“Experimentally she thinks about dumping toxic waste in pristine wilderness and killing the last great apes on earth with a club. She still finds both those thoughts disgusting. This is a relief; it seems to her that she’s just selfish, not evil.
She was always taught they’re the same thing. She hopes she remembers, when she gets out of all this, that they’re not.”

John Barnes book Mother of Storms

Source: Mother of Storms (1994), p. 298

Hope, Thinking, Evil, Selfishness

“…there, strung out under the cornice of the building, was the motto, which he had never noticed before, of the Federal Communications Agency:
PLANNED FREEDOM IS THE ROAD TO
LASTING PROGRESS.
So simple, so direct, and yet, when you thought about it, almost impossible to understand.”

Thomas M. Disch (1940–2008) Novelist, short story writer, poet

"The Man Who Had No Idea".
The Man Who Had No Idea (and other stories) (1982)

Communication, Understanding, Freedom

“The way to attain love is to love. A less excellent love leads to a greater love, and a greater love in turn leads to the highest love, as well as to the most excellent and ultimate fruits of active love. Each of these degrees has its own theory and practice. All of them, especially the last degrees, possess a simple, exalted, and singular contemplation of the divine Object, which constantly exerts a powerful influence on the soul and ravishes it with delight.”

John of St. Samson (1571–1636)

From The Goad, the Flames, the Arrows and the Mirror of the love of God

Love, Way, Soul

“Let no cobler go beyond his last.”

Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet (1763–1841) British judge

1 St. Tr. (N. S.) 282; invoking Pliny the Elder: "Let the cobler stick to his last".
Trial of Hunt and others (King v. Hunt) (1820)

“I would like to thank first the vast multitudes who voted against me - and I have met quite a few in the last nine months, not all of them entirely polite.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

2000s, 2008, First Speech As London Mayor (May 3, 2008)

“In short, unbalanced bipolar systems are so unstable that they cannot last for any appreciable period of time.”

John Mearsheimer book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

Source: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), Chapter 9, The Causes of Great Power War, p. 337

Time

“Two recent studies of the geomagnetic field in the last 1Myr have found 14 excursions, large changes in direction lasting 5–10kyr each, six of which are established as global phenomena by correlation between different sites. The older picture of the geomagnetic field enjoying long periods of stable polarity may not therefore be correct; instead, the field appears to suffer many dramatic changes in direction and concomitant reduction in intensity for 10–20 per cent of the time. During excursions the field may reverse in the liquid outer core, which has timescales of 500yr or less, but not in the solid inner core, where the field must change by diffusion with a timescale of 3kyr. This timescale is consistent with the remarkably uniform duration of well-dated excursions. The disparity of dynamical timescales between the inner and outer cores, a factor of 10, is consistent with the 10 excursions between full reversals.”

David Gubbins (1947) British university teacher

[The distinction between geomagnetic excursions and reversals, Geophysical Journal International, 137, 1, 1 April 1999, F1–F3, 10.1046/j.1365-246x.1999.00810.x]

Study, Suffering, Appearance, Change

“It is so by nature that the plant will develop with regularity, that the animal will move purposefully, and that human beings will think. Why should I take exception to recognizing also the last as the expression of an original force of nature, as I do the first and the second?”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Source: The Vocation of Man (1800), P. Preuss, trans. (1987), p. 11

Nature, Thinking, Animals

“I have written a good number of drafts and small reflections. They are not waiting for the last touch but for the sunlight to wake them up.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

B 29
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook B (1768-1771)

Waiting

“If we can stand up
When all else falls down,
We'll last through the winter.
We'll last through the storms.
We'll last through the north winds
That bring down the ice and snow.
We'll last through the long nights
Till the green field's growing again.
Growing again.”

Peter Gabriel (1950) English singer-songwriter, record producer and humanitarian

The Time of the Turning
Song lyrics, OVO (2000)

Winter, Night

“The last bastions of resistance to evolutionary theory are organized religion and cultural anthropology.”

Napoleon Chagnon (1938–2019) American anthropologist

How Napoleon Chagnon Became Our Most Controversial Anthropologist http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/magazine/napoleon-chagnon-americas-most-controversial-anthropologist.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 by Emily Eakin, The New York Times. February 13, 2013

Religion

“Why not make an end of it all?" he asked himself. "Why this obstinate resistance to the fate that is crushing me? It is all very well my forming what are apparently the most reasonable forms of conduct, my life is a succession of griefs and bitter feelings. This month is no better than the last; this year is no better than last year. Why this obstinate determination to go on living? Can I be wanting in firmness? What is death?" he asked himself, opening his case of pistols and examining them. "A very small matter, when all is said; only a fool would be concerned about it.”

