Quotes about living
page 62

“The pygmies are one of the most cultured peoples on the face of the earth. They live a wonderful life, a life of purity. Not only are they busy and productive, they're happy and healthy as well. If we puny Americans had to live under their conditions, we'd perish in a day. Modern man has much to learn from the people he calls 'savages'. Before we are down to the last blade of grass it would be wise to study the life of the Pygmies. The secret of our own survival rests with them, the people who know how to make the most out of very little and find complete happiness with the bare essentials.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Reflections (1981)

Life, Happiness, People, Secret

“It is not possible to express the most precious insights,
To see all that craves to be seen,
To visit even the closest neighbors in the universe,
To learn all that needs to be learned,
To live without dying,
And I am sad about it.
But I lived
And I am happy about that.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Sadness and Happiness http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/sadness-and-happiness-2/ From the poems written in English

Happiness, Sadness, Learning, Universe

“Given what I do for a living, my body is my temple — and you need to put the right things in your body. If you are not eating the right things or getting the proper amount of rest, you won't be productive.”

Tony Richardson (American football)

Quoted in Tony Gonzalez and Mitzi Dulan, The All-Pro Diet: Lose Fat, Build Muscle, and Live Like a Champion (Rodale Books, 2009), ch. 1.

“I started keeping a list of these annoyances but it got too long and depressing so I just learned to live with them again. We really are using a 1970s era operating system well past its sell-by date. We get a lot done, and we have fun, but let's face it, the fundamental design of Unix is older than many of the readers of Slashdot, while lots of different, great ideas about computing and networks have been developed in the last 30 years. Using Unix is the computing equivalent of listening only to music by David Cassidy.”

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

Music, Idea, Learning, Past

“His aunt drily remarked that, at this rate, he would soon get through all the sights; but she could not guess — having lived always in Washington — how little the sights of Washington had to do with its interest.

The boy could not have told her; he was nowhere near an understanding of himself. The more he was educated, the less he understood. Slavery struck him in the face; it was a nightmare; a horror; a crime; the sum of all wickedness! Contact made it only more repulsive. He wanted to escape, like the negroes, to free soil. Slave States were dirty, unkempt, poverty-stricken, ignorant, vicious! He had not a thought but repulsion for it; and yet the picture had another side. The May sunshine and shadow had something to do with it; the thickness of foliage and the heavy smells had more; the sense of atmosphere, almost new, had perhaps as much again; and the brooding indolence of a warm climate and a negro population hung in the atmosphere heavier than the catalpas. The impression was not simple, but the boy liked it: distinctly it remained on his mind as an attraction, almost obscuring Quincy itself. The want of barriers, of pavements, of forms; the looseness, the laziness; the indolent Southern drawl; the pigs in the streets; the negro babies and their mothers with bandanas; the freedom, openness, swagger, of nature and man, soothed his Johnson blood.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Education, Boy, Understanding, Nature

“These could be the best days of our lives / but I don't think we've been living very wise.”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

Digsy's Dinner
Definitely Maybe (1994)

Thinking

“When I approached God at that time, I hardly had a living faith in Him. The agnostic was in me, the atheist was in me, the sceptic was in me and I was not absolutely sure that there was a God at all. I did not feel His presence. Yet something drew me to the truth of the Vedas, the truth of the Gita, the truth of the Hindu religion. I felt there must be a mighty truth somewhere in this Yoga, a mighty truth in this religion based on the Vedanta.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

The Uttarpara Address (1909)

God, Truth, Faith, Religion

“well boss
mehitabel the cat
has reappeared in her old
haunts with a
flock of kittens

archy she said to me
yesterday
the life of a female
artist is continually
hampered what in hell
have i done to deserve
all these kittens
i look back on my life
and it seems to me to be
just one damned kitten
after another
i am a dancer archy
and my only prayer
is to be allowed
to give my best to my art
but just as i feel
that i am succeeding
in my life work
along comes another batch
of these damned kittens
it is not archy
that i am shy on mother love
god knows i care for
the sweet little things
curse them
but am i never to be allowed
to live my own life
i have purposely avoided
matrimony in the interests
of the higher life
but i might just
as well have been a domestic
slave for all the freedom
i have gained
i hope none of them
gets run over by
an automobile
my heart would bleed
if anything happened
to them and i found it out
but it isn t fair archy
it isn t fair
these damned tom cats have all
the fun and freedom
if i was like some of these
green eyed feline vamps i know
i would simply walk out on the
bunch of them and
let them shift for themselves
but i am not that kind
archy i am full of mother love
my kindness has always
been my curse
a tender heart is the cross i bear
self sacrifice always and forever
is my motto damn them
i will make a home
for the sweet innocent
little things
unless of course providence
in his wisdom should remove
them they are living
just now in an abandoned
garbage can just behind
a made over stable in greenwich
village and if it rained
into the can before i could
get back and rescue them
i am afraid the little
dears might drown
it makes me shudder just
to think of it
of course if i were a family cat
they would probably
be drowned anyhow
sometimes i think
the kinder thing would be
for me to carry the
sweet little things
over to the river
and drop them in myself
but a mother s love archy
is so unreasonable
something always prevents me
these terrible
conflicts are always
presenting themselves
to the artist
the eternal struggle
between art and life archy
is something fierce
yes something fierce
my what a dramatic
life i have lived
one moment up the next
moment down again
but always gay archy always gay
and always the lady too
in spite of hell
well boss it will
be interesting to note
just how mehitabel
works out her present problem
a dark mystery still broods
over the manner
in which the former
family of three kittens
disappeared
one day she was talking to me
of the kittens
and the next day when i asked
her about them
she said innocently
what kittens
interrogation point
and that was all
i could ever get out
of her on the subject
we had a heavy rain
right after she spoke to me
but probably that garbage can
leaks so the kittens
have not yet
been drowned”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

mehitabel and her kittens http://donmarquis.com/reading-room/kittens/ archy and mehitabel (1927)

Love, Life, Wisdom, God

“The Christian way is a life of faith. In order to hold on to the promises of God, you’ve got to believe them and live by them.”

