Quotes about moment
page 43

“Sometimes, I genuinely enjoy having conversations with journalists; enjoying the few moments of intimacy with a stranger is fascinating to me. But once in a while that backfires and you're suddenly reading something that has a bent on it that you didn't feel was in the least bit a part of the conversation that you thought you were having. Then you get overly protective and say very little and then you come out of the hole again.”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

The Observer staff (October 1, 2000 ) "Review: Interview: The truth is out here: X-files star Gillian Anderson has rejected the lure of Hollywood for the austere style of cult British director Terence Davies. What is she thinking of...", The Observer.
2000s

Feeling, Reading, Parting

“At the moment the world is restless. Only in the time of the system of the Mahdi all the streets will attain peace and tranquility.”

Harun Yahya (1956) Turkish author

29 April 2013.
A9 TV addresses, 2013

World, Peace, Time

“A painter is somebody who sees. I paint the moment when I set out. When I set out to see. And it’s the same thing for the viewer. When he approaches the canvas, he is advancing towards an encounter. The encounter with vision.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

short quotes, 14 September 1967; p. 67
1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

Painting

“Every thought about death takes a moment of life away.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Death http://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poem/21379/Death From the poems written in English

Life, Death

“The longer my production moves in a definite direction, the less gaily it progresses. But just now something new seems to be happening to the stream: it is broadening into a lake. I hope it will not lack a corresponding depth. I was the faithful image of a part of art history; I moved towards Impressionism and beyond it. I don't want to say that I grew out of it; I hope this is not so... In lucid moments, I now have a clear view of twelve years of the history of my inner self. First the cramped self, that self with the big blinkers, then the disappearance of the blinkers and the self, now gradually the re-emergence of a self without blinkers. It is good that one didn't know this in advance.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote (1911), Diary # 899; as cited by Francesco Mazzaferro, in 'The Diaries of Paul Klee Part Four', : Klee as an Expressionist and Constructivist Painter http://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.nl/2015/05/paul-klee-ev27.html 1911 - 1914

Faith, Hope, Art, History

“I've extended my hospitality to one of my friends, a former student of Gleyre's, who lacks a studio at the moment. Renoir, that's his name, is a real worker, he takes advantage of my models and helps me pay for them.”

Frédéric Bazille (1841–1870) French painter

In a letter to his parents, c. 1868; as quoted in Frédéric Bazille, Prophet of Impressionism (exhibition catalogue), Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn & Dixon Gallery, Memphis, 1992-93, p. 38
Renoir would move in with Bazille around 1868, and Bazille's letter is only one example of his charitable nature
1866 - 1870

Help

“It may be that everywhere else in the world, the ascendance of Flower Power began and ended in the sixties, Mr. Speaker, but in Montreal it began in 1971 and ended yesterday when Guy Lafleur retired. This is the end of a great era, Mr. Speaker. I am certain that the House and the entire population of Canada will join me in wishing him good luck in the future and thanking him for the unforgettable moments he has given us.”

Guy Lafleur (1951) Canadian ice hockey player

Canadian MP Lorne Nystrom comments on Lafleur's retirement, in the House of Commons. Quoted in Kevin Shea, "One on One with Guy Lafleur," http://www.legendsofhockey.net/html/spot_oneononep198802.htm Legends of Hockey.net (2003-03-16) About

World, Guy, Flowers, Future

“All that can really be said is that at some indeterminate point in the very distant past, for reasons unknown, there came the moment known to science as t = 0. We were on our way.”

Bill Bryson book A Short History of Nearly Everything

On the moment of creation; page 10
A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003)

Way, Distant, Science, Past

“You see I am like a surgeon in a hospital; all these [sketches / watercolors] lying around me are my patients, and as I walk about among them I notice those most in need of doctoring. I pick out some sickly looking specimen and say to myself, 'Only wait a moment, and I will find some remedy for you'; some need much medicine, and some even require a severe operation to bring them round. Look at that one in the corner. I believe it is suffering from jaundice, but doubtless I shall find a cure for it.”

Jan Hendrik Weissenbruch (1824–1903) Dutch painter of the Hague School (1824-1903)

as quoted by E. C. Cady, in 'The Art of Johannes Hendrick Weissenbruch' https://ia801702.us.archive.org/33/items/jstor-25540452/25540452.pdf, in 'Brush and Pencil, Volume 12', April 1904, pp. 51-52

Lying, Suffering, Waiting

“Beware! By Allah the son of Abu Quhafah (Abu Bakr) dressed himself with it (the caliphate) and he certainly knew that my position in relation to it was the same as the position of the axis in relation to the hand-mill. The flood water flows down from me and the bird cannot fly upto me. I put a curtain against the caliphate and kept myself detached from it.
Then I began to think whether I should assault or endure calmly the blinding darkness of tribulations wherein the grown up are made feeble and the young grow old and the true believer acts under strain till he meets Allah (on his death). I found that endurance thereon was wiser. So I adopted patience although there was pricking in the eye and suffocation (of mortification) in the throat. I watched the plundering of my inheritance till the first one went his way but handed over the Caliphate to Ibn al-Khattab after himself.
(Then he quoted al-A`sha's verse):
My days are now passed on the camel's back (in difficulty) while there were days (of ease) when I enjoyed the company of Jabir's brother Hayyan.
It is strange that during his lifetime he wished to be released from the caliphate but he confirmed it for the other one after his death. No doubt these two shared its udders strictly among themselves. This one put the Caliphate in a tough enclosure where the utterance was haughty and the touch was rough. Mistakes were in plenty and so also the excuses therefore. One in contact with it was like the rider of an unruly camel. If he pulled up its rein the very nostril would be slit, but if he let it loose he would be thrown. Consequently, by Allah people got involved in recklessness, wickedness, unsteadiness and deviation.
Nevertheless, I remained patient despite length of period and stiffness of trial, till when he went his way (of death) he put the matter (of Caliphate) in a group and regarded me to be one of them. But good Heavens! what had I to do with this "consultation"? Where was any doubt about me with regard to the first of them that I was now considered akin to these ones? But I remained low when they were low and flew high when they flew high. One of them turned against me because of his hatred and the other got inclined the other way due to his in-law relationship and this thing and that thing, till the third man of these people stood up with heaving breasts between his dung and fodder. With him his children of his grand-father, (Umayyah) also stood up swallowing up Allah's wealth like a camel devouring the foliage of spring, till his rope broke down, his actions finished him and his gluttony brought him down prostrate.
At that moment, nothing took me by surprise, but the crowd of people rushing to me. It advanced towards me from every side like the mane of the hyena so much so that Hasan and Husayn were getting crushed and both the ends of my shoulder garment were torn. They collected around me like the herd of sheep and goats. When I took up the reins of government one party broke away and another turned disobedient while the rest began acting wrongfully as if they had not heard the word of Allah saying:
That abode in the hereafter, We assign it for those who intend not to exult themselves in the earth, nor (to make) mischief (therein); and the end is (best) for the pious ones. (Qur'an, 28:83)
Yes, by Allah, they had heard it and understood it but the world appeared glittering in their eyes and its embellishments seduced them. Behold, by Him who split the grain (to grow) and created living beings, if people had not come to me and supporters had not exhausted the argument and if there had been no pledge of Allah with the learned to the effect that they should not acquiesce in the gluttony of the oppressor and the hunger of the oppressed I would have cast the rope of Caliphate on its own shoulders, and would have given the last one the same treatment as to the first one. Then you would have seen that in my view this world of yours is no better than the sneezing of a goat.”