Stendhal book Armance

Pourquoi ne pas en finir? se dit-il enfin; pourquoi cette obstination à lutter contre le destin qui m'accable? J'ai beau faire les plans de conduite les plus raisonnables en apparence, ma vie n'est qu'une suite de malheurs et de sensations amères. Ce mois-ci ne vaut pas mieux que le mois passé; cette année-ci ne vaut pas mieux que l'autre année; d'où vient cette obstination à vivre? Manquerais-je de fermeté? Qu'est-ce que la mort? se dit-il en ouvrant la caisse de ses pistolets et les considérant. Bien peu de chose en vérité; il faut être fou pour s'en passer.
Source: Armance (1827), Ch. 2

Life, Death, Fate, Fools

“I discover that some of the Eastern papers represent me as a great blasphemer, because I said, in my lecture on Marriage, at our last Conference, that Jesus Christ was married at Cana of Galilee, that Mary, Martha, and others were his wives, and that he begat children. All that I have to say in reply to that charge is this— they worship a Savior that is too pure and holy to fulfil the commands of his Father. I worship one that is just pure and holy enough "to fulfil all righteousness;" not only the righteous law of baptism, but the still more righteous and important law "to multiply and replenish the earth." Startle not at this! for even the Father himself honored that law by coming down to Mary, without a natural body, and begetting a son; and if Jesus begat children, he only "did that which he had seen his Father do."”

Orson Hyde (1805–1878) American Mormon leader

Journal of Discourses 2:210 (March 18, 1855).

Marriage, Children, Law, Nature

“To be young and aware is to suspect that, in the end, the debate about climate action isn’t about substance, but about rich old men trying to squeeze every last dollar, euro, and yen from their investments in outdated industries. It is to agree with the environmentalist Paul Hawken that we have an economy that steals the future, sells it in the present, and calls it GDP. It is to begin to see your elders as cannibals with golf clubs.”

Alex Steffen (1968) American writer and futurist

The GOOD Guide to COP15: The Fire this Time: Copenhagen and the War for the Future, 18 November 2009 http://www.good.is/post/The-GOOD-Guide-to-COP15-The-Fire-this-Time-Copenhagen-and-the-War-for-the-Future/,

Men, Future

“Most people would never connect abortion to radical Islam, but you're smarter than most people. Don't just take my words for it. Look at the numbers. There are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world. America has, at last count, 320 million people: with so many illegals it is tough to get an accurate count. There are roughly four times as many Muslims as Americans. They keep adding to their ranks, and we keep importing illegals because our own people eliminate their babies. At this rate we will go the way of Europastan.”

Michael Savage (1942) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, and Author

Scorched Earth: Restoring the Country after Obama (2016)

People, World, Way, Time

“What are the fundamental motives that explain the present rivalry of armaments in Europe, notably the Anglo-German? Each nation pleads the need for defence; but this implies that someone is likely to attack, and has therefore a presumed interest in so doing. What are the motives which each State thus fears its neighbors may obey?
They are based on the universal assumption that a nation, in order to find outlets for expanding population and increasing industry, or simply to ensure the best conditions possible for its people, is necessarily pushed to territorial expansion and the exercise of political force against others…. It is assumed that a nation's relative prosperity is broadly determined by its political power; that nations being competing units, advantage in the last resort goes to the possessor of preponderant military force, the weaker goes to the wall, as in the other forms of the struggle for life.
The author challenges this whole doctrine. He attempts to show that it belongs to a stage of development out of which we have passed that the commerce and industry of a people no longer depend upon the expansion of its political frontiers; that a nation's political and economic frontiers do not now necessarily coincide; that military power is socially and economically futile, and can have no relation to the prosperity of the people exercising it; that it is impossible for one nation to seize by force the wealth or trade of another — to enrich itself by subjugating, or imposing its will by force on another; that in short, war, even when victorious, can no longer achieve those aims for which people strive….”