James MacDonald (1960) American pastor

Source: Always True (Moody, 2011), p. 58

Life, God, Faith, Way

“The Great Western Disease is that we fixate on the future at the expense of enjoying the life we're living now.”

Marshall Goldsmith (1949) American author of leadership and management literature

Source: What Got You Here Won't Get You There, 2008, p. 81 (2010 edition)

Life, Disease, Future

“The intellectual … may live for ideas, as I have said, but something must prevent him from living for one idea, from becoming obsessive or grotesque. Although there have been zealots whom we may still regard as intellectuals, zealotry is a defect of the breed and not of the essence.”

Richard Hofstadter (1916–1970) American historian

Source: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1974), p. 29

Idea

“Now come and join the living, its not so far from you
And its getting nearer, soon it will all be true
Oh peace train sounding louder”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

Peace Train
Song lyrics, Teaser and the Firecat (1971)

Peace, Training

“…we who valued above all things the acquisition of wealth and possessions, now bring what we have into a common stock, and communicate to every one in need; we who hated and destroyed one another, and on account of their different manners would not live with men of a different tribe, now, since the coming of Christ, live familiarly with them, and pray for our enemies, and endeavour to persuade those who hate us unjustly to live conformably to the good precepts of Christ, to the end that they may become partakers with us of the same joyful hope of a reward from God the ruler of all.”

Justin Martyr book First Apology of Justin Martyr

First Apology, chap. xiv (trans. Marcus Dods)

Men, God, Hate, Hope

“Lamarck, after having first studied botany with success, had then turned his attention to conchology, and soon became aware that in the newer (or tertiary) strata of the earth's crust there were a multitude of fossil species of shells… He also observed that other shells were so nearly allied to living forms, that it was difficult not to suspect that they had been connected by a common bond of descent. He therefore proposed that the element of time should enter into the definition of a species, and that it should run thus: 'A species consists of individuals all resembling each other, and reproducing their like by generation, so long as the surrounding conditions do not undergo changes sufficient to cause their habits, characters, and forms to vary. He came at last to the conclusion, that none of the animals and plants now existing were primordial creations, but were all derived from pre-existing forms, which, after they may have gone on for indefinite ages reproducing their like, had, at length, by the influence of alterations in climate and in the animate world, been made to vary gradually, and adapt themselves to new circumstances, some of them deviating, in the course of ages, so far from their original type as to have claims to be regarded as new species.”

Charles Lyell (1797–1875) British lawyer and geologist

Source: The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863), Ch.20, p. 389-390

Age, World, Study, Change

“It was a miracle — more than a miracle — when I found you, Melanie. Right now, if I was given the choice between having the world back and having you, I wouldn't be able to give you up. Not to save five billion lives.”

Stephenie Meyer book The Host

Jared Howe to Melanie Stryder, p. 78
The Host (2008)

World

“You must realize that living organisms will do anything to survive. Castaways at sea will drink their own urine in their need for water. Disgust at this is only the attitude of the overprotected who have never experienced extreme thirst or hunger.”

Harry Harrison book Planet of the Damned

Source: Planet of the Damned (1962), Chapter 8

Hunger, Drink, Water, Sea

“This is the largest Republican majority in the history of the State and I am humbled by the outpouring of support I have received. I am honored to have been elected to serve as the Majority Leader and I am looking forward to working toward making this State a better place to make a living and raise a family. I believe Missourians are tired of failed policies out of Washington DC and are looking for more common sense solutions here in Missouri, I believe this majority can deliver them.”

Todd Richardson (1976) American politician

State Rep. Todd Richardson to Serve as Majority Floor Leader for 98th General Assembly http://www.richardsonformissouri.com/richardson-elected-floor-leader/ (November 5, 2014)

Family, History, Support, Sense

“The labouring poor, to use a vulgar expression, seem always to live from hand to mouth. Their present wants employ their whole whole attention, and they seldom think of the future. Even when they have an opportunity of saving they seldom exercise it, but all that is beyond their present neccessities goes, generally speaking, to the ale house.”

Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) British political economist

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter V, paragraph 13, lines 8-13

Exercises, Thinking, Future, Housing

“The created, as well as the Creator, creates. Self-activity that recognises and affirms self-activity in others, freedom that freely recognises freedom, is universal: every part of this eternally real world is instinct with life in itself. Each lives in and by free ideality, the active contemplation of its own ideal; and this ideal embraces, as its essential, prime, and final factor, the one Supreme Ideal.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Harmony of Determinism and Freedom, p.356

Life, World, Freedom, Universe

“Sometimes you fantasize that people who are really up-there and rich and living it up have something you don't have, that their things must be better than your things because they have more money than you. But they drink the same Cokes and eat the same hot dogs and wear the same ILGWU clothes and see the same TV shows and the same movies. Rich people can't see a sillier version of w:Truth or Consequences, or a scarier version of w:The Exorcist. You can get just as revolted as they can—you can have the same nightmares. All of this is really American.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Source: 1975, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), Ch. 6: Work

