Quotes about mine (1780 quotes, page 13)

“For towards the close of my father’s reign,… availing himself of the influence which by some means or other he had acquired, he [Abul Fazzel] so wrought upon the mind of his master [that is, Akbar], as to instil into him the belief that the seal and asylum of prophecy, to whom the devotion of a thousand lives such as mine would be a sacrifice too inadequate to speak of, was no more to be thought of than as an Arab of singular eloquence, and that the sacred inspirations recorded in the Koran were nothing else but fabrications invented by the ever-blessed Mahommed…. Actuated by these reasons it was that I employed the man who killed Abul Fazzel and brought his head to me, and for this it was that I incurred my father’s deep displeasure.”

Jahangir (1569–1627) 4th Mughal Emperor

Memoirs of the Emperor Jahangueir, written by himself; and translated from a Persian manuscript, by Major David Price (Oriental Translation Committee, 1829), Quoted from Spencer, Robert (2018). The history of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS.

“He put his hand over mine, the one with the dead cigarette crumbled in it, and gave me a wonderful smile. "Easy, child, easy. I’m only teasing you. Don’t think I disapprove for Christ’s sake. Live it up, I say. Don’t say no to life, Gorce, you’re only young once.””

Elaine Dundy (1921–2008) American journalist, actress

We were on last name terms, Keevil and I.
Part One, One
The Dud Avocado (1958)

Life , Smile , Thinking , Christ

“Mine is not a theology of the elect. I intend to preach to the masses. Even the sinners.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, Borders of Infinity (1989)

“When the two Regts. were panic-stricken they [his command] stood by me like heroes … Would I abandon men who showed themselves willing to give their own lives to save mine?”

Charles P. Mattocks (1840–1910) American soldier, lawyer and politician

Speaking of the 17th Main Volunteer Infantry Regiment in a letter to his mother, in [Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai, Northern Character: College-Educated New Englanders, Honor, Nationalism, and Leadership in the Civil War Era, https://books.google.com/books?id=cFMnDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA160, 2016, Oxford University Press, 978-0-8232-7181-8, 160–]

Men

“We were professional rivals, yes. But beyond that there was no acrimony. He was getting his films and I was getting mine. We weren’t eating into each other’s songs. And we’ve sung duets together like Yeh bandhan toh (Karan Arjun 1995) and Neend churai meri (Ishq 1997). So it wasn’t as if we never got along.”

Draft:Udit Narayan (1955) Playback singer

http://www.filmfare.com/interviews/udit-narayan-looks-back-at-his-career-with-affection-14692.html

“Companies earn their profits by exploiting their environment. Mining and oil companies exploit the physical environment; social media companies exploit the social environment. This is particularly nefarious because social media companies influence how people think and behave without them even being aware of it.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Remarks delivered at the World Economic Forum https://www.georgesoros.com/2018/01/25/remarks-delivered-at-the-world-economic-forum/ (25 January 2018)

People , Thinking

“Any friend of fossil is a friend of mine. … We've got to do everything we can to get people out of their automobiles and into mass transit.”

Michael Bloomberg (1942) American businessman and politician, former mayor of New York City

http://uk.reuters.com/article/motoringNews/idUKNOA53343620070615
Energy Reform

People

“The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belong to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Bk. 2, ch. 1
The End of the Affair (1951)

Pain , Sense , Happiness

“I think there can be few examples of a life as dilapidated as mine.”

Charles Baudelaire book Les Fleurs du mal

Letter to his mother, Correspondences, Vol. 2, p. 253
Les fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) (1857)

Life , Thinking

“Still haunted by Haiku, and tried my hand at it, but I fall pitifully short of the Wordsworthian touch. But failure in this realm turned my mind to an old enthusiasm of mine, the Welsh englyn. This verse form was derived by the Welsh from the inscriptions which their Roman conquerors put on tombs … A good englym must have four lines, of ten, then six, syllables, the last two lines having seven syllables each. In the first line there must be a break after the seventh, eighth, or ninth syllable, and the rhyme with the second line comes at this break; but the tenth syllable of the first line must either rhyme or be in assonance with the middle of the second line. The last two lines must rhyme with the first rhyme in the first line, but the third or fourth line must rhyme on a weak syllable. Got that?”

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

"Haiku and Englyn" in The Toronto Daily Star (4 April 1959), republished in The Enthusiasms of Robertson Davies (1979) edited by Judith Skelton Grant, p. 241.

Failure

“The lapse of time during which a given event has not happened, is, in this logic of habit, constantly alleged as a reason why the event should never happen, even when the lapse of time is precisely the added condition which makes the event imminent. A man will tell you that he has worked in a mine for forty years unhurt by an accident as a reason why he should apprehend no danger, though the roof is beginning to sink...”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

Source: Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861), Chapter 5 (at page 41)

Time

“The reason I love 'Slumdog' is because the music is all world cultures, all celebrating. In India, I know people feel other film scores [of mine] are closer to their hearts. But when you are doing a film, it's very important to make the film look like one full piece of artwork. I think scoring 'Slumdog' with every kind of music possible, from Chinese to hip-hop to M. I. A.... was really fresh ground for me.”

A. R. Rahman (1966) Indian singer and composer

Quoted in Slumdog' Composer Competes for Oscars, 19 February 2009, 16 December 2013, Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/18/AR2009021803790.html,

Love , People , World , Music

“In that kitty of mine where people call me anpadh (illiterate), I do have a degree from Yale University as well, which I can bring out and show how Yale celebrated my leadership capacities.”