Norman Angell book The Great Illusion

The Great Illusion (1910)

Life, War, People, Fear

“I vowed to myself if I ever go to one of these award shows I'm gonna wear some kind of a bird. So I went to the Grammys last years I had a dress made out of peacock feathers. And I didn't win a Grammy, was named worst dressed. And that's impressive, because if you win a Grammy you had to just beat out what, three, four people? But if you're worst dressed you beat fifteen thousand people! I beat Mary J. Blige! I beat Lil' Kim!”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Tours and CDs, Assassin CD

People, Bird

“David Dimbleby: You couldn't - you couldn't set our minds at rest on the vexed question of what the Sunday Times did actually pay you for the book?
Harold Wilson: No, I don't think it's a matter of interest to the BBC or to anybody else.
Dimbleby: But why..
Wilson: If you're interested in these things, you'd better find out how people buy yachts. Do you ask that question? Did you ask him how he was able to pay for a yacht?
Dimbleby: I haven't interviewed …
Wilson: Have you asked him that question?
Dimbleby: I haven't interviewed him.
Wilson: Well, has the BBC ever asked that question?
Dimbleby: I don't know …
Wilson: Well, what's it got to do with you, then?
Dimbleby: I imagine they have..
Wilson: Why you ask these question, I mean why, if people can afford to buy £25,000 yachts, do the BBC not regard that as a matter for public interest? Why do you insult me with these questions here?
Dimbleby: It's only that it's been a matter of..
Wilson: All I'm saying, all I'm saying..
Dimbleby: … public speculation, and I was giving you an opportunity if you wanted to, to say something about it.
Wilson: It was not a matter of speculation, it was just repeating press gossip. You will not put this question to Mr. Heath. When you have got an answer to him, come and put the question to me. And this last question and answer are not to be recorded. Is this question being recorded?
Dimbleby: Well it is, because we're running film.
Wilson: Well, will you cut it out or not? All right, we stop now. No, I'm sorry, I'm really not having this. I'm really not having this. The press may take this view, that they wouldn't put this question to Heath but they put it to me; if the BBC put this question to me, without putting it to Heath, the interview is off, and the whole programme is off. I think it's a ridiculous question to put. Yes, and I mean it cut off, I don't want to read in the Times Diary or miscellany that I asked for it to be cut out. [pause]
Dimbleby: All right, are we still running? Can I ask you this, then, which I mean, I.. let me put this question, I mean if you find this question offensive then..
Wilson: Coming to ask if your curiosity can be satisfied, I think it's disgraceful. Never had such a question in an interview in my life before.
Dimbleby: I.. [gasps]
Joe Haines (Wilson's Press Secretary): Well, let's stop now, and we can talk about it, shall we?
Dimbleby: No, let's.. well, I mean, we'll keep going, I think, don't you?
Wilson: No, I think we'll have a new piece of film in and start all over again. But if this film is used, or this is leaked, then there's going to be a hell of a row. And this must be..
Dimbleby: Well, I certainly wouldn't leak it..
Wilson: You may not leak it but these things do leak. I've never been to Lime Grove without it leaking.”

Harold Wilson (1916–1995) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Exchange with BBC interviewer David Dimbleby recorded for a documentary called "Yesterday's Men" broadcast on 16 June 1971. The BBC did agree not to show this portion of the interview, but Wilson's fears of a leak were justified as a transcript was published on page 1 of The Times on June 18, 1971. A fuller transcript appeared in Private Eye during 1972.
Leader of the Opposition

Life, People, Books, Imagination

“There are two kinds of micropower. One is co-gen and combined heat and power. That was about two-thirds of the new capacity and three-quarters of the new electricity last year. The rest was distributed or decentralized renewables, which was a $38 billion U. S. global market last year for selling equipment. That's wind, solar, geothermal, small hydro and biomass…. Micropower surpassed nuclear power in worldwide installed capacity in 2002, and surpassed nuclear in electricity generated per year just in the last few months.”

Amory B. Lovins (1947) American physicist

An interview with Amory Lovins re: Nuclear Power http://a4nr.org/news-and-events/10.22.2006-torontostar

“Without its assiduity to the ridiculous, would the human race have lasted more than a single generation?”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

All Gall Is Divided (1952)

“The happiness which comes from long practice, which leads to the end of suffering, which at first is like poison, but at last like nectar - this kind of happiness arises from the serenity of one's own mind.”

