Quotes about master
page 6

“Paul McCartney may be the closest thing our generation has produced to Franz Schubert -- a master of melody, writing tunes anyone can sing, songs that seem to have been there all along. Most people don't realize that "Ave Maria" and "Serenade" were written by Schubert (or that his "Moment Musical in F" so resembles "Martha My Dear"). McCartney writes with similar universality. His "Yesterday" has been recorded by more musicians than any other song in history. Its stepwise melody is deceptively complex, drawing from outside the diatonic scale so smoothly that anyone can sing it, yet few theorists can agree on exactly what it is that McCartney has done.”

Daniel Levitin (1957) American psychologist

The Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/31/AR2007053101848.html (June 1, 2007)

People, Music, History, Universe

“All the mystery and wisdom of the Masters, when it’s out in the daylight, doesn’t amount to so much, you know. Tricks of the trade—wonderful illusions. But people don’t want to know that. They want the illusions, the mysteries. Who can blame them? There’s so little in life that’s beautiful or worthy.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

“Dragonfly” (p. 199)
Earthsea Books, Tales from Earthsea (2001)

Life, Wisdom, People, Beauty

“Listen carefully, my child, to your master's precepts, and incline the ear of your heart. Receive willingly and carry out effectively your loving father's advice, that by the labor of obedience you may return to Him from whom you had departed by the sloth of disobedience.”

Benedict of Nursia (480–547) Christian saint and monk

Rule of St. Benedict: opening words

Love, Heart

“Only during hard times do people come to understand how difficult it is to be master of their feelings and thoughts.”

Anton Chekhov book Misfortune

Misfortune (1886)

People, Feeling, Understanding, Time

“A dead man, Sir Moses,” Lord Darcy told him.
“Remember, young man, he isn’t dead until I say he’s dead,” Sir Moses said. He pushed Lord Darcy aside and stepped over to the throne. He stared down at Master Sorcerer Dandro Bittman.
“This man is dead,” Sir Moses said.
“Indeed he is, Sir Moses,” Master Sean said, coming up behind him. “And that’s something that neither you with your bone cutting nor I with my spells, nor the finest healer with the most sensitive hands in the kingdom, can do aught about.”

Michael Kurland book Ten Little Wizards

Source: Ten Little Wizards (1988), Chapter 15 (p. 151)

Dead

“Machiavelli says that if as a ruler you accept that your every action must pass moral scrutiny, you will without fail be defeated by an opponent who submits to no such moral test. To hold on to power, you have not only to master the crafts of deception and treachery but to be prepared to use them where necessary.”

J.M. Coetzee book Diary of a Bad Year

Source: Diary of a Bad Year (2007), p. 17

“All our talents increase in the using, and every faculty, both good and bad, strengthens by exercise: therefore, if you choose to use the bad, or those which tend to evil, till they become your masters, and neglect the good till they dwindle away, you have only yourself to blame.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XXIII : First weeks of Matrimony; Helen to Arthur

Exercises, Evil

“Choose only one master — Nature.”

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669) Dutch 17th century painter and etcher

As quoted in Rembrandt Drawings (1975) by Paul Némo, as translated by David Macrae
undated quotes

Nature

“Whether we believe the Greek poet, "it is sometimes even pleasant to be mad", or Plato, "he who is master of himself has knocked in vain at the doors of poetry"; or Aristotle, "no great genius was without a mixture of insanity"; the mind cannot express anything lofty and above the ordinary unless inspired. When it despises the common and the customary, and with sacred inspiration rises higher, then at length it sings something grander than that which can come from mortal lips. It cannot attain anything sublime and lofty so long as it is sane: it must depart from the customary, swing itself aloft, take the bit in its teeth, carry away its rider and bear him to a height whither he would have feared to ascend alone.”

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

In Latin, nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit (There is no great genius without some touch of madness). This passage by Seneca is the source most often cited in crediting Aristotle with this thought, but in Problemata xxx. 1, Aristotle says: 'Why is it that all those who have become eminent in philosophy or politics or poetry or the arts are clearly melancholic?' The quote by Plato is from the Dialogue Phaedrus (245a).
On Tranquility of the Mind

Fear, Singing, Madness

“This reaction of man upon himself, is one of his noblest attributes; it offers, indeed, the finest field for the display of his activity. As a member of the social body, he is subjected every instant to the necessity of these causes, and pays them a regular tribute; but as a man, employing all the energy of his intellectual faculties, he in some measure masters these causes, and modifies their effects, thus constantly endeavouring to improve his condition.”

Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874) Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist

Introductory
A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)

“Richard Nixon could tell us a lot about peaking too early. He was a master of it, because it beat him every time. He never learned and neither did Bush the Elder.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

2000s, Welcome to the Big Darkness (2003)

Learning, Time

“The American Politician has developed into the gutless master of procrastination with a maximum of non-committal statement and the barest minimum of action. This moral vacuum is exceeded only by the apathetic public who allows him to stay in power.”

Phil Ochs (1940–1976) American protest singer and songwriter

As quoted off the blurb for the song "Days of Decision" on the back of the album https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Ain%27t_Marching_Anymore I Ain't Marching Anymore.

“I think of novelists that I really return to and admire, you can almost sense that the book is somehow ahead of them, just a little bit ahead of them, no? You could write from the front: you could pull the book; there are masters that do that, and you can admire the architecture of it. […] I suppose what I look for as a reader is a writer who's risky, who's putting themselves in a position that's vulnerable, where the text knows a little bit more, is a bit ahead of them. And so I aspire to write those books, and that's why I suppose I put myself in that position.”

Hisham Matar (1970) American writer

at 43:30.
Blue Metropolis Festival (2013)

Books, Thinking, Sense

“Perhaps,
The man-hero is not the exceptional monster,
But he that of repetition is most master.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Give Pleasure

“For the artist, fulfillment of self consists not in marching in the ranks of the liberators but in being entered in the roll of the Masters. The artist tends to find himself in the position of a deserter from his social group — or, at best, one who collaborates, with secret reservations.”

Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978) American writer and art critic

Source: Art & Other Serious Matters, (1985), p. 271, "Being Outside"

Secret

“There are moments when the Spirit moves among men and the breath of the Lord is abroad upon the waters of our being; there are others when it retires and men are left to act in the strength or the weakness of their own egoism. The first are periods when even a little effort produces great results and changes destiny; the second are spaces of time when much labour goes to the making of a little result. It is true that the latter may prepare the former, may be the little smoke of sacrifice going up to heaven which calls down the rain of God's bounty…. Unhappy is the man or the nation which, when the divine moment arrives, is found sleeping or unprepared to use it, because the lamp has not been kept trimmed for the welcome and the ears are sealed to the call. But thrice woe to them who are strong and ready, yet waste the force or misuse the moment; for them is irreparable loss or a great destruction…. In the hour of God cleanse thy soul of all self-deceit and hypocrisy and vain self-flattering that thou mayst look straight into thy spirit and hear that which summons it. All insincerity of nature, once thy defence against the eye of the Master and the light of the ideal, becomes now a gap in thy armour and invites the blow. Even if thou conquer for the moment, it is the worse for thee, for the blow shall come afterwards and cast thee down in the midst of thy triumph. But being pure cast aside all fear; for the hour is often terrible, a fire and a whirlwind and a tempest, a treading of the winepress of the wrath of God; but he who can stand up in it on the truth of his purpose is he who shall stand; even though he fall, he shall rise again; even though he seem to pass on the wings of the wind, he shall return. Nor let worldly prudence whisper too closely in thy ear; for it is the hour of the unexpected, the incalculable, the immeasurable. Mete not the power of the Breath by thy petty instruments, but trust and go forward…. But most keep thy soul clear, even if for a while, of the clamour of the ego. Then shall a fire march before thee in the night and the storm be thy helper and thy flag shall wave on the highest height of the greatness that was to be conquered.”

