Quotes about living
page 8

Billie Joe Armstrong photo

“We pride ourselves on trying to put on the best show we can and we're not afraid to say that we happen to be the best live band in the world”

Billie Joe Armstrong (1972) American singer and guitarist

Reported in Q Magazine interview - Jan 2015

Indíra Gándhí photo
Diogenes of Sinope photo

“One day, observing a child drinking out of his hands, he cast away the cup from his wallet with the words, "A child has beaten me in plainness of living."”

Diogenes of Sinope (-404–-322 BC) ancient Greek philosopher, one of the founders of the Cynic philosophy

Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 37
Quoted by Diogenes Laërtius

Black Elk photo
Colette photo

“Nothing ages a woman like living in the country.”

Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi

L'Envers du music hall (Music Hall Sidelights), "On Tour" (1913)

Richard Stallman photo

“Control over the use of one's ideas really constitutes control over other people's lives; and it is usually used to make their lives more difficult.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

1980s, GNU Manifesto (1985)

Joaquin Phoenix photo

“Animal rights is a part of my everyday life. When you live by example, you create a certain level of awareness. Friends of mine, people I have never discussed vegetarianism with, are adopting vegetarian habits because they see it.”

Joaquin Phoenix (1974) American actor, music video director, producer, musician, and social activist

" Fake leather please! http://www.dnaindia.com/entertainment/report_fake-leather-please_1064075". Interview for Daily News and Analysis. November 14, 2006.

Ted Bundy photo
Daryl Hannah photo
Madhvacharya photo

“The five-fold difference between God, living and non-living beings is an eternal fact”

Madhvacharya (1199–1278) Hindu philosopher who founded Dvaita Vedanta school

Ya, Hindu Online

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo
Suman Pokhrel photo

“What heart touched is what is touched
what heart experienced is what is experienced
where heart lived is what is lived.”

Suman Pokhrel (1967) Nepali poet, lyricist, playwright, translator and artist

<span class="plainlinks"> I shall bid no Farewell https://allpoetry.com/poem/11694634--I-shall-bid-no-Farewell-by-Suman-Pokhrel</span>
From Poetry

Mark Twain photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Maxim Gorky photo
Bertrand Russell photo
Dante Alighieri photo

“Unless, before then, the prayer assist me which rises from a heart that lives in grace: what avails the other, which is not heard in heaven?”

Canto IV, lines 133–135 (tr. C. E. Norton).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Purgatorio

Erich Fromm photo

“It is often said that the Arabs fled, that they left the country voluntarily, and that they therefore bear the responsibility for losing their property and their land. It is true that in history there are some instances — in Rome and in France during the Revolutions when enemies of the state were proscribed and their property confiscated. But in general international law, the principle holds true that no citizen loses his property or his rights of citizenship; and the citizenship right is de facto a right to which the Arabs in Israel have much more legitimacy than the [European] Jews. Just because the Arabs fled? Since when is that punishable by confiscation of property and by being barred from returning to the land on which a people's forefathers have lived for generations? Thus, the claim of the Jews to the land of Israel cannot be a realistic political claim. If all nations would suddenly claim territories in which their forefathers had lived two thousand years ago, this world would be a madhouse. … I believe that, politically speaking, there is only one solution for Israel, namely, the unilateral acknowledgement of the obligation of the State towards the Arabs — not to use it as a bargaining point, but to acknowledge the complete moral obligation of the Israeli State to its former inhabitants of Palestine.”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

Jewish Newsletter [New York] (19 May 1959); quoted in Prophets in Babylon (1980) by Marion Woolfson, p. 13

Jacque Fresco photo

“War represents the supreme failure of nations to resolve their differences. From a strictly pragmatic standpoint, it is the most inefficient waste of lives and resources ever conceived.”

Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) American futurist and self-described social engineer

Source: The Best That Money Can't Buy: Beyond Politics, Poverty, & War (2002), p. 31.

Max Ernst photo
Humberto Maturana photo
Shams-i Tabrizi photo

“You have to live with the people in hypocrisy for them to stay happy with you.”

Shams-i Tabrizi (1185–1248) 1185-1248, spiritual instructor of Mewlānā Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhi.

Me & Rumi (2004)

Sergei Rachmaninoff photo
George Orwell photo
John Locke photo
Witold Pilecki photo

“So they didn't let anybody else off. I can't live anymore, they've done me. Auschwitz was just a child's play.”

