Quotes about moment
page 31

Julie Andrews photo
Corey Feldman photo

“It's been really difficult, honestly. I'm all shaken up right now. I had to do a lot of acting, basically, to get through the last 48 hours. It was shocking, and I think I'm still in shock, to an extent. I don't think I have fully, completely come to terms with it yet. I have waves and flashes. One moment, I feel fine and I'm myself. Then all of a sudden, it hits me, and I go, 'Wow, he's really gone.”

Corey Feldman (1971) American actor

It's very troubling.
"From Michael Phelps to Eva Longoria: A look back at 2016's celebrity weddings" http://www.people.com/people/package/article/0,,20287787_20288168,00.html, by Nicholas White, People (June 28, 2009), retrieved July 12, 2012.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu photo
John Cage photo
Roberto Mangabeira Unger photo
H. Rider Haggard photo

“I looked down the long lines of waving black plumes and stern faces beneath them, and sighed to think that within one short hour most, if not all, of those magnificent veteran warriors, not a man of whom was under forty years of age, would be laid dead or dying in the dust. It could not be otherwise; they were being condemned, with that wise recklessness of human life which marks the great general, and often saves his forces and attains his ends, to certain slaughter, in order to give their cause and the remainder of the army a chance of success. They were foredoomed to die, and they knew the truth. It was to be their task to engage regiment after regiment of Twala’s army on the narrow strip of green beneath us, till they were exterminated or till the wings found a favourable opportunity for their onslaught. And yet they never hesitated, nor could I detect a sign of fear upon the face of a single warrior. There they were—going to certain death, about to quit the blessed light of day for ever, and yet able to contemplate their doom without a tremor. Even at that moment I could not help contrasting their state of mind with my own, which was far from comfortable, and breathing a sigh of envy and admiration. Never before had I seen such an absolute devotion to the idea of duty, and such a complete indifference to its bitter fruits.”

Source: King Solomon's Mines (1885), Chapter 14, "The Last Stand of the Greys"

Boris Johnson photo

“It is vital now to see this [Brexit] moment for what it is. This is not a time to quail, it is not a crisis, nor should we see it as an excuse for wobbling or self-doubt, but it is a moment for hope and ambition for Britain. A time not to fight against the tide of history, but to take that tide at the flood, and sail on to fortune.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

During the announcement that he would not run to become Britain's prime minister. A reference to Brutus's "There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune" in Julius Caesar. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/world/europe/britain-conservative-party.html (June 30, 2016)
2010s, 2016

Cole Porter photo

“What moments divine, what rapture serene.”

Cole Porter (1891–1964) American composer and songwriter

"Begin the Beguine" in Jubilee (1935)

Larry Wall photo

“It may be possible to get this condition from within Perl if a signal handler runs at just the wrong moment. Another point for Chip…”

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

[199710161546.IAA07885@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Tim Parks photo
Thomas Browne photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
George W. Bush photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
Richard Bach photo
Blase J. Cupich photo
Baruch Spinoza photo
James Craig, 1st Viscount Craigavon photo
Ray Comfort photo
Herman Melville photo
Eric Foner photo
Henry Fielding photo
Francis Parkman photo

“The most momentous and far-reaching question ever brought to issue on this continent was: Shall France remain here, or shall she not?”

Francis Parkman (1823–1893) American historian

Introduction
Montcalm and Wolfe http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14517/14517-8.txt (1884)

Antonio Llidó photo
Neal A. Maxwell photo
Patrick Modiano photo
Philip Johnson photo
Chris Cornell photo