Smriti Irani (1972) Indian politician

Responding to critics saying that she is not qualified to be the Human Resource Minister, as quoted in " Smriti Irani claims she has degree from Yale University http://www.livemint.com/Politics/nOmCKp0bDGBTgrsytAy1NP/Smriti-Irani-claims-she-has-degree-from-Yale-University.html" Live Mint (10 August 2014)

People , Universe

“The Tippoo himself led the defenders north of the breach. The Tippoo had cursed Gudin for blowing the mines too early and thus wasting its terrible destructive power, but now he tried to revive the defense by his personal example. He stood in the front rank of his soldiers while behind him a succession of aides loaded jewel-encrusted hunting rifles. One by one the rifles were given to the Tippoo who aimed and fired, aimed and fired, and redcoat after redcoat was struck down.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Narrator, p. 351
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Tiger (1997)

Success , Personality

“There was a treasure in the earth which the Lord loved. I marvelled and thought what it might be, and I was answered in mine understanding: It is a food which is delectable and pleasant to the Lord.”

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

Summations, Chapter 51

Love , Food , Understanding

“Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours' march to dinner — and then to thinking! … I begin to feel, think, and be myself again. Instead of an awkward silence, broken by attempts at wit or dull common-places, mine is that undisturbed silence of the heart which alone is perfect eloquence.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

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

Feeling , Thinking , Silence , Heart

“I dream I am the chosen Poet,
Who knows all there is to know on Earth,
The one whose inspiration’s pure and perfect,
And captures infinity in a verse!I dream a verse of mine has all the brightness
To light the whole world! And it will please
Even those who long and die of sadness!
And even wise, unhappy souls it will appease.”

Florbela Espanca (1894–1930) Portuguese poet

Sonho que sou a Poetisa eleita,
Aquela que diz tudo e tudo sabe,
Que tem a inspiração pura e perfeita,
Que reúne num verso a imensidade!<p>Sonho que um verso meu tem claridade
Para encher todo o mundo! E que deleita
Mesmo aqueles que morrem de saudade!
Mesmo os de alma profunda e insatisfeita!
Quoted in Trocando olhares (1994), p. 131
Translated by John D. Godinho
Book of Sorrows (1919), "Vaidade"

World , Sadness , Dreams , Soul

“It is part of my duty as a decent member of my local hamlet to mow the grass in front of the church. It's a pleasant little task and mowing is a favorite activity of mine; it gives me a lot of pleasure to make the churchyard look tidy. I sometimes pause at the grave of someone or other and speculate what he might have been like when he was alive, but gravestones don't tell much.”

Tom Baker (1934) English actor

Pleasure , Grass , Parting

“In the center sits Mary, with her crown on her head and her son in her lap, enthroned, receiving the homage of heaven and earth; of all time, ancient and modern; of all thought, Christian and Pagan; of all men, and all women; including if you please, your homage and mine, which she receives without question, as her due; which she cannot be said to claim, because she is above making claims; she is empress. Her left hand bore a sceptre; her right supported the child, who looks directly forward, repeating the mother's attitude, and raises his right hand to bless, while his left rests on the orb of empire. She and her child are one.”

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

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Women , Men , Question , Support

“It is not possible to make such things [paintings of street-views] without the help of photos. How do you want me to make an Amsterdam street. I make thumbnail sketches in my sketchbook. if it's possible I make a study from a window. and a sketch for the details after my choice. The composition is mine anyhow.”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

translation from the original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner's brief, in het Nederlands:) Het is niet mogelijk dergelijke dingen te maken zonder hulp van photos. Hoe wil je dat ik een Amsterdamsche straat maak. Ik maak krabbeltjes in mijn schetsboek. als het kan een studie uit een raam. en een schets voor de details maar de keus. De compositie is toch van mij.
after 1886; quoted by Van Veen in G.H. Breitner : fotograaf en schilder van het Amsterdamse stadsgezicht', 1997, p. 28-29; as cited in Van IJs naar Sneeuw - De ontwikkeling van het wintergezicht in de 19de eeuw, Arsine Nazarian Juli 2008, Utrecht, p. 85
Breitner defended himself when he was criticized by his art-dealer in using photography for making his paintings
undated quotes

Photo , Study , Help , Painting

“This is where I want to be.
This is what I need.
This is where I want to be,
But I know that this will never be mine.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, The Sensual World (1989)

“Of all my verse, like not a single line;
But like my title, for it is not mine.
That title from a better man I stole:
Ah, how much better, had I stol'n the whole!”

Robert Louis Stevenson book Underwoods

Title page poem
Underwoods (1887)

“As you know, Bergson pointed out that there is no such thing as disorder but rather two sorts of order, geometric and living. Mine is clearly living. The folders I need are within reach, in the order of frequency with which I use them. True, it gets tricky to locate a folder in the lower levels. But if you have to find it, you look for it. That takes less time than putting them away every day.”

Jean Piaget (1896–1980) Swiss psychologist, biologist, logician, philosopher & academic

Conversations with Jean Piaget (1980) by Jean Claude Bringuier

Time

“Greek and Roman mythology had never been a favourite subject of mine at school, but as I grew older I began to appreciate the legends and realize that they contained a vivid world of adventure with wonderful heroes, villains and, most importantly, lots of fantastic creatures.”