Witold Pilecki (1901–1948) World War II concentration camp leader and resistor

Having just been sentenced to death, 1948.
Source: Ewa K. Czaczkowska, Chcą beatyfikacji Pileckiego, Rzeczpospolita. Nr 249 (8150), 24 October 2008, p. A9

Richard Feynman photo
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada photo
Elizabeth I of England photo
Kurt Vonnegut photo
The Notorious B.I.G. photo

“Damn right I like the life I live, 'cause I went from negative to positive.”

The Notorious B.I.G. (1972–1997) American rapper

Song lyrics, Ready to Die (1994), "Juicy"

Dante Alighieri photo
Robert Murray M'Cheyne photo
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo
Emil M. Cioran photo
Sam Cooke photo

“It's summertime and the living is easy
Fish are jumping and the cotton is high
Your daddy's rich and your mama's good-looking
Hush, little baby don't you cry.”

Sam Cooke (1931–1964) American singer-songwriter and entrepreneur

Summertime
Song lyrics, Sam Cooke (1957)

Eugene Cernan photo
Philip II of Spain photo

“I would rather lose all my lands and a hundred lives than be king over heretics.”

Philip II of Spain (1527–1598) King of Spain who became King of England by marriage to Queen Mary I

David A. Pharies, A brief history of the Spanish language (2007), p. 147.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart photo
Pope Pius X photo

“I was born poor, I have lived poor, I wish to die poor.”

Pope Pius X (1835–1914) Catholic Pope and saint

His last will, as quoted in an obituary in The Maine Catholic Historical Magazine (1914) Volumes 3-6, p. 17

Michael Oakeshott photo
Chuck Close photo
Jagadish Chandra Bose photo
Francis Bacon photo
Nâzım Hikmet photo
Dante Alighieri photo

“This miserable state
is borne by the wretched souls of those
who lived without disgrace and without praise.”

Canto III, lines 34–36 (tr. John D. Sinclair).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

George Orwell photo
Walter Gropius photo

“A modern, harmonic and lively architecture is the visible sign of an authentic democracy.”

Walter Gropius (1883–1969) German architect (1883-1969) and founder of the Bauhaus School

In 'The Observer' (London), 'Sayings of the Week'

George Orwell photo
Salvador Sobral photo

“We live in a world of disposable music; fast-food music without any content… Music is not fireworks, music is feeling. So let's try to change this and bring music back which is really what matters.”

Salvador Sobral (1989) Portuguese singer

"Portugal's Eurovision triumph", Euronews (14 May 2017) http://www.euronews.com/2017/05/14/portugal-has-won-the-2017-eurovision-song-contest

Randy Blythe photo
Etty Hillesum photo
Brigitte Bardot photo
Andrea Dworkin photo
Antonin Scalia photo

“What secret knowledge, one must wonder, is breathed into lawyers when they become Justices of this Court, that enables them to discern that a practice which the text of the Constitution does not clearly proscribe, and which our people have regarded as constitutional for 200 years, is in fact unconstitutional? […] The Court must be living in another world. Day by day, case by case, it is busy designing a Constitution for a country I do not recognize.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Board of County Commissioners, Wabaunsee County, Kansas, v. Umbehr, 518 U.S. 668 http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=000&invol=U20028&friend=oyez, No. 94-1654 (1996, dissenting); decided June 28, 1996.
1990s

Saint Patrick photo
C.G. Jung photo

“Among all my patients in the second half of life—that is to say, over thirty-five—there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost what the living religions of every age have given their followers, and none of them has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook.”

Chap. 11 (Psychotherapists or the Clergy), p. 229 http://books.google.com/books?id=mAsPAQAAIAAJ&q=%22Among+all+my+patients+in+the+second+half+of+life+that+is+to+say+over+thirty+five+there+has+not+been+one+whose+problem+in+the+last+resort+was+not+that+of+finding+a+religious+outlook+on+life%22&pg=PA229#v=onepage
Modern Man in Search of a Soul (1933)

Edvard Munch photo
Josiah Gilbert Holland photo
George Orwell photo
Socrates photo
Rudolf Steiner photo
Élie Metchnikoff photo

“The duration of the life of men may be considerably increased. It would be true progress to go back to the simple dishes of our ancestors. … Progress would consist in simplifying many sides of the lives of civilised people.”