Money, People, Dogs, Drink

“My error? Why, I may be charged with having committed a breach of faith with the Hindus. I asked them to lay their lives and their property at the disposal of the Mussalmans for the protection of their Holy Places. Even to-day I am asking them to practise Ahimsa, to settle quarrels by dying but not by killing. And what do I find to be the result? How many temples have been desecrated? How many sisters came to me with complaints? As I was saying to Hakimji [Ajmal Khan] yesterday, Hindu women are in mortal fear of Mussalman goondas. I had a letter from… How can I bear the way in which his little children were molested? How can I now ask Hindus to put up with everything patiently? I gave the assurance that the friendship with Mussalmans was bound to bear fruit. I asked them to befriend them, regardless of results. It is not in my power to make good that assurance. And yet I must ask the Hindus even to-day to die rather than kill. I can only do so by laying down my own life. I can teach them the way to die by my own example.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

September 1924. Mahadev Desai, Day to Day with Gandhi, Volume 4, p. 165.
1920s

Life, Women, Friendship, Children

“You must not suppose, because I am a man of letters, that I never tried to earn an honest living.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

The Irrational Knot, Preface (1905)
1900s

“At the beginning of the last two decades of our century, we find ourselves in a state of profound, world-wide crisis. It is a complex, multi-dimensional crisis whose facets touch every aspect of our lives - our health and livelihood, the quality of our environment and our social relationships, our economy, technology, and politics. It is a crisis of intellectual, moral, and spiritual dimensions; a crisis of a scale and urgency unprecedented in recorded human history. For the first time we have to face the very real threat of extinction of the human race and of all life on this planet.”

Fritjof Capra book The Turning Point

Source: The Turning Point (1982), Ch. 1. The Turning of the Tide.

Life, Health, World, History

“Is it any surprise, then, that Jesus felt such intense compassion for the poor and marginalized? That he constantly asked his disciples to care for the poor, the sick, the forgotten, the stranger? He was one of these throwaway people, and he lived among them for 30 years before his public ministry began. Christians tend to see Jesus’ commands to care for the poor as divine. And they were — Jesus was fully divine. But they also came from his human experience. He was fully human as well. I’m always amazed by people who feel they can be Christian without caring for the poor. Not only did Jesus command us to do this, Jesus himself was from this class. When God chose to join us, he joined us in Nazareth, to make sure that we wouldn’t forget.”

James Martin (priest) (1960) Jesuit priest and writer

"How can you be Christian without caring for the poor?" (2017)

God, People, Feeling, Forgetting

“It is thought pretty to say that "Women have no passion." If passion is excitement in the daily social intercourse with men, women think about marriage much more than men do; it is the only event of their lives. It ought to be a sacred event, but surely not the only event of a woman's life, as it is now. Many women spend their lives in asking men to marry them, in a refined way. Yet it is true that women are seldom in love. How can they be?”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Cassandra (1860)

Love, Life, Women, Men

“Greenpeace protesters who lived on the trees right above the planned radar location and who eat environmentally friendly roots, insect, excrements, and dirt.”

Luboš Motl (1973) Czech physicist and translator

http://motls.blogspot.com/2009/09/czech-poland-missile-defense-system.html The Reference Frame http://motls.blogspot.com/

Tree

“Not all women, in fact, very few, have had the good fortune to live and work among women and men actively involved in the feminist movement. Many of us live in circumstances and environments where we must engage in feminist strugle alone, with only occasional support and affirmation.”

Bell Hooks book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

Acknowledgments https://books.google.com/books?id=ClWvBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT8. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984)

Women, Men, Support

“Plainly Hugo was the greatest man of letters of his day. It has been given to few or none to live a life so full of effort and achievement, so rich in honour and success and fame. Born almost with the century, he was a writer at fifteen, and at his death he was writing still; so that the record of his career embraces a period of more than sixty years. There is hardly a department of art to a foremost place in which he did not prove his right. From first to last; from the time of Chateaubriand to the time of Zola, he was a leader of men; and with his departure from the scene the undivided sovereignty of literature became a thing of the past like Alexander's empire.”

William Ernest Henley (1849–1903) English poet, critic and editor

"Hugo"
Views and Reviews (1889)

Life, Death, Men, Art

“art is fruit growing out of man like the fruit out of a plant like the child out of the mother. While the fruit of the plant grows independent forms and never resembles a balloon or a president in a cutaway suit the artistic fruit of man shows for the most part a ridiculous resemblance to the appearance of other things. Reason tells man to stand above nature and to be the measure of all things. thus man thinks he is able to live and to create against the laws of nature and he creates abortions. through reason man became a tragic and ugly figure. i dare say he would create even his children in the form of vases with umbilical cords if he could do so. reason has cut man off from nature.”

Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist

Arp wrote this in lowercase letters
Notes From a Dada Diary; published, 1932 in 'Transition magazine'; as quoted (in lowercase letters), “Soby, James Thrall. Arp: The Museum of Modern Art. Doubleday, New York, 1958, Print. p. 17
1930s

Children, Law, Art, Nature

“Naturally, when considering the whole issue of who will live in Europe, one could argue that this problem will be solved by successful integration. The reality, however, is that we’re not aware of any examples of successful integration… In countering arguments for successful integration, we must also point out that if people with diverging goals find themselves in the same system or country, it won’t lead to integration, but to chaos. It’s obvious that the culture of migrants contrasts dramatically with European culture. Opposing ideologies and values cannot be simultaneously upheld, as they are mutually exclusive. To give you the most obvious example, the European people think it desirable for men and women to be equal, while for the Muslim community this idea is unacceptable, as in their culture the relationship between men and women is seen in terms of a hierarchical order. These two concepts cannot be upheld at the same time. It’s only a question of time before one or the other prevails. Of course one could also argue that communities coming to us from different cultures can be re-educated. But we must see – and Bishop Tőkés also spoke about this – that now the Muslim communities coming to Europe see their own culture, their own faith, their own lifestyles and their own principles as stronger and more valuable than ours. So, whether we like it or not, in terms of respect for life, optimism, commitment, the subordination of individual interests and ideals, today Muslim communities are stronger than Christian communities. Why would anyone want to adopt a culture that appears to be weaker than their own strong culture? They won’t, and they never will! Therefore re-education and integration based on re-education cannot succeed.”