Ray Harryhausen (1920–2013) American animator

Source: An Animated Life (2003), p. 151

World , School

“The first painting to appear with an affirmation of simultaneity was mine and had the following title: 'Simultaneous visions', [Boccioni painted in 1911]. It was exhibited in the galerie Bernheim in Paris, and in the same exhibition my Futurist painter friends also appeared with similar experiments in simultaneity.”

Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) Italian painter and sculptor

Boccioni's quote on early realized simultaneity in his art; as quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 458.
1914 - 1916, Pittura e scultura futuriste' Milan, 1914

Appearance , Painting

“I've loved not being looked at so much since dyeing my hair dark for my part in Resident Evil: Apocalypse. With my normal blondey- brown colour, I get stared at so much, so I feel quieter, more low- key. It's like being undercover, as even friends of mine haven't recognised me. It was quite difficult to get used to. I would see a picture of someone blonde in a Polaroid or shop window and think: "Don't I look brilliant?" But then it wouldn't be me. But it does mean that I can wear brighter colours, as well as brighter lipsticks than usual. I've just done a shoot where I was wearing bright red lipstick - although that did feel a bit Eighties and weird, as if I were a Robert Palmer extra.”

Sienna Guillory (1975) British actress

How do I look? Sienna Guillory Actress, age 28 Article http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20040131/ai_n9686748 The London Independent. January 21, 2004.

Love , Feeling , Thinking , Evil

“All of us, ride on the same bus, shop at the same malls and stores. All of us, debate and discuss, decide and divide what is mine and what’s yours.”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

"All of Us"
A Picnic of Poems in Allah's Green Garden (2011)

“For my own part, I may desire in general to be other than I am; I may condemn and dislike my whole form, and beg of Almighty God for an entire reformation, and that He will please to pardon my natural infirmity: but I ought not to call this repentance, methinks, no more than the being dissatisfied that I am not an angel or Cato. My actions are regular, and conformable to what I am and to my condition; I can do no better; and repentance does not properly touch things that are not in our power; sorrow does.. I imagine an infinite number of natures more elevated and regular than mine; and yet I do not for all that improve my faculties, no more than my arm or will grow more strong and vigorous for conceiving those of another to be so.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 2
Essais (1595), Book III

God , Angels , Imagination , Nature

“The bearer of this letter is an old friend of mine not quite the right side of the blanket as they say in fact he is the son of a first rate butcher but his mother was a decent family called Hyssopps of the Glen so you see he is not so bad and is desireus of being the correct article.”

Daisy Ashford book The Young Visiters

Source: The Young Visiters (1919), Chapter 5

Family

“A Nation spoke to a Nation,
A Queen sent word to a Throne:
‘Daughter am I in my mother's house,
But mistress in my own.
The gates are mine to open,
As the gates are mine to close,
And I set my house in order,'
Said our Lady of the Snows.”

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

Our Lady of the Snows http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/verse/p1/ourladysnows.html, Stanza 1 (1898).
Other works

Housing , Daughters

“Vengeance is mine; I will repay.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Epigraph
Anna Karenina (1875–1877; 1878)

“The news of our health is not good. My wife has been in agony several times, but she is having a little rest now. As for myself, I am better in a certain sense, and worse in another. I have still that feverish blood which runs through me, and which troubles my brain when my pains are most acute. I have again left off work, and again recommenced. Now I can do nothing, and it is killing me... In this we are all warned we must have health for a motto. Therefore, take care of yourself to the end, and do not tire yourself too much. Usually you inscribe my name on the official list for the [Paris] Salon towards the new year, and you will doubtless do it this year. As it is useless to make ourselves enemies in this way, this is what we must do: request Etcheverry to erase mine from the lists or I will send you cards to use as you think best.”

Théodore Rousseau (1812–1867) French painter (1812-1867)

Quote from a letter to fr:Alfred Sensier, Dec. 1866; as cited in Alfred Sensier, Souvenirs sur Th. Rousseau; quoted in The Barbizon School of Painters: Corot, Rousseau, Diaz, Millet, Daubigny, etc., by D. C. Thomson; Scribner and Welford, New York 1890 – (copy nr. 78), pp. 142-143
1851 - 1867

Pain , Health , Way , Thinking

“I am the older of his wedded wives; the chief religious merit must be mine. Therefore, O Madri, prevent me not from achieving that which must be achieved. I must follow our lord to the region of the dead. Rise up, O Madri, and yield me his body. Rear thou these children.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Kunti in grief wanting to commit sati (selfimmolation) with her dead husband.
The Mahabharata/Book 1: Adi Parva/Section CXXV

Children , Wedding , Dead

“And thirdly, [we have] to defeat the absurd pantheist ideologies that believe that the walls are gods and the air is a god. In the end, to return to such primitive forms of religiosity where one is told, “don’t touch this hill because it is an Apu and is filled with millennia-old spirit,” and who knows what else. Well, if we reach that point, we wouldn’t do anything, much less mining. Don’t touch those fish because they are creatures of god and expressions of the god Poseidon. We would return to this, let’s say, primitive animism. Right? I think that we need more education [of these people], but that is long-term work that just can’t be fixed right away.”

Alan García (1949–2019) Peruvian politician

Alan García in an interview with Cecilia Valenzuela (channel Willax) in January 2011, translation by Carwil without Borders, 27 June 2011 https://woborders.wordpress.com/tag/peru/

God , People , Education , Thinking

“Justice requires us to remember that when any citizen denies his fellow, saying, "His color is not mine," or "His beliefs are strange and different," in that moment he betrays America, though his forebears created this Nation.”

