Quotes about leave
page 34

“There is but one indefectibly certain truth, and that is the truth that pyrrhonistic scepticism itself leaves standing, — the truth that the present phenomenon of consciousness exists.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

The Will to Believe http://infomotions.com/etexts/philosophy/1800-1899/james-will-751.htm (1897) 1890s

Truth

“Jim Dilley, the father of the Laguna Greenbelt, used to take roses to the secretaries of the county Board of Supervisors when he'd go to do battle over open space with the secretaries' bosses. Jim Dilley was a nice man, kind and gentle. He smoked a pipe. His eyes twinkled as though he knew a joke the rest of us didn't. But he's dead, and the Board is still alive, and that is a joke on us of monstrous proportions. I'm not nice, kind or gentle. The Board keeps rubber-stamping building permits, and this is my goodbye to these shores. After 36 years, my wife and I will soon leave Orange County for Costa Rica, to join the Peace Corps, and that, too, is a joke. We traipse off to bring peace to Costa Rica, which hasn't had an army since 1948.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

From "OC Forum: O.C. Can You Say?" https://books.google.com/books?id=FhEEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA8 in Orange Coast Magazine (July 1991), p. 8 Other Topics

Peace, Dead

“Here we are, naked lovers,
beautiful to each other—and that's enough.
The leaves of our eyelids our only covers,
we're lying amidst deep night.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

Openess
Poems New and Collected (1998), Calling Out to Yeti (1957)

Beauty, Lying, Lovers, Night

“In the empty mountains
The leaves of the bamboo grass
Rustle in the wind.
I think of a girl
Who is not here.”

Kakinomoto no Hitomaro (662–710) Japanese poet

XVII, p. 19
Kenneth Rexroth's translations, One Hundred Poems from the Japanese (1955)

Girl, Mountain, Thinking, Grass

“Alas! she looked but in that eye
Where now was writ her destiny.
The heart love leaves looks back ever;
The heart where he is dwelling, never.”

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

The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Love, Heart

“Secondly, you are blessed to live in the greatest Nation – ever. Here you can strive and succeed as far as you dare to dream. It says something about our country that millions around the world are willing to leave their homes and families and risk everything to come here and realize the American dream. Their pursuit of that dream invigorates our national soul. It renews our country’s character. And it adds vitality to our culture.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2010s, 2015, Remarks at the SMU 100th Spring Commencement (May 2015)

World, Family, Dreams, Home

“I can bear this - that I am not the young wild guy [as he was in the 1970's]. I hope that the lust to work doesn't leave me. That would be sad. I am glad to get honors and high prices. But artists are valued today in terms of money, auctions. I wish society would need art more, but it doesn't. So I feel very lonely in this culture.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

after 2000, Gerhard Richter: An Artist Beyond Isms' (2002)

Money, Sadness, Hope, Art

“The masses of the people could not be held back from Nazism, so powerful was its appeal, and this same priest, who would not leave his people, went with them to Nazism, too.”

Milton Mayer (1908–1986) American journalist

Source: They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-35 (1955), p. 219

People

“For example, when we leave [The Documenta in] Kassel, a working group or maybe two working groups will work on things here at Kassel. We want to cause a snow-ball effect. We want to build a network throughout Europe that will work on these things, right? I can only say: we can only do it as well as possible.”

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) German visual artist

1970's, Every Man an Artist: Talks at Documenta 5', 1972

“No, Mr. Bush, you just stay the course. It's not your fault that 30 percent of New Orleans lives in poverty or that tens of thousands had no transportation to get out of town. C'mon, they're black! I mean, it's not like this happened to Kennebunkport. Can you imagine leaving white people on their roofs for five days? Don't make me laugh! Race has nothing — NOTHING — to do with this!”

Michael Moore (1954) American filmmaker, author, social critic, and liberal activist

[Vacation is Over... an open letter from Michael Moore to George W. Bush, MichaelMoore.com, 2 September 2005, http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mikes-letter/vacation-is-over-an-open-letter-from-michael-moore-to-george-w-bush]
2005

People, Imagination

“Like all walls it was ambiguous, two-faced. What was inside it and what was outside it depended upon which side of it you were on. Looked at from one side, the wall enclosed a barren sixty-acre field called the Port of Anarres. […] It was in fact a quarantine. The wall shut in not only the landing field but also the ships that came down out of space, and the men that came on the ships, and the worlds they came from, and the rest of the universe. It enclosed the universe, leaving Anarres outside, free. Looked at from the other side, the wall enclosed Anarres: the whole planet was inside it, a great prison camp, cut off from other worlds and other men, in quarantine.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, The Dispossessed (1974), Chapter 1 (pp. 1–2)

Men, World, Universe, Dependency

“Through the mad mystic hammering of the wild ripping hail,
The sky cracked its poems in naked wonder,
That the clinging of the church bells blew far into the breeze
Leaving only bells of lightning and its thunder
Striking for the gentle, striking for the kind,
Striking for the guardians and protectors of the mind,
An’ the poet and the painter far behind his rightful time
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964), Chimes of Freedom

Freedom, Time, Madness

“All the efforts of several hundred thousand people, crowded in a small space, to disfigure the land on which they lived; all the stone they covered it with to keep it barren; how so diligently every sprouting blade of grass was removed; all the smoke of coal and naphtha; all the cutting down of trees and driving off of cattle could not shut out the spring, even from the city. The sun was shedding its light; the grass, revivified, was blooming forth, where it was left uncut, not only on the greenswards of the boulevard, but between the flag-stones, and the birches, poplars and wild-berry trees were unfolding their viscous leaves; the limes were unfolding their buds; the daws, sparrows and pigeons were joyfully making their customary nests, and the flies were buzzing on the sun-warmed walls. Plants, birds, insects and children were equally joyful. Only men—grown-up men—continued cheating and tormenting themselves and each other. People saw nothing holy in this spring morning, in this beauty of God's world—a gift to all living creatures—inclining to peace, good-will and love, but worshiped their own inventions for imposing their will on each other.”

Leo Tolstoy book Resurrection

Source: Resurrection (1899), Ch. 1

Love, Men, God, Children

“While we leave those things to time, circumstances and the future, we must each one of us resolve in our own hearts that we shall at all times do everything which within us lies to obtain Ireland the fullest measure of her rights.”