Viktor Orbán (1963) Hungarian politician, chairman of Fidesz

Life, Women, Men, People

“"You must tell them that there must be a new union or there will be chaos," he [Shevardnadze] implored me. That evening, when I hosted republic leaders for dinner — a mixed group of presidents, prime ministers, and foreign ministers — I saw around the table and in the conversation a microcosm of the post-coup Soviet Union’s potential — and its problems. Whatever euphoria that they felt with their post-putsch independence declarations had given way to a marked degree of realism. "Independence sounds nice, but we have to live, and we have to be practical," observed the Prime Minister of Moldova, Valeriu Muravsky. That was the persistent theme that I heard from every one of the republic leaders, with the sole exception of the Georgian Prime Minister, Vissarion Gugushvili, though even he spoke of the need for economic cooperation once Georgian independence was recognized internationally.”

James Baker (1930) Former U.S. Secretary of State

The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War and Peace 1989-1992 (1995) by James Addison Baker, p. 531
1995

Way, Problem

“The fact that men have a same origin and live in the same universe means that they are representatives of a same unity. Deep down, they are also related (or connected) among them; that they consider (or not) themselves as strangers, this just depends on the feeling (or sensation) that dictate their relationships. In their country, two fellow coutrymen whose paths berely cross (or see each only only briefly) with inferrence, would effusively rush themselves up (or throw themselves) into each other arms if they would happen to meet in a desert, among Cannibles.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 42.

Men, Feeling, Universe, Dependency

“Our laws need to reflect the evolution of technology and the changing expectations of American society. This is why the Constitution is often called a “living” document. But we have a long way to go to get our modern privacy laws in line with modern technology.”

Al Franken (1951) American comedian and politician

"Privacy and Civil Liberties in the Digital Age" in WIRED (2 March 2012) http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/03/opinion-franken-privacyliberties/

Law, Way, Change

“6. You realize that if 10 million people saw the movie once, each wasting 3 hours of their lives, that 30 million hours have been wasted, and that if each person lived an average of 70 years, 3,424 years, or 49 lives will have been wasted watching the Titanic. James Cameron has effectively murdered 49 people. (Not necessarily a reason to cry, but it is to a sap that saw Titanic in the first place).”

Maddox (1978) American internet writer

Reasons to cry during the movie "Titanic" http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=cry_titanic. The Best Page in the Universe

People, Personality, Cry

“There are no lebensunwertes leben--no "lives unworthy of life." Every member of the human family bears profound, inherent and equal dignity.”

Robert P. George (1955) American legal scholar

Twitter post https://twitter.com/McCormickProf/status/920123964982284293 (16 October 2017) 2017

Life, Family

“I believe that it is as much a right and duty for women to do something with their lives as for men and we are not going to be satisfied with such frivolous parts as you give us.”

Louisa May Alcott book Rose in Bloom

Rose in Bloom (1876), Ch. 1 : Coming Home

Women, Men, Parting

“In the old times, women did not get their lives written, though I don't doubt many of them were much better worth writing than the men's.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) Abolitionist, author

The Pearl of Orr's Island : A Story of the Coast of Maine (1862).

Women, Men, Time

“I also appeal to those who have already done most of their work for society. I hope that the changes you awaited or worked for for so long will bring joy and satisfaction into your lives. We need your experience, your wisdom and your love.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

New Year's Address to the Nation (1991)

Love, Wisdom, Hope, Change

“But often, in the world’s most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart which beats
So wild, so deep in us, to know
Whence our lives come and where they go.”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

"The Buried Life" (1852), st. 6

Life, World, Knowledge, Heart

“As for history, we are living in its ruins. And as for biographies, we are living with the consequences of all the decisions ever made in them. I tend not to read them for pleasure. It‘s not unlike carefully scrutinizing the map when one has already reached the destination.”

Scott Lynch book Red Seas Under Red Skies

Source: Red Seas Under Red Skies (2007), Chapter 2 “Requin” section 4 (pp. 100-101)

Pleasure, History, Decision, Reading

“Madam, methinks I see him living yet;
So well your words his noble virtues praise,
That all both judge you to relate them true,
And to possess them, honour'd Margaret.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

To the Lady Margaret Ley http://www.bartleby.com/106/85.html

“The Americans have always been more open to my ideas. In fact, I could earn a living in America just by lecturing. One of my brightest audiences, incidentally, were the prisoners in a Philadelphia gaol — brighter than my students at university.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Interview with Paul Newman in Abraxas Unbound #7

Idea, Universe

“One lives in the hope of becoming a memory.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Se vive con la esperanza de llegar a ser un recuerdo.
Voces (1943)

Hope, Memory, Hope, Missing You

“The people resemble a wild beast, which, naturally fierce and accustomed to live in the woods, has been brought up, as it were, in a prison and in servitude, and having by accident got its liberty, not being accustomed to search for its food, and not knowing where to conceal itself, easily becomes the prey of the first who seeks to incarcerate it again.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book Discourses on Livy

Book 1, Ch. 16
Discourses on Livy (1517)

People, Food, Search, Nature

“To apply any other test– to deny a man his hopes because of his color or race, his religion or the place of his birth — is not only to do injustice, it is to deny America and to dishonor the dead who gave their lives for American freedom. Our fathers believed that if this noble view of the rights of man was to flourish, it must be rooted in democracy. The most basic right of all was the right to choose your own leaders. The history of this country, in large measure, is the history of the expansion of that right to all of our people.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, The American Promise (1965)

People, Religion, Hope, Color

“When you live on Cold Mountain long enough the autumns pass quickly
When you live alone you have no worries
When you leave the doors open no one bothers you
The bubbling stream runs forever
In the cave a clay pot boils over a fire on the ground
A wandering breeze stirs the fragrant pines
When hungry I eat one simple meal
And lean against the rock in complete harmony”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

Mountain, Autumn

“I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there.”