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

1918 (The Hour of God)
India's Rebirth

Men, God, Truth, Fear

“If the student got little from his mates, he got little more from his masters. The four years passed at college were, for his purposes, wasted. Harvard College was a good school, but at bottom what the boy disliked most was any school at all. He did not want to be one in a hundred — one per cent of an education. He regarded himself as the only person for whom his education had value, and he wanted the whole of it.”

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

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Education, School, Boy, Personality

“A divine life is hidden in every seed we sow for Jesus. It matters not how small the seed may be, nor in what secluded part of the vineyard it may be sown — a prayer, a word, a look, a pressure of the hand — God's almighty energy is enfolded in every seed which we sow in the Master's name and for His glory.”

Abbott Eliot Kittredge (1834–1912) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 128.

Life, God, Parting

“Often people, especially computer engineers, focus on the machines. They think, "By doing this, the machine will run faster. By doing this, the machine will run more effectively. By doing this, the machine will something something something." They are focusing on machines. But in fact we need to focus on humans, on how humans care about doing programming or operating the application of the machines. We are the masters. They are the slaves.”

Yukihiro Matsumoto (1965) Japanese computer scientist

Yukihiro Matsumoto " The Philosophy of Ruby, A Conversation with Yukihiro Matsumoto, Part I http://www.artima.com/intv/ruby4.html" by Bill Venners on 2003-09-29 (Artima Developer).

People, Thinking

“[Modern capitalism] is masterful at producing services people don't need and in large part probably don't want. It is brilliant at convincing people that they do need and want them. But it has difficulty turning itself to the production of those services which people really do need. Not only that, it often spends an enormous amount of time and effort convincing people that those services are either unrealistic, marginal or counterproductive.”

John Ralston Saul (1947) Canadian author and essayist

Voltaire's Bastards (1992)

People, Effort, Time, Parting

“This “sublime revenge” of ressentiment (in Nietzsche's words) has indeed played a creative role in the history of value systems. It is “sublime,” for the impulses of revenge against those who are strong, healthy, rich, or handsome now disappear entirely. Ressentiment has brought deliverance from the inner torment of these affects. Once the sense of values has shifted and the new judgments have spread, such people cease to be enviable, hateful, and worthy of revenge. They are unfortunate and to be pitied, for they are beset with “evils.” Their sight now awakens feelings of gentleness, pity, and commiseration. When the reversal of values comes to dominate accepted morality and is invested with the power of the ruling ethos, it is transmitted by tradition, suggestion, and education to those who are endowed with the seemingly devaluated qualities. They are struck with a “bad conscience” and secretly condemn themselves. The “slaves,” as Nietzsche says, infect the “masters.” Ressentiment man, on the other hand, now feels “good,” “pure,” and “human”—at least in the conscious layers of his mind. He is delivered from hatred, from the tormenting desire of an impossible revenge, though deep down his poisoned sense of life and the true values may still shine through the illusory ones. There is no more calumny, no more defamation of particular persons or things. The systematic perversion and reinterpretation of the values themselves is much more effective than the “slandering” of persons or the falsification of the world view could ever be."”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Variant: The man of ressentiment cannot justify or even understand his own existence and sense of life in terms of positive values such as power, health, beauty, freedom, and independence. Weakness, fear, anxiety, and a slavish disposition prevent him from obtaining them. Therefore he comes to feel that “all this is vain anyway” and that salvation lies in the opposite phenomena: poverty, suffering, illness, and death. This “sublime revenge” of ressentiment (in Nietzsche’s words) has indeed played a creative role in the history of value systems. It is “sublime,” for the impulses of revenge against those who are strong, healthy, rich, or handsome now disappear entirely. Ressentiment has brought deliverance from the inner torment of these affects. Once the sense of values has shifted and the new judgments have spread, such people cease to been viable, hateful, and worthy of revenge. They are unfortunate and to be pitied, for they are beset with “evils.” Their sight now awakens feelings of gentleness, pity, and commiseration. When the reversal of values comes to dominate accepted morality and is invested with the power of the ruling ethos, it is transmitted by tradition, suggestion, and education to those who are endowed with the seemingly devaluated qualities. They are struck with a “bad conscience” and secretly condemn themselves. The “slaves,” as Nietzsche says, infect the “masters.” Ressentiment man, on the other hand, now feels “good,” “pure,” and “human”—at least in the conscious layers of his mind. He is delivered from hatred, from the tormenting desire of an impossible revenge, though deep down his poisoned sense of life and the true values may still shine through the illusory ones. There is no more calumny, no more defamation of particular persons or things. The systematic perversion and reinterpretation of the values themselves is much more effective than the “slandering” of persons or the falsification of the world view could ever be.
Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1973), pp. 76-77

Life, Hate, People, World

“The less a writer discusses his work—and himself—the better. The master chef slaughters no chickens in the dining room; the doctor writes prescriptions in Latin; the magician hides his hinges, mirrors, and trapdoors with the utmost care.”

Jack Vance (1916–2013) American mystery and speculative fiction writer

Afterword to "The Bagful of Dreams" in The Jack Vance Treasury (2007). First appeared in Epoch (1775), ed. Robert Silverberg and Roger Elwood.

“Once early in the morning, at two or three in the morning, when the master was asleep, the books in the library began to quarrel with each other as to which was the king of the library. The dictionary contended quite angrily that he was the master of the library because without words there would be no communication at all. The book of science argued stridently that he was the master of the library for without science there would have been no printing press or any of the other wonders of the world. The book of poetry claimed that he was the king, the master of the library, because he gave surcease and calm to his master when he was troubled. The books of philosophy, the economic books, all put in their claims, and the clamor was great and the noise at its height when a small low voice was heard from an old brown book lying in the center of the table and the voice said "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want."”

Louis Nizer (1902–1994) American lawyer

And all of the noise and the clamor in the library ceased, and there was a hush in the library, for all of the books knew who the real master of the library was.
"Ministers of Justice", Address delivered at the Eighty-Second Annual Convention of the Tennessee Bar Association at Gatlinburg, June 5, 1963; published in 31 Tennessee Law Review 1 (Fall 1963), p. 19.