Charles Stewart Parnell (1846–1891) Irish politician

Cork address (1885)

Time, Future, Heart

“It will be remembered, that the object of the several states in the adoption of that instrument, was not the establishment of a general consolidated government, which should swallow up the state sovereignties, and annihilate their several jurisdictions, and powers, as states; but a federal government, with powers limited to certain determinate objects; viz. their intercourse and concerns with foreign nations; and with each other, as separate and independent states; and, as members of the same confederacy: leaving the administration of their internal, and domestic concerns, to the absolute and uncontrolable jurisdiction of the states, respectively; except in one or two particular instances, specified, and enumerated in the constitution.”

St. George Tucker (1752–1827) Bermudan lawyer and judge

https://books.google.com/books?id=NTQ0AQAAMAAJ&pg=RA1-PA412 Page 412
Blackstone’s Commentaries (1803)

“We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of the land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother, but his enemy - and when he has conquered it, he moves on. He leaves his fathers' graves, and his children’s birthright is forgotten.”

Chief Seattle (1786–1866) Duwamish chief

Misattributed

Children, Way, Understanding, Night

“Dear Joe The letter said The windows rattle without you, you bastard. The trees are the cause, rattling in the wind, you jerk, the wild scraping those leaves and twigs against my window. They'll keep on doing this, you terrible husband, and slowly wear away our entire apartment.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Adverbs (2006), Naturally

Jerk, Tree

“If you say that this is absurd, that we cannot be in love with everyone at once, I merely point out to you that, as a matter of fact, certain persons do exist with an enormous capacity for friendship and for taking delight in other people's lives; and that such person know more of truth than if their hearts were not so big. The vice of ordinary Jack and Jill affection is not its intensity, but its exclusions and its jealousies. Leave those out, and you see that the ideal I am holding up before you, however impracticable to-day, yet contains nothing intrinsically absurd.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

"What Makes a Life Significant?"
1910s, Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals (1911)

Love, Friendship, People, Truth

“I want to be free, independent. Free of all coercion. Free of any need to rely on other people. I have no credit cards, nor do I want any. I toss the cash on the table. I leave others in peace and I want to be left in peace. I spend my nights sleeping on the ground in the forest. I embrace trees as I have done all my life. I smell their bark and kiss it. I lay my face on the moss and breathe in the spicy aroma of fruitfulness as if I were lying on a woman's belly.”

Klaus Kinski (1926–1991) German actor

Source: Kinski Uncut : The Autobiography of Klaus Kinski (1996), p. 305

Life, People, Peace, Lying

“There is but one way to Americanize for each and every American to understand the ideals of America and to be able to interpret them in every act of his daily life. But this alone is not enough. Groups of men, from the humblest unit to the greatest political entity in the country, must be able to do this in combination; and there must be agreement. There are certain things that men go all over the world to find. Where those things exist men stay; when they fail men leave. These things are basic. They are opportunities to better conditions, to be equal to other men, to have the right to be heard, freedom of thought, worship, and speech, and to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is for this that men desert their home countries, and it is for this that they may desert America if their native lands in Europe offer the same great adventure and reward.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

Life, Men, Happiness, World

“The alternatives with which Freud leaves us are grim only if we view them from the perspective of some past possibility. … The grimness is relieved by the gaiety of being free from the historic Western compulsion of seeking large and general meanings for small and highly particular lives.”

Philip Rieff (1922–2006) American sociologist

The Triumph of the Therapeutic (1966)

Past

“Police, federal agency and military operations are fraught with the potential for catastrophic disaster. The nature of operations routinely conducted by counter narcotic agents, special weapons and tactics units, special response teams, and mlitary special operations units leave no room for error. A drug bust in the wrong house or a botched hostage rescue situation will be on the evening news with some senior official hemming and hawing and wishing he'd planned better. Once that occurs there is no defense. The best that can happen is to convince everyone that it will not occur again because of all the "lessons learned, and hope that there is a crisis somewhere else that will take your place in the media's attention. THIS IS A LOSING STRATEGY.”

Wheeler L. Baker (1938) President of Hargrave Military Academy

Source: Crisis Management: A Model For Managers (1993), p. 12

Hope, Error, Nature, Learning

“Our passions are like convulsion-fits, which, though they make us stronger for the time, leave us the weaker ever after.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)

Passion, Time

“What a bad day it was, the clouds were low and cloudy, the rain no fun, and the dark as it hit the late afternoon thick like someone who stops by your place and just won't leave. The day was canceled, almost, on account of the rain spilling itself over everything.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Adverbs (2006), Frigidly

“Sir,
Having long deferred to make any report relating to the observations that were taken at sea by captain Campbell, in the year 1757, which you transmitted to me by order of the lords of the admiralty, I think it necessary to acquaint you, that, upon examining those observations, I perceived that they were not in all respects accompanied with such circumstances as are requisite for forming a right judgment of the accuracy and certainty with which observations proper for finding the longitude at sea by the moon can in fact be taken; for which reason I delayed giving my opinion upon this point till I could have an opportunity of comparing a greater variety of observations, made at different times, and with different instruments: such an opportunity having lately been given me by captain Campbell, who has favoured me with a copy of several observations that were made by him in 1758 and 1759, I now beg leave to lay before their lordships the result of the comparisons which I have made.”

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

Miscellaneous Works and Correspondence (1832), To Mr. Cleveland Secretary of the Admiralty (April 14, 1760)

Thinking, Time, Sea

“Italy is, after France and perhaps in the same degree, the land in which love of country has the deepest roots in the hearts of its inhabitants. The fact is that perhaps nowhere else has nature been so prodigal with its enchantments and seductions. Therefore, although Italy has been, since the fall of the Caesars, the object of European covetousness, the eternal battlefield of powerful neighbors, and the theatre of the fiercest and most prolonged civil wars, her children have always refused to leave her. Save for some commercial colonies hastily thrown upon the shores of Asia by Genoa and Venice, history has not, in fact, recorded in Italy any important outward movement of population.”

Alfred Legoyt (1812–1869) statistician and author

Alfred Legoyt (1861) cited in: [Richard N. Juliani, Building Little Italy, http://books.google.com/books?id=IbB7AnIJ8fsC&pg=PA184, June 2005, Penn State Press, 978-0-271-02864-4, 184–]

Love, War, Children, History

“My father came to visit and spent about half a day with me during a weekend. At the time, September 1942, he was in a highly classified planning program for the attack on Morocco at Casablanca. He was unable to tell me anything about the operation, except that this would be the last time he would see me before going overseas. He said that I was not to tell anybody that he was going overseas, but that he was leaving soon. Of course, in those days, you didn't have too many privileges as a fourth classman, and besides there were so damned many generals at West Point, and in the Army, that his appearance, as I recall, didn't cause any particular stir. At the time he was a major general and had recently been training in Indio, California.”