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

1960s, Inaugural address (1965)

Justice , Color

“Jumbled black rocks adorned an otherwise pale, flat landscape of salmons and khakis. Mountains rose in distant ridges. Out there in the Namaqua sea, I found myself thinking of South Africa as an island. Like Robinson Crusoe, I was walking its perimeter, noting the extent of my domain, checking for cannibals, finding fresh water. Sure, there were 47 million others who might make such a claim, but theirs were no more valid than mine, only similar. Beating my drum, singing the land, proclaiming it mine from coast to coast.”

Justin D. Fox (1967) South African author, photojournalist, lecturer and editor

The Marginal Safari: Scouting the Edge of South Africa (2010)

Mountain , Thinking , Water , Distant

“His the knife, and mine the body
the twofold cause of suffering.
He has grasped the knife, I my body.
At which is there anger?”

Šantidéva (685–763) 8th-century Indian Buddhist monk and scholar

Bodhicaryavatara

Suffering , Anger

“The slave who digs in the mine or labors at the oar can rejoice at the prospect of laying down his burden together with his life; but to the slave of guilt there arises no hope from death. On the contrary, he is obliged to look forward with constant terror to this most certain of all events, as the conclusion of all his hopes, and the commencement of his greatest miseries.”

Hugh Blair (1718–1800) British philosopher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 550.

Life , Death , Hope

“KERRY: I have had conversations with leaders.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Recently?
KERRY: Yes, recently.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How recent?
KERRY: That‘s not your business. It‘s mine. Are you a Democrat, a Republican? What are you? Are you a registered Republican?
(CROSSTALK)
KERRY: Are you a Republican? You answer the question. Did you vote for George Bush? Did you vote for George Bush?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I voted for George Bush and I…
KERRY: Thank you.
(UNIDENTIFIED MALE sits while booed by crowd)”

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

March 2004 exchange
Quoted in

Question , Business

“Lay your head upon my pillow
Hold your warm and tender body
Close to mine
Hear the whisper of the raindrops
Blow softly against my window
Make believe you love me
One more time
For the good times
For the good times..”

Kris Kristofferson (1936) American country music singer, songwriter, musician, and film actor

For the Good Times
Song lyrics, Kristofferson (1970)

Love , Time

“I was angry with you about him, furious that he so much as set eyes on you. I would rather kill you than see you lie in his arms.” “is that love then? A thing that leads to murder?” “I don’t know. In all honesty, I don’t know. You’re mine. What’s mine I keep, I rule, and give my body over to defend. I offer you my honor, and my life. That’s not an easy thing. Its within your power to break my pride, and take that life, insignificant though it is.” “you put it very simply.” “its not. Such a gift rouses strange passions, fears of treachery, and deep distrust. I’m not immune to them.” “no one told me it would be like this. Perhaps it won't go into words, what I feel for you. Its not desire, yet I love your touch, the warm softness of your flesh against mine.””

Alice Borchardt (1939–2007) American fiction writer

Devoted

Love , Life , Lie , Fear

“The Church has become hostile to new ideas. If any doctrine came from the priesthood the church would hear it and heed it, but if it came from an out of the way place, like Nazareth, they would scorn and persecute it. It was churchmen who put Jesus to the cross. In Luther's time when he hurled his advanced ideas like bombshells into the Roman Church, it was the churchmen of his day that sought his death. In Wesley's time, though he preached the purest form of spiritual Truth that was proclaimed to his age, yet the churchmen of his time drove him out and he had to preach in graveyards and coal mines and on the markets.”

Benjamin Fish Austin (1850–1933) Nineteenth-century Canadian educator/Methodist Minister/Spiritualist

Sermon (1899)

Death , Hostility , Truth , Age

“The sacred sense of beyond, of timelessness, of a world which had an eternal value and the substance of which was divine had been given back to me today by this friend of mine who taught me dancing.”

Hermann Hesse book Steppenwolf

Source: Steppenwolf (1927), p. 154

World , Sense , Dance

“We look to find each other but cannot—
we only see those green mulberry groves.
Mulberry groves all share one shade of green—
of your own grief and mine, which hurts the more?”

Đặng Trần Côn (1710–1745) writer

Source: Chinh phụ ngâm, Lines 61–64

Hurt

“We are worse [off] than we were during the times of apartheid. We are being killed by our own people. We are being oppressed by our own government. … Every mine has a politician inside. They give them money every month, they call it shares. But it is a protection fee to protect whites against the workers.”

Julius Malema (1981) South African political activist

To a workers rally at the Aurora mine, East Rand, as quoted in "Malema: Apartheid was better" http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2012/08/31/malema-apartheid-was-better, in Times Live (31 August 2012)

Money , People , Time

“I hope the dogs don't bark tonight. I always think it's mine.”