Books, World, Communication, Lying

“Grace and peace from God to you, respected, honoured, wise clement, gracious and beloved Masters: An exceedingly unfortunate affair has happened to me, in that I have been publicly accused before your worships of having reviled you in unseemly words and, be it said with all respect, of having called you heretics, my gracious rulers of the State. I am so far from applying this name to you, that I should as soon think of calling heaven hell. For all my life I have thought and spoken of you in terms of praise and honour, gentlemen of Abtzell, as I do to-day, and, as God favours me, shall do to the end of my days. But it happened not long ago when I was preaching against the Catabaptists that I used these words: 'The Catabaptists are now doing so much mischief to the upright citizens of Abtzell and are showing so great insolence, that nothing could be more infamous. You see, gentle sirs, with what modesty I grieved on your account, because the turbulent Catabaptists caused you so much trouble. Indeed I suspect that the Catabaptists are the very people who have set this sermon against me in circulation among you, for they do many of those things which do not become true Christians. Therefore, gentle and wise sirs, I beg most earnestly that you will have me exculpated before the whole community, and, if occasion arise, that you will have this letter read in public assembly. Sirs, I assure you in the name of God our Saviour, in these perilous times you have never been our of my thoughts and my solicitious anxiety; and if in any way I shall be able to serve you I will spare no pains to do so. In addition to the fact that I never use such terms even against my enemies, let me say that it never entered my mind to apply such insulting epithets to you, pious and wise sirs. Sufficient of this. May God preserve you in safety, and may He put a curb on these unbridled falsehoods which are being scattered everywhere, which is an evidence of some great peril - and may He hold your worships and the whole state in the true faith of Christ@ Take this letter of mine in good part, for I could not suffer that so base a falsehood against me should lie uncontradicted.”

Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) leader of the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland, and founder of the Swiss Reformed Churches

Letter to Abtzell February 12, 1526 (vi., 473), ibid, p.250-251

Life, God, Pain, People

“After 1930, political theorists had begun to realize that every democracy—being a government of public opinion—is largely in the hands of those who make public opinion—that is to say, the newspaper-owners. In every country the big business men, the great financiers, were being compelled to purchase the influential newspapers and had little by little succeeded in doing so. They had been very clever in respecting the the external forms of democracy. The people continued to elect their deputies, who continued to to go through the forms of choosing ministers and presidents; but the ministers, presidents, and deputies could hold on to their positions only so long as they did what the Masters of Public Opinion told them to do; and, being well aware of this fact, they were duly submissive.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

The Next Chapter: The War Against the Moon (1928)

Men, People, Democracy, Business

“We can begin, like the Scholastic masters, with an objection: videtur quod non … ""It seems not to be true that…"" And this is the objection: a time like the present [i. e., a few years after the Second World War, in Germany] seems, of all times, not to be a time to speak of leisure. […]
That is no small objection. But there is also a good answer to it. […]
For, when we consider the foundations of Western European culture (is it, perhaps, too rash to assume that our re-building will in fact be carried out in a ""Western"" spirit? Indeed, this and no other is the very assumption that is at issue today), one of these foundations is leisure. We can read it in the first chapter of Aristotle's Metaphysics. And the very history of the meaning of the word bears a similar message. The Greek word for leisure (σχολή) is the origin of Latin scola, German Schule, English school. The names for the institutions of education and learning mean ""leisure.""”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), Leisure, the Basis of Culture, pp. 3–4

War, World, Education, School

“On the 10th day of October, Fiji achieved nationhood in the fullest sense of that term. There was no declaration of independence on her part, since independence was freely given. There was simply a grateful acceptance of the independence that was offered, and a dedication to the tasks that lay ahead and she became the master of her own destiny and assumed her place in the world family of Nations.”

Robert Sidney Foster (1913–2005) British Colonial governor

Address opening Fiji's first parliamentary session as an independent nation (excerpts)

World, Family, Sense, Parting

“Does one get faith by mere studying of books? Too much reading creates confusion. The Master used to say that one should learn from the scriptures that God alone is real and the world illusory.”

Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna

[Swami Tapasyananda, Swami Nikhilananda, Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother; Life and Conversations, 348]

God, Books, World, Faith

“The Sultan again resolved on an expedition to Hind, and marched towards Narain, urging his horses and moving over ground, hard and soft, until he came to the middle of Hind, where he reduced chiefs, who, up to that time obeyed no master, overturned their idols, put to the sword the vagabonds of that country, and with delay and circumspection, proceeded to accomplish his design. He fought a battle with the chiefs of the infidels, in which Allah bestowed upon him much booty in property, horses, and elephants, and the friends of Allah committed slaughter in every hill and valley. The Sultan returned to Ghazna with all the plunder he had obtained.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

Narain (Rajasthan) Narayanpur in Alwar district of Rajasthan. Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. p. 36
Quotes from Tarikh Yamini (Kitabu-l Yamini) by Al Utbi

Time, Horse, Country

“The required techniques of effective reasoning are pretty formal, but as long as programming is done by people that don't master them, the software crisis will remain with us and will be considered an incurable disease. And you know what incurable diseases do: they invite the quacks and charlatans in, who in this case take the form of Software Engineering gurus.”

Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930–2002) Dutch computer scientist

Dijkstra (2000) "Answers to questions from students of Software Engineering" http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD13xx/EWD1305.html (EWD 1305). 2000s

People, Disease

“He [Giovanni Ardini, Italian master-carver] opened up a new vista for me of the quality of form, light, and colour contained in the Mediterranean conception of carving.”

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) English sculptor

Hepworth's quote in: 'Approach to Sculpture', The Studio, London, October 1946, Vol. CXXXII, no. 643, p. 97
Hepworth is here referring to Giovanni Ardini's remark that "marble changes colour under different people's hands"
1932 - 1946

Light

“P. S. Perl's master plan (or what passes for one) is to take over the world like English did. Er, *as* English did…”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[199705201832.LAA28393@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

World

“I think that if we would, every evening, come to our Master's feet, and tell Him where we have been, what we have done, what we have said, and what were the motives by which we have been actuated, it would have a salutary effect upon our whole conduct.”

Edward Payson (1783–1827) American religious leader

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 466.

Motivation, Thinking

“We are living in 1937, and our universities, I suggest, are not half-way out of the fifteenth century. We have made hardly any changes in our conception of university organization, education, graduation, for a century - for several centuries. The three or four years' course of lectures, the bachelor who knows some, the master who knows most, the doctor who knows all, are ideas that have come down unimpaired from the Middle Ages. Nowadays no one should end his learning while he lives and these university degrees are preposterous. It is true that we have multiplied universities greatly in the past hundred years, but we seem to have multiplied them altogether too much upon the old pattern.. [A] new university is just another imitation of all the old universities that have ever been. Educationally we are still for all practical purposes in the coach and horse and galley stage.”

H. G. Wells book World Brain

World Brain (1938)

Age, Education, Way, Idea

“The Beatific Vision, Sat Chit Ananda, Being-Awareness-Bliss-for the first time I understood, not on the verbal level, not by inchoate hints or at a distance, but precisely and completely what those prodigious syllables referred to. And then I remembered a passage I had read in one of Suzuki's essays. “What is the Dharma-Body of the Buddha?” ('“the Dharma-Body of the Buddha” is another way of saying Mind, Suchness, the Void, the Godhead.) The question is asked in a Zen monastery by an earnest and bewildered novice. And with the prompt irrelevance of one of the Marx Brothers, the Master answers, “The hedge at the bottom of the garden.” “And the man who realizes this truth,” the novice dubiously inquires, “what, may I ask, is he?””