Ali book Nahj al-Balagha

Known as the Sermon of ash-Shiqshiqiyyah (roar of the camel), It is said that when Amir al-mu'minin reached here in his sermon a man of Iraq stood up and handed him over a writing. Amir al-mu'minin began looking at it, when Ibn `Abbas said, "O' Amir al-mu'minin, I wish you resumed your Sermon from where you broke it." Thereupon he replied, "O' Ibn `Abbas it was like the foam of a Camel which gushed out but subsided." Ibn `Abbas says that he never grieved over any utterance as he did over this one because Amir al-mu'minin could not finish it as he wished to.
Nahj al-Balagha

Death, Hunger, Children, People

“I have a lot of interest in interior rhyming; not just rhyming at the end of the lines, but playing around with rhymes within the lines, playing with where the syllabic emphases in the sentences are, lining those up at strange moments in the line of the song. I’m not sure if that comes across or not.”

Joanna Newsom (1982) American musician

dustedmagazine.com, 19 April 2004

“All the worry people expend over not existing after they die, yet nary a one ever seems to spare a moment to worry about not having existed before they were conceived. Or at all. After all, one sperm over and we would have been our sisters, and we'd never have been missed.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, Cryoburn (2010)

People, Sister

“Like Rimbaud before them, the surrealists abandoned the aesthetic altogether; it takes a certain courage to leave poetry for Africa [as Rimbaud himself did]. They revealed their insight as essentially moral in never forgetting for a moment that most living is a process of conforming to an established order which is inhuman in its drives and consequences. Their hatred sustained them through all the humiliating situations in which the modern artist find himself, and led them to conceptions beyond the reach of more passive souls. For them true 'poetry' was freedom from mechanical social responses. No wonder they loved the work of children and the insane – if not the creatures themselves.”

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter

Source: 1940's, Beyond the Aesthetics (1946), pp. 39-40

Love, Children, Soul, Courage

“(Sylvia at typewriter) In the heat of the moment, I said a lot of unforgiveable things. Please call me. I've thought of a few more.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 148

“Never talk ill of anybody, be he a devotee, a monk, or an ordinary householder, nor despise any for a wrong act. After all, everyone is a child of the Lord. Who knows today's sinning will not make him a saint tomorrow? Other acts do not count so much as a moment's of love for the Lord. Blessed is he who has loved Him even for a moment. Saint or sinner, the Lord loves all.”

Swami Adbhutananda Disciple

The Apostles of Sri Ramakrishna

Love

“So now we stand at an epochal moment. The debate is over. The case has gone to the jury, and the jury is history. Events will soon reveal who was right, Bush or Chirac.”

David Brooks (1961) American journalist, commentator and editor

[David, Brooks, http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/379yqbvk.asp?pg=1, 48 Hours, Weekly Standard, March 17, 2003, May 24, 2011]
2000s

History

“[Fox] exhibited two pictures of this country; the one representing her at the end of the last glorious war, the other at the present moment. At the end of the last war this country was raised to a most dazzling height of splendour and respect. The French marine was in a manner annihilated, the Spanish rendered contemptible; the French were driven from America; new sources of commerce were opened, the old enlarged; our influence extended to a predominance in Europe, our empire of the ocean established and acknowledged, and our trade filling the ports and harbours of the wondering and admiring world. Now mark the degradation and the change, We have lost thirteen provinces of America; we have lost several of our Islands, and the rest are in danger; we have lost the empire of the sea; we have lost our respect abroad and our unanimity at home; the nations have forsaken us, they see us distracted and obstinate, and they leave us to our fate. Country! …This was your situation, when you were governed by Whig ministers and by Whig measures, when you were warmed and instigated by a just and a laudable cause, when you were united and impelled by the confidence which you had in your ministers, and when they were again strengthened and emboldened by your ardour and enthusiasm. This is your situation, when you are under the conduct of Tory ministers and a Tory system, when you are disunited, disheartened, and have neither confidence in your ministers nor union among yourselves; when your cause is unjust and your conductors are either impotent or treacherous.”

Charles James Fox (1749–1806) British Whig statesman

Speech in the House of Commons (27 November 1781), reprinted in J. Wright (ed.), The Speeches of the Rt. Hon. C. J. Fox in the House of Commons. Volume I (1815), p. 429.
1780s

Fate, War, World, Home

“I remember an old proverb. It says that youth thinks itself wise just as drunk men think themselves sober. Youth is not wise! Youth knows nothing about life! Youth knows nothing about anything except for massive cliches which for the most part through the media of pop songs are just foisted on them by middle-age entrepreneurs and exploiters who should know better. When we start thinking that pop music is close to God, then we'll think pop music is aesthetically better than it is. And it's only the aesthetic value of pop music that we're really concerned. I mean the only way we can judge Wagner or Beethoven or any other composer is aesthetically. We don't regard Wagner or Beethoven nor Shakespeare or Milton as great teachers. When we start claiming for Lennon or McCartney or Maharishi or any other of these pop prophets the ability to transport us to a region where God becomes manifest then I see red. We're satisfied with our little long playing record, ten pop numbers or thereabouts a side. This is great art, we've been told this by the great pundits of our age. And in consequence why should we bother to learn? There's nothing more delightful than to be told: "You don't have to learn, my boy. There's nothing in it. Modern art? There's nothing in it." When you're told these things you sit down with a sigh of relief: "Thank God I don't have to learn, I don't have to travel, I don't have to exert myself in the slightest. I am what I am. Youth is youth. Pop is pop. There's no need to progress. There's no need to do anything. Let us sit down, smoke our marijuana (an admirable thing in itself but not the end of anything), let us listen to our records and life has become a single moment. And the single moment is eternity. We're with God. Finis!”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Pop Music

Life, Men, God, Youth

“The poet is a brother speaking to a brother of "a moment of their other lives" — a moment that had been buried beneath the dust of the busy world.”