Élie Metchnikoff (1845–1916) Russian-French immunologist, embriologist, biologist, Nobel laureat

Quoted in Strength and Diet https://books.google.it/books?id=uexsAAAAMAAJ by Francis Albert Rollo Russell (London: Longmans, Green, & Co, 1905), p. 2.

Menachem Mendel Schneerson photo
Socrates photo

“He [Socrates] would say that the rest of the world lived to eat, while he himself ate to live.”

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

Socrates II: xxiv http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=D.+L.+2.5.24&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0258#note-link18. Original Greek: ἔλεγέ τε τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους ἀνθρώπους ζῆν ἵν᾽ ἐσθίοιεν: αὐτὸς δὲ ἐσθίειν ἵνα ζῴη.
Diogenes Laertius

Robert Browning photo

“Good, to forgive;
Best, to forget!
Living, we fret;
Dying, we live.”

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

Dedication to La Saisiaz.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Richard Dawkins photo

“The genes are the master programmers, and they are programming for their lives.”

Source: The Selfish Gene (1976, 1989), Ch. 4. The Gene machine

Marcus Aurelius photo
Catherine the Great photo

“You philosophers are lucky men. You write on paper and paper is patient. Unfortunate Empress that I am, I write on the susceptible skins of living beings.”

Catherine the Great (1729–1796) Empress of Russia

Letter to Denis Diderot, as quoted in The Affairs of Women : A Modern Miscellany (2006) by Colin Bingham

Joanne K. Rowling photo
Plato photo

“Sons, the event proves that your fathers were brave men; for we might have lived dishonourably, but have preferred to die honourably rather than bring you and your children into disgrace, and rather than dishonour our own fathers and forefathers”

A speech of Aspasia, recounted by Socrates, as portrayed in the dialogue.
Menexenus
Context: p>Let every man remind their descendants that they also are soldiers who must not desert the ranks of their ancestors, or from cowardice fall behind. Even as I exhort you this day, and in all future time, whenever I meet with any of you, shall continue to remind and exhort you, O ye sons of heroes, that you strive to be the bravest of men. And I think that I ought now to repeat what your fathers desired to have said to you who are their survivors, when they went out to battle, in case anything happened to them. I will tell you what I heard them say, and what, if they had only speech, they would fain be saying, judging from what they then said. And you must imagine that you hear them saying what I now repeat to you:Sons, the event proves that your fathers were brave men; for we might have lived dishonourably, but have preferred to die honourably rather than bring you and your children into disgrace, and rather than dishonour our own fathers and forefathers; considering that life is not life to one who is a dishonour to his race, and that to such a one neither men nor Gods are friendly, either while he is on the earth or after death in the world below.Remember our words, then, and whatever is your aim let virtue be the condition of the attainment of your aim, and know that without this all possessions and pursuits are dishonourable and evil.For neither does wealth bring honour to the owner, if he be a coward; of such a one the wealth belongs to another, and not to himself. Nor does beauty and strength of body, when dwelling in a base and cowardly man, appear comely, but the reverse of comely, making the possessor more conspicuous, and manifesting forth his cowardice.And all knowledge, when separated from justice and virtue, is seen to be cunning and not wisdom; wherefore make this your first and last and constant and all-absorbing aim, to exceed, if possible, not only us but all your ancestors in virtue; and know that to excel you in virtue only brings us shame, but that to be excelled by you is a source of happiness to us.And we shall most likely be defeated, and you will most likely be victors in the contest, if you learn so to order your lives as not to abuse or waste the reputation of your ancestors, knowing that to a man who has any self-respect, nothing is more dishonourable than to be honoured, not for his own sake, but on account of the reputation of his ancestors.The honour of parents is a fair and noble treasure to their posterity, but to have the use of a treasure of wealth and honour, and to leave none to your successors, because you have neither money nor reputation of your own, is alike base and dishonourable.And if you follow our precepts you will be received by us as friends, when the hour of destiny brings you hither; but if you neglect our words and are disgraced in your lives, no one will welcome or receive you. This is the message which is to be delivered to our children.</p

Heraclitus photo

“Although the Law of Reason is common, the majority of people live as though they had an understanding of their own.”