Albert Camus book The Stranger

The Stranger (1942)

Dogs , Hope , Thinking

“The motions of the Grand Army will best deter mine the propriety of endeavouring to hold all the ground from King's Bridge to the lower lines. I shall be as much on the Island of York as possible, so as not to neglect the duties of my own department.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (31 October 1776)

“Here I swear, and as I break my oath may Infinity Eternity blast me, here I swear that never will I forgive Christianity! It is the only point on which I allow myself to encourage revenge… Oh, how I wish I were the Antichrist, that it were mine to crush the Demon, to hurl him to his native Hell never to rise again — I expect to gratify some of this insatiable feeling in Poetry.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

Letter to Thomas Jefferson Hogg (3 January 1811)

Feeling , Forgiveness , Hell , Revenge

“It's because they want to sound like Americans. I'd like to see them develop our music and sing it their way, but they think sounding American is going to take them higher, but it is not. They have beautiful voices, but they want to sound like Whitney Houston. You can't beat people like that at their own game. And they can't beat me at mine, either!”

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

Interview with Robin Denselow (May 2008)
Source: Denselow, Robin, http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,2280144,00.html, Robin Denselow talks to African superstar and activist Miriam Makeba, The Guardian, 15, London, 16 May 2008, 18 November 2010

People , Beauty , Music , Way

“Two days before Britney Spears' HBO concert from Las Vegas, someone broke into her dressing room and stole the white, Elvis-inspired jumpsuit that she wore to promote the event. And you know what, I'm not giving it back! I keep it now, it's mine!”

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

citation needed

“Two lifetimes -- yours and mine.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Georgina and Michael
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover

“I'm no reformer; for I see more light
Than darkness in the world; mine eyes are quick
To catch the first dim radiance of the dawn,
And slow to note the cloud that threatens storm.”

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919) American author and poet

Optimism
Poetry quotes, Poems of Pleasure (1900)

World , Light

“In our first pilot study we talked with clerical and production workers as well as professional and managerial people. We discovered that the professional and managerial groups were more verbal, showed a quicker grasp of the technique, and gave more and better delineated sequences of events than the clerical and production groups.
The second pilot study was restricted to managerial and professional people. On the basis of our experiences in this work, we decided to concentrate in the major sample on engineers and accountants. It was apparent in the results of this second pilot that engineers were able to give exceptionally vivid accounts of their work experiences. Since our study was still in the nature of an exploratory project, it was vital to us that we mine where the metal was richest.”

Frederick Herzberg (1923–2000) American psychologist

Source: The motivation to work, 1959, p. 32

People , Nature , Study

“In my view, I’ve had tons of success but, in the way the world views success and they expect Idols to do, mine has just been a longer journey to get there. And I’m grateful for it. It just makes the journey that much sweeter in the end.”

Katharine McPhee (1984) American pop singer, songwriter, and actress

'Smash' scoop: Katharine McPhee talks NBC's new musical drama and life after 'Idol' -- 'Certain casting people didn’t wanna see me' http://ew.com/article/2012/01/24/smash-katharine-mcphee-2/ (January 24, 2012)

World , Way , Success

“When an attacking force laid siege to a castle, they used techniques and weapons not unlike those developed by the ancient Romans. First they surrounded the castle in order to cut off all avenues of escape and resupply. They also built a camp ringed by ditches and palisades to secure their own position. Then they built siege engines—great stonethrowing devices—which they hoped would break down the castle walls. Although the knights’ chivalric code gave pride of place in warfare to a charge on horseback with lance or to hand-to-hand combat with swords, military engineers skilled in the mechanics of offensive engines had to first break through the walls. To breach the walls the army used battering rams, various kinds of projectiles, and mines. In other words they tried to go through, over, or under the walls.”

Marilyn Stokstad (1929–2016) art historian

Source: Medieval castles (2005), Ch. 2 : The Castle as Fortress : The Castle and Siege Warfare

Hope

“I went for a walk through the streets. My God, here I was again, roaming the town. I looked at the faces around me, and I knew mine was like theirs. Faces with the blood drained away, tight faces, worried, lost. Faces like flowers torn from their roots and stuffed into a pretty vase, the colors draining fast. I had to get away from that town.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Source: Ask the Dust (1939), Chapter Eighteen

God , Color , Flowers

“I have sought, but I seek it vainly,
That one lost chord divine,
Which came from the soul of the Organ,
And entered into mine. It may be that Death's bright angel
Will speak in that chord again,
It may be that only in Heaven
I shall hear that grand Amen.”

Adelaide Anne Procter (1825–1864) English poet and songwriter

"A Lost Chord".
Legends and Lyrics: Second Series (1861)

Death , Angels , Soul

“Like dew on drooping blossoms,
Like breath from Holy place,
Laden with health and healing,
Come Thy deep words of grace:
"Thy strength is all in leaning
On One who fights for thee;
Thine is the helpless clinging,
And mine the victory."”

Hetty Bowman (1838–1872)

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 595.

Health , Victory , Fight

“Turning a small surface of water into vapour by fire, applied to the bottom of the cylinder that contains it; which vapour forces up the plug (or piston) in the cylinder to a considerable height, and which, as the vapour condenses, (as the water cools when taken from the fire,) descends again by air's pressure, and is applied to raise water out of the mine.”

Denis Papin (1647–1713) French physicist, mathematician and inventor

Denis Papin, Letter, as quoted by Robert Stuart Meikleham, A Descriptive History of the Steam Engine (1824)

Water

“This is so personal it makes Chris Eubank look like an old friend of mine by comparison.”