Edith Sitwell (1887–1964) British poet

"The Poet's Vision" (1959)

World, Business

“[Nietzsche’s doctrine of the eternal return] is what makes moments caught up in the immanence of return suddenly appear as ends. In every other system, don’t forget, these moments are viewed as means: Every moral system proclaims that “each moment of life ought to be motivated.””

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Return unmotivates the moment and frees life of ends.
Source: On Nietzsche (1945), p. xxxiii

Life, Motivation, Appearance, Forgetting

“And, O Lord, give us Faith. Give us Faith in Thee; Faith in our sons; Faith in each other; Faith in our united crusade. Let not the keenness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose. With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogancies. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister Nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

1940s, Prayer on D-Day (1944)

Men, World, Peace, Faith

“Most Illustrious and most Excellent Lady, our very dear Sister,- Confident of the circumstance that there can be no more efficacious and salutary medicine for the indisposition from which you are at present suffering than the announcement of good and happy news, we advise you that at this very moment we have received sure tidings of the capture of Camerino. We beg that you will do honour to this message by an immediate improvement, and inform us of it, because, tormented as we are to know you so ill, nothing, not even this felicitous event, can suffice to afford us pleasure. We beg you also kindly to convey the present to the Illustrious Lord Don Alfonso, your husband and our beloved Brother-in-law, to whom we are not writing to-day.”

Cesare Borgia (1475–1507) Duke of Romagna and former Catholic cardinal

Cesare's letter to Lucrezia (July, 1502), as quoted by Rafael Sabatini, 'The Life of Cesare Borgia', Chapter XIII: Urbino and Camerino.

Happiness, Pleasure, Law, Confidence

“De Chirico [Italian painter, later admired by the Surrealists as 'early Surrealist'] found himself in 1912 confronted with the problem of following one of the roads already opened or of opening a new road. He avoided Fauvism as well as Cubism and introduced what could be called 'metaphysical painting'. Instead of exploiting the coming medium of abstraction, he organized on his canvases the meeting of elements which could only meet in a 'metaphysical world'. These elements, painted in the minutest technique, were 'exposed' on a horizontal plane in orthodox perspective. This technique, in opposition to the Cubist or the purely abstract formula in full bloom at the moment, protected de Chirico’s position and allowed him to lay down the foundation of what was to become Surrealism ten years later.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

Quote by Marcel Duchamp, 1943, from 'Appreciations of other artists': Giorgio de Chirico (painter, writer, illustrator); as cited in Catalog, Collection of the Societé Anonyme, eds. Michel Sanouillet / Elmer Peterson, London 1975, pp. 143- 159
1921 - 1950

World, Problem, Painting

“[T]he labor of keeping house is labor in its most naked state, for labor is toil that never finishes, toil that has to be begun again the moment it is completed, toil that is destroyed and consumed by the life process.”

Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) American writer

"The Vita Activa", p. 158. First published in The New Yorker (18 October 1958)
On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

Life, Housing

“Well, there are certain stock words that I have found myself using a great deal. When I become aware of them, it is an alarm signal meaning I am falling back on something that has served in the past—it is a sign of not thinking at the present moment, not that there is anything intrinsically bad about certain words or phrases.”

John Ashbery (1927–2017) poet from the United States

Source: Paris Review Interview (1983)

Thinking, Past

“Tea! Thou soft, thou sober, sage, and venerable liquid, thou innocent pretence for bringing the wicked of both sexes together in a morning; thou female tongue-running, smile-smoothing, heart- opening, wink-tipping cordial, to whose glorious insipidity I owe the happiest moment of my life, let me fall prostrate thus, and … adore thee.”

Colley Cibber (1671–1757) British poet laureate

The Lady's Last Stake (1707), Act I, sc. i.

Life, Smile, Sex, Heart

“Examine your own hearts. Do you see there any habit or custom which you know is wrong in the sight of God? If you do, don't delay for a moment in attacking it. Resolve at once to lay it aside. Nothing darkens the eyes of the mind so much, and deadens the conscience so surely, as an allowed sin. It may be a little one, but it is not any less dangerous.”

J.C. Ryle (1816–1900) Anglican bishop

Thoughts for Young Men.

God, Heart

“War, as Rousseau pointed out long before Tolstoy took up the theme, only makes manifest events already determined by moral causes (Emile, Bk. IV). For this reason our main energies must be directed against the moral causes of war. Those moral causes lie within ourselves — and pacifists should not suppose for a moment that they are pure in heart in this respect.”

Herbert Read (1893–1968) English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art

The Redempton of the Robot (1969)
Other Quotes

War, Lie, Heart

“When the moment arrives for taking decisions, facing responsibilities, entering upon sacrifices — decisions which ought to be taken before they are imposed, responsibilities which ought to be welcomed, for the initiative must be secured and the offensive launched — where should we find a man equal to these uncertain and dangerous tasks were it not among men of a superior stamp, men eager for responsibilities? He must indeed be a man who, being deeply imbued with a will to conquer, shall derive from that will (as well as from a clear perception of the only means that lead to victory) the strength to make an unwavering use of the most formidable rights, to approach with courage all difficulties and all sacrifices, to risk everything; even honour — for a beaten general is disgraced for ever.”

Ferdinand Foch (1851–1929) French soldier and military theorist

Source: Precepts and Judgments (1919), p. 140

Men, Courage, Decision, Victory

“The roar of the.45 shook the room. Charlotte staggered back a step. Her eyes were a symphony of incredulity, an unbelieving witness to truth. Slowly, she looked down at the ugly swelling in her naked belly where the bullet went in.
"How c-could you?" she gasped.
I had only a moment before talking to a corpse, but I got it in.
"It was easy," I said.”