Heraclitus (-535) pre-Socratic Greek philosopher

Fragment 92, as translated by G.W.T. Patrick, trans.
Numbered fragments

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo

“Here, lads, we live by the law of the taiga. But even here people manage to live.”

Kuziomin, in the Ralph Parker translation (1963).
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962)
Context: Here, lads, we live by the law of the taiga. But even here people manage to live. D’you know who are the ones the camps finish off? Those who lick other men’s left-overs, those who set store by the doctors, and those who peach on their mates.

Warren Buffett photo

“I’ve worked in an economy that rewards someone who saves the lives of others on a battlefield with a medal, rewards a great teacher with thank-you notes from parents, but rewards those who can detect the mispricing of securities with sums reaching into the billions.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

" My Philanthropic Pledge http://givingpledge.org/pdf/letters/Buffett_Letter.pdf" at the The Giving Pledge (2010)
Context: Some material things make my life more enjoyable; many, however, would not. I like having an expensive private plane, but owning a half-dozen homes would be a burden. Too often, a vast collection of possessions ends up possessing its owner. The asset I most value, aside from health, is interesting, diverse, and long-standing friends.
My wealth has come from a combination of living in America, some lucky genes, and compound interest. Both my children and I won what I call the ovarian lottery. (For starters, the odds against my 1930 birth taking place in the U. S. were at least 30 to 1. My being male and white also removed huge obstacles that a majority of Americans then faced.) My luck was accentuated by my living in a market system that sometimes produces distorted results, though overall it serves our country well. I’ve worked in an economy that rewards someone who saves the lives of others on a battlefield with a medal, rewards a great teacher with thank-you notes from parents, but rewards those who can detect the mispricing of securities with sums reaching into the billions. In short, fate’s distribution of long straws is wildly capricious.
The reaction of my family and me to our extraordinary good fortune is not guilt, but rather gratitude. Were we to use more than 1% of my claim checks on ourselves, neither our happiness nor our well-being would be enhanced. In contrast, that remaining 99% can have a huge effect on the health and welfare of others. That reality sets an obvious course for me and my family: Keep all we can conceivably need and distribute the rest to society, for its needs. My pledge starts us down that course.

Albert Schweitzer photo

“Affirmation of the world, which means affirmation of the will-to-live that manifests itself around me, is only possible if I devote myself to other life.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics
Context: Affirmation of the world, which means affirmation of the will-to-live that manifests itself around me, is only possible if I devote myself to other life. From an inner necessity, I exert myself in producing values and practising ethics in the world and on the world even though I do not understand the meaning of the world. For in world- and life-affirmation and in ethics I carry out the will of the universal will-to-live which reveals itself in me. I live my life in God, in the mysterious divine personality which I do not know as such in the world, but only experience as mysterious Will within myself.
Rational thinking which is free from assumptions ends therefore in mysticism. To relate oneself in the spirit of reverence for life to the multiform manifestations of the will-to-live which together constitute the world is ethical mysticism. All profound world-view is mysticism, the essence of which is just this: that out of my unsophisticated and naïve existence in the world there comes, as a result of thought about self and the world, spiritual self-devotion to the mysterious infinite Will which is continuously manifested in the universe.

Vincent Van Gogh photo

“What is true is that I have at times earned my own crust of bread, and at other times a friend has given it to me out of the goodness of his heart. I have lived whatever way I could, for better or for worse, taking things just as they came.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

1880s, 1880, Letter to Theo (Cuesmes, July 1880)
Context: What is true is that I have at times earned my own crust of bread, and at other times a friend has given it to me out of the goodness of his heart. I have lived whatever way I could, for better or for worse, taking things just as they came. It is true that I have forfeited the trust of various people, it is true that my financial affairs are in a sorry state, it is true that the future looks rather bleak, it is true that I might have done better, it is true that I have wasted time when it comes to earning a living, it is true that my studies are in a fairly lamentable and appalling state, and that my needs are greater, infinitely greater than my resources. But does that mean going downhill and doing nothing?

Adi Shankara photo

“Though he lives in the conditionings (Upadhis), he, the contemplative one, remains ever unconcerned with anything or he may move about like the wind, perfectly unattached.”