Herb Caen (1916–1997) American newspaper columnist

Byrne, Robert. The 2,548 Wittiest Things Anybody Ever Said, page 599. http://books.google.com/books?id=ANv-5xpfa-kC&pg=PT599 Simon and Schuster, 2012. ISBN 145164891X Attributed

Life, Past

“The house kept its own time, like the old-fashioned grandfather clock in the living room. People who happened by raised the weights, and as long as the weights were wound, the clock continued ticking away. But with people gone and the weights unattended, whole chunks of time were left to collect in deposits of faded life on the floor.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 32, An Unlucky Bend in the Road

Life, People, Fashion, Time

“Beware not to use the future as an excuse to ignore living in the present.”

Neil Harbisson (1984) Catalan-Irish musician, artist and activist

As quoted in Serious Wonder (22 June 2015). "A conversation on cyborgism" http://www.seriouswonder.com/a-conversation-on-cyborgism-interview-with-u-k-cyborg-neil-harbisson/

Future

“A great moral reformation will occur only as reformation takes place in the hearts, minds, and lives of each of us; as morality is reinstated as a priority in the homes of the country; and as men and women, boys and girls, realize that their lives are missing a critical moral component and determine to seek a life of virtue.”

Gordon B. Hinckley book Standing for Something

Standing for Something: Ten Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes.

Life, Women, Men, Home

“Swaraj means that we must live within ourselves, we must be self-contained. I tell you we are great slaves to-day. Our economic slavery is greater than our political slavery… From Manchester comes 60 crores rupees worth of cloth every year. You will not have to pay these 60 crores rupees which go out of India. If a householder works by Charkha for one o two hours a day at the end of the year he will find himself with all the necessaries of his family.”

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

Address delivered on 11th February 1921 at a meeting held in Maulana Mazhar-ul-Haq’s compound at Patna. Source: Collected Works of Deshbandhu.
1921

Family, Clothes

“People tend to talk in terms of how many people and civilians the United States has killed using drones. One question I’m never asked, though, is how many lives did you save?”

Brett Velicovich (1983)

What Drone Warfare Does to a Soldier's Brain http://www.gq.com/story/drone-warfare-interview-brett-velicovich, GQ Magazine, 29 June 2017

People, Question

“Man must have light. He must live in the fierce full constant glare of light, where all shadow will be defined and sharp and unique and personal: the shadow of his own singular rectitude or baseness. All human evils have to come out of obscurity and darkness, where there is nothing to dog man constantly with the shape of his own deformity.”

William Faulkner book The Mansion

Gavin Stevens in Ch. 6
The Mansion (1959)

Dogs, Light, Evil, Personality

“It was indeed a dead grove, made up of the corpses of trees. Even the wood of these corpses was non-living, a deathly grey, silver-green, with peeling bark; and the bark had also flaked, shrivelling and simply sloughing off like dead skin. And arching along all the dead twigs, crawled a supple, clutching, lashing, bold convolvulus-serpent. It was her leaves which glowed a cheerful green on the dead branches, on all their agonizing bifurcations; it was her flowers which hung on the branches from clusters of tiny suckers and tentacles, astonishingly tender and serene. They were so alien to that austere and honest deathly sterility that they seemed almost dazzling. It was like an explosion of something splendid, like the sombre and magical secret of that dead river and its dry valley. There was something about that copse reminiscent of the hut on chickens' legs, or Koschei's hoard, or the field sown with dead men's bones.”

Yury Dombrovsky book The Faculty of Useless Knowledge

tr. Alan Myers, The Harvill Press, 1996, Part 1, Chapter 2, pp. 100-101 cited and discussed in Peter Doyle, Iurii Dombrovskii: Freedom Under Totalitarianism, Routledge, 2000, p. 145 https://books.google.com/books?id=MoLCsjaQT08C&lpg=PA145&ots=ekC9_khOAS&dq=%22It%20really%20was%20a%20dead%20grove%22&pg=PA145#v=onepage&q=%22It%20really%20was%20a%20dead%20grove%22&f=false The Faculty of Useless Knowledge (1975)

Men, Secret, Flowers, Tree

“[The] chief [of the gods of Cimmeria] is Crom. He dwells on a great mountain. What use to call on him? Little he cares if men live or die. Better to be silent than to call his attention to you; he will send you dooms, not fortune! He is grim and loveless, but at birth he breathes power to strive and slay into a man's soul. What else shall men ask of the gods? … There is no hope here or hereafter in the cult of my people. In this world men struggle and suffer vainly, finding pleasure only in the bright madness of battle; dying, their souls enter a gray misty realm of clouds and icy winds, to wander cheerlessly throughout eternity.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"Queen of the Black Coast" (1934)

Men, God, People, Pleasure

“For 30 years I have watched from a central position the manifestations of the will power of Great Britain, and I do not believe the people will consent to be edged, pushed, talked and cozened out of India. No nation of which I am aware, great or small, has ever voluntarily or tamely suffered such an overwhelming injury to its interests or such a harsh abrogation of its rights. After all, there are British rights and interests in India. Two centuries of effort and achievement, lives given on a hundred fields, far more lives given and consumed in faithful and devoted service to the Indian people themselves. All this has earned us rights of our own in India.”