Mickey Spillane book I, the Jury

I, the Jury (1947)

Truth

“Unless in fact he had a very dim memory of her and the photograph had blown on the tiny little ember of his connection with his granny, like a faint orange glow in a heap of soft grey ash, and for a moment he really could remember when he had sat on his granny’s lap and smiled at her and patted her wrinkly old face — his mother said he smiled at her and she was really pleased.”

Edward St. Aubyn (1960) British writer

At Last, Chapter 10

Smile, Memory

“But, dear brother, think, further think for a moment, what joy filled our hearts, and with what surprise we must have bowed, (for who would not have bowed the knee for such a blessing?) when we received under his hand the Holy Priesthood as he said, ‘Upon you my fellow-servants, in the name of Messiah, I confer this Priesthood and this authority, which shall remain upon earth, that the Sons of Levi may yet offer an offering unto the Lord in righteousness!”

Oliver Cowdery (1806–1850) American Mormon leader

Thinking, Heart, Joy

“The relevant fact about the history of the British Isles and above all of England is its separateness in a political sense from the history of continental Europe. The English have never belonged to it and have always known that they did not belong. The assertion contains no element of paradox. The Angevin Empire contradicts it as little as the English claim to the throne of France; neither the possession of Gascony nor the inheritance of Hanover made Edward I or George III anything but English sovereigns. When Henry VIII declared that 'this realm of England is an empire (imperium) of itself', he was making not a new claim but a very old one; but he was making it at a very significant point of time. He meant—as Edward I had meant, when he said the same over two hundred years before—that there is an imperium on the continent, but that England is another imperium outside its orbit and is endowed with the plenitude of its own sovereignty. The moment at which Henry VIII repeated this assertion was that of what is misleadingly called 'the reformation'—misleadingly, because it was, and is, essentially a political and not a religious event. The whole subsequent history of Britain and the political character of the British people have taken their colour and trace their unique quality from that moment and that assertion. It was the final decision that no authority, no law, no court outside the realm would be recognised within the realm. When Cardinal Wolsey fell, the last attempt had failed to bring or keep the English nation within the ambit of any external jurisdiction or political power: since then no law has been made for England outside England, and no taxation has been levied in England by or for an authority outside England—or not at least until the proposition that Britain should accede to the Common Market.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech to The Lions' Club, Brussels (24 January 1972), from The Common Market: Renegotiate or Come Out (Elliot Right Way Books, 1973), pp. 49-50
1970s

People, Law, History, Decision

“Tennyson follows his feelings in creating each line. He follows the music in his head. If you had asked him, at the end of the day, to describe the prosody of the poem to you, he would no doubt have had to think for a moment before he could answer you, not because he was ignorant of the terms, but because he had been writing a poem, not a metrical exercise. At every point, he was exerting his free will. And the outcome of that exertion was the form.”

James Fenton (1949) poet

Source: An Introduction to English Poetry (2002), Ch. 4: The Sense of Form (pp. 24-25)

Music, Feeling, Exercises, Thinking

“…he would say that he doubted whether it was possible for anyone who had not visited India, even Members of Her Majesty's Government, to realize how incredibly strong, and, at the same time, how incredibly slender, our position in India was. It was strong far beyond ordinary human strength so long as we showed ourselves capable of ruling; but it was weaker than the weakest the moment we showed the faintest indications of relaxing our grasp.”

Lord Randolph Churchill (1849–1895) British politician

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1885/may/04/supply-vote-of-credit-report in the House of Commons (4 May 1885)

Strong, Time

“When someone becomes a Christian, he immediately cares about those around him. He cares about those unwanted in society - the poor, the bad, and the ugly (those who lack what society esteems). This is because God put His love within him the moment that he repented and trusted the Saviour.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (2009)

Love, God

“We have been given an assignment as a monarchy, and we do as well as we can … We try to be as little populistic as possible. We don't do anything on the spur of the moment to win an opinion poll, or short-term popularity.”

Harald V of Norway (1937) King of Norway

Interview in Wenche Fuglehaug (November 21, 2005). " Norway's monarchy turns 100 http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1161406.ece", Aftenposten, Aftenposten Multimedia A/S, Oslo, Norway.

“I think that’s the beauty of the Olympics. There’s always a story. There’s always someone you’re invested in. There are so many Olympic moments that resonate with people all across Canada, and I think that’s the beauty of it. We’re just one of those stories and we’re grateful for the support we’ve received.”

Tessa Virtue (1989) Canadian ice dancer

Tessa Virtue, Interview with Kristina Rutherford for Sportsnet.ca (January 2018)

People, Beauty, Support, Thinking

“If we could all rephrase the question from "What was your most embarrassing moment?" to "What was your most embarrassing year?" Then I might be able to give you an honest answer.”

Buddy Wakefield (1974) American poet

Thin Ice
Poetry

Question

“Lincoln. His commitment to preserving the United States was so strong and so deep that he was willing to do whatever it took to succeed. Would you like to be in his shoes? Just think about that for a moment. Not just Lincoln. There are hundreds of examples in history.”

James M. McPherson (1936) American historian

1990s, An Exchange With a Civil War Historian (June 1995)

Shoe, History, Thinking, Strong

“The real problem of living creatures is that for most of the time they are not aware that they are an active force. They become aware of it briefly -- as the lion tracks its prey, as the warrior gallops into battle -- but, for the most part, they feel as helpless as leaves carried on the wind. When we look back at our struggles, we often become aware of how much we have achieved. Meanwhile, as we plod along in the present moment, trying to anticipate the next problem, life seems a long uphill grind. Yet man has always had these moments in which he sees that things are not as bad as they appear -- those moments of exaltation or deep relaxation, when he suddenly becomes aware of the powers of his own mind. It is in these moments that he suddenly grasps the basic nature of his problem: that he is stifled and blinded by "close-upness" -- by the sheer pressure of the world against his senses. The moments of insight permit him a bird's-eye view of his own life, and make him aware that his everyday consciousness amounts to a worm's-eye view.”