“I don’t really remember writing it [The Day I Tried To Live]. I vaguely remember the verse. It was based on a tuning that Ben Shepherd had came up with. Lyrically, it was one of those songs that I thought everyone could connect with. ‘Fell On Black Days’ is maybe a sister song to it. It’s this feeling that could come over anyone, and has probably happened to everyone. ‘Fell On Black Days’ is the feeling of waking up one day and realizing you’re not happy with your life. Nothing happened, there was no emergency, no accident, you don’t know what happened. You were happy, and one day you just aren’t, and you have to try to figure that out.
With ‘The Day I Tried To Live,’ the attitude I was trying to convey was that thing that I think everyone goes through where you wake up in the morning and you just don’t know how you are going to get through the day, and you kind of just talk yourself into it. You may go through different moments of hopelessness and wanting to give up, or wanting to just get back into bed and say f— it, but you convince yourself you’re going to do it again. And maybe this is the last time you’re going to do it, but it’s once more around.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Interview with Entertainment Weekly, June 3, 2014 http://ew.com/article/2014/06/03/soundgarden-superunknown-spoonman-black-hole-sun-stories/,
On depression and suicide

Cormac McCarthy photo
Louis C.K. photo
Gulzarilal Nanda photo

“I had seen him [Mahatama Gandhi] from a distance This was going to be the first personal contact. As I ascended the stairs of Manibahavan…I was feeling the thrill of anticipation of a great event. I entered the room and the awe which the scene inside inspired in my heart has not been erased from my memory. I sat in front of the Mahatma…After a while Gandhiji turned to me and asked me about the work that I was doing…He then inquired about my situation. Would I have to face any difficulties if I came away to join the movement? I reflected for a few fleeting moments. I asked myself…How can an army like this function if every soldier who is recruited has to place his personal difficulties before the General. I replied to him that I had no problems for his consideration. Then an interesting conversation followed. Lala Lajpat Rai took up the thread and asked Gandhiji to permit me to proceed to the Punjab, the place of my origin and join him, in the work of the movement there. Thereafter Shankarlal Banker put forward the argument that since my political birth was in Bombay I should stick to this place. The Mahatma gave his verdict in favour of Bombay and thus the interview ended. I found that Bunker was the key figure in the organization in Bombay then and a number of activities were being carried out under his personal direction.”

Gulzarilal Nanda (1898–1998) Prime Minister of India

In, p. 5-6
Gulzarilal Nanda: A Life in the Service of the People

Samuel Johnson photo

“Catch then, O! catch the transient hour,
Improve each moment as it flies;
Life's a short Summer — man a flower,
He dies — alas! how soon he dies!”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Winter, An Ode. The works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1787), p. 355

Ashraf Pahlavi photo
Ai Weiwei photo

“Stupidity can win for a moment, but it can never really succeed because the nature of humans is to seek freedom. Rulers can delay that freedom, but they cannot stop it.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

" Living in Fear Is Worse Than Imprisonment http://mg.co.za/article/2012-06-28-living-in-fear-is-worse-than-imprisonment." Mail and Guardian, June 29, 2012.
2010-, 2012

June Vincent photo

“Producer Gail Patrick used me so much as a villain I finally told her, ‘They’ll know it’s me the moment I show up!”

June Vincent (1920–2008) actress

An Interview with June Vincent (1996)

Dorothy Parker photo

“Van and Schenck put their songs over so skillfully that it isn’t until their act is all done that you realize what extremely indifferent songs they are. Now, when John Steel is singing, on the other hand, you are never fooled for a moment. p.153”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923 (2014) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25758762M/Dorothy_Parker_Complete_Broadway_1918-1923, Chapter 3: 1920

Paul Ryan photo
George W. Bush photo
Josh Waitzkin photo
Olaudah Equiano photo
George William Curtis photo