George S. Patton IV (1923–2004) U.S. Army general

Source: The Fighting Pattons (1997) by Brian M. Sobel, p. 30-31

Appearance, Time, Training

“The Syrian Ba’ath Party claims to have 2.3 million members — but most of that consists of people who need membership to get a job or be promoted. Leaving aside a few thousand top cadre (mostly from the Alawite minority to which Assad belongs), the Ba’ath Party is no more than an empty shell.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Assad must (still) go" http://nypost.com/2012/12/06/assad-must-still-go/, New York Post (December 6, 2012). New York Post

People

“Leave the beaten track occasionally and dive into the woods. Every time you do so you will be certain to see something you have never seen before. Of course it will be a little thing, but do not ignore it. Follow it up, explore around it, and before you know it, something worth thinking about to occupy your mind.”

Alexander Graham Bell (1847–1922) scientist and inventor known for his work on the telephone

A Treasury of Inspirational Thoughts (2004) by S.P. Sharma, p. 41.
Disputed

Thinking, Time

“If customers leave without a purchase, you have not failed. But if customers leave without a smile, you have.”

Ron Kaufman (1956) American author and consultant

Lift Me UP! Service With A Smile (2005)

Smile

“The heart of my soul is bloody with sorrow. … (Nonverbatim: I have done my utmost for peace, despite England pushing the Boers out of their inheritance bit by bit, and taking advantage of us in every conference and native war. My hope till the present war had been for a South African Confederacy under English protection – the Cape, Natal, Free State and Transvaal all having equal rights and local self-government.) … But now we can only leave it to God. If it is His will that the Transvaal perish, we can only do our best.
— The Diary of a Siege, 1900, H. W. Nevinson.
:In conversation with Henry Nevinson, October 2, 1899, at the outbreak of war. According to Nevinson, Joubert spoke English with a "piquant lack of grammar and misuse of words".”

Piet Joubert (1834–1900) Boer politician and general

God, War, Peace, Hope

“The economy of a novelist is a little like that of a careful housewife who is unwilling to throw away anything that might perhaps serve its turn. Perhaps the comparison is closer to the Chinese cook who leaves hardly any part of a duck unserved.”

Graham Greene (1904–1991) English writer, playwright and literary critic

From journal kept while writing A Burnt-Out Case (1959)

Parting, Cooking

“My friends tell me that I have a tendency to point out problems without offering solutions, but they never tell me what I should do about it. In one chapter after another, I've described the ways in which imagination fails to provide us with accurate previews of our emotional futures. I’ve claimed that when we imagine our futures we tend to fill in, leave out, and take little account of how differently we will think about the future once we actually get there. I’ve claimed that neither personal experience nor cultural wisdom compensates for imagination’s shortcomings. I’ve so thoroughly marinated you in the foibles, biases, errors, and mistakes of the human mind that you may wonder how anyone ever manages to make toast without buttering their kneecaps. If so, you will be heartened to learn that there is a simple method by which anyone can make strikingly accurate predictions about how they will feel in the future. But you may be disheartened to learn that, by and large, no one wants to use it.”

Daniel T. Gilbert book Stumbling on Happiness

Source: Stumbling on Happiness, 2006, p. 223

Wisdom, Way, Error, Feeling

“I am not anti-coloured, take it from me; nothing pleases me more than when I arrive at an airport, or a station, or a seaport, and I see a coloured family there — the black father, the black wife and the black children… When I see these families arriving at the airport I am happy, and when I see them leaving at London airport I am happy.
But if there is one thing that gets up my nose, I must admit, it is this — the way… the thing is when I am down in Torquay and I switch on my television and I see one of them reading our news to us. It is our news and they’re reading it to me. If I was a chauvinist I would say I object even to seeing women reading our news to us.
But now we have women reading our news to us. If they could perhaps have their own news which they were reading to us, I suppose [laughter], it would be very interesting.
For the time being, for a transitional period I'd be prepared to accept that the BBC should have a dinner-jacketed gentleman reading the important news to us, following by a lady reading all the less important news, followed by Trevor McDonald giving us all the latest news about the muggings and the drug busts…”

David Irving (1938) British writer and Holocaust denier

David Irving's Talk to the Clarendon Club http://www.fpp.co.uk/speeches/speech190992.html

Women, Happiness, Children, Family

“After every war, there's an immense overhaul of language, which in the Western world has created really the cultural and artistic phenomenon of what we call modernism; that is, a paring down of everything to minimal size, including language and ideas of grandeur, and ideas of a possibility of the state making everybody happy, and things like that. That modernism is really a form of skepticism or minimalism. You cut out everything that has deceived you and throw it away, and that leaves you with things like the Eames chair and Picasso and numerous other outcrops of modernism.”

Paul Fussell (1924–2012) Recipient of the Purple Heart medal

Humanities interview (1996)

War, Happiness, World, Idea

“Whoever comes to this house shall never leave without being filled with joy. To Me, the Parent, all human beings in the world are My children.”

Nakayama Miki (1798–1887) Founder of Tenrikyo

The Life of Oyasama, Foundress of Tenrikyo, p. 19
The Life of Oyasama

Children, World, Parent, Joy

“It is the police who are our main protection against terrorism and it is to the police that we must give our sustenance and support. It cannot be without reluctance that we contemplate powers of the kind proposed in the Bill, involving as they must some encroachment—limited but real—on the liberties of individual citizens. Few things would provide a more gratifying victory to the terrorists than for this country to undermine its traditional freedoms in the very process of countering the enemies of those freedoms. This we must keep in mind not only today but in the future as we persevere in what may not be a short struggle to eradicate terrorism from this country…the Bill proposes strengthened powers in four broad areas. First, it proscribes the IRA and makes display of support for it illegal. Second, the Bill makes it possible to make exclusion orders against persons who are involved in terrorism. Third, the Bill gives the police wide powers to arrest and detain, within limits, suspected terrorists. Fourth, it gives the police powers to carry out a security check on all travellers entering and leaving Great Britain and Northern Ireland.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1974/nov/28/prevention-of-terrorism-temporary in the House of Commons introducing the Prevention of Terrorism Act (28 November 1974) 1970s

Travel, Support, Freedom, Future

“My answer is that I am a Hindu and I love Hindu dharma. How can anyone destroy it? It provides happiness both in this world as well as in the other world. There is no other religion like it. Only a deranged person or a fool would leave it to become vile. Hindu dharma would remain in the world for ever. It is not going to be destroyed by your efforts.”