Colin Wilson book The Misfits: A Study of Sexual Outsiders

Source: The Misfits: A Study of Sexual Outsiders (1988), p. 248

Life, World, Feeling, Nature

“The world knows that last Monday a meeting assembled to discuss the question: "How Shall Slavery Be Abolished?" The world also knows that that meeting was invaded, insulted, captured by a mob of gentlemen, and thereafter broken up and dispersed by the order of the mayor, who refused to protect it, though called upon to do so. If this had been a mere outbreak of passion and prejudice among the baser sort, maddened by rum and hounded on by some wily politician to serve some immediate purpose, - a mere exceptional affair, - it might be allowed to rest with what has already been said. But the leaders of the mob were gentlemen. They were men who pride themselves upon their respect for law and order. These gentlemen brought their respect for the law with them and proclaimed it loudly while in the very act of breaking the law. Theirs was the law of slavery. The law of free speech and the law for the protection of public meetings they trampled under foot, while they greatly magnified the law of slavery. The scene was an instructive one. Men seldom see such a blending of the gentleman with the rowdy, as was shown on that occasion. It proved that human nature is very much the same, whether in tarpaulin or broadcloth. Nevertheless, when gentlemen approach us in the character of lawless and abandoned loafers, - assuming for the moment their manners and tempers, - they have themselves to blame if they are estimated below their quality.”

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

1880s, Plea for Free Speech in Boston (1880)

Men, World, Law, Question

“The evil spirit of love left his soul for a moment, but returned, though with a strange and lurid aspect, bringing with him other and worse spirits than himself—hate, revenge, blood-thirstiness—all merged in and coloured by the excited and fanatic temper of the time.”

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

Other Gift Books

Love, Hate, Soul, Revenge

“"The Vigils are more important than the school," Archie snapped. "You should have come to me, Carter. Told me your doubts. I'm not the enemy. Instead, you went to the enemy-" "I thought it was the right thing to do." "The right thing to do," Archie mocked. "You guys make me want to vomit. With your precious honor and pride. Football hero. Boxing champ. Strutting the campus with your chest out and your head high. Carter, the ace of aces…" Carter had never heard such rancor, such venom in Archie's voice, Archie, who was always so cool, so detached, like he had been a moment before.”

Robert Cormier book Beyond the Chocolate War

Source: Beyond the Chocolate War (1985), p. 207

School, Guy, Football, Box

“Time flies and draws us with it. The moment in which I am speaking is already far from me.”

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636–1711) French poet and critic

Le temps fuit, et nous traine avec soi :
Le moment ou je parle est déjà loin de moi.
Épitres (1701) III, 47

Time, Drawing

“We were picking apart a problem in linguistic history and, as it were, examining close up the peak period of glory in the history of a language; in minutes we had traced the path which had taken it several centuries. And I was powerfully gripped by the vision of transitoriness: the way before our eyes such a complex, ancient, venerable organism, slowly built up over many generations, reaches its highest point, which already contains the germ of decay, and the whole intelligently articulated structure begins to droop, to degenerate, to totter toward its doom. And at the same time the thought abruptly shot through me, with a joyful, startled amazement, that despite the decay and death of that language it had not been lost, that its youth, maturity, and downfall were preserved in our memory, in our knowledge of it and its history, and would survive and could at any time be reconstructed in the symbols and formulas of scholarship as well as in the recondite formulations of the Glass Bead Game. I suddenly realized that in the language, or at any rate in the spirit of the Glass Bead Game, everything actually was all-meaningful, that every symbol and combination of symbols led not hither and yon, not to single examples, experiments, and proofs, but into the center, the mystery and innermost heart of the world, into primal knowledge. Every transition from major to minor in a sonata, every transformation of a myth or a religious cult, every classical or artistic formulation was, I realized in that flashing moment, if seen with a meditative mind, nothing but a direct route into the interior of the cosmic mystery, where in the alternation between inhaling and exhaling, between heaven and earth, between Yin and Yang, holiness is forever being created.”

Hermann Hesse book The Glass Bead Game

The Glass Bead Game (1943)

Death, Youth, World, Way

“Making mental sermons, can spoil delicious moments.”

Remy de Gourmont (1858–1915) French writer

A Virgin Heart (trans. 1922)

“There are moments when her voice is all he needs.”

Max Frisch book Montauk

Montauk (1975)

“Oh some I know! I have embalmed the days,
Even the sacred moments when we played,
All innocent of passion, uncorrupt,
At noon and evening in the flame-heart’s shade.”

Claude McKay (1889–1948) Jamaican American writer, poet

Flame-Heart, l. 26-29

Passion, Heart

“Economics is in high degree a pedagogical discipline, and an economist must be in close touch with popular psychology in order to know what ought to be said at any particular moment.”

Gustav Cassel (1866–1945) Swedish economist

Quoted in Bertil Ohlin (1972, 107); as cited in: Carlson, Benny, and Lars Jonung. "Knut Wicksell, Gustav Cassel, Eli Heckscher, Bertil Ohlin and Gunnar Myrdal on the role of the economist in public debate." Econ Journal Watch 3.3 (2006): p. 525

“Our problem at the moment is a problem of success.”

Edward Heath (1916–2005) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1970–1974)

Six weeks before the three-day week, November 1973.[citation needed]
Prime Minister

Problem, Success

“When we do not expect anything we can be ourselves. That is our way, to live fully in each moment of time.”

Shunryu Suzuki (1904–1971) Japanese Buddhist missionary

Shikantaza: Living Fully In Each Moment (page 4)
Not Always So, practicing the true spirit of Zen (2002)

Way, Time

“My spring has been much better than every travelling springs of the last two years — I have been working — or trying to work my garden into a kind of permanent shape... At the moment I have three rose bushes so full of red and yellow roses that they look on fire — they are really astonishing — You would really laugh to see them — two are very tall — the other smaller — It is a rose that is the reddest red on top and yellow underneath — then sometimes a few spots that are deep butter yellow — and an odd iris — dirty lavender petals reaching up — a pale lavender mixed with yellow that greys it and yellow petals mixed with a little lavender drooping down — very handsome — There are lots of ordinary colors too — many kinds. Well — that's my life”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

In a letter to Anita Pollitzer Abiquiu, New Mexico, (May 31, 1955), from The Complete Correspondence of Georgia O'Keeffe & Anita Pollitzer, ed. Clive Giboire, Touchstone Books, Simon & Schuster Inc., New York, 1990, p. 298
1950 - 1970

Life, Color, Travel, Spring

“Discussing coronation ceremonies with Vidal, "I quickly moved on to…the moment when two masons appear and ask the newly crowned king for instructions as to his tomb. 'Masons? Masons! Yes. You one? I'm one. But I've forgotten all the odds and ends. Dull, really."”