Adi Shankara (788–820) Hindu philosopher monk of 8th century

Source: Atma Bodha (1987), p. 98-101: Quote nr. 52 - 54.
Context: Though he lives in the conditionings (Upadhis), he, the contemplative one, remains ever unconcerned with anything or he may move about like the wind, perfectly unattached.
On the destruction of the Upadhis, the contemplative one is totally absorbed in "Vishnu", the All-pervading Spirit, like water into water, space into space and light into light.
Realise That to be Brahman, the attainment of which leaves nothing more to be attained, the blessedness of which leaves no other blessing to be desired and the knowledge of which leaves nothing more to be known.

George Orwell photo

“If you live for others, you must live for others, and not as a roundabout way of getting an advantage for yourself.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool," Polemic (March 1947)
Context: Shakespeare starts by assuming that to make yourself powerless is to invite an attack. This does not mean that everyone will turn against you (Kent and the Fool stand by Lear from first to last), but in all probability someone will. If you throw away your weapons, some less scrupulous person will pick them up. If you turn the other cheek, you will get a harder blow on it than you got on the first one. This does not always happen, but it is to be expected, and you ought not to complain if it does happen. The second blow is, so to speak, part of the act of turning the other cheek. First of all, therefore, there is the vulgar, common-sense moral drawn by the Fool: "Don't relinquish power, don't give away your lands." But there is also another moral. Shakespeare never utters it in so many words, and it does not very much matter whether he was fully aware of it. It is contained in the story, which, after all, he made up, or altered to suit his purposes. It is: "Give away your lands if you want to, but don't expect to gain happiness by doing so. Probably you won't gain happiness. If you live for others, you must live for others, and not as a roundabout way of getting an advantage for yourself."

Matka Tereza photo

“Be the living expression of God's kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile.”

Matka Tereza (1910–1997) Roman Catholic saint of Albanian origin

As quoted in Worldwide Laws of Life : 200 Eternal Spiritual Principles‎ (1998) by John Templeton, p. 448
1990s
Context: Spread love everywhere you go; first of all in your house. Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to a next door neighbor. Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God's kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile.

C.G. Jung photo

“We are living in what the Greeks called the right time for a "metamorphosis of the gods," i.e. of the fundamental principles and symbols.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

p 110
The Undiscovered Self (1958)
Context: We are living in what the Greeks called the right time for a "metamorphosis of the gods," i. e. of the fundamental principles and symbols. This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious man within us who is changing. Coming generations will have to take account of this momentous transformation if humanity is not to destroy itself through the might of its own technology and science.

Virgil photo

“I have lived
and journeyed through the course assigned by fortune.
And now my Shade will pass, illustrious,
beneath the earth.”

Vixi, et, quem dederat cursum Fortuna, peregi; Et nunc magna mei sub terras ibit Imago.

Source: Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book IV, Lines 653–654 (tr. Allen Mandelbaum)

Eric Rücker Eddison photo

“I was not, I lived and loved, I am not.”

A Fish Dinner in Memison (1941)
Context: The black arrowed swoop of the moment swung high into the unceilinged future, ten, fifty, sixty years, may be: then, past seeing, up to that warmthless unconsidered mock-time, when nothing shall be left but the memorial that fits all (except, if there be, the most unhappiest) of human kind: I was not, I lived and loved, I am not.

Ovid photo

“So I can't live either without you or with you.”
Sic ego nec sine te nec tecum vivere possum.

Ovid book Amores

Variant translation: Thus, I can neither live without you nor with you.
Book III; xib, 39
Compare: Nec possum tecum vivere nec sine te ("I cannot live with you nor without you"), Martial, Epigrams XII, 46
Amores (Love Affairs)

John Wesley photo

“The longer I live, the larger allowances I make for human infirmities.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

Letter to Reverend Samuel Furley (25 Janurary 1762), Published in The Life and Times of the Rev. John Wesley, M. A., Founder of the Methodists (1872) by Luke Tyerman, p. 451.
General sources
Context: The longer I live, the larger allowances I make for human infirmities. I exact more from myself, and less from others. Go thou and do likewise!

Rabindranath Tagore photo

“In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning, sending its glad voice across a hundred years.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

85
The Gardener http://www.spiritualbee.com/love-poems-by-tagore/ (1915)
Context: Who are you, reader, reading my poems an hundred years hence?
I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring, one single streak of gold from yonder clouds.
Open your doors and look abroad.
From your blossoming garden gather fragrant memories of the vanished flowers of an hundred years before.
In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning, sending its glad voice across a hundred years.