Guru Tegh Bahadur (1621–1675) The ninth Guru of Sikhism

Tegh Bahadur’s Hindi reply to Aurangzeb when he was asked to become a Muslim. Kshitish Vedalankar: Storm in Punjab, p.178.

Love, Happiness, World, Religion

“As I take man's last step from the surface, back home for some time to come - but we believe not too long into the future - I'd like to just (say) what I believe history will record. That America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus- Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17.”

Eugene Cernan (1934–2017) United States Navy officer and former NASA astronaut

NASA transcript http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a17/a17.clsout3.html

God, Peace, Hope, Home

“Poor Gauguin, 'way off there on his island! I'll wager he spends most of his time thinking of Rue Lafitte. I advised him to go to New Orleans, but he decided it was too civilized. He had to have people around him with flowers on their heads and rings in their noses before he could feel at home. Now if I should leave my house for more than two days…”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

"The Crime and the Punishment" (p. 48)
posthumous quotes, Degas: An Intimate Portrait' (1927)

People, Way, Feeling, Home

“Did that leave an undesirable taste in your mouth? Let’s take a swig.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

“Tides are like politics. They come and go with a great deal of fuss and noise, but inevitably they leave the beach just as they found it. On those few occasions when major change does occur, it is rarely good news.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Deepsix (2001), Chapter 22 (p. 323)

Change

“When I was first aware that I had been laid low by the disease, I felt a need, among other things, to register a strong protest against the word “depression.” Depression, most people know, used to be termed “melancholia,” a word which appears in English as early as the year 1303 and crops up more than once in Chaucer, who in his usage seemed to be aware of its pathological nuances. “Melancholia” would still appear to be a far more apt and evocative word for the blacker forms of the disorder, but it was usurped by a noun with a bland tonality and lacking any magisterial presence, used indifferently to describe an economic decline or a rut in the ground, a true wimp of a word for such a major illness. It may be that the scientist generally held responsible for its currency in modern times, a Johns Hopkins Medical School faculty member justly venerated — the Swiss-born psychiatrist Adolf Meyer — had a tin ear for the finer rhythms of English and therefore was unaware of the semantic damage he had inflicted by offering “depression” as a descriptive noun for such a dreadful and raging disease. Nonetheless, for over seventy-five years the word has slithered innocuously through the language like a slug, leaving little trace of its intrinsic malevolence and preventing, by its very insipidity, a general awareness of the horrible intensity of the disease when out of control.
As one who has suffered from the malady in extremis yet returned to tell the tale, I would lobby for a truly arresting designation. “Brainstorm,” for instance, has unfortunately been preempted to describe, somewhat jocularly, intellectual inspiration. But something along these lines is needed. Told that someone’s mood disorder has evolved into a storm — a veritable howling tempest in the brain, which is indeed what a clinical depression resembles like nothing else — even the uninformed layman might display sympathy rather than the standard reaction that “depression” evokes, something akin to “So what?” or “You’ll pull out of it” or “We all have bad days.””

William Styron book Darkness Visible

The phrase “nervous breakdown” seems to be on its way out, certainly deservedly so, owing to its insinuation of a vague spinelessness, but we still seem destined to be saddled with “depression” until a better, sturdier name is created.
Source: Darkness Visible (1990), IV

People, Disease, School, Way

“It was the verdict of ancient writers that men afflict themselves in evil and weary themselves in the good, and that the same effects result from both of these passions. For whenever men are not obliged to fight from necessity, they fight from ambition; which is so powerful in human breasts, that it never leaves them no matter to what rank they rise. The reason is that nature has so created men that they are able to desire everything but are not able to attain everything: so that the desire being always greater than the acquisition, there results discontent with the possession and little satisfaction to themselves from it. From this arises the changes in their fortunes; for as men desire, some to have more, some in fear of losing their acquisition, there ensues enmity and war, from which results the ruin of that province and the elevation of another.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book Discourses on Livy

Book 1, Ch. 37 Variant: Nature has so contrived that to men, though all things are objects of desire, not all things are attainable; so that desire always exceeds the power of attainment, with the result that men are ill-content with what they possess and their present state brings them little satisfaction. Hence arise the vicissitudes of their fortune. (as translated by LJ Walker and B Crick)
Discourses on Livy (1517)

Men, War, Fear, Nature

“I don't pride myself on being self-educated because I don't like to brag about the fact that I'm a high school dropout. My school wasn't prepared to have somebody leave for three months out of the year to be in a movie. Graduating wasn't in the cards in a conventional sense if I was going to continue acting. I could get my GED, or could I? I'd have to study up for that.”

Matt Dillon (1964) American actor

Ruthe Stein (April 25, 2006) "Matt Dillon dishes on 'Factotum's' private parts", San Francisco Chronicle, p. D1.

Education, School, Sense, Study

“Ralph waved the conch.
"Shut up! Wait! Listen!"
He went on in the silence, borne on in his triumph.
"There’s another thing. We can help them to find us. If a ship comes near the island they may not notice us. So we must make smoke on top of the mountain. We must make a fire."
"A fire! Make a fire!"
At once half the boys were on their feet. Jack clamored among them, the conch forgotten.
"Come on! Follow me!"
The space under the palm trees was full of noise and movement. Ralph was on his feet too, shouting for quiet, but no one heard him. All at once the crowd swayed toward the island and was gone— following Jack. Even the tiny children went and did their best among the leaves and broken branches. Ralph was left, holding the conch, with no one but Piggy.”

William Golding book Lord of the Flies

Source: Lord of the Flies (1954), Ch. 2: Fire on the Mountain

Children, Mountain, Boy, Tree

“That'll be the day — when you say goodbye.
That'll be the day — when you make me cry.
You say you're gonna leave — you know it's a lie, 'cause
That'll be the day when I die.”

Buddy Holly (1936–1959) American singer-songwriter

That'll Be the Day, written by Buddy Holly, Jerry Allison, and Norman Petty
Song lyrics, The "Chirping" Crickets (1957)

Lie, Cry

“You know, my Dear, I never meddle in matters of Death; I always leave those Affairs to you. Women indeed are bitter bad Judges in these cases, for they are so partial to the Brave that they think every Man handsome who is going to the Camp or the Gallows.”

John Gay (1685–1732) English poet and playwright

Mrs. Peachum, Act I, sc. iv
The Beggar's Opera (1728)

Death, Women, Thinking

“You should leave that place, my girl” “you know me better than that.” “yes, I do. Too brave for your own good. Too brave now, I think.” “would you have me any less?” “I’m sorry. No, I wouldn’t have you less.””