Edward VIII of the United Kingdom (1894–1972) king of the United Kingdom and its dominions in 1936

Vidal, Palimpsest, 206

Appearance

“What has set the mass in motion for any length of time is then called great. It is given the name of a historical power. When, for example, the vulgar mob has appropriated or adapted to its needs some religious idea, has defended it stubbornly and dragged it along for centuries, then the originator of that idea is called great. There is the testimony of thousands of years for it, we are told. But this is Nietzsche’s and Kierkegaard’s idea the noblest and highest does not affect the masses at all, either at the moment or later. Therefore the historical success of a religion, its toughness and persistence, witness against its founder’s greatness rather than for it.”

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), p. 20

Religion, Idea, Time, Success

“Benjamin describes the revolutionary moment when the past suddenly bursts into the present, as if rising from the grave to rectify the wrongs it suffered at the hands of a banally triumphant progress. Thus Benjamin’s historical materialism implies a capacity to link otherwise separate and distant moments in time through a profound empathy. The empathy takes on a revolutionary character by disrupting the regularity of quotidian temporality. Without this sort of tie to the past, no critical stance in the present is possible.”

Russell Berman (1950) American academic

Source: Fiction Sets You Free: Literature, Liberty and Western Culture (2007), p. 18.

Suffering, Distant, Time, Past

“There were moments - when Jeopardy came on, in the car during radio trivia challenges, or for practically any question I couldn't answer in any subject - that Rogerson simply amazed me. I started to seek out facts, just to stump him, but it never worked. He was that sharp.”

Sarah Dessen book Dreamland

Dreamland (2000)

Cars, Question

“The moments of perfect pleasure in Johnson's songs, and the beauty of those songs, remind one that it is not the simple presence of evil that is unbearable; what is unbearable is the impossibility of reconciling the facts of evil with the beauty of the world.”

Greil Marcus (1945) American historian

Marcus on Robert Johnson in Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music (1975, fourth revision May, 1997) p. 31.

Pleasure, World, Beauty, Evil

“All springs begin in this way, from those enormous and astounding horoscopes, each beyond the scale of a single season of the year. And in each one—be it nevermore said, let me say it here—there is everything: endless processions and demonstrations, revolutions and barricades. And through them all at a certain moment, the hot wind of remembrance blows, that boundlessness of sadness and intoxication seeking in vain its counterpart in reality.”

Bruno Schulz (1892–1942) Polish novelist and painter

“Spring” http://www.schulzian.net/translation/sanatorium/spring01.htm His father, The seasons

Sadness, Way, Spring, Reality

“The atmosphere in [the last twenty] years has been, in many parts of the country, poisoned. I do not wish to say anything here about where the faults may lie. But I do want to say that I realise, as you do, that a great deal of the propaganda which has been done during the last twenty years—the propaganda of a kind that teaches class hatred—has in many places done its evil and its poisonous work…the work that has been done in that direction cannot be undone in a moment. And it will mean the utmost goodwill, the utmost force of example to bring about, to any great extent, something better and something on which we may erect a permanent and stable building.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Leeds (13 March 1925), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 66-67.
1925

Lie, Evil, Parting, Country

“How shocking must thy summons be, O Death!
To him that is at ease in his possessions!
Who, counting on long years of pleasure here,
Is quite unfurnished for the world to come.
In that dread moment, how the frantic soul
Raves round the walls of her clay tenement;
Runs to each avenue, and shrieks for help;
But shrieks in vain.”

Hugh Blair (1718–1800) British philosopher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 175.

Death, Pleasure, World, Soul

“You and I possess within ourselves, at every moment of our lives and under all circumstances, the power to transform the quality of our lives.”

Werner Erhard (1935) Critical Thinker and Author

Interview with William Warren Bartley, cited in [Bartley, William Warren, w:William Warren Bartley, Werner Erhard: the Transformation of a Man: the Founding of est, Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1978, New York, 104, 0-517-53502-5]

“I think if Obama is reelected, then that'll be a disaster of immeasurable proportions. If the government takes over large segments of the economy, we will become a socialist state. The salvation of the Republican Party, and of the country and of the world, will be changing the conservative moment to reflect the principles of Abraham Lincoln. The platform on which Lincoln was elected in 1860 quoted part of the Declaration of Independence. Government is based on the consent of the governed.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2010s, Interview with Eric Benson (2012)

World, Quotes, Thinking, Change

“What is the use trying to describe the flowing of a river at any one moment, and then at the next moment, and then at the next, and the next, and the next? You wear out. You say: There is a great river, and it flows through this land, and we have named it History.”

Ursula K. Le Guin book Four Ways to Forgiveness

"A Man of the People", p. 108
Four Ways to Forgiveness (1995)

History

“The moment juries or judges go beyond their functions, and take upon themselves to lay down the law or find the facts, not according to the law as it is, but according to the law as they think it ought to be, then the certainty of the law is at an end; there is nothing to rely upon; we are left to the infinite variety and uncertainty of human opinion; to caprice which may at any moment influence the best of us, to feelings and prejudices, perhaps excellent in themselves, but which may distort or disturb our judgment, and distract our minds from the single simple operation of ascertaining whether the facts proved bring the case within the law as we are bound to take it.”

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge (1820–1894) British lawyer, judge and Liberal politician

1 Cababe & Ellis' Q. B. D. Rep. 134.
Reg. v. Ramsey (1883)

Law, Feeling, Thinking

“There is an inward state of the heart which makes truth credible the moment it is stated. It is credible to some men because of what they are. Love is credible to a loving heart; purity is credible to a pure mind; life is credible to a spirit in which life beats strongly — it is incredible to other men.”

Frederick William Robertson (1816–1853) British writer and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 605.

Love, Life, Men, Truth

“What has changed is that I've gained a lot more sympathy for Lincoln. At the time I was doing my dissertation I tended to take the Wendell Phillips view of Lincoln. Why didn't he move more quickly? Why was he so conservative on some of these issues? Why didn't he seize this revolutionary moment? The more I've learned about it, the more I realize that Lincoln was under extraordinary pressure from all sides. In his position he could not have acted like Wendell Phillips. He would have lost the whole war.”

James M. McPherson (1936) American historian

1990s, An Exchange With a Civil War Historian (June 1995)

War, Learning, Change, Time

“Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail :
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Kubla Khan

Kubla Khan (1797 or 1798)

Dance

Cyril Connolly book Enemies of Promise

Source: Enemies of Promise (1938), Part 2: The Charlock’s Shade, Ch. 15: The Slimy Mallows (p. 122-123)

Death, Truth, Hope, Way

“The emergence of a unified cognitive moment relies on the coordination of scattered mosaics of functionally specialized brain regions. Here we review the mechanisms of large-scale integration that counterbalance the distributed anatomical and functional organization of brain activity to enable the emergence of coherent behaviour and cognition. Although the mechanisms involved in large-scale integration are still largely unknown, we argue that the most plausible candidate is the formation of dynamic links mediated by synchrony over multiple frequency bands.”