Aldous Huxley book The Doors of Perception

Groucho gives him a whack over the shoulders with his staff and answers, “A golden-haired lion.”
The Doors of Perception (1954)

Truth, Way, Question, Time

“A master in art need not go into the highways and byways for affects; he knows the straight course and follows it.”

Ernest Flagg (1857–1947) American architect

Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)

Art

“Writing stories was not easy. When they were turned into words, projects withered on the paper and ideas and images failed. How to reanimate them? Fortunately, the masters were there, teachers to learn from and examples to follow. Flaubert taught me that talent is unyielding discipline and long patience. Faulkner, that form – writing and structure – elevates or impoverishes subjects. Martorell, Cervantes, Dickens, Balzac, Tolstoy, Conrad, Thomas Mann, that scope and ambition are as important in a novel as stylistic dexterity and narrative strategy. Sartre, that words are acts, that a novel, a play, or an essay, engaged with the present moment and better options, can change the course of history. Camus and Orwell, that a literature stripped of morality is inhuman, and Malraux that heroism and the epic are as possible in the present as is the time of the Argonauts, the Odyssey, and the Iliad.”

Mario Vargas Llosa (1936) Peruvian writer, politician, journalist, and essayist

Nobel Lecture (2010)

History, Literature, Idea, Learning

“Plastic automatism.... as employed by modern masters, like Masson, Miro, [both artists of Surrealism] and Picasso, is actually very little a question of the unconsciousness. It is much more a plastic weapon with which to invent new forms. As such it is one of the twentieth century greatest formal inventions.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

Modern Painter's World, Robert Motherwell , Dyn, Nov. 1942, p. 13
1940s

Question

“He (Mr. Cobden) wanted hon. Gentlemen opposite to bring in a little head, as well as a little heart, when they were dealing with this question…he trusted the time was coming when men would no longer rush into hasty legislation prompted by feelings of benevolence and philanthropy alone, but repudiating the facts of that science which taught how to legislate with something like probability of the result being for the general benefit of the community. He did not oppose interference between masters and men for the sake of employers alone; he opposed all interference whatever with the labour of adults, primarily for the sake of the adults themselves. If they were to establish the principle that Parliament would not interfere at all with labour, and would not interfere between masters and workmen, it would be the best thing for the working men that that House could do.”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1846/may/22/factories-bill in the House of Commons (22 May 1846) against the Factory Act 1847. 1840s

Men, Feeling, Communication, Question

“"Is there anything more miraculous than the wonders of nature?" the monk asked.
The Master answered: "Yes! Your awareness, your understanding of the wonders of nature."”

Frederick Franck (1909–2006) Dutch painter

Source: Echoes from the Bottomless Well (1985), p. 8

Understanding, Nature

“Peons or servants are exceedingly numerous in this country… for every one-be he mounted soldier, merchant or king’s official-keeps as many as his position and circumstances permit. Outside the house, they serve for display, running continually before their master’s horse; inside, they do the work of the house, each knowing his duty…”

Francisco Pelsaert (1591–1630) Dutch merchant, commander of the ship Batavia

Pelsaert, quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.
Jahangir’s India

Horse, Housing, Country

“Labour, upon whichever of those operations it be bestowed, is productive, because it concurs in the creation of a product. Thus the labour of the philosopher, whether experimental or literary, is productive; the labour of the adventurer or master-manufacturer is productive, although he perform no actual manual work; the labour of every operative workman is productive, from the common day-labourer in agriculture, to the pilot that governs the motion of a ship.”

Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832) French economist and businessman

Source: A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition) (1832), Book I, On Production, Chapter VII, p. 85

“Händel is the unattained master of all masters. Go and learn from him how to achieve vast effects with simple means.”

George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) German, later British Baroque composer

Criticism

Learning

“When you have mastered the numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading a book. You will be reading meanings.”

Harold Geneen (1910–1997) American businessman

Managing, Chapter Nine (The Numbers), p. 151.

Books, Reading

“It is not here necessary to examine in detail the causes which led to the American Revolution. In their immediate occasion they were largely economic. The colonists objected to the navigation laws which interfered with their trade, they denied the power of Parliament to impose taxes which they were obliged to pay, and they therefore resisted the royal governors and the royal forces which were sent to secure obedience to these laws. But the conviction is inescapable that a new civilization had come, a new spirit had arisen on this side of the Atlantic more advanced and more developed in its regard for the rights of the individual than that which characterized the Old World. Life in a new and open country had aspirations which could not be realized in any subordinate position. A separate establishment was ultimately inevitable. It had been decreed by the very laws of human nature. Man everywhere has an unconquerable desire to be the master of his own destiny.”

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

1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

Life, World, Law, Nature

“I wished to dub as Masters: Love, Truth, Serenity. They'd feed and house and teach me with total sovereignty.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

"On the Avenue"
Rewards of Passion (Sheer Poetry) (1981)

Love, Truth, Housing

“The weak in mind or body require guidance, support and protection; they must obey and work for those who protect and guide them—they have a natural right to guardians, committees, teachers or masters. Nature has made them slaves, all that law and government can do, is to regulate, modify and mitigate their slavery.”

George Fitzhugh (1806–1881) American activist

Source: Sociology For The South: Or The Failure Of A Free Society (1854), p. 178

Law, Support, Nature, Teachers

“To master this instrument the religious thinker must make a preliminary study of logic, just as the lawyer must study legal reasoning. This is no more heretical in the one case than in the other. And logic must be learned from the ancient masters, regardless of the fact that they were not Muslims.”

Averroes (1126–1198) Medieval Arab scholar and philosopher

The Decisive Treatise
Source: Jon McGinnis, David C. Reisman (2007) Classical Arabic Philosophy: An Anthology of Sources. p. 310

Study, Learning

“We know, since the theory of relativity at least, that empirical sciences are to some degree free in defining dynamical concepts or even in assuming laws, and that only a system as a whole which includes concepts, coordinating definitions, and laws can be said to be either true or false, to be adequate or inadequate to empirical facts. This "freedom," however, is a somewhat doubtful gift. The manifold of possibilities implies uncertainty, and such uncertainty can become rather painful in a science as young as psychology, where nearly all concepts are open and unsettled. As psychology approaches the state of a logically sound science, definitions cease to be an arbitrary matter. They become far-reaching decisions which presuppose the mastering of the conceptual problems but which have to be guided entirely by the objective facts.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Source: 1930s, Principles of topological psychology, 1936, p. viii.