Napoleon I of France photo

“The happiest days of my life were from sixteen to twenty, during the semestres, when I used to go about, as I have told you I should wish to do, from one restaurateur to another, living moderately, and having a lodging for which I paid three louis a month. They were the happiest days of my life. I was always so much occupied, that I may say I never was truly happy upon the throne.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Barry Edward O'Meara, in Napoleon in Exile : or, A Voice from St. Helena (1822), Vol. II, p. 155
About
Context: "What do you think," said he, "of all things in the world would give me the greatest pleasure?" I was on the point of replying, removal from St. Helena, when he said, "To be able to go about incognito in London and other parts of England, to the restaurateurs, with a friend, to dine in public at the expense of half a guinea or a guinea, and listen to the conversation of the company; to go through them all, changing almost daily, and in this manner, with my own ears, to hear the people express their sentiments, in their unguarded moments, freely and without restraint; to hear their real opinion of myself, and of the surprising occurrences of the last twenty years." I observed, that he would hear much evil and much good of himself. "Oh, as to the evil," replied he, "I care not about that. I am well used to it. Besides, I know that the public opinion will be changed. The nation will be just as much disgusted at the libels published against me, as they formerly were greedy in reading and believing them. This," added he, "and the education of my son, would form my greatest pleasure. It was my intention to have done this, had I reached America. The happiest days of my life were from sixteen to twenty, during the semestres, when I used to go about, as I have told you I should wish to do, from one restaurateur to another, living moderately, and having a lodging for which I paid three louis a month. They were the happiest days of my life. I was always so much occupied, that I may say I never was truly happy upon the throne."

“We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind”

mass merchandising, advertising, politics conducted as a branch of advertising, the instant translation of science and technology into popular imagery, the increasing blurring and intermingling of identities within the realm of consumer goods, the preempting of any free or original imaginative response to experience by the television screen. We live inside an enormous novel. For the writer in particular it is less and less necessary for him to invent the fictional content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer's task is to invent the reality.
"Introduction" to the French edition (1974) of Crash (1973); reprinted in Re/Search no. 8/9 (1984)
Crash (1973)

Fyodor Dostoyevsky photo

“Love children especially, for like the angels they too are sinless, and they live to soften and purify our hearts, and, as it were, to guide us. Woe to him who offends a child.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) Russian author

Book VI, chapter 3: "Conversations and Exhortations of Father Zossima; Of Prayer, of Love, and of Contact with other Worlds" (translated by Constance Garnett)
The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)
Context: Brothers, have no fear of men's sin. Love a man even in his sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all God's creation, the whole of it and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you have perceived it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day, and you will come at last to love the world with an all-embracing love. Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and untroubled joy. So do not trouble it, do not harass them, do not deprive them of their joy, do not go against God's intent. Man, do not exhale yourself above the animals: they are without sin, while you in your majesty defile the earth by your appearance on it, and you leave the traces of your defilement behind you — alas, this is true of almost every one of us! Love children especially, for like the angels they too are sinless, and they live to soften and purify our hearts, and, as it were, to guide us. Woe to him who offends a child.
My young brother asked even the birds to forgive him. It may sound absurd, but it is right none the less, for everything, like the ocean, flows and enters into contact with everything else: touch one place, and you set up a movement at the other end of the world. It may be senseless to beg forgiveness of the birds, but, then, it would be easier for the birds, and for the child, and for every animal if you were yourself more pleasant than you are now. Everything is like an ocean, I tell you. Then you would pray to the birds, too, consumed by a universal love, as though in ecstasy, and ask that they, too, should forgive your sin. Treasure this ecstasy, however absurd people may think it.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo

“Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Harvard University address (1978)
Context: Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction. We cannot avoid revising the fundamental definitions of human life and human society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man's life and society's activities have to be determined by material expansion in the first place? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our spiritual integrity?
If the world has not come to its end, it has approached a major turn in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will exact from us a spiritual upsurge, we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life where our physical nature will not be cursed as in the Middle Ages, but, even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon as in the Modern era.
This ascension will be similar to climbing onto the next anthropologic stage. No one on earth has any other way left but — upward.

Václav Havel photo

“The worst thing is that we live in a contaminated moral environment. We fell morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought.”