Francisco Varela (1946–2001) Chilean biologist

Francisco Varela*, Jean-Philippe Lachaux*, Eugenio Rodriguez, and Jacques Martinerie (2001) "The brainweb: phase synchronization and large-scale integration" in: Nature Rviews Vol 2. (April 2001). p. 229 ( online http://www.saminverso.com/brg/archive/varela%202001%20Brainweb-Phase%20synchronization%20and%20large%20scale%20integration.pdf)

“It is absolutely just to avoid all useless sacrifices. Therefore, it is so important to clear up the real possibilities that dependent America may have of liberating itself through pacific means. For us, the solution to this question is quite clear: the present moment may or may not be the proper one for starting the struggle, but we cannot harbor any illusions, and we have no right to do so, that freedom can be obtained without fighting.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Message to the Tricontinental (1967)

Question, Freedom, Fight, Dependency

“Death is in the nature of the universe, Barker. Death is only the operation of a mechanism. All the universe has been running down from the moment of its creation. Did you expect a machine to care what it acted upon? Death is like sunlight or a falling star; they don’t care where they fall. Death cannot see the pennants on a lance, or the wreath of glory in a dying man’s hand. Flags and flowers are the inventions of life. When a man dies, he falls into enemy hands—an ignorant enemy, who doesn’t merely spit on banners but who doesn’t even know what banners are. No ordinary man could stand to find that out. You found it out today. You sat in the laboratory and were speechless at the injustice of it. You’d never thought that justice was only another human invention.”

Algis Budrys book Rogue Moon

Source: Rogue Moon (1960), Chapter 5, Section 6 (p. 117)

Life, Death, Justice, Star

“A Christian ought to be disposed and prepared to keep in mind that he has to reckon with God every moment of his life.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Page 28.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)

Life, God

“Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark. Nobody knows what is going to happen to him from one moment to the next, or how one will bear it. This is irreducible. And it's true of everybody. Now, it is true that the nature of society is to create, among its citizens, an illusion of safety; but it is also absolutely true that the safety is always necessarily an illusion. Artists are here to disturb the peace.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

"An interview with James Baldwin" (1961), in Conversations with James Baldwin, p. 21

Peace, Nature

“We are gathered in the cause of liberty; this is a unique moment. The great democracies face new and serious threats – yet seem to be losing confidence in their own calling and competence. Economic, political and national security challenges proliferate, and they are made worse by the tendency to turn inward. The health of the democratic spirit itself is at issue. And the renewal of that spirit is the urgent task at hand.”

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

2010s, 2017, Speech at "Spirit of Liberty: At Home, In the World" event (2017)

Health, Democracy, Confidence

“The significant problems of living organisms are seldom those in which one can rigidly maintain constant all but two variables. Living things are more likely to present situations in which a half-dozen, or even several dozen quantities are all varying simultaneously, and in subtly interconnected ways. Often they present situations in which the essentially important quantities are either non-quantitative, or have at any rate eluded identification or measurement up to the moment. Thus biological and medical problems often involve the consideration of a most complexly organized whole.”

Warren Weaver (1894–1978) American mathematician

Source: Science and Complexity, 1948, p. 536

Way, Problem

“I'm weary of conjectures,—this must end 'em.
Thus am I doubly armed: my death and life,
My bane and antidote, are both before me:
This in a moment brings me to an end;
But this informs me I shall never die.
The soul, secured in her existence, smiles
At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years;
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,
Unhurt amidst the war of elements,
The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.”

Joseph Addison book Cato

Act V, scene i.
Cato, A Tragedy (1713)

Life, Death, War, Youth

“Don't allow the lucid moment to dissolve
Let the radiant thought last in stillness
though the page is almost filled and the flame flickers
We haven't risen yet to the level of ourselves.”

Adam Zagajewski (1945) Poet

Don't Allow The Lucid Moment To Dissolve.

“And then a funny thing happened to me…except when I think about it, it wasn't very funny at all. There must be a line in all of us, a very clear one, just like the line that divides the light side of a planet from the dark. I think they call that line the terminator. That's a very good word for it. Because at that moment I was freaking out, and at the next I was as cool as a cucumber.”

Stephen King book Rage

Rage (1977)

Thinking, Light

“Think of the majesty of that moment in this dying world's history, when Jesus Christ declared that to the Christian death was only a sleep. Outside of that small dwelling in Capernaum, a great race of men rushed and toiled as they harassed continents and seas; mighty events marshaled themselves into annals and pageants. What was inside? In one inconspicuous chamber of a now forgotten house, man's Redeemer, unobserved, martyred man's final enemy. There Immanuel subdued death forever.”

Charles Seymour Robinson (1829–1899) American pastor, editor and compiler of hymns

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 64.

Death, Men, World, History

“These experiences are not 'religious' in the ordinary sense. They are natural, and can be studied naturally. They are not 'ineffable' in the sense the sense of incommunicable by language. Maslow also came to believe that they are far commoner than one might expect, that many people tend to suppress them, to ignore them, and certain people seem actually afraid of them, as if they were somehow feminine, illogical, dangerous. 'One sees such attitudes more often in engineers, in mathematicians, in analytic philosophers, in book keepers and accountants, and generally in obsessional people'. The peak experience tends to be a kind of bubbling-over of delight, a moment of pure happiness. 'For instance, a young mother scurrying around her kitchen and getting breakfast for her husband and young children. The sun was streaming in, the children clean and nicely dressed, were chattering as they ate. The husband was casually playing with the children: but as she looked at them she was suddenly so overwhelmed with their beauty and her great love for them, and her feeling of good fortune, that she went into a peak experience…”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: New Pathways In Psychology: Maslow and the Post-Freudian Revolution (1972), p. 17

Love, Happiness, Children, People

“Looking for God—or Heaven—by exploring space is like reading or seeing all Shakespeare's plays in the hope that you will find Shakespeare as one of the characters or Stratford as one of the places. Shakespeare is in one sense present at every moment in every play.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

"The Seeing Eye", in Christian Reflections (1967), p. 167

God, Hope, Sense, Reading

“Arms! arms! my friends, with speed my arms supply,
'Tis our last hour, and summons us to die;
My arms!—in vain you hold me,—let me go—
Give, give me back this moment to the foe.
'Tis well—we will not tamely perish all,
But die revenged, and triumph in our fall.”