Alice Borchardt (1939–2007) American fiction writer

Devoted

Girl, Thinking

“What was I to do? It was plain that my resignation would not prevent the military occupation, would indeed merely give Hitler and opportunity to introduce a hundred per cent Nazi Arrow-Cross regime. The precedent of the Italian debacle with its horrible attendant circumstances constituted a timely warning. So long as I continued head of the state, the Germans would have to show a certain circumspection. They would have to leave the Hungarian Army under my orders, and would therefore be unable to incorporate it into the German Army. While I was in charge, they could not attempt putting the Arrow-Cross Party into office to do their deadly work of murdering Hungarian patriots, of exterminating the 800,000 Hungarian Jews and the tens of thousands of refugees who had sought sanctuary in Hungary. It would have been easier for me to make the great gesture of abdication. I would have been spared many a denunciation. But to leave a sinking ship, especially one that needed her captain more than ever, was a step I could not bring myself to take. At the time it was more important to me that Hitler promised to withdraw his troops from Hungary as soon as a government acceptable to him had been appointed.”

Miklós Horthy (1868–1957) Hungarian Admiral and Regent 1920-1944

Source: Memoirs, pp. 260-261

Time

“My writing is quantum writing. Do you know of the quantum bullet? The quantum bullet, when it's fired, leaves not one hole but two. That's how my writing is.”

Wilson Harris (1921–2018) Guyanese writer

Interview with Wilson Harris (2010) on being Knighted at Queen Elizabeth II Birthday Honours

“Summer fog. It leached all color and substance from the world, leaving only grays. Lead gray tombstone gray cobweb gray ash gray snot gray dust gray corpse gray. It was unheard-of that there be fog at this time of the year, late August. So it had to be another portent — as dire a one as the death of the One-Handed Warrior. There were many who said that the fog had its origin in the supercooled ashes of the hero: each molecule of his scattered body accreting water vapor, each tiny relic drawing to itself the air's own tears to fashion this wide-spreading shroud over the Many-Colored Land.”

Julian May (1931–2017) American science fiction, fantasy, horror, science and children's writer

The Adversary (Houghton Mifflin, 1984), ISBN 0-395-34410-7, p. 19 (opening lines of chapter 1)

Death, World, Color, Fashion

“If you are cheerful, and wish to remain so, leave the study of astronomy alone. Of all the sciences, it alone deserves the character of the terrible.”

Thomas Hardy book Two on a Tower

Two on a Tower (1882), vol 1, ch. 4 (Swithin St Cleeve speaking to Viviette Constantine)

Study, Science

“How many times have you sat across from me?
And how many times have you told me you were leaving?
I'm not trying to listen cuz it's all the same.
And why, why are you constantly believing
That I, I could ever give you what you needed?
Baby, baby please don't put your faith in me.”

Pink (singer) (1979) American singer-songwriter

Catch Me While I'm Sleeping, written by Pink and Linda Perry
Song lyrics, Try This (2003)

Faith, Time, Baby

“However painful the process of leaving home, for parents and for children, the really frightening thing for both would be the prospect of the child never leaving home.”

Robert N. Bellah (1927–2013) American sociologist

Habits of the Heart, pt. 1, ch. 3 (1985)

Pain, Children, Home, Parent

“Judaism is the No. 1 propagator of violence…. the Torah itself states that when you enter a certain country, you must offer peace, and if they agree, all their residents are your slaves. In other countries, you should not offer peace or conversion. You must destroy them all, do not leave a living soul. In the first country you must slay all males and leave only the women, but in the second country, you must not leave… you must uproot them. This is in Judaism, in the Torah.”

Yusuf Qaradawi (1926) Egyptian imam

Sheikh Qaradhawi: American Culture And Judaism Spread Violence In The World http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/96.htm May 2004. Violence in Judaism

Women, Peace, Soul, Country

“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.”

L. P. Jacks (1860–1955) British educator, philosopher, and Unitarian minister

Misattributed to Chateaubriand on the internet and even some recently published books, this statement actually originated with L. P. Jacks in Education through Recreation (1932)
Misattributed

Education, Art, Appearance, Drawing

“What an astounding thing is the voice! By what miracle is the hot magma of the earth transformed into that which we call speech? If out of clay such an abstract medium as words can be shaped what is to hinder us from leaving our bodies at will and taking up our abode on other planets or between the planets? What is to prevent us from rearranging all life, atomic, molecular, corporeal, stellar, diving? Who or what is powerful enough to eradicate this miraculous leaven which we bear within us like a seed and which, after we have embraced in our mind all the universe, is nothing more than a seed — since to say universe is as easy as to say seed, and we have yet to say greater things, things beyond saying, things limitless and inconceivable, things which no trick of language can encompass.”

Henry Miller book The Colossus of Maroussi

The Colossus of Maroussi (1941)

Life, Universe

“Private courier companies are fine to handle the lucrative parts of the [postal] business. But they have little interest in servicing remote communities, so these areas get poor or non-existent service. Similarly, leaving health care and education to the private marketplace will result in fine services for the affluent but leave many others without access to decent services (or in some cases any services at all). While this kind of deficiency is bad enough when it comes to postal delivery, it becomes downright serious in areas like health care and education.”

Linda McQuaig (1951) journalist and author

All You Can Eat: Greed, Lust and the New Capitalism (2001)

Health, Education, Communication, Business

“He [Tolstoy] tried to persuade his wife to permit him to give away every penny of his possessions, to leave their large house, and to live in a peasant's cottage, where together they could share the manual labor of a small farm. The Countess was a most devoted wife but in this she could not follow her husband. …The Countess had to suffer all the trials which it is said the wife of every artist and genius must suffer and, in addition, some of those that must come to the wife of any man who tries to follow literally in modern society the teachings of Jesus. …He felt so keenly the opposition of his wife and children that he was led to believe what he said repeatedly—that the institution of the family was one of the greatest obstacles to a truly Christian life.”

Robert Hunter (author) (1874–1942) American sociologist, author, golf course architect

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 38-41

Life, Children, Family, Suffering

“I would say that I was just as anxious to leave Utah as any other kid in any other part of the world wants to get out of where they're from. It's definitely a hard place, especially if you're an artist. There's not much support for art, especially rock 'n' roll music. It wasn't really about escaping Utah, though. It was about getting out and being able to do what I wanted to do with my whole life. And now I am.”

Bert McCracken (1982) American musician

Daniel Durchholz (March 10, 2005) "Top billing at Taste of Chaos: Can the Used get used to this?", St. Louis Post-Dispatch, p. 16.