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

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1931/jan/26/india-1#column_702 in the House of Commons (26 January 1931) The 1930s

People, Faith, Effort, Suffering

“He was not condemned to death, freedom awaited
him. What was the temptation, the one that worked?
Perhaps he wanted to live with a woman whose life
he had saved, who had seen down into the earth but
had nevertheless followed him back up to life. It was
his only chance to be a hero, to one person at least,
for if he became the hangman the others would
despise him. He was in prison for wounding another
man, on one finger of the right hand, with a sword.
This too is history.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Selected Poems 1976-1986 (1987), Marrying the Hangman

Life, Death, History, Freedom

“Often, very often, I am alone. My studio in Amsterdam, [Beckmann lived and worked in the heart of Amsterdam during World War 2. ] an enormous old tobacco storeroom is again filled in my imagination with figures from the old days and from the new, like an ocean moved by storm and sun and always present in my thoughts. Then shapes become beings and seem comprehensible to me in the great void and uncertainty of the space which I call god.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

1930s, On my Painting (1938)

God, War, World, Imagination

“The bourgeois … considered the philosophes to be his true guides, which did not prevent him from taking good care not to adopt their teachings once he realized they might be damaging to the interests of his class. … He seemed quite disposed to make his peace with the Church, now that he was sure of being sufficiently emancipated to be able to live his life as he chose. To go farther, he feared, would to to act contrary to the interests of his class, for disbelief, by spreading among the people, might eventually endanger the principles of the social order which the bourgeoisie needed to establish its domination.”

Bernard Groethuysen (1880–1946) French literary historian, translator and writer

Source: The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1927), p. 46

Life, People, Fear, Peace

“Your gatherings are a living testimony of a determination to support these principles. It would be impossible to come into this presence, which is a symbol of more than 300 years of our advancing civilization, which represents to such a degree the hope of our consecrated living and the prayers of our hallowed dead, without a firmer conviction of the deep and abiding purpose of our country to live in accordance with this vision. There have been and will be lapses and discouragements, surface storms and disturbances. The shallows will murmur, but the deep is still. If We shall be made aware of the boisterous and turbulent forces of evil about us seeking the things which are temporal. But we shall also be made aware of the still small voice arising from the fireside of every devoted home in the land seeking the things which are eternal. To such a country, to such a cause, the American Legion has dedicated itself. Upon this rock you stand for the service of humanity. Against it no power can prevail.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Toleration and Liberalism (1925)

Hope, Home, Support, Evil

“We would most gladly ye came yourself if that ye may, and if ye may not, we pray you not to fail, but to accomplish in all diligence our said commandment, to send our Seal incontinent upon the sight hereof, as we trust you, with such as ye trust and the Officers pertaining to attend with it; praying you to ascertain us of your News. Here, loved be God, is all well and truly determined, and for to resist the Malice of him that had best Cause to be true, the Duke of Buckingham, the most untrue creature living; whom with God’s Grace we shall not be long till that we will be in those parts, and subdue his Malice. We assure you there was never false traitor better purveyed for, as this bearer Gloucester shall show you.”

Richard III of England (1452–1485) English monarch

Postscript from a letter to his Chancellor, 12 October, 1483. Reprinted in Richard the Third (1956) http://books.google.com/books?id=dNm0JgAACAAJ&dq=Paul+Murray+Kendall+Richard+the+Third&ei=TZHDR8zXKZKIiQHf2NCpCA

Love, God, Parting, Falseness

“Making men live in three worlds at once — past, present and future has been the chief harm organized religion has done.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard (1927)

Men, World, Religion, Past

“To me, Dharma had always been a matter of moral norms, external rules and regulations, do's and don'ts, enforced on life by an act of will. Now I was made to see Dharma as a multi dimensional movement of man's inner law of being, his psychic evolution, his spiritual growth, and his spontaneous building of an outer life for himself and the community in which he lived.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

How I became a Hindu (1982)
Variant: To me, Dharma had always been a matter of moral norms, external rules and regulations, do's and don'ts, enforced on life by an act of will. Now I was made to see Dharma as a multi dimensional movement of man's inner law of being, his psychic evolution, his spiritual growth, and his spontaneous building of an outer life for himself and the community in which he lived.

Life, Lie, Law, Communication

“Handel and Shakespeare have left us the best that any have left us; yet, in spite of this, how much of their lives was wasted.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Waste
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VIII - Handel and Music

“My fathering had always taken the form of a friendly cloud that floated across the lives of the children, and paused occasionally to cast a shadow. That they would turn out to have their own weather, and that I would profit by the climate, was an immense satisfaction.”

John Leonard (1939–2008) American critic, writer, and commentator

"The Fathering Instinct" http://books.google.com/books?id=EbQbAQAAMAAJ&q=%22My+fathering+had+always+taken+the+form+of+a+friendly+cloud+that+floated+across+the+lives+of+the+children+and+paused+occasionally+to+cast+a+shadow+That+they+would+turn+out+to+have+their+own+weather+and+that+I+would+profit+by+the+climate+was+an+immense+satisfaction%22&pg=PA112#v=onepage, Ms. magazine, May 1974

Children, Weather

“Afrikaners: The time for white supremacism is gone. You cannot hope to survive while you are so intrinsically entwined with black labour. You used them for everything, even to murdering you and then digging your grave. You cannot survive while every single thing you do, every enterprise, every interaction, every aspect of your lives, is determined by your reliance on black labour. Because, whether you like it or not, black people also have rights, and they have claimed them. You cannot think that you have a right to rule over black people — you do not.”