Pain, Law, Problem, Decision

“It was once said by Abraham Lincoln that this Republic could not long endure half slave and half free; and the same may be said with even more truth of the black citizens of this country. They cannot remain half slave and half free. They must be one thing or the other. And this brings me to consider the alternative now presented between slavery and freedom in this country. From my outlook, I am free to affirm that I see nothing for the negro of the South but a condition of absolute freedom, or of absolute slavery. I see no half-way place for him. One or the other of these conditions is to solve the so-called negro problem. There are forces at work in both of these directions, and for the present that which aims at the re-enslavement of the negro seems to have the advantage. Let it be remembered that the labor of the negro is his only capital. Take this from him, and he dies from starvation. The present mode of obtaining his labor in the South gives the old master-class a complete mastery over him. I showed this in my last annual celebration address, and I need not go into it here. The payment of the negro by orders on stores, where the storekeeper controls price, quality, and quantity, and is subject to no competition, so that the negro must buy there and nowhere else–an arrangement by which the negro never has a dollar to lay by, and can be kept in debt to his employer, year in and year out–puts him completely at the mercy of the old master-class. He who could say to the negro, when a slave, you shall work for me or be whipped to death, can now say to him with equal emphasis, you shall work for me, or I will starve you to death… This is the plain, matter-of-fact, and unexaggerated condition of the plantation negro in the Southern States today.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Speech http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-nations-problem/

Death, Truth, Way, Problem

“Consider for a moment what it is like when the people are roused to revolt and get the upper hand of their master, and especially in England. Then there is no stopping it, for they are the most dangerous common people in the world, the most violent and presumptuous. And of all the commons in England the Londoners are the ringleaders.”

Jean Froissart (1337–1405) French writer

Considerés que c'est de pueple, quant il s'esmuet et esliève et il a puissance contre son seigneur, et par especial en Angleterre. Là n'y a-il nul remède, car c'est le plus périlleus poeuple commun qui soit au monde et le plus oultrageux et orgueilleux. Et de tous ceulx d'Angleterre Londriens sont chiefs.
Book 4, pp. 454-5.
Chroniques (1369–1400)

People, World

“The Feast of Birds is dedicated to Avalei, the Goddess of Love and Death, of whom my master had said: “Not all that is ancient is worthy of praise.””

Sofia Samatar book A Stranger in Olondria

Source: A Stranger in Olondria (2013), Chapter 6, “The Feast of Birds” (p. 60)

Love, Death, Bird

“The Mockery Bird regarded him with a roguish eye, head on one side, and took a few slow steps into the clearing. With its head on one side and its foot tentatively raised, it seemed like some sort of lanky, avian dancing master. It stepped forward among the guava stems with a mincing delicacy and then shuffled its wings like someone shuffling a pack of cards. He noticed that it had very long eyelashes which it raised and lowered over its large gaily-sparkling eyes. … There was another complicated rustle and flurry in the undergrowth and then, projected into the clearing by its own nervous eagerness, came a female Mockery Bird making strange, peeting noises, which became a soothing babble when she caught sight of the male. She went up to her mate and briefly preened his throat feathers as an over-zealous wife will straighten the tie of her consort. … Here in front of him, cossetting each other, were two birds which were thought to be extinct.”

Gerald Durrell book The Mockery Bird

The Mockery Bird (1981)

Bird, Dance

“The body was the slave of the vortex; but the slave has become the master; and we must free ourselves from that tyranny. It is this stuff [indicating her body], this flesh and blood and bone and all the rest of it, that is intolerable. Even prehistoric man dreamed of what he called an astral body, and asked who would deliver him from the body of this death.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

The She-Ancient, in Pt. V
1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)

Death, Dreams

“Ikenobo Sen'o, a master of flower arranging, once said (the remark is to be found in his Sayings): "With a spray of flowers, a bit of water, one evokes the vastness of rivers and mountains." The Japanese garden too, of course symbolizes the vastness of nature. The Western garden tends to be symmetrical, the Japanese garden asymmetrical, and this is because the asymmetrical has the greater power to symbolize multiplicity and vastness. The asymmetry, of course, rests upon a balance imposed by delicate sensibilities. Nothing is more complicated, varied, attentive to detail, than the Japanese art of landscape gardening. Thus there is the form called the dry landscape, composed entirely of rocks, in which the arrangement of stones gives expression to mountains and rivers that are not present, and even suggests the waves of the great ocean breaking in upon cliffs.”

Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972) Japanese author, Nobel Prize winner

Japan, the Beautiful and Myself (1969)

Art, Mountain, Flowers, Nature

“The storyteller makes no choice, soon you will not hear his voice, his job is to shed light, and not to master”

Robert Hunter (1941–2019) American musician

"Lady With a Fan"
Song lyrics, (1977)

Light

“I dare truly and boldly say, that one years exercise therein to ingenious spirits, under able Masters, will produce more real and true fruit, than the studying Aristotelian Philosophy hath brought forth in many centuries. O that the Schools therefore would leave their idle, and fruitless speculations, and not be too proud to put their hands to the coals and furnace, where they might find ocular experiments to confute their fopperies, and produce effects that would be beneficial to all posterities.”

John Webster (1578–1634) English dramatist

Academiarum Examen, or the Examination of Academies (1654), p. 71; of chemistry.

School, Exercises, Study

“The love of a dog for his master is notorious; in the agony of death he has been known to caress his master, and every one has heard of the dog suffering under vivisection, who licked the hand of the operator; this man, unless he had a heart of stone, must have felt remorse to the last hour of his life.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume I, chapter II: "Comparison of the Mental Powers of Man and the Lower Animals", page 40 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=53&itemID=F937.1&viewtype=image The Descent of Man (1871)

Love, Life, Death, Dogs

“Love is the master-key that opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of all, the gate of fear. How terrible is the one fact of beauty!”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

A Mortal Antipathy (1885) This statement is often misquoted as "Love is the master-key that opens the gates of happiness".

Love, Happiness, Fear, Jealousy

“Politics, especially in our country, is like a mountain stream which suddenly overflows and soon recedes, while educational work flows not only during monsoon but also in the summer by melting the hearts of mountains. Politics is concerned with the strengthening of national existence and is impatient by nature, education is dedicated to social ideals, it is inherently patent. Which is why education is the master and politics its servant.”

Zakir Hussain (politician) (1897–1969) 3rd President of India

In:p.6.
Uniqueness of Zakir Husain and His Contributions (1997)

Education, Mountain, Nature, Heart

“Why must he mistrust his life just when he was more its master than he'd been in years?.”

Philip Roth book Everyman

Everyman (2006)

Life

“Far too often, Christians have accepted the common secular view that we are the masters of animals, their rulers or owners — utterly forgetting that the dominion promised to humanity is a deputized dominion, in which we are to stand before creation as God's vice-regents, putting into effect not our own egotistical wants but God's own law of love and mercy. And yet, when one begins to challenge our despotic treatment of animals — whether killing for sport, the ruthless export trade, or (to take the latest example) the quite obscene slaughter of thousands of seals for their penises, to be sold as aphrodisiacs in Europe and Asia — again and again, one has to face this humanistic dogma: If it benefits humanity, it must be right.”

Andrew Linzey (1952) British theologian and divine

Source: Animal Gospel: Christian Faith as if Animals Mattered (1998), p. 12

Love, God, Law, Sport

“Carné used to behave like a hysterical maniac. I had a small part in that film. Maurice Ronet and Annie Girardot were also in it. He was screaming like a maniac. But he was a masterful director. LES ENFANTS DU PARADIS is one of the greatest films ever made.”