Life, World, Art, Music

“There are a lot of people who think our job is to reassure the public every night that their home, their community and their nation is safe. I don't subscribe to that at all. I subscribe to leaving people with essentially — sorry it's a cliche — a rough draft of history. Some days it's reassuring, some days it's absolutely destructive.”

Peter Jennings (1938–2005) News anchor

Interview in Anchoring America: The Changing Face of Network News (2003) by Jeff Alan

People, Home, History, Communication

“It took me years to realize that a computer would never truly be able to say cogito ego sum although dozens of lurid Hollywood movies about robots want to leave that impression. A computer thinks…. that is, it realizes it has been switched on…but it doesn't know it exists.”

John Twelve Hawks book Spark

Spark (2014)

Thinking

“Do not become someone who regrets leaving a job or resigning from a company when with hindsight you realize you should have stayed longer and stuck it out.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Source: Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, Managing Teams in a Week (2013) https://books.google.ae/books?idqZjO9_ov74EC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIIDAB#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, Secrets of Success at Work – 50 techniques to excel (2014) https://books.google.ae/books?id4S7vAgAAQBAJ&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIJjAC#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, p.29

“Whenever Israel faces a public relations debacle such as the Intifada or international pressure to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict, American Jewish organizations orchestrate this extravaganza called the 'new anti-Semitism.' The purpose is several-fold. First, it is to discredit any charges by claiming the person is an anti-Semite. It's to turn Jews into the victims, so that the victims are not the Palestinians any longer. As people like Abraham Foxman of the ADL put it, the Jews are being threatened by a new holocaust. It's a role reversal – the Jews are now the victims, not the Palestinians. So it serves the function of discrediting the people leveling the charge. It's no longer Israel that needs to leave the Occupied Territories; it's the Arabs who need to free themselves of the anti-Semitism.”

Norman G. Finkelstein (1953) American political scientist and author

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=9035
Other sourced statements

People, Personality

“It is dangerous to society to have students leave school believing that science is a perfect means to absolute, objective truths, discovered by people of superhuman intelligence. Apart form the danger that scientific “findings” could be used to justify wrong social polices, an impersonal, inhuman view of science alienates many students from the subject. If we are to encourage students of all kinds to take in interest in science, and use it for their own purposes, we need to show it as it really is.”

Jay Lemke (1946) American academic

Source: Talking Science: Language, Learning, and Values. 1990, p. 175

People, Truth, School, Intelligence

“I have a Defined Goal - A Dream - and I am trying to get there. Wholeheartedly, Yes, I leave nothing out. I Believe - The Regrets in Life are the Risks not taken.”

Arin Paul (1980) Indian film director

AarinZz Blog http://aarinzz.blogspot.com/

Life, Dreams

“Judy lived in my hotel. She was just seventeen, and what she was doing in Paris was supposedly chaperoning her younger brother, a fully fledged concert pianist of fifteen, who was studying there with one of the leading teachers. In view of their combined and startling innocence, however, this was a rather useless arrangement. Their last name was Galache, and they were the issue with which the highly unlikely union of a Quaker woman from Philadelphia and a dreadfully dashing Spaniard (now, alas, dead) had been blessed. Naturally their upbringing, up to this point, had been strict and very sheltered. … Judy was so different from me that it was really ludicrous. Whereas I was hell-bent for living, she was content, at least for the time being, to leave all that to others. Just as long as she could hear all about it. She really was funny about this. Folded every which way on the floor, looking like Bambi — all eyes and legs and no chin — she would listen for ages and ages with rapt attention to absolutely any drivel that you happened to be talking. It was unbelievable.”

Elaine Dundy (1921–2008) American journalist, actress

Part One, Two
The Dud Avocado (1958)

Age, Way, Hell, Nature

“I always wanted to leave home. I never knew they were going to stop me from coming back. Maybe, if I knew, I never would have left. It is kind of painful to be away from everything that you've ever know. Nobody will know the pain of exile until you are in exile. No matter where you go, there are times when people show you kindness and love, and there are times when they make you know that you are with them but not of them. That's when it hurts.”

Miriam Makeba (1932–2008) South African singer and civil rights activist

As quoted in

Love, Pain, People, Home

“The task of youth is not only its own salvation but the salvation of those against whom it rebels, but in that case there must be something vital to rebel against and if the elderly stiffly refuse to put up a vigorous front of their own, it leaves the entire situation in a mist.”

Jane Addams (1860–1935) pioneer settlement social worker

The Second Twenty Years at Hull-House (1930)

Youth

“I was now in my sixteenth year, and for the first time it occurred to me that, although conversant with most of the modern languages, I did not understand a word of Latin, and thought the knowledge of this language indispensable to my future prospects in life. I spoke to Rector Steffens, and got permission of my father to leave school entirely, and devote my whole time to the study of Latin. In less than twelve months I was completely master of a language which is often the torment of boys from their sixth to their twentieth years, and still remain ignorant of it. Since then I have written several pamphlets in Latin, which were admired; and in Gottingen my Discourses were generally delivered in that language. Doctor Taube, physician to the king, gave me lessons in natural history, botany, and anatomy; I bade farewell to philosophy and belles lettres, and began in earnest, and with great perseverance, to study physics; but still I was in bad odour amongst many of the learned, and it was said, when they heard of my progress, that henceforth they should not despair of making something of the most stupid of pupils.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Life, Stupidity, School, History

“Ralph could you please sit down and behave yourself or we are going to have to throw you out. As a matter of fact Ralph can you leave right now?…. Ok sit down.”

Brandon DiCamillo (1976) American actor

From Brans Icelandic Gameshow

“At eighty, a man has experienced everything: love, and its ending; ambition, and its emptiness; several foolish beliefs, and their rectification. Fear of death is not very great; affections and interest concern people who have died and events of the past. In a cinema theatre when the show is continuous the spectator has the right to retain his seat as long as he wishes to do so, but actually, when the scenes he has already witnessed reappear on the screen, he leaves the theatre. Life is a continuous show. The same events take place every thirty years, and they become boring. One after another the spectators take their departure.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Growing Old

Love, Life, Death, People

“The time has now come for every Latter-day Saint, who calculates to be prepared for the future and to hold his feet strong upon a proper foundation, to do the will of the Lord and to pay his tithing in full. That is the word of the Lord to you, and it will be the word of the Lord to every settlement throughout the land of Zion. After I leave you and you get to thinking about this, you will see yourselves that the time has come when every man should stand up and pay his tithing in full. The Lord has blessed us and has had mercy upon us in the past; but there are times coming when the Lord requires us to stand up and do that which He has commanded and not leave it any longer. What I say to you in this stake of Zion I will say to every stake of Zion that has been organized. There is no man or woman that now hears what I am saying who will feel satisfied if he or she fails to pay a full tithing.”