“And so it went until the alarm was struck in the famous Missouri debate. Then wise men remembered what Washington had said, 'Resist with care the spirit of innovation upon the principles of the Constitution'. They saw that the letting alone was all on one side, that the unfortunate anomaly was deeply scheming to become the rule, and they roused the country. The old American love of liberty flamed out again. Meetings were everywhere held. The lips of young orators burned with the eloquence of freedom. The spirit of John Knox and of Hugh Peters thundered and lightened in the pulpits, and men were not called political preachers because they preached that we are all equal children of God. The legislatures of the free States instructed their representatives to stand fast for liberty. Daniel Webster, speaking for the merchants of Boston, said that it was a question essentially involving the perpetuity of the blessings of liberty for which the Constitution itself was formed. Daniel Webster, speaking for humanity at Plymouth, described the future of the slave as 'a widespread prospect of suffering, anguish, and death'. The land was loud with the debate, and Rufus King stated its substance in saying that it was a question of slave or free policy in the national government. Slavery hissed disunion; liberty smiled disdain. The moment of final trial came. Pinckney exulted. John Quincy Adams shook his head. Slavery triumphed and, with Southern chivalry, politely called victory compromise.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Mark Hopkins (educator) photo
Neil Gaiman photo
Jeffrey Montgomery photo

“It's going to be a heartbreaking moment for these couples, to come face to face with this discrimination against them.”

Jeffrey Montgomery (1953–2016) American LGBT rights activist and public relations executive

Commenting on couples trying to get same-sex marriage licenses in Michigan in 2004, Associated Press, March 4, 2004 [Irwin, http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=sXAyAAAAIBAJ&sjid=16wFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1410,230607&dq=jeffrey-montgomery+executive&hl=en, July 19, 2016, Jim, Gay couples are denied marriage licenses in Detroit, Argus-Press, March 4, 2004, Associated Press]

Andrew Solomon photo
John McCain photo
Michelle Obama photo
Roy E. Disney photo

“I keep wondering why the Academy decided that they needed a separate category for animated films just at a moment when there are a lot of people who couldn't tell you whether a film is animated or not.”

Roy E. Disney (1930–2009) longtime senior executive for The Walt Disney Company

Roy Edward Disney (2003) as quoted in Disney Stories: Getting to Digital (2012) by Newton Lee and Krystina Madej, p. 3

Tod A photo
Mary McCarthy photo
Roger Ebert photo
Alfred P. Sloan photo

“In the spring of 1920, General Motors found itself, as it appeared at the moment, in a good position. On account of the limitation of automotive production during the war there was a great shortage of cars. Every car that could be produced was produced and could be sold at almost any price. So far as any one could see, there was no reason why that prosperity should not continue for a time at least. I liken our position then to a big ship in the ocean. We were sailing along at full speed, the sun was shining, and there was no cloud in the sky that would indicate an approaching storm. Many of you have, of course, crossed the ocean and you can visualize just that sort of a picture yet what happened? In September of that year, almost over night, values commenced to fall. The liquidation from the inflated prices resulting from the war had set in. Practically all schedules or a large part of them were cancelled. Inventory commenced to roll in, and, before it was realized what was happening, this great ship of ours was in the midst of a terrific storm. As a matter of fact, before control could be obtained General Motors found itself in a position of having to go to its bankers for loans aggregating $80,000,000 and although, as we look at things from today's standpoint, that isn't such a very large amount of money, yet when you must have $80,000,000 and haven't got it, it becomes an enormous sum of money, and if we had not had the confidence and support of the strongest banking interests our ship could never have weathered the storm.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Source: Alfred P. Sloan in The Turning Wheel, 1934, p. 185-6; Retrospective vein President Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., addressing the automobile editors of American newspapers at the Proving Ground at Milford, Michigan in 1927.

Mickey Spillane photo
Thomas Jefferson photo
Emil M. Cioran photo
Antoni Tàpies photo
P.G. Wodehouse photo
Samuel Beckett photo
Abul A'la Maududi photo
Hariprasad Chaurasia photo
Amy Lee photo
Amit Chaudhuri photo
Robert Williams Buchanan photo
Connie Willis photo

“From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.”