Nigel Benn (1964) British boxer

Nigel Benn compares his rivalry http://observer.guardian.co.uk/osm/story/0,,1010013,00.html#article_continue

Personality

“The beat must not be like a tyrannical hammer, impeding or urging on, but must be to the music what the pulse-beat is to the life of man. There is no slow tempo in which passages do not occur that demand a quicker motion, so as to obviate the impression of dragging. Conversely there is no presto that does not need a quiet delivery by many places, so as not to throw away the chance of expressiveness by hurrying… Neither the quickening nor the slowing of the tempo should ever give the impression of the spasmodic or the violent. The changes, to have a musical-poetic significance, must come in an orderly way in periods and phrases, conditioned by the varying warmth of the expression. We have in music no signs for all this. They exist only in the sentient soul. If they are not there, then there is no help to be had from the metronome – which obviates only the grosser errors – nor from these extremely imperfect precepts of mine.”

Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826) German composer

quoted in Harold C. Schonberg, The Great Conductors (1981) ISBN 0671208349

Life , Music , Way , Error

“I grew up with the colors of war -- the red colors of fire and blood, the brown tones of earth as it explodes in our faces and the piercing silver of an exploded missile, so bright that nothing can protect your eyes from it. I grew up with the sounds of war -- the staccato sounds of gunfire, the wrenching booms of explosions, ominous drones of jets flying overhead and the wailing warning sounds of sirens. These are the sounds you would expect, but they are also the sounds of dissonant concerts of a flock of birds screeching in the night, the high-pitched honest cries of children and the thunderous, unbearable silence. "War," a friend of mine said, "is not about sound at all. It is actually about silence, the silence of humanity."”

Zainab Salbi (1969) Iraqi American author, women's rights activist

Speech at TEDGlobal 2010

War , Children , Color , Bird

“His poetry, as a whole, is more nearly the real right thing than any of the poetry of a somewhat older generation than mine except Mr. Yeats's.”

Harold Monro (1879–1932) British poet

T. S. Eliot, in Alida Monro (ed.) The Collected Poems of Harold Monro (London: Cobden-Sanderson, 1933) p. xiv.
Criticism

“In the end the American dream boils down to what? I'm getting mine and to hell with you.”

Steven Pressfield book The Profession

General Salter, p. 306
The Profession (2011)

Dreams , Hell

“You are staking your own head by trusting the King. Never will I so stake mine, for he has deceived me too often. His favourite maxim is, haereticis non est servanda fides. I am now bald and Calvinist and in that faith will I die.”

William the Silent (1533–1584) stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht, leader of the Dutch Revolt

William to a supporter of the King, as quoted in William the Silent (1897) by Frederic Harrison, p. 92

Faith

“Its easier to forget a thing without a name. I’ve learned to guard my affections.” “I know, you’ve never asked mine.””

Alice Borchardt (1939–2007) American fiction writer

Devoted

Learning , Forgetting

“And so in City after City, street-barricades are piled, and truculent, more or less murderous insurrection begins; populace after populace rises, King after King capitulates or absconds; and from end to end of Europe Democracy has blazed up explosive, much higher, more irresistible and less resisted than ever before; testifying too sadly on what a bottomless volcano, or universal powder-mine of most inflammable mutinous chaotic elements, separated from us by a thin earth-rind, Society with all its arrangements and acquirements everywhere, in the present epoch, rests! The kind of persons who excite or give signal to such revolutions—students, young men of letters, advocates, editors, hot inexperienced enthusiasts, or fierce and justly bankrupt desperadoes, acting everywhere on the discontent of the millions and blowing it into flame,—might give rise to reflections as to the character of our epoch. Never till now did young men, and almost children, take such a command in human affairs.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), The Present Time (February 1, 1850)

Men , Children , Democracy , Universe

“Our ground today is not so much the national or the regional ground as it is the understanding of this single earth. The earth has been round for some time now, but not in man’s relation to man, nor in the understanding of the arts of each as a part of that roundness. As usual we have occupied ourselves too much with the outer, the objective, at the expense of the inner world wherein tie true roundness lies... America more than any other country is placed geographically to lead in this understanding., and if from past methods of behaviour she has constantly looked towards Europe, today she must assume her position, Janus-faced, toward Asia, for in not too long a time the waves of the Orient shall wash heavily upon her shores. All this is deeply related with her growth in the arts, particularly upon the Pacific slopes. Of this I am aware. Naturally my work will reflect such a condition and so it is not surprising to me when an Oriental responds to a painting of mine as well as an American or an European..”

Mark Tobey (1890–1976) American abstract expressionist painter

Quote from Fourteen Americans, Mark Tobey, exhibition catalogue MOMA New York, 1946, p. 70
1940's

World , Art , Understanding , Nature

“(Sylvia to her daughter) Rita, your body may be a temple. Mine is a Chevy Vega.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p.105

Daughters

“I'm dedicating my little story to you; doubtless you will be among the very few who will ever read it. It seems war stories aren't very well received at this point. I'm told they're out-dated, untimely and as might be expected - make some unpleasant reading. And, as you have no doubt already perceived, human beings don't like to remember unpleasant things. They gird themselves with the armor of wishful thinking, protect themselves with a shield of impenetrable optimism, and, with a few exceptions, seem to accomplish their "forgetting" quite admirably. But you, my children, I don't want you to be among those who choose to forget. I want you to read my stories and a lot of others like them. I want you to fill your heads with Remarque and Tolstoy and Ernie Pyle. I want you to know what shrapnel, and "88's" and mortar shells and mustard gas mean. I want you to feel, no matter how vicariously, a semblance of the feeling of a torn limb, a burnt patch of flesh, the crippling, numbing sensation of fear, the hopeless emptiness of fatigue. All these things are complimentary to the province of war and they should be taught and demonstrated in classrooms along with the more heroic aspects of uniforms, and flags, and honor and patriotism. I have no idea what your generation will be like. In mine we were to enjoy "Peace in our time". A very well meaning gentleman waved his umbrella and shouted those very words… less than a year before the whole world went to war. But this gentleman was suffering the worldly disease of insufferable optimism. He and his fellow humans kept polishing the rose colored glasses when actually they should have taken them off. They were sacrificing reason and reality for a brief and temporal peace of mind, the same peace of mind that many of my contemporaries derive by steadfastly refraining from remembering the war that came before.”