Vyasa central and revered figure in most Hindu traditions

Sources, Veda Vyasa Maharshi

Happiness, Suffering

“During the years when my own daughters were pupils in this school I attended many of these gatherings, and heard many speeches made by men who stood where I stand at this moment. They said all sorts of things. I recall one speaker who said that as he looked out at the girls who were assembled to receive prizes, and to pay their last respects to their school, he felt as though he were looking over a garden of exquisite flowers. He was drunk, poor man, and it would be absurd to treat his remark as though he were speaking on oath.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

What Every Girl Should Know.
One-Half of Robertson Davies (1977)

Men, School, Girl, Flowers

“Most of the world's people have been robbed of their freedom by tyrants… In the last century alone, 272,000,000 were shot, burned, stabbed, tortured, beaten, starved to death, blasted to death, buried alive, or whatever other ways of murdering their slaves these thugs could imagine. This horrific and evil toll of bodies could head-to-toe circle the earth more than ten times. It is as though a catastrophic nuclear war had happened, but its mountain of deaths spread over each day of the last century”

Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014) American academic

Source: The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007), p. 11

Death, War, People, World

“Too many people in Connecticut are struggling right now, and the last thing we need is meddling politicians making things worse. Only by cutting deficit spending, reducing burdensome regulations, and letting people keep more of their hard-earned dollars will we get our economy back on track.”

Peter D. Schiff (1963) American entrepreneur, economist and author

2010 Senate Campaign

People

“Until the last great war, a general expectation of material improvement was an idea peculiar to Western man. Now war and its aftermath have made economic and social progress a political imperative in every quarter of the globe. If we ignore this, there will be no peace. There has been a widening of horizons to which in the West we have been perhaps too insensitive. Yet it is as important as the extension of our vision into outer space.
Today continuing poverty and distress are a deeper and more important cause of international tensions, of the conditions that can produce war, than previously.”

Lester B. Pearson (1897–1972) 14th Prime Minister of Canada

The Four Faces of Peace (1957)

War, Peace, Idea

“A man who is not poor nor ill, nor about to be stoned to death, must not distress himself if he does not feel all through his life what faith Stephen had only in his last moments.”

William Mountford (1816–1885) English Unitarian preacher and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 221.

Life, Death, Faith, Feeling

“Regarding my childhood, my grandmother could play by ear and she loved to hear me practice and would say after every piece, "That was pretty. Play that one again." She was a booster. I had two women piano teachers who encouraged me to compose--Margie Murphy and Helen Lipscomb. Helen was also a composer and we used part of my lessons for composition.
When I was in high school, I read John Cage's books and fell in love with the ideas and the excitement of the avant garde. My music, as a result, moved over to what has been called post-Cagian, non-academic. That lasted until about 1979 at which point I changed. My music is now quite lyrical, sometimes called neo-Romantic, and full of cut-ups/collage of newly composed materials. Since 1985 I have been composing mostly swales for various instrumental combinations.
A swale is a meadow or a marsh where there is nourishment and moisture and therefore, a rich diversity of plant life. My work, since 1984, has been made from swatches (of newly composed music, rather than found music) which are reminiscent of this diversity…”

Beth Anderson (1950) American neo-romantic composer

Anderson (1996-2011) "Beth Anderson, Composer, Miscellany From The Dark Past" at beand.com http://www.beand.com/, Last Updated January 3, 2011

Love, Life, Women, Books

“Men are different. It is diversity that makes life interesting. There is no common basis in mens minds. The unconscious is inexhaustible and uncontrollable. Its force surpasses us. It is as mysterious as the last particle of a brain cell. Even if we knew it, we could not reconstruct it.”

Tristan Tzara (1896–1963) Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist

1920s, Lecture on Dada', 1922

Life, Men

“Whatever shall we do in future? The nation that does not arm continuously is lost – as France has been lost, as Britain will be lost but for the Grace of God. In this mechanistic age where bravery and improvised organization at the last moment will not help. The only alternative is a League of the Nations or of some nations strong enough to withstand aggression …”

Jan Smuts (1870–1950) military leader, politician and statesman from South Africa

As quoted by W. K. Hancock in SMUTS 2: The Fields of Force 1919-1950, p. 360

God, Age, Strong, Future

“The last and greatest herald of Heaven's King,
Girt with rough skins, hies to the deserts wild,
Among that savage brood the woods forth bring,
Which he than man more harmless found and mild.”

William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585–1649) British writer

"For the Baptist" Flowers of Sion (1623).

“Although (the one reactor at Kuosheng Nuclear Power Plant) is not considered part of the operating reserve, I would make a formal report to the Legislative Yuan to reactivate it as a last resort in the event of a predictable power shortage. The manufacturing industry should have confidence in the (Taiwan) power supply.”