Donald O'Brien (actor) (1930–2003) Italian film and TV actor

Euro Trash Cinema magazine interview (March 1996)

Parting

“I believe in the existence of an immaterial God, the Author and Master of all beings and all things, and I feel that I never had any doubt of His existence, from the fact that I have always relied upon His providence, prayed to Him in my distress, and that He has always granted my prayers. Despair brings death, but prayer does away with despair; and when a man has prayed he feels himself supported by new confidence and endowed with power to act. As to the means employed by the Sovereign Master of human beings to avert impending dangers from those who beseech His assistance, I confess that the knowledge of them is above the intelligence of man, who can but wonder and adore.”

Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice

Memoirs of J. Casanova de Seingalt (1894)

Death, God, Feeling, Confidence

“You see around you the old masters. They were called masters, as you are doubtless aware, because they taught drawing; the epithet old was applied on account of the general leeriness of their dispositions.”

Henry Savile Clarke (1841–1893)

Hugger-Mugger

Drawing

“The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly. The individual slave, property of one master, is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master’s interest. The individual proletarian, property as it were of the entire bourgeois class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence. This existence is assured only to the class as a whole.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

(1847)

“Picasso.... the master.... being a master: 'I don't search, I find' [a famous quote of Picasso, where he criticize the 'searching' artists].. the master, the mastery.... Producing, producing... He [Picasso! ] only knows how to work, can’t do anything else. What lost souls!... The great risk is producing for its own sake. You must never force things. You just have to wait.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

31 October 1966; p. 59
1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

Quotes, Soul, Search, Waiting

“Following the lead given by new institutional economics, we shall take the transaction as our unit of analysis. For our purposes, a transaction can be thought of as any act of social exchange that depends on information flows for its accomplishment. Transactions can be as simple and brief as the purchase of a packet of cigarettes, or as complex as and extended as those which bind a Zen master to his disciples. Like institutional economists, we are interested in the relationship that can be established between different transactional characteristics and the phenomenon of institutionalization. Our use of the term transaction, however, will extend beyond that of institutional economics where the focus has tended to be primarily on transaction costs and efficiency considerations. These, to be sure, are relevant. But, as we shall see, they are not the whole story.”

Max Boisot (1943–2011) British academic and educator

Source: Knowledge Assets, 1998, p. 124; As cited in: Ortiz et al. (2006)

Dependency

“But the boy who left the hall was not the boy who had gone in some ten minutes before. After my college days, my political work, and after my years of stay at Uttarkashi at the feet of my master, Tapovanam I knew that what I gained on the Ganges banks was that which had been given to me years before by the saint of Tiruvannamalai on that hot summer day – by a mere look”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quoted in "Forever is in the Now: The Timeless Message of Sri Ramana Maharshi", p. 192

Boy, Summer

“One of the tasks that we clearly have is to rebuild trust in our political system. Yes, that's about cleaning up expenses, yes, that's about reforming parliament, and yes, it's about making sure people are in control and that the politicians are always their servants and never their masters.
But I believe it's also something else — it's about being honest about what government can achieve. Real change is not what government can do on its own, real change is when everyone pulls together, comes together, works together, when we all exercise our responsibilities to ourselves, our families, to our communities and to others. And I want to help try and build a more responsible society here in Britain, one where we don't just ask what are my entitlements but what are my responsibilities, one where we don't ask what am I just owed but more what can I give, and a guide for that society that those that can should and those who can't we will always help.
I want to make sure that my Government always looks after the elderly, the frail, the poorest in our country.
We must take everyone through us on some of the difficult decisions that we have ahead.
Above all it will be a Government that is built on some clear values, values of freedom, values of fairness and values of responsibility. I want us to build an economy that rewards work, I want us to build a society with stronger families and stronger communities and I want a political system that people can trust and look up to once again.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

2010s, 2010, First speech as UK Prime Minister (2010)

People, Family, Exercises, Communication

“Teachers of science in schools and colleges must be masters of the tools for ensuring integrity in science and must instill them in their students.”

Lewis M. Branscomb (1926) physicist and science policy advisor

1994, p. 45
Integrity in Science (1985)

School, Teachers, Science

“So, from generation to generation, the spiritual church is rising upwards toward its perfection; and, though one after another the workmen pass away, the fabric remains, and the great Master-builder carries on the undertaking. Be it ours to build in our portion in a solid and substantial manner, so that they who come after us may be at once thankful for our thoroughness, and inspired by our example.”

William Mackergo Taylor (1829–1895) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 144.

Perfection

“In the vaunted works of Art
The master-stroke is Nature's part. 5.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Art
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Variant: In the vaunted works of Art
The master-stroke is Nature's part. 5.

Art, Nature, Parting

“late news was suicide of Jan Masaryk - In my view, Jan Masaryk was thoroughly corrupt, who bumped himself off because he saw at last where his moral cowardice and ideological 'Playboyery' had led him. I vividly remember visiting him in Washington, fat, slightly tight, coming into the room looking like a broken-down butler with his master, the little Communist, Clementis, [-] and saying in a loud voice -'Has anyone seen an Iron Curtain? I haven't.”

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

Well, he has now.
Like It Was, p.255

Suicide

“[on w:Diego Rivera:].. the one artist on this continent who is in the class of the old masters.”

John Sloan (1871–1951) American painter

Source: Brooks, Van Wyck. John Sloan: a Painter's Life. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co, 1955, p. 170

“They are masters of the earthquake, and Atlantis rests on none too solid a foundation. Their power is sufficient to sink Atlantis forever beneath the sea.”

Henry Kuttner (1915–1958) American author

Zend explaining the Spawn of Dagon to Elak
Short fiction, The Spawn Of Dagon (1938)
Context: "They dare'd not invade the palace while the globe shone, for the light-rays would have killed them. … This island-continent would have gone down beneath the sea long ago if I hadn't pitted my magic and my science against that of the children of Dagon. They are masters of the earthquake, and Atlantis rests on none too solid a foundation. Their power is sufficient to sink Atlantis forever beneath the sea. But within that room" — Zend nodded toward the curtain that hid the sea-bred horrors — "in that room there is power far stronger than theirs. I have drawn strength from the stars, and the cosmic sources beyond the universe. You know nothing of my power. It is enough — more than enough — to keep Atlantis steady on its foundation, impregnable against the attacks of Dagon's breed. They have destroyed other lands before Atlantis."

Sea

“Many of the greatest masters of the mathematical sciences were first attracted to mathematical inquiry by problems relating to numbers, and no one can glance at the periodicals of the present day which contain questions for solution without noticing how singular a charm such problems still continue to exert. The interest in numbers seems implanted in the human mind, and it is a pity that it should not have freer scope in this country. The methods of the theory of numbers 271 are peculiar to itself, and are not readily acquired by a student whose mind has for years been familiarized with the very different treatment which is appropriate to the theory of continuous magnitude; it is therefore extremely desirable that some portion of the theory should be included in the ordinary course of mathematical instruction at our University. From the moment that Gauss, in his wonderful treatise of 1801, laid down the true lines of the theory, it entered upon a new day, and no one is likely to be able to do useful work in any part of the subject who is unacquainted with the principles and conceptions with which he endowed it.”