Rod Serling (1924–1975) American screenwriter

Excerpt from a dedication to an unpublished short story, "First Squad, First Platoon"; from Serling to his as yet unborn children.
Other

War , Children , World , Fear

“I have won him, and shall keep him; for to his weak temper habit will be as fetters of iron. I have won him — but how? He remembered not the earnest and devoted love of the young heart, which was his, and his only. Even my beauty failed to influence his selfish carelessness : but he is mine by a more potent spell. Love may be given in vain,— beauty may be powerless; but I have mastered by the deeper magic of flattery.”

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

Other Gift Books

Love , Beauty , Heart , Selfishness

“My father was miserably treated by the mining company, but he had imbibed the false humility and meekness that the oppressors of his race and class had hypocritically taught him. He sought consolation from his torment in a touching devotion to his church, distracting himself from the sordid realities of his life and that of his family with dreams of the Reward Hereafter.”

Angelo Herndon (1913–1997) African American communist

Source: Let Me Live (1937), p. 8

Life , Family , Dreams , Reality

“So my answer to why I wrote this book [about Pakistani textbooks] is: I have written for posterity. (Sometimes I feel that I have written all my books for the generations whom I will not see). In a hundred years' time; when the future historian sets out to contemplate the Pakistan off an age gone by and look for the causes that brought it low, he might find in this book of mine one small candle whose quivering flame will light his path.”

Khursheed Kamal Aziz (1927–2009) historian

Khursheed Kamal Aziz The Murder of History, critique of history textbooks used in Pakistan, 1993

Books , Age , Feeling , Light

“At this point in the dreadful story I am writing, I must interrupt for a moment and describe something that happened to a good friend of mine named Mr. Sirin. Mr. Sirin was a lepidoptrerist, a word which usually means "a person who studies butterflies." In this case, however, the word "lepidopterist" means "a man who was being pursued by angry government officials," and on the night I am telling you about they were right on his heels. Mr. Sirin looked back to see how close they were--four officers in their bright-pink uniforms, with small flashlights in their left hands and large nets in their right--and realized that in a moment they would catch up, and arrest him and his six favorite butterflies, which were frantically flapping alongside him. Mr. Sirin did not care much if he was captured--he had been in prison four and a half times over the course of his long and complicated life--but he cared very much about the butterflies. He realized that these six delicate insects would undoubtedly perish in bug prison, where poisonous spiders, stinging bees, and other criminals would rip them to shreds. So, as the secret police closed in, Mr. Sirin opened his mouth as wide as he could and swallowed all six butterflies whole, quickly placing them in the dark but safe confines of his empty stomach. It was not a pleasant feeling to have these six insects living inside him, but Mr. Sirin kept them there for three years, eating only the lightest foods served in prison so as not to crush the insects with a clump of broccoli or a baked potato. When his prison sentence was over, Mr. Sirin burped up the grateful butterflies and resumed his lepidoptery work in a community that was much more friendly to scientists and their specimens.”

Daniel Handler book The Hostile Hospital

Lemony Snicket
The Hostile Hospital (2001)

Life , Secret , Food , Feeling

“It wasn't that I mistrusted the Seth personality, but I felt it was a personification of something else -- and that "something else" wasn't a person in our terms. It was, I felt, a consciousness different from mine, but to call Seth a spirit guide, meaning a nonphysical person in usual terms, just didn't fit to me.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Adventures In Consciousness: An Introduction to Aspect Psychology (1975), p. 132

Personality

“Here I must inject a personal note—I never shed blood upon the field of Sidwell Friends, nor did I fight the battles of Yale Law. I am a miner's son, and my father was a self-made man who unmade himself during my youth. Education was not a family legacy, and my kin belonged to the United Mine Workers of America, not to Skull and Bones. My forebears fought this country's wars from the bottom ranks, and I began my own military career as a private. I have felt the full arrogance of those to whom much was given, and personally, wish that I might come to bury the elite, not to praise them. Yet, those who would rise need examples to emulate. It grates on me to write it, but our military needs a return of the nation's elite to the officer corps, to the extent that a traditional elite, with its spotty but essential ideals of service, still exists.”

Ralph Peters (1952) American military officer, writer, pundit

autobiographical aside from Beyond Terror, p. 319. Originally part of an essay entitled "Hucksters in Uniform" which appeared in the May 1999 edition of The Washington Monthly.
1990s, Hucksters in Uniform (1999)

War , Youth , Education , Family

“This sad reality, To know it couldn't be,
That's Portugal and love in April!
The music and the wine convinced me you were mine,
But it was just the spring fooling me.”