S.J. Perelman (1904–1979) American humorist, author, and screenwriter

Groucho Marx on Perelman’s Dawn Ginsbergh’s Revenge (1928), quoted in Dorothy Herrmann S. J. Perelman: A Life (1986) p. 61.
Criticism

Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo
Bill Bryson photo
Erik Naggum photo

“Ignoring for a moment the power of the American Medical Association, we still wouldn't see a huge amount of books on neurosurgery for dummies in 21 days or whatever. It's just plain inappropriate, and it's intentionally out of people's reach.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: Is LISP dying? http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.misc/msg/63257b85465935eb
Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

Joseph Conrad photo

“I knew Muhammad Mujeeb personally. He was Head of the Department of History and Shaikh-ul-Jamia… In 1972, however, there was a mild 'confrontation' between him and me. Sometime that year there was a Selection Committee meeting for the post of Professor of History in Delhi University. I was then a Reader and candidate for the post of Professor. Mujeeb was an 'expert'… Mujeeb asked me a question: "Why did the Hindu convert to Islam?" It was a loaded question carrying the suggestion that the initiative for conversion came from the Hindu. In all probability Mujeeb expected me to say that the Hindus suffered from the injustices of the caste system, that Islam was spiritually so great and its message of social equality so attractive that the Hindus queued up for conversion the moment they came in contact with Islamic invaders. A tactful candidate (not a truthful one) would have said what Mujeeb desired, but my answer was different. I said that Hindus did not (voluntarily) convert to Islam; they were converted, often forcibly, as told by Muslim chroniclers. Muslim invaders and rulers felt proud of their achievements in the fields of loot and destruction, enslavement and proselytization. Their chroniclers, writing at their command or independently, speak about their achievements in these spheres in glowing terms. They repeatedly write about the choice offered to the Hindus - "Islam or death". Mujeeb expected a different answer. I was not selected.”

Source: Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India (1999), Chapter 6

William Julius Mickle photo

“The present moment is our ain,
The neist we never saw!”

William Julius Mickle (1734–1788) British writer

St. 6
The Mariner's Wife (1769)

Patrick Stump photo
David Gerrold photo
Helen Keller photo
Morrissey photo
Sara Bareilles photo

“Set me free
 Leave me be
 I dont wanna fall another moment into your gravity”

Sara Bareilles (1979) American pop rock singer-songwriter and pianist

"Gravity"
Lyrics, Careful Confessions (2004)

Alexander Maclaren photo
Halle Berry photo

“Sexiness is a state of mind -- a comfortable state of being. It's about loving yourself in your most unlovable moments.”

Halle Berry (1966) American actress

Suzanne Condie Lambert (October 9, 2008) "'Esquire' crowns Berry the sexiest woman alive", The Arizona Republic, p. E6.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti photo
David Lloyd George photo
Danny Yamashiro photo

“Yes, the moment of conversion is absolutely critical, but the process of evangelism cannot be isolated to one event.”

Danny Yamashiro (1967) American radio evangelist

From Successful Evangelism, page 39

George Gordon Byron photo
Sugar Ray Leonard photo

“I tried the gloves on, and it just felt so natural. From that moment I became so embedded in boxing. I found a friend in boxing.”

Sugar Ray Leonard (1956) American boxer

Sugar Ray Leonard on his first taste of boxinghttp://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20061006/ai_n16774982/pg_2

Jane Roberts photo
Maxwell D. Taylor photo
Ludwig Tieck photo

“The truly beautiful, the great and sublime, when it overpowers us with astonishment and admiration, still does not surprise us as a thing foreign, never heard of, never seen; but, on the other hand, our own inmost nature in such moments becomes clear to us, our deepest remembrances are awakened, our dearest feelings made alive.”