James Whitbread Lee Glaisher (1848–1928) English mathematician and astronomer

Source: "Presidential Address British Association for the Advancement of Science," 1890, p. 467 : On the theory of numbers

Mathematics, Question, Problem, Universe

“In my earlier days I had read the biography of Sri Ramakrishna written by Romain Rolland. I had read the talk which Vivekananda had delivered long ago about "My Master". I had visited Sri Ramakrishna's room at Dakshineshwar. I had also seen a Bengali film on his life. But what brought me into an intimate and living contact with this great mystic and bhakta and shakta and advaitin, was his Kathamrita. He had not used a single abstraction nor discussed any of the problems which pass as philosophy. His talks embodied expressions of a concrete consciousness which had dropped every trace of the dirt and dross and inertia which characterise what is known as normal human consciousness. The metaphors which sprang spontaneously from this purified consciousness were matchless in their aptness and illumined in a few words the knotted problems which many voluminous works had failed to solve. I was now having my first intimations of immortality towards which Kabir and Nanak and Sri Garibdas had inclined me earlier.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

How I became a Hindu (1982)

Life, Problem, Reading

“O Master, let me walk with Thee
In lowly paths of service free;
Tell me Thy secret; help me bear
The strain of toil, the fret of care.”

Washington Gladden (1836–1918) American pastor

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 124.

Secret, Help

“No age is wanting in able men; it is the duty of wise masters to find them out, win them over, and get work done by means of them, without listening to the calumnies of selfish men against them.”

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

Ruqat-i-Alamgiri, as quoted in Later Mughals : Volume II : 1719-1739 (1922) by Irvine William Irvine http://www.archive.org/details/latermughals02irviuoft Quotes from late medieval histories

Men, Age, Selfishness

“The reason the corporate media serves the Republican agenda so much is it means they don't have to work hard. They don't have to do anything. They don't have to do investigative journalism. They don't have to get into the dirty waters of speaking truth to power. If the corporate media continues to serve their Republican masters, then their job is easy peasy. It's nuttin'. You go to Matt Drudge. You go get some stuff from Karl Rove. You go to Grover Norquist meetings. You get the talking points. Easy peasy.”

Janeane Garofalo (1964) comedian, actress, political activist, writer

Majority Report, July 12, 2005 broadcast
Majority Report

Truth, Water

“Among Noah's sons was one who covered the shame of his father, but the Hegelians are still tearing away the cloak which time and oblivion had sympathetically thrown over the shame of their Master.”

Heinrich Christian Friedrich Schumacher (1757–1830) Danish scientist

In a letter to Gauss. As quoted in Carl Friedrich Gauss: Titan of Science (2004) by Guy Waldo Dunnington. p. 361-362
Quoted

Tear, Time

“[.. feel interested in] Things that are not overworked, that are in essence light. In other words, the great Cezannes that are not all filled in.... while I can recognize a master piece that is heavily painted or darkly painted or painted in layers as great and sublime, it would not be my choice to hang a - [inaudible] - for five years if I could instead perhaps have a Cezanne of the kind I just described. Or a certain kind of Matisse. Or one of those large Rubens sketches, where the first breath of feeling is the picture, rather than the labor and the gift.”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

quote about 'light' paintings
1960s, Interview with Barbara Rose', Archives - American Art, 1968

Feeling, Light, Painting

“The master of a private dwelling will not allow any untidiness or unseemliness to be seen in the house, such as a couch upset, or the table littered with rubbish, or vessels of price thrown away into dirty corners, while those which serve ignobler uses are thrust forward for entering guests to see. He has everything arranged neatly and in the proper place, where it stands to most advantage; and then he can welcome his guests, without any misgivings that he need be ashamed of opening the interior of his house to receive them. The same duty, I take it, is incumbent on that master of our "tabernacle," the mind; it has to arrange everything within us, and to put each particular faculty of the soul, which the Creator has fashioned to be our implement or our vessel, to fitting and noble uses.”

Gregory of Nyssa (335–395) bishop of Nyssa

On Virginity, Chapter 18

Soul, Fashion, Housing

“In order to win this war Hitler must destroy Great Britain. He may carry havoc into the Balkan States; he may tear great provinces out of Russia; he may march to the Caspian; he may march to the gates of India. All this will avail him nothing. It may spread his curse more widely throughout Europe and Asia, but it will not avert his doom. With every month that passes the many proud and once happy countries he is now holding down by brute force and vile intrigue are learning to hate the Prussian yoke and the Nazi name as nothing has ever been hated so fiercely and so widely among men before. And all the time, masters of the sea and air, the British Empire—nay, in a certain sense, the whole English-speaking world—will be on his track bearing with them the swords of justice.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Broadcast (9 February 1941), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill, 1939–1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), p. 1009
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Men, Hate, War, Happiness

“And so the arbitrary union of three incommensurate, mutually disconnected concepts became the basis of a bewildering theory… [by which] one of the lowest renderings of art, art for mere pleasure — against which all of the master teachers warned — was idealized as the ultimate in art.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

What is Art? (1897)

Pleasure, Art, Teachers

“A crown is a pitiless master, harsher than the staff of a pig-keeper; while a staff bears up, a crown weighs down, beyond the strength of any man to wear it lightly.”

Lloyd Alexander The Chronicles of Prydain

Source: The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book V : The High King (1968), Chapter 10 (King Math)

“Apparently an "art"—which almost by definition cannot be put into words—is probably best communicated by approaching it from many sides and doing so repeatedly, hoping thereby students will finally master enough of the art, or if you wish, style, to significantly increase their future contributions to society.”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)

Hope, Art, Communication, Future

“Kerchak was dead.
Withdrawing the knife that had so often rendered him master of far mightier muscles than his own, Tarzan of the Apes placed his foot upon the neck of his vanquished enemy, and once again, loud through the forest rang the fierce, wild cry of the conqueror.
And thus came the young Lord Greystoke into the kingship of the Apes.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 11 : "King of the Apes"

Cry, Dead

“I have been strongly influenced by the Mahabharata, discourses of the Buddha, Sri Aurobindo and Plato. My masters have been Vyasa, Buddha and Sri Aurobindo, as elucidated by Ram Swarup. … Paganism was a term of contempt invented by Christianity for people in the countryside who lived close to and in harmony with Nature, and whose ways of worship were spontaneous as opposed to the contrived though-categories constructed by Christianity’s city-based manipulators of human minds. In due course, the term was extended to cover all spiritually spontaneous culture of the world – Greek, Roman, Iranian, Indian, Chinese, native American. It became a respectable term for those who revolted against Christianity in the modern West. But it has yet to recover its spiritual dimension which Christianity had eclipsed. For me, Hinduism preserves ancient Paganism in all its dimensions. In that sense, I am a Pagan. The term "Polytheism' comes from Biblical discourse, which has the term 'theism' as its starting point. I have no use for these terms. They create confusion. I dwell in a different universe of discourse which starts with 'know thyself' and ends with the discovery, 'thou art that'…
I met her [Mother Theresa] briefly in Calcutta in 1954 or 1955 when she was unknown. I had gone to see an American journalist who was a friend and had fallen ill, when she came to his house asking for money for her charity set-up. The friend went inside to get some cash, leaving his five or six year old daughter in the drawing room. Teresa told her, "He is not your real father. Your real father is in heaven." The girl said, "He is very ill." Theresa commented, "If he dies, your father does not die. For your real father who is in heaven never 'dies."”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

The girl was in tears. Interview, The Observer. Date : February 22, 1997. http://sathyavaadi.tripod.com/truthisgod/Articles/goel.htm https://egregores.blogspot.com/2009/10/buddha-sri-aurobindo-and-plato.html https://egregores.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/hindus-and-pagans-a-return-to-the-time-of-the-gods/

Money, People, World, Art

“The last time I ever witnessed a movement that had these qualifications: (1) a totally monolithic movement with a single point of view and a single authoritarian head; (2) replete with fanatical followers who are prepared and programmed to do anything their master says; (3) supplied by absolutely unlimited funds; (4) with a hatred of everyone on the outside; (5) with suspicion of parents, against their parents -- the last movement that had those qualifications was the Nazi youth movement, and I'll tell you, I'm scared.”