Arthur Kemp (1962) British writer

Let Eugene Terre’Blanche’s Tomb be the End of Apartheid and White Supremacism, blog post http://www.arthurkemp.com/?p=508 Quotes from other works:

People, Hope, Thinking, Time

“Tis strange how like a very dunce,
Man, with his bumps upon his sconce,
Has lived so long, and yet no knowledge he
Has had, till lately, of Phrenology—
A science that by simple dint of
Head-combing he should find a hint of,
When scratching o'er those little pole-hills
The faculties throw up like mole hills.”

Thomas Hood (1799–1845) British writer

Thomas Hood, Craniology, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 597.
20th century

Knowledge, Science

“Even though I now feel more confident and happy, I was really paranoid for about a year and a half. Basically, what happened was that I quit taking drugs and I walked out into the world and was sort of in this film that was really well received. So, after years of living a more destructive lifestyle, I had to, instantly, kind of court this world which had incredibly nice value systems, but with protocols that I had never encountered before. And then I had to reconcile these two worlds. You know—I want to live a happier, more productive lifestyle, but the question was, did I want to renounce being in a great rock ’n’ roll band for that? The answer was ‘No way.”

Courtney Love (1964) American punk singer-songwriter, musician, actress, and artist

On reconciling her career in acting and music, interview with The Georgia Straight (1999)
1996–2005

Happiness, World, Way, Feeling

“Hoping to court ex-New Yorkers living in Florida, the Bush campaign is running radio ads there, featuring former New York mayors Rudy Giuliani and Ed Koch. The ads begin, "Hiiii. We're the reason you LEFT."”

Tina Fey (1970) American comedian, writer, producer and actress

citation needed

Hope

“'So then at forty-six years of age I came here to learn to live by cliches,' is what Day says to Charlotte Treat right after Randy Lenz asked what time it was, again, at 0825. 'To turn my will and life over to the care of cliches. One day at a time. Easy does it. First things first. Courage is fear that has said its prayers. Ask for help. Thy will not mine be done. It works if you work it. Grow or go. Keep coming back.' […] I walk around with my arms out straight in front of me and recite these cliches. In a monotone. No inflection necessary. Could that be one? Could that be added to the cliche-pool? "No inflection necessary"? Too many syllables, probably.'”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Infinite Jest (1996)

Life, Age, Fear, Courage

“A culture is like the upright strands that you begin with in basket-making, round which you wind the texture of the basket itself: no sticks, no basket; no culture, no community. It is the grammar, the story, humour and good faith that identifies a community and gives it existence. It is both the parent and child of social capital. And the social capital of a community is its social life – the links of cooperation and friendship between its members. It is the common culture and ceremony, the good faith and reciprocal obligations the civility and citizenship, the play, humour and conversation which make a living community, the cooperation that builds its institutions. It is the social ecosystem in which a culture lives.”

David Fleming (1940–2010) British activist

Lean Logic, (2016), p. xxi, introduction http://www.flemingpolicycentre.org.uk/lean-logic-surviving-the-future/

Life, Friendship, Faith, Communication

“He had a theory about it. It happened, and re-happened, because it was a city uninterested in history. Strange things occurred precisely because there was no necessary regard for the past. The city lived in a sort of everyday present. It had no need to believe in itself as a London, or an Athens, or even a signifier of the New World, like a Sydney, or a Los Angeles. No, the city couldn't care less about where it stood. He had seen a T-shirt once that said: NE YORK FUCKIN' CITY. As if it were the only place that ever existed and the only one that ever would.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book Three: Part of the Parts

World, Angels, History, Past

“But one can't go without his sleep forever.
The immortals give each thing its proper place
in our mortal lives throughout the good green earth.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

XIX. 592–594 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)

Sleep

“Often it is the case that it takes ‘just a little’ to help and support people, so they can help themselves. I have met adults and children, men and women, whose living conditions are difficult for us to imagine, but every time I come away inspired by their strength and will to improve their lives and provide a better life for their children.”

Mary, Crown Princess of Denmark (1972) Crown Princess of Denmark

Speech at the opening of Danida’s 50th anniversary exhibition in Bella Center; quoted on royal website http://kongehuset.dk/Menu/materiale/taler/speech-by-hrh-the-crown-princess-at-the-launch-of-danidas-50th-anniversary-exhibition-in (16 March 2012)

Life, Women, Men, Children

“Most of us live betwixt quiet despair and furious nihilism.”

Albert Caraco (1919–1971) French-Uruguayan philosopher

Source: Ma confession (1975), p. 94

Despair

“In repudiating extremism, we need to recommit ourselves to a few common-sense principles that should transcend partisan differences.
First, we cannot enhance our own security if we place in jeopardy what is most precious to us, namely the centrality of human rights in our daily lives and in global affairs.
Second, we cannot maintain our historic self-confidence as a people if we generate public panic.
Third, we cannot do our duty as citizens and patriots if we pursue an agenda that polarizes and divides our country.
Next, we cannot be true to ourselves if we mistreat others.
And finally, in the world at large, we cannot lead if our leaders mislead.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Post-Presidency, DNC address (2004)

People, World, Confidence, Sense

“[Legitimate Constitution]… I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution. And if that be not the guide in expounding it, there can be no security for a consistent and stable, more than for a faithful exercise of its powers. If the meaning of the text be sought in the changeable meaning of the words composing it, it is evident that the shape and attributes of the Government must partake of the changes to which the words and phrases of all living languages are constantly subject. What a metamorphosis would be produced in the code of law if all its ancient phraseology were to be taken in its modern sense! And that the language of our Constitution is already undergoing interpretations unknown to its founders, will I believe appear to all unbiased Enquirers into the history of its origin and adoption.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Letter to Henry Lee http://books.google.com/books?id=B0waAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA191&dq=%22In+that+sense+alone+it+is+the+legitimate+Constitution%22 (25 June 1824) 1820s

Faith, Law, Exercises, History

“You should never eat when you're on the toilet. "But I'm lactose-intolerant, and I've always wanted to enjoy a bowl of Puffins with whole milk!" That's more of an almond milk cereal, but live your dream.”