Lin Chuan (1951) Taiwanese politician

Lin Chuan (2017) cited in " Nuclear power an emergency option: Lin http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2017/08/29/2003677359" on Taipei Times, 29 August 2017.

Confidence, Parting

“When Earth's last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted and dried,
When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died,
We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it—lie down for an aeon or two,
Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall put us to work anew!”

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

L'Envoi, Stanza 1 (1896).
The Seven Seas (1896)

Lie, Faith, Painting

“We're leaving Downing Street for the last time after eleven-and-a-half wonderful years, and we're very happy that we leave the United Kingdom in a very, very much better state than when we came here eleven and a half years ago.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Remarks departing Downing Street (28 November 1990) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/108258 Third term as Prime Minister

Happiness, Time

“In fact I am beginning to see a way to provide a place for my line. I am at last finding my way out of the dead-end of ornament where I found myself one day in 1907! With new strength from my naturalistic études [studies], I may dare to give form to enter my prime real of psychic improvisation again. Bound only very indirectly to an impression of nature, I may again dare to give form to what burdens the soul. To note experiences that can turn themselves into linear compositions even in the blackest night. Here a new creative possibility has long since been awaiting me, which only my frustration resulting from isolation interfered with in the past. Working in this way, my real personality will express itself, will be able to emancipate itself into the greatest freedom.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote (1908), # 840, in The Diaries of Paul Klee; University of California Press, 1964; as quoted by Francesco Mazzaferro, in 'The Diaries of Paul Klee - Part Three' : Klee as a Secessionist and a Neo-Impressionist Artist http://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.nl/2015/05/paul-klee-ev.html 1903 - 1910

Way, Soul, Nature, Study

“When I see that there have been 3.6 million examples of road rage in the last year, I say to myself that there must have been 3.6 million examples of bad, inattentive or selfish driving.”

Jeremy Clarkson book Born to be Riled

Source: Born to be Riled (1999), p. 50

Rage, Selfishness

“Nothing in our daily life will last if neglected; houses, stuffs, friendships, pleasures. Roofs fall in, love comes to an end. A tile needs re-fastening, a joint must be repaired, a misunderstanding cleared up. Otherwise bitterness is created; feelings deep down in the soul become centers of infection, and one day, during a quarrel, the abscess breaks, and each is horrified by the picture of himself or herself discovered in the other's mind.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Marriage

Love, Life, Friendship, Pleasure

“The leading Nazis were divided as a rule between the three normal German points of view in regard to external policy. Some wanted an accommodation with France, some wanted to come to terms with Great Britain at the expense of France, and the third and most active group were trying to get an alliance with Soviet Russia against the whole of the West. I knew that [Eric] Koch was the chief advocate of this last policy. He took pains to keep in personal touch with Russian emissaries. He wanted to go to Russia himself. Assuming that I had Hitler's ear on questions of eastern policy, he repeatedly asked me to put forward his ideas in talking to Hitler.”

Hermann Rauschning (1887–1982) German politician

Source: Men in Chaos (1942), p. 247

Pain, Idea, Question, Personality

“I would say if all the names you wrote in the last few days are correct we would have a 50-player squad and I hate to work with big squads.”

José Mourinho (1963) Portuguese association football player and manager

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/c/chelsea/3769431.stm Chelsea FC

Hate

“To die is to become like a child, at last one knows nothing, nothing of death and nothing of life, only that all distances are equally long and all words unintelligible but beautiful.”

Stig Dagerman book A Burnt Child

Source: A Burnt Child (1948), p. 251

Life, Death, Beauty

“In the penultimate decade of the twentieth century science is sufficiently advanced to resolve the puzzles that stymied scientists in the last century and demonstrate, without metaphysical speculation, the consistency of evolution in all realms of experience. It is now possible to advance a general evolution theory based on unitary and mutually consistent concepts derived from the empirical sciences.”

Ervin László (1932) Hungarian musician and philosopher

Source: Evolution: the general theory (1996), p. 21 as cited in: Kingsley L. Dennis (2003) An evolutionary paradigm of social systems : An Application of Ervin Laszlo's General. Evolutionary Systems Theory to the Internet http://quigley.mab.ms/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/An-Evolutionary-Paradigm-of-Social-Systems-MA-Thesis.pdf.

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