Maurice Davis (1921–1993) American rabbi

Rabbi Maurice Davis, quoted http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/wakefield/us-16.html in Ronald Enroth, Ph.D.'s Youth, brainwashing, and the extremist cults, 1977, Grand Rapids: Zondervan Pub. House.

Youth, Parent, Time

“Knowledge is more than equivalent to force. The master of mechanicks laughs at strength.”

Samuel Johnson book The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

Source: The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759), Chapter 13; variant with modernized spelling: Knowledge is more than equivalent to force. The master of mechanics laughs at strength.

Knowledge

“The face of nature and civilization in this our country is to a certain point a very sufficient literary field. But it will yield its secrets only to a really grasping imagination… To write well and worthily of American things one need even more than elsewhere to be a master.”

Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic

Letter to Charles Eliot Norton (16 January 1871).

Secret, Imagination, Nature, Country

“When one listens to your speeches it sounds as if you had always fought against capitalism. The truth is that it was you who gave all the power to capitalism. In this republic capitalism has grown as it had never before. You can think about the old state as you will, one thing is certain: it was not as rotten as the one you brought about! …
What shall one say when Reich president Ebert in his letters addresses the Jewish scoundrel Barmat as "My dear Barmat" and closes with the greeting "Yours Ebert"? Despite all the veneration that I feel for this man, whom by the way I respect more as a master saddle-maker than as a Reich president, I simply have to be astonished. Gentlemen, where is the "beauty and dignity?"”

Julius Streicher (1885–1946) German politician

Wenn man Euch reden hört, dann habt Ihr immer den Kapitalismus bekämpft. In Wirklichkeit habt Ihr den Kapitalismus erst in den Sattel gehoben. In dieser Republik hat sich der Kapitalismus ausgewachsen wie niemals zuvor. Mag man über den alten Staat denken wir man will, eines steht fest: so verlumpt war er nicht wie der, den Ihr uns gebracht habt! …
Was soll man dazu sagen, wenn ein Reichspräsident Ebert den jüdischen Schurken Barmat in Briefen mit "Mein lieber Barmat" anredet und ihn am Schlusse mit "Dein Ebert" grüßt? Bei aller Ehrfurcht, die ich vor dem Mann habe, den ich übrigens als Sattlermeister weit mehr schätze denn als Reichspräsident, muss ich mich doch sehr wundern. Meine Herren, wo ist da "Schönheit und Würde"?
01/23/1925, speech in the Bavarian regional parliament ("Kampf dem Weltfeind", Stürmer publishing house, Nuremberg, 1938)

Truth, Beauty, Way, Feeling

“In all things I yearn for the past. Modern fashions seem to keep on growing more and more debased. I find that even among the splendid pieces of furniture built by our master cabinetmakers, those in the old forms are the most pleasing.”

Yoshida Kenkō (1283–1350) japanese writer

22
Essays in Idleness (1967 Columbia University Press, Trns: Donald Keene)

Fashion, Past

“Different languages, the same thoughts; servant to thoughts and their masters.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

“Hidden Words,” p. 58
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “A Stone and a Word”

“.. the modern artist can conclude that impulsive and speculative production has come to an end. THE ERA OF DECORATIVE TASTE HAS VANISHED, the artist of today has finished completely with the past. Scientific and technical developments oblige him to draw conclusions.... to revise his means, to establish laws creating a system, that is to say, to master his elementary means of expression in a conscious manner.”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Quote from Van Doesburg's article: 'Towards elementary plastic expression', in 'Material zur elementaren Gestaltung', G-1, July 1923; as quoted in 'Theo van Doesburg', Joost Baljeu, Studio Vista, London 1974, p. 141
1920 – 1926

Law, Past, Drawing

“In our time it has been seen, as I hope to show quite shortly, that simple children, roughly brought up in the wilderness, have begun to draw by themselves, impelled by their own natural genius, instructed solely by the example of these beautiful paintings and sculptures of Nature. Much more then it is probable that the first men, being less removed from their divine origin, were more perfect, possessing a brighter intelligence, and that with Nature as a guide, a pure intellect for master, and the lovely world as a model, they originated these noble arts, and by gradually improving them brought them at length, from small beginnings, to perfection. I do not deny that there must have been an originator, since I know quite well that there must have been a beginning at some time, due to some individual.”

Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) Italian painter, architect, writer and historian

Source: The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, 1900, p. 5-6

Love, Men, Children, World

“I studied a good deal in the museum at Naples; the Pompeian paintings are extremely interesting from every aspect. So I am staying in the sun – not to paint portraits but while I am warming myself and looking hard at things I hope I will have acquired some of the grandeur and simplicity of the old masters. Raphael didn't work out-of-doors, but he studied the sunlight all the same – his frescoes are full of it. So, by looking around outside, I have finished by seeing only the broad harmonies, and am no longer preoccupied with the little details, which only extinguish the sunlight, instead of increasing its brilliance. I hope therefore, when I get back to Paris, to produce something which will be the outcome of all these general studies, and to give you the benefit of them”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French painter and sculptor

in a letter written during his three-weeks-stay, working with Paul Cezanne at l'Estaque, near Marseille
Source: 1880's, Renoir – his life and work, 1975, p. 169 in a letter to madame Charpentier, l'Estaque, January 1882

Hope, Study, Sun, Painting

“Your armed forces have toppled the reactionary, backward and corrupt regime. With one strike your heroic army has toppled idols and destroyed them in one of Providence's fateful moments. As of now Libya shall be free and sovereign, a republic under the name of the Libyan Arab Republic. No oppressed or deceived or wronged, no master and no slave; but free brothers in a society over which, God willing, shall flutter the banner of brotherhood and equality. And thus shall we build glory, revive heritage and avenge a wounded dignity. Sons of the Bedouins, sons of the desert, sons of the ancient cities, sons of the countryside, sons of the villages, the hour of work has struck and so let us forge ahead.”

Muammar Gaddafi (1942–2011) Libyan revolutionary, politician and political theorist

Radio broadcast from Benghazi (1 September 1969), quoted in The Libyan Revolution: Its Origins and Legacy (2009) by Nicholas Hagger
Speeches

God, Fate

Quotes about master page 6

Quotes about master
page 6