Daniel Tosh (1975) American stand-up comedian

Happy Thoughts (2011)

Dreams

“Afore this time I had great longing and desire of God’s gift to be delivered of this world and of this life. For oftentimes I beheld the woe that is here, and the weal and the bliss that is being there: (and if there had been no pain in this life but the absence of our Lord, methought it was some-time more than I might bear;) and this made me to mourn, and eagerly to long. And also from mine own wretchedness, sloth, and weakness, me liked not to live and to travail, as me fell to do.
And to all this our courteous Lord answered for comfort and patience, and said these words: Suddenly thou shalt be taken from all thy pain, from all thy sickness, from all thy distress and from all thy woe. And thou shalt come up above and thou shalt have me to thy meed, and thou shalt be fulfilled of love and of bliss. And thou shalt never have no manner of pain, no manner of misliking, no wanting of will; but ever joy and bliss without end. What should it then aggrieve thee to suffer awhile, seeing that it is my will and my worship?”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Fifteenth Revelation, Chapter 63

Love, Life, God, Pain

“Now I gazed upon him, no longer in a passionate frenzy, but in a cold contempt. I visualized long days and nights of vengeance, of fiendish ingenuity and complete consumation. My enemy was at my mercy; he lived; all the plans of hate and torture I had concieved through the long years of wrong and insult I would wreak upon him. My plans were carefully laid; I knew exactly what tortures I would use, how long I could inflict them without causing death, until my enemy at last went forth, a man ruined of soul and body. I was at peace, and content.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

From “Revenge” in a letter to Tevis Clyde Smith (c. late Aug/early September 1927)
Letters

Death, Hate, Peace, Soul

“There’s no reason to trade insults. We have our way of life and they have theirs. I wouldn’t live as they do, but disrespect seems pointless. I’m sure there are good people among them.”

Alexei Panshin book Rite of Passage

Source: Rite of Passage (1968), Chapter 7 (p. 94).

Life, People, Way

“If you really want to live, why not try and make yourself?”

Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist

Lyrics, Make Yourself (1999)

“Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like putting a live grenade in the hands of a child.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

Newsweek (22 October 1984)

“I wanted to experiment with that live energy, to push myself a little. It's very much about having intimacy with the music. I love theater - and I love playing in these old theaters. It's not a Vegas stage show. It's very much just me and the music and a five-piece band and a 20-piece string section from each city.”

Josh Groban (1981) American musician and actor

Miami Herald, 4/23/04

Love, Music

“Truth be told, having two passports in Japan is not necessarily a problem. If one lived a quiet life, one could conceivably keep renewing a non-Japanese passport ad infinitum. The USG permits dual citizenship and doesn't go out of its way to tell other governments about the nationalities of their citizens. However, as you know, I don't live a quiet life.”

Debito Arudou (1965) Author/activist with Japanese citizenship born in the USA

"How to Lose Your American Passport" http://www.debito.org/deamericanize.html, Debito.org (2003-01-10)

Life, Truth, Way, Problem

“Pollution, defilement, squalor are words that never would have been created had man lived conformably to Nature. Birds, insects, bears die as cleanly and are disposed of as beautifully as flies. The woods are full of dead and dying trees, yet needed for their beauty to complete the beauty of the living…. How beautiful is all Death!”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

August or September 1875, page 222
John of the Mountains, 1938

Death, Beauty, Nature, Bird

“Unfortunately, there would be no live casting of the game, hence we will have to miss the game.”

Leung Chun-ying (1954) Hong Kong politician

2015
Source: http://www.ejinsight.com/20151117-fans-vow-not-to-boo-chinese-national-anthem-to-protect-hk-team/

Game

“There is great freedom in simplicity of living.”

Peace Pilgrim (1908–1981) American non-denominational spiritual teacher

Source: Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work in Her Own Words (1982), Ch. 2 : My Spiritual Growing Up : My Steps Toward Inner Peace

Freedom

“A horn of plenty
spills from your hands into the
starved lives of millions.”

Aberjhani (1957) author

(haiku from poem Notes for an Elegy in the Key of Michael).
From Articles, Essays, and Poems, On Michael Jackson

“Or is all this fuss actually important for << art history >>? Oh, no, never. If things only ever originated as a result of such competition (between subject- and subjectless art), it wouldn't be worth living among them, like an accidental, capricious toy. Clearly there is a greater, a more serene and more modest power, but we are either too lazy to live by its laws, or we have no time, or it "hurts too much."”

Marc Chagall (1887–1985) French artist and painter

Quote in Chagall's letter to A. N. Benois, 1918; as quoted in Marc Chagall - the Russian years 1906 – 1922, editor Christoph Vitali, exhibition catalogue, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 1991, p. 150
1910's

Law, Art, History, Time

“They do not live in the world,
Are not in time and space.
From birth to death hurled
No word do they have, not one
To plant a foot upon,
Were never in any place.”

Edwin Muir (1887–1959) British poet, novelist and translator

The Animals (1983)

Death, World, Birth, Time

“France must live with terrorism, but we will not give in”

Manuel Valls (1962) French Socialist Party (PS) politician

la France doit vivre avec le terrorisme, mais nous ne céderons pas Statement regarding Nice attacks https://www.rt.com/news/351228-valls-nice-statement-social-media/, Russia Today, 15 July 2016