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

New Year's Address to the Nation (1990)
Context: The worst thing is that we live in a contaminated moral environment. We fell morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought. We learned not to believe in anything, to ignore one another, to care only about ourselves. Concepts such as love, friendship, compassion, humility or forgiveness lost their depth and dimension, and for many of us they represented only psychological peculiarities, or they resembled gone-astray greetings from ancient times, a little ridiculous in the era of computers and spaceships.

Geronimo photo

“I will protect my people if I live. For myself I do not fear for I have the word of Usen.”

Geronimo (1829–1909) leader of the Bedonkohe Apache

On being informed that there were authorizations to kill him while he was a prisoner in San Antonio, prior to news of further instructions to transport him to Florida, as quoted in Geronimo and the End of the Apache Wars (1990), by Charles Leland Sonnichsen, p. 102; "Usen" is the Apache word for God, and "Nantan" their word for a leader, spokesman, or "chief".
Context: I will protect my people if I live. For myself I do not fear for I have the word of Usen. Who is the White Nantan to think he can pit his power against that of Usen?

Ernesto Che Guevara photo

“Now you have the privilege of living in another era and you must be worthy of it.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Birthday Letter to his Daughter (1966)
Context: You should fight to be among the best in school. The very best in every sense and you already know what that means; study and revolutionary attitude. In other words: good conduct, seriousness, love for the revolution, comradeship. I was not that way at your age but I lived in a different society, where man was an enemy of man. Now you have the privilege of living in another era and you must be worthy of it.

Rabindranath Tagore photo

“The meaning of the living words that come out of the experiences of great hearts can never be exhausted by any one system of logical interpretation. They have to be endlessly explained by the commentaries of individual lives, and they gain an added mystery in each new revelation.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Preface
Sādhanā : The Realisation of Life http://www.spiritualbee.com/spiritual-book-by-tagore/ (1916)
Context: The meaning of the living words that come out of the experiences of great hearts can never be exhausted by any one system of logical interpretation. They have to be endlessly explained by the commentaries of individual lives, and they gain an added mystery in each new revelation. To me the verses of the Upanishads and the teachings of Buddha have ever been things of the spirit, and therefore endowed with boundless vital growth; and I have used them, both in my own life and in my preaching, as being instinct with individual meaning for me, as for others, and awaiting for their confirmation, my own special testimony, which must have its value because of its individuality.

Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“Only a man who lives not in time but in the present is happy.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Journal entry (8 July 1916), p. 74e
1910s, Notebooks 1914-1916
Context: There are two godheads: the world and my independent I.
I am either happy or unhappy, that is all. It can be said: good or evil do not exist.
A man who is happy must have no fear. Not even in the face of death.
Only a man who lives not in time but in the present is happy.

Kurt Vonnegut photo

“Maybe God has let everybody who ever lived be reborn — so he or she can see how it ends.”

"Dr. Norbert Woodley"
Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1970)
Context: Maybe God has let everybody who ever lived be reborn — so he or she can see how it ends. Even Pitecanthropus erectus and Australopithecus and Sinanthropus pekensis and the Neanderthalers are back on Earth — to see how it ends. They're all on Times Square — making change for peepshows. Or recruiting Marines.

Erwin Schrödinger photo

“This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of this entire existence, but in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance.”

Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) Austrian physicist

My View of the World (1961)
Context: This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of this entire existence, but in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance. This, as we know, is what the Brahmins express in that sacred, mystic formula which is yet really so simple and so clear; tat tvam asi, this is you. Or, again, in such words as "I am in the east and the west, I am above and below, I am this entire world."

G. K. Chesterton photo

“The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives and dies in a desperate and suicidal effort to persuade all the other people how good they are.”

"Introduction"
The Defendant (1901)
Context: The pessimist is commonly spoken of as the man in revolt. He is not. Firstly, because it requires some cheerfulness to continue in revolt, and secondly, because pessimism appeals to the weaker side of everybody, and the pessimist, therefore, drives as roaring a trade as the publican. The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives and dies in a desperate and suicidal effort to persuade all the other people how good they are. It has been proved a hundred times over that if you really wish to enrage people and make them angry, even unto death, the right way to do it is to tell them that they are all the sons of God.

Rumi photo

“Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

"A Community of the Spirit" in Ch. 1 : The Tavern, p. 2
The Essential Rumi (1995)
Context: Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence. Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.