Jimmy Kennedy (1902–1984) Irish songwriter

Song April in Portugal
Song lyrics

Love , Sadness , Fools , Music

“What struck me most in this conversation was a radical passion for truthfulness in everything (which I came to know as a characteristic vogue among the young Viennese intellectuals of the generation immediately preceding mine only in the following university years). This truthfulness became almost a fashion in that border group between the purely Jewish and the purely Gentile parts of the intelligentsia in which I came so much to move. It meant much more than truth in speech. One had to "live" truth and not tolerate any pretence in oneself or others. It sometimes produced outright rudeness and, certainly, unpleasantness. Every convention was dissected and every conventional form exposed as fraud. Wittgenstein merely carried this further in applying it to himself. I sometimes felt that he took a perverse pleasure in discovering falsehood in his own feelings and that he was constantly trying to purge himself of all fraud.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

" Remembering My Cousin, Ludwig Wittgenstein https://www.unz.org/Pub/Encounter-1977aug-00020", Encounter ( August 1977 https://www.unz.org/Pub/Encounter-1977aug). Page 20.
1960s–1970s

Pleasure , Truth , Feeling , Fashion

“Decision Points is based primarily on my recollections. With help from researchers, I have confirmed my account with government documents, contemporaneous notes, personal interviews, news reports, and other sources, some of which remain classified. There were instances in which I had to rely on memory alone. If there are inaccuracies in this book, the responsibility is mine. In the pages that follow, I have done my best to write about the decisions I got right, those I got wrong, and what I would do differently if given the chance. Of course, in the presidency, there are no do-overs. You have to do what you believe is right and accept the consequences. I tried to do that every day of my eight years in office. Serving as president was the honor of a lifetime, and I appreciate your giving me the opportunity to share my story.”

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

Source: 2010s, 2010, Decision Points (November 2010), p. xii

Books , Decision , Memory , Chance

“If we taught men to repress feelings and rewarded him instead for being a captain he might be willing to die to protect us; if we paid him enough to feed his family if he worked in a coal mine, he might be willing to die sooner to keep us warm. But all that required him to forfeit his feelings – his power as a human being – and substitute it for “power” as a human doing: feeling obligated to earn money someone else spent while he died sooner.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)

Men , Money , Family , Feeling

“When I am asked about my own motivations for changing, my response is that the alternative of not changing seems far worse and more frightening. Mine is not idealistic rebellion or personal sacrifice. From my point of view it is a matter of survival. I do not want to pay the price I see extracted from most of the men around me.”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

He and His Changes, p. 244
The New Male (1979)

Men , Motivation , Change , Personality

“My mind is ever toying with economic ideas and relationships. Great novelists and poets have reported occasional abandonment by their muse. The well runs dry, permanently or on occasion. Mine has been a better luck. As I have written elsewhere, there is a vast inventory of topics and problems floating in the back of my mind. More perhaps than I shall ever have occasion to write up for publication. A result that I notice in statistical mechanics may someday help resolve a problem in finance.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

February 1985, in William Breit and Roger W. Spencer (ed.) Lives of the laureates
1980s–1990s

Idea , Problem , Help

“Steve Jencks: The computer doesn't have any ideas. It only evaluates mine…”

Michael Crichton book Odds On

Odds On (1966)

Idea

“There's a great bloody mine, sir! Just waiting to kill our lads! I ain't letting that happen. You can do what you bloody well like, but I'm going to kill some more of these bastards.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Private Richard Sharpe, p. 329
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Tiger (1997)

Waiting

“I will never leave China, unless I am forced to. Because China is mine. I will not leave something that belongs to me in the hands of people I do not trust.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, Ai Weiwei Says Blind Dissident’s Escape Will Inspire Chinese, 2012

People

“Do you believe in God, Andrei? No. Neither do I. But that's a favorite question of mine. An upside-down question, you know. What do you mean? Well, if I asked people whether they believed in life, they'd never understand what I meant. It's a bad question. It can mean so much that it really means nothing. So I ask them if they believe in God. And if they say they do—then, I know they don't believe in life. Why? Because, you see, God—whatever anyone chooses to call God—is one's highest conception of the highest possible. And whoever places his highest conception above his own possibility thinks very little of himself and his life. It's a rare gift, you know, to feel reverence for your own life and to want the best, the greatest, the highest possible, here, now, for your very own. To imagine a heaven and then not to dream of it, but to demand it.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

We The Living (1936)
Source: We The Living Part One Chapter 9

Life , God , People , Dreams

“This conversation taught me that some of us can meet reality on this side of the grave. I do not envy them. Such adventures may profit the disembodied soul, but as long as I have flesh and blood I pray that my grossness preserve me. Our lower nature has its dreams. Mine is of a certain farm, windy but fruitful, half-way between the deserted moorland and the uninhabitable sea. Hither, at rare intervals, she should descend and he ascend, to shatter their spiritual communion by one caress.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

The Rock
The Life to Come and other stories (1972)

Dreams , Way , Soul , Nature

“I only wanted to play baseball. I only wanted to play shortstop. I only wanted to play for the Yankees. My whole life. It wasn't like I wanted to play for another team and ended up in New York. It wasn't like I wanted to play another position and ended up at short. This has always been the dream of mine: to play shortstop for the New York Yankees. And I get a chance to do it.”

Derek Jeter (1974) American baseball player

Reported in Tom Verducci, " Derek Jeter: In his own words http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/magazine/specials/sportsman/2009/11/30/jeter.interview/index.html", Sports Illustrated (November 30, 2009).
2000s, 2009

Life , Dreams , Chance