Ludwig Tieck (1773–1853) German poet, translator, editor, novelist, and critic

Das wahrhaft Schöne, Große und Erhabene, so wie es uns in Erstaunen und Verwunderung setzt, überrascht uns doch nicht als etwas Fremdes, Unerhörtes und Niegesehenes, sondern unser eigenstes Wesen wird uns in solchen Augenblicken klar, unsre tiefsten Erinnerungen werden erweckt, und unsre nächsten Empfindungen lebendig gemacht.
"Der Pokal", from Phantasus (1812-16) http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/misc/gutenberg-de/1996/gutenb/tieck/pokal/pokal2.htm; translation from Thomas Carlyle German Romance: Specimens of its Chief Authors, (London: Tait, 1827), vol. 2, p. 163.

Peter Kropotkin photo

“When we have but the will to do it, that very moment will Justice be done: that very instant the tyrants of the Earth shall bite the dust.”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

An Appeal to the Young (1880)

Sören Kierkegaard photo

“If a person is unwilling to make a decisive resolution, if he wants to cheat God of the heart’s daring venture in which a person ventures way out and loses sight of all shrewdness and probability, indeed, takes leave of his senses or at least all his worldly mode of thinking, if instead of beginning with one step he almost craftily seeks to find out something, to have the infinite certainty changed into a finite certainty, then this discourse will not be able to benefit him. There is an upside-downness that wants to reap before it sows; there is a cowardliness that wants to have certainty before it begins. There is a hypersensitivity so copious in words that it continually shrinks from acting; but what would it avail a person if, double-minded and fork-tongued he wanted to dupe God, trap him in probability, but refused to understand the improbable, that one must lose everything in order to gain everything, and understand it so honestly that, in the most crucial moment, when his soul is already shuddering at the risk, he does not again leap to his own aid with the explanation that he has not yet fully made a resolution but merely wanted to feel his way. Therefore, all discussion of struggling with God in prayer, of the actual loss (since if pain of annihilation is not actually suffered, then the sufferer is not yet out upon the deep, and his scream is not the scream of danger but in the face of danger) and the figurative victory cannot have the purpose of persuading anyone or of converting the situation into a task for secular appraisal and changing God’s gift of grace to the venture into temporal small change for the timorous. It really would not help a person if the speaker, by his oratorical artistry, led him to jump into a half hour’s resolution, by the ardor of conviction started a fire in him so that he would blaze in a momentary good intention without being able to sustain a resolution or to nourish an intention as soon as the speaker stopped talking.”

Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Hong, One Who Prays Aright Struggles In Prayer and is Victorious-In That God is Victorious p. 380-381
1840s, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses

John Ruysbroeck photo

“If every earthly pleasure were melted An intelligence in repose without images, an intuition in the light of God, and a spirit elevated in Purity to the Face of God, these three qualities united constitute the true contemplative life into a single experience and bestowed upon one man,
it would be as nothing when measured by the joy of which I write for here it is God who passes into the depths of us in all His purity,
and the soul is not only filled but overflowing.
This experience is that light that makes manifest to the soul the terrible desolation of such as live divorced from love;
it melts the man utterly; he is no longer master of his joy.
Such possession produces intoxication, the state of the spirit in which its bliss transcends the uttermost bounds of anticipation or desire.
Sometimes the ecstasy pours forth in song, sometimes in tears:
at one moment it finds expression in movement, at others in the intense stillness of burning, voiceless feeling.
Some men knowing this bliss wonder if others feel God as they do; some are assured that no living creature has ever had such experiences as theirs;
there are those who wonder that the world is not set aflame by this joy; and there are others who marvel at its nature, asking whence it comes, and what it is.
The body itself can know no greater pleasure upon earth than to participate in it;
and there are moments when the soul feels that it must shiver to fragments in the poignancy of this experience.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

An Anthology of Mysticism and Philosophy

William Pfaff photo

“These choices by small countries are vital for them, but may be more momentous than commonly understood for others as well, including the major powers, who presumptuously believe they are in control of events.”

William Pfaff (1928–2015) American journalist

Source: Barbarian Sentiments - How The American Century Ends (1989), Chapter 3, Central Europe, p. 70.

William Stanley Jevons photo