Christopher Pitt (1699–1748) English poet

Book II, line 899
The Æneid of Virgil (1740)

Revenge, Speed

“Going to tell you something, Hank. Hand me that bat. Now I'm going to show you the whole secret of how I hit those home runs. Only fellow I ever told it to was Lou Gehrig, when poor Lou first came up to the Yanks and Miller Huggins was trying to make a left-field hitter out of him. Look. See how this grip makes your wrist break at the right moment? Throws the whole weight of the bat into the ball. With this grip, you've just got to follow through. I kept it a secret a long time.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

Speaking with Hank Greenberg on Sunday, February 23, 1947; as quoted in "Tips From the Bambino: Ruth Reveals Hitting Secret to Greenberg; Convalescing Babe Congratulates Hank On Decision to Play" by Bob Considine (INS), in The Philadelphia Inquirer (February 25, 1947)

Secret, Home, Time

“No matter how complete the despair, no matter how bitter the cynicism, a possibility beckons of a world more beautiful and a life more magnificent than what we know today. Though we may rationalize it, it is not rational. We become aware of it in moments, gaps in the rush and press of modern life. These moments come to us alone in nature, or with a baby, making love, playing with children, caring for a dying person, making music for the sake of music or beauty for the sake of beauty. At such times, a simple and easy joy shows us the futility of the vast, life-consuming program of management and control.”

Charles Eisenstein (1967) American writer

The Ascent of Humanity (2007)

Love, Life, Children, World

“The relation between physical sanitary laws and the national welfare is now hardly disputed. At this moment the cholera is stealthily feeling its terrible way along the edges of Europe to this country, and there is not an intelligent man who does not know that it is a divine vengeance upon uncleanliness. Let it seize the unclean city of New York, and it will riot in horror and devastation. Panic will empty the palaces, trade will stop in the warehouses. Those who can will flee, while the poor and wretched, poisoned in tenement-houses, will be huddled in heaps of agony and death. Does any man say that cholera is God's remedy for overpopulation? On the contrary, it is only the ghastly proof that God's laws of human health are disregarded. It is not a proclamation that the world is over-peopled; it is merely a warning for the world to provide decently for its population. God does not create men in his image to rot in tenement-houses, and he will make squalor and filth and misery plague-spots threatening the fairest prosperity, until that prosperity acknowledges in vast sanitary reforms that cleanliness is next to godliness. And if the dread pestilence now approaching our shores would frighten us into universal purgation of our foul cities, it would be seen at this moment hovering in the wintry air, not an angry demon, but a stem angel with a sword of fire to open the path of knowledge and humanity and civilization.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Death, Men, God, People

“One day, maybe she'd stick around to explore her own capacity for the dark, but at the moment all she wanted was a cheeseburger.”

Lisa Alther book Kinflicks

Kinflicks

“Let any one try, I will not say to arrest, but to notice or attend to, the present moment of time. One of the most baffling experiences occurs. Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Source: 1890s, The Principles of Psychology (1890), Ch. 15

Time

“Either we will sink into a final coma and end it all or, as I trust and believe, we will awaken to the truth of our peril, a truth as great as life itself, and, like a person who has swallowed a lethal poison but shakes off his stupor at the last moment and vomits the poison up, we will break through the layers of our denials, put aside our fainthearted excuses, and rise up to cleanse the earth of nuclear weapons.”

Jonathan Schell book The Fate of the Earth

" The Choice http://books.google.com/books?id=tYKJsAEs1oQC&q=%22Either+we+will+sink+into+the+final+coma+and+end+it+all+or+as+I+trust+and+believe+we+will+awaken+to+the+truth+of+our+peril+a+truth+as+great+as+life+itself+and+like+a+person+who+has+swallowed+a+lethal+poison+but+shakes+off+his+stupor+at+the+last+moment+and+vomits+the+poison+up+we+will+break+through+the+layers+of+our+denials+put+aside+our+fainthearted+excuses+and+rise+up+to+cleanse+the+earth+of+nuclear+weapons%22&pg=PA231#v=onepage," The Fate of the Earth (1982)

Life, Truth, Personality

“No American will think it wrong of me if I proclaim that to have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy. I could not foretell the course of events. I do not pretend to have measured accurately the martial might of Japan, but now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all! … Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Post-war years (1945–1955)
Source: The Second World War, Volume III : The Grand Alliance (1950) Chapter 32 (Pearl Harbor).

Death, Fate, War, Thinking

“O Heaven! Today I am sick and tired
Of the colors and forms of this world! …
I close my eyes to disregard the present,
Gradually shifting into the past upon my eyelids.
I close my eyes to let the dark shadows arise boundlessly,
Immense as in the deep of night,
To let my soul grow dark with the artificial,
In the world of the dead so long awaited.
Let the shades of ghosts and demons one by one appear.
Let their cries, their shouts of epilogue, reverberate in my ear.
Let me roll about, my soul intoxicated with illusion,
To put out of mind for a few minutes the scenes of this world!
Let my soul soar rapidly over great distances
In the dark night shadows of my eyelids,
And proudly assert: Here is a world
Created in a moment of grief.”

Chế Lan Viên (1920–1989) Vietnamese writer

"Creation", as quoted in "Shattered Identities and Contested Images: Reflections of Poetry and History in 20th-Century Vietnam" by Neil Jamieson, in Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1992, p. 89, and in Understanding Vietnam by Neil Jamieson (University of California Press, 1995), ISBN 978-0520916586, p. 164

World, Color, Soul, Appearance

“The emergence of new media (and therefore artistic) formats is certainly interesting. But etching information into copper plates is just as exciting. We think that the perpetual return of 'the new', to cite Walter Benjamin, is nothing to write home about - except perhaps for the slave-drivers in the fashion industry. We've never been interested in the new just in itself, but in the accidental occurrence. In the moment where things don't tally, where productive confusion arises. That's why in the final analysis, although we've laughed a lot with Stewart Home, we even reject the meta-criticism of innovation-fixation articulated in 'neoism.”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

The new sorts itself out when it lands in the museum. Finito. Interview on Furtherfield http://www.furtherfield.org/features/interviews/interview-johannes-grenzfurthner-monochrom-part-3

Home, Fashion, Thinking