Lorenzo Snow (1814–1901) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Tithing (see also: Tithe) [citation needed]

Feeling, Thinking, Strong, Time

“There's a plot in this country to enslave every man, woman, and child. Before I leave this high and noble office, I intend to expose this plot. - President John F. Kennedy 7 days before his assassination”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

a fake quote debunked on several websites, including metabunk.org https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-theres-a-plot-in-this-country-to-enslave-every-man-woman-and-child-jfk.t319/ Misattributed

Country

“When you're leaving your teenage kids alone, probably a good idea to let them know you're going to be checking in on them occasionally. I suspect Greenspan missed that part.”

Ian Bremmer (1969) American political scientist

"Revenge of the Tweets," http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Film/Pix/pictures/2007/04/18/networkmadashell460.jpg&imgrefurl=http://eurasia.foreignpolicy.com/blog/2193&h=300&w=460&sz=33&tbnid=F-e94iI8HqmXkM:&tbnh=83&tbnw=128&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dian%2Bbremmer&hl=en&usg=__v6DBDglY6u0vJLee5RL8ub5Pdzs=&sa=X&ei=VFEeTNuJLcGB8gb81ZWFDA&ved=0CDoQ9QEwBQ Foreign Policy (May 10, 2010).

Idea, Parting

“[about how people in the 90's used "awesome" wrongly]
Webster's dictionary defines awesome as "anything that leaves you in awe and wonder." Like winning the lottery—twice. That's awesome. Getting a call from the IRS saying you've been audited and they owe you $50,000—that would be awesome. Ladies, you wake up tomorrow morning and the newspaper reads, "Scientists have discovered a way for men to experience childbirth." That would be awesome. Getting invited to the Playboy Mansion—on trampoline night, that would be awesome. And I started thinking, ladies and gentlemen, what would be awesome for Bill Engvall? What would leave me in awe and wonder? And it would have to be, if I left this stage tonight and I went back to my hotel room, and Shania Twain met me at my door, wearing nothing but a fur coat, holding a note from my wife that said, "Have a good time!"”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

THAT would be AWESOME! It ain't gonna happen—but that would be awesome.
Now That's Awesome (2000)

Men, People, Way, Thinking

“In the table—and in nature—we find (leaving aside the antineutrino) fifteen fundamental fermions, with diverse strong, weak, and electromagnetic charges. …They are so closely related by symmetry transformations that they are, so to speak, no more than different faces of the same cube.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987)

Nature, Strong

“You can’t remember sex. You can remember the fact of it, and recall the setting, and even the details, but the sex of the sex cannot be remembered, the substantive truth of it, it is by nature self-erasing, you can remember its anatomy and be left with a judgment as to the degree of your liking of it, but whatever it is as a splurge of being, as a loss, as a charge of the conviction of love stopping your heart like your execution, there is no memory of it in the brain, only the deduction that it happened and that time passed, leaving you with a silhouette that you want to fill in again.”

E.L. Doctorow book Billy Bathgate

Billy Bathgate (1989), Ch. 16

Love, Truth, Sex, Nature

“Yeah, congratulations. Way to go, Punk, way to go. Congratulations on your big win. You need to enjoy them while you can. You see, you can smirk if you want to, but I see straight through you. When I look at you, I see a fraud. And I'm not talking about the fact that you call yourself the best in the world, I'm talking about you as a person. Because I did a little research this week, Punk, and I found something, a little deep, dirty, dark secret about you. You've been straight edge ever since you came to the WWE, but you've never explained the reasons why. I wanna tell all of these wannabes why you're straight edge. I wanna tell them that you're straight edge because your father is an alcoholic.
Yeah, that's right. Your father was an alcoholic who let you down every step of the way when you were growing up, and it terrifies you. You don't want to end up like him. But it's inevitable that you will, because alcohol is in your blood, it's in your genes, it's part of who you are, and that tortures you. I know you've built this facade, this wall that you're a sarcastic antihero with not a care in the world, but I think I've found something that you care about. I've found something that gives you nightmares, something that terrifies you.
And isn't it ironic that the very alcohol that you crave is the same thing that ruined your childhood? Oh, the nightmares you must have about your father; I almost feel bad for you, Punk. Is that the reason why you have all those tattoos? Was the pain of wanting to drink so bad that you needed the pain of a tattoo needle to take it out of your mind? Was that your only solace?
It doesn't matter if it is, Punk, because you are going to drink eventually, and I'm the one who is going to make you drink. At WrestleMania XXVIII, I'm going to take away your title, I'm gonna take away your claims of being the best in the world, I'm gonna take away your bravado, and I'm gonna leave you a broken man. You're gonna hit bottom, Punk, and when you do, you're going to embrace your destiny, and you're gonna take a drink. And it's gonna taste so good that you're gonna wanna take another one, and another one, and another one. After April 1st, I'm gonna be recognized for who I am—the undisputed best in the world and the new WWE Champion. And you're gonna be recognized for who you are, who your father was—a pathetic damn drunk!”

Chris Jericho (1970) American professional wrestler, musician, television host, podcast host and author

March 12, 2012 - WWE Raw

Pain, Alcohol, Secret, World

“I was never drawn to experiment with language; I take note of such experiments, but avoid them in my own writing. The reason is that the substance of life claims me completely. To indulge in linguistic experiments is to ignore the greater part of this substance, leaving all but a tiny portion untouched and unused, as if a musician were to ceaselessly play an instrument with his little finger only.”

Elias Canetti (1905–1994) Bulgarian-born Swiss and British jewish modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and non-fiction writer

J. Agee, trans. (1989), p. 3
Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock] (1987)

Life, Parting

“To hear never-heard sounds,
To see never-seen colors and shapes,
To try to understand the imperceptible
Power pervading the world;
To fly and find pure ethereal substances
That are not of matter
But of that invisible soul pervading reality.
To hear another soul and to whisper to another soul;
To be a lantern in the darkness
Or an umbrella in a stormy day;
To feel much more than know.
To be the eyes of an eagle, slope of a mountain;
To be a wave understanding the influence of the moon;
To be a tree and read the memory of the leaves;
To be an insignificant pedestrian on the streets
Of crazy cities watching, watching, and watching.
To be a smile on the face of a woman
And shine in her memory
As a moment saved without planning.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Task of a Poet http://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poem/21367/Task_of_a_Poet From the poems written in English

World, Smile, Color, Feeling

“They made a grid of rods which they placed on forked sticks, then lashed the victims to the grid and lighted a smoldering fire underneath, so that little by little, as those captives screamed in despair and torment, their souls would leave them.”

Bartolomé de las Casas (1474–1566) Spanish Dominican friar, historian, and social reformer

History of the Indies (1561)

Soul, Light, Despair

“Nooo! Leave that to George Lucas, he' s really mastered the CGI acting. That scares me! I hate it! Everybody is so pleased and excited by it. Animation is animation. Animation is great. But it's when you're now taking what should be films full of people, living thinking, breathing, flawed creatures and you're controlling every moment of that, it's just death to me. It's death to cinema, I can't watch those Star Wars films, they're dead things.”

Terry Gilliam (1940) American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe

About CGI, in IMDB profile http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000416/bio#quotes

Death, Hate, War, People

“I was called a formalist, and in East Germany that meant you could be denied a chance to exhibit. So I knew I had to leave [to West-Germany], not because I was worried about the controversy but because I knew the controversy was about a bad picture. It wasn't good enough to be controversial. I was getting all the wrong reactions. Friends said the work was wonderful, and the attacks made it seem more important than it was. I had started to earn money with the murals. I earned enough to get a car. That was a big deal. So it was not easy to give up. But I knew I had to leave.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

after 2000, Gerhard Richter: An Artist Beyond Isms' (2002)

Money, Cars, Chance

“Christ should leave us. He is too much with us and I don't like his friends. We have no hope of recovering Christ until Christ leaves us. There is after all something worse than being God-forsaken. It is when God overstays his welcome and take up with the wrong people.”

Walker Percy book The Last Gentleman

The Last Gentleman (1966)

God, People, Hope, Christ

“Let him leave his home town and try to invade the United States and beat Bernard Hopkins, a great champion, a legend.”

Bernard Hopkins (1965) American boxer

On Joe Calzaghe, as quoted in "Hopkins turns up heat on Calzaghe"at BBC News (14 November 2007) http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/boxing/7084427.stm 2000s, 2007

Home

“I wonder what my grandfather Björn of Brekkukot really thought what Latin was? Did he think it was the magic Sesame which opened all cliffs in Iceland? If so, I am not at all sure that he was all that far from the truth. Where fish leaves off in Iceland, Latin takes over.</b”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

Truth, Thinking, Fish

“To think bad thoughts is really the easiest thing in the world. If you leave your mind to itself it will spiral down into ever-increasing unhappiness. To think good thoughts, however, requires effort. This is one of the things that discipline — training — is about.”

James Clavell book Shōgun

Source: Shōgun (1975), Ch. 5

World, Thinking, Effort, Training

“[T]ake the Bible just as it reads; and if it be translated incorrectly, and there is a scholar on the earth who professes to be a Christian, and he can translate it any better than King James's translators did it, he is under obligation to do so, or the curse is upon him. If I understood Greek and Hebrew as some may profess to do, and I knew the Bible was not correctly translated, I should feel myself bound by the law of justice to the inhabitants of the earth to translate that which is incorrect and give it just as it was spoken anciently. Is that proper? Yes, I would be under obligation to do it. But I think it is translated just as correctly as the scholars could get it, although it is not correct in a great many instances. But it is no matter about that. Read it and observe it and it will not hurt any person in the world. If we are not to believe the whole of the Bible, let the man, whoever he may be, among the professed Christians, who thinks he knows, draw the line between the true and the false, so that the whole sectarian world may be able to take the right and leave the wrong. But the man Christ Jesus, who has revealed himself in the latter days, says the Bible is true and the people must believe it. Let us believe it, and then obey it.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses 14:226-227 (August 27, 1871)
1870s

People, World, Justice, Law

“A light is gone from yonder sky,
A star has left its sphere;
The beautiful--and do they die
In yon bright world as here?
Will that star leave a lonely place,
A darkness on the night?—
No; few will miss its lovely face,
And none think heaven less bright!”

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

The Lost Star from The Literary Souvenir, 1828
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Love, World, Beauty, Star

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Thoughts in Solitude (1956)

Death, God, Fear, Hope

“Pure as the snow the summer sun
Never at noon hath look'd upon, —
Deep, as is the diamond wave,
Hidden in the desart cave, —
Changeless, as the greenest leaves
Of the wreath the cypress weaves, —
Hopeless, often, when most fond,
Without hope or fear beyond
Its own pale fidelity, —
And this woman's love can be!”

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

Canto II
The Troubadour (1825)

Love, Fear, Hope, Sun

“Plants and plant-eaters co-evolved. And plants aren't the passive partners in the chain of terrestrial life. Hence today's Pop Ecology movement is quite wrong in believing that plants are happy to fill their role as fodder for herbivores in a harmonious and perfectly balanced ecosystem. A birch tree doesn't feel cosmic fulfillment when a moose munches its leaves; the tree species, in fact, evolves to fight the moose, to keep the animal's munching lips away from vulnerable young leaves and twigs. In the final analysis, the merciless hand of natural selection will favor the birch genes that make the tree less and less palatable to the moose in generation after generation. No plant species could survive for long by offering itself as unprotected fodder.”

Robert T. Bakker book The Dinosaur Heresies

The Dinosaur Heresies: A Revolutionary View of Dinosaurs (1986), Longman Scientific & Technical, p. 179
The Dinosaur Heresies (1986)

Life, Happiness, Feeling, Nature

“Cease all interference in the religion, society, politics, and governance of the Muslims world. And leave us alone to establish the Islamic shura state, which will unite the Muslims of Earth in truth and justice.”

Adam Yahiye Gadahn (1978–2015) Al-Qaida member

American Al-Qaeda Operative Adam Gadahn in a Message to President Bush: Your People Will Experience Things That Will Make You Forget the Horrors of September 11, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Virginia Tech http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/1464.htm May 2007

Truth, World, Religion, Justice

“Mrs. B. and two young women were of the same party, except when Mrs. B. thought herself obliged to leave them to run round the room after her drunken husband. His avoidance, and her pursuit, with the probable intoxication of both, was an amusing scene.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter (1801-05-12) [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters

Women

“Every minute everything is different everywhere. It is all flowing... The duty or beauty of a painting is that there is no reason to do it nor any reason not to. It can be done as a direct act or contact with the moment and that is the moment you are awake and moving. It all passes and is never true literally as the present again leaving more work to be done.”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

Quote of Rauschenberg (1961), as cited in Introduction, Roberta Bernstein, from catalog 'The White and Black Paintings'
from a recording of a symposium in 1961, Larry Gagosian Gallery, New York, 1986
1960's

Beauty, Painting