Quotes about passing
page 13

Dorothy L. Sayers photo
Samuel Johnson photo
Gore Vidal photo

“Never pass up a chance to have sex or appear on television.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

Quoted by Bob Chieger, Was It Good For You, Too? (1983).
1980s

Piet Mondrian photo
François de La Rochefoucauld photo

“Jealousy lives upon suspicion; and it turns into a fury or ends as soon as it passes from suspicion to certainty.”

La jalousie se nourrit dans les doutes, et elle devient fureur, ou elle finit, sitôt qu'on passe du doute à la certitude.
Maxim 32.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

George Santayana photo

“No doubt the spirit or energy of the world is what is acting in us, as the sea is what rises in every little wave; but it passes through us, and cry out as we may, it will move on. Our privilege is to have perceived it as it moves.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

Source: Winds of Doctrine: Studies in Contemporary Opinion (1913), p. 199

Dara Ó Briain photo

“My faults will not pass into other hands through any fault of mine. I do not want another fault on my hands.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Mis culpas no irán a otras manos por mi culpa. No quiero otra culpa en mis manos.
Voces (1943)

Propertius photo

“Let each man pass his days in that wherein his skill is greatest.”
Qua pote quisque, in ea conterat arte diem.

Propertius (-47–-16 BC) Latin elegiac poet

II, i, 46.
Elegies

Jackie Speier photo
Lyndall Urwick photo

“Scientific Management is not a new "system," something "invented" by a man called F. W. Taylor, a passing novelty." It is something much deeper, an attitude towards the control of human systems of co-operation of all kinds rendered essential by the immense accretion of power over material things ushered in by the industrial revolution…
What Taylor did was not to invent something quite new, but to synthesise and present as a reasonably coherent whole ideas which had been germinating and gathering force in Great Britain and the United States throughout the nineteenth century. He gave to a disconnected series of initiatives and experiments a philosophy and a title; complete unity was not within his scope… It was left to others to extend his philosophy to other functions and especially to Henri Fayol, a Frenchman, to develop logical principles for the administration of a large-scale undertaking as a whole.
It detracts nothing from Taylor's greatness to see him thus as a man who focussed his thought of the preceding age, carried that thought forward with a group of friends and colleagues whose united contribution was so outstanding as to constitute a "golden age" of management in the United States and laid the intellectual foundations on which all subsequent work in Great Britain and many other countries has been based. But it is impossible to understand Taylor's achievement or the significance of Scientific Management for our society, unless his individual work is seen against the background of this larger whole of which it is only a part.”

Lyndall Urwick (1891–1983) British management consultant

Vol I. p. 16-17; as cited in: Harry Arthur Hopf. Historical perspectives in management https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009425985. Ossining, N.Y., 1947. p. 4-5
1940s, The Making Of Scientific Management, 1945

Willem Roelofs photo

“I have focused on your desire to bring in more effect [in the watercolor].... with more light in the drawing, [what] was not the least difficult.... [this operation] has passed tricky moments; but I believe I have remained master of the area and have made a drawing [watercolor] of aspect [? ] and color.”

Willem Roelofs (1822–1897) Dutch painter and entomologist (1822-1897)

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
(original Dutch: citaat van Willem Roelofs, in het Nederlands:) Ik heb mij op uw verlangen toegelegd er meer effect in te brengen.. ..met méér licht in een teekening [= aquarel] te brengen, [wat] niet van de minst moeijelijke was.. ..[deze bewerking] heeft kwade oogenblikken doorstaan; maar ik geloof meester gebleven te zijn van het terrein en er eene Teekening [aquarel] van aspect [?] en kleur gemaakt te hebben.
In a letter to Pieter verLoren van Themaat, 17 Feb. 1864; in Haagsch Gemeentearchief / Municipal Archive of The Hague
Mr. verLoren van Themaat had asked for some changes in an already purchased watercolor, made by Roelofs: a landscape with duck decoys, near the village Meerkerk
1860's

William Ellery Channing photo
François Fénelon photo
Jozef Israëls photo

“He [the painter J. A. Kruseman in Amsterdam] is very amicable with his students without exposing his mastery to disdain. I sometimes see him painting from time to time. And I almost visit daily his studio. You must know that his students don't work in the same room where the big man is staying... Sometimes one or two days pass that he doesn't see our work, he let follow the students their own way most of the time... Thanks God he tells me I have feeling and talent.”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

translation from original Dutch text: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat uit de brief van Jozef Israëls, in het Nederlands): Hij [de schilder J.A. Kruseman te Amsterdam] gaat zeer amical met zijn discipelen om zonder zijn meesterschap aan minachting bloot te stellen. Ik zie hem nu en dan wel eens schilderen. En kom in zijn atelier bijna dagelijksch. Gij moet namenlijk weten dat zijn leerlingen niet in dezelfde kamer zitten te werken waar de groote man zit.. .Soms gaan er wel een of 2 dage voorbij dat hij het werk niet komt zien, hij laat de leerlingen meest hun eigen manier volgen.. .Hij zegt mij Gode zij dank gevoel en dispositie toe..
In a letter of Jozef Israels from Amsterdam, 16 July 1843, to his friend, pharmacist Essingh in Groningen; from R.K.D. Archive, A.S. Kok, The Hague
Quotes of Jozef Israels, 1840 - 1870

Jean-François Millet photo

“He [Alfred de Musset] puts you into a fever, it is true; but he can do nothing more for you. He has undoubted charms, but his taste is capricious and poisoned. All he can do is to disenchant and corrupt you, and at the end leave you in despair. The fever passes, and you are left without strength - like a convalescent who is in need of fresh air, of the sunshine, and of the stars.”

Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) French painter

a remark to his friend Louis Marolle in Paris c. 1839; as quoted by Julia Cartwright in Jean Francois Millet, his Life and Letters https://archive.org/stream/jeanfrancoismill00cart#page/n5/mode/2up, Swan Sonnenschein en Co, Lim. London / The Macmillian Company, New York; second edition, September 1902, p. 60
Millet had little sympathy with the French poet Alfred de Musset and criticized the tendencies of his poetry severely.
1835 - 1850

Victoria Woodhull photo

“If Congress refuse to listen to and grant what women ask, there is but one course left then to pursue. Women have no government. Men have organized a government, and they maintain it to the utter exclusion of women…. [¶] Under such glaring inconsistencies, such unwarrantable tyranny, such unscrupulous despotism, what is there left [for] women to do but to become the mothers of the future government? [¶] There is one alternative left, and we have resolved on that. This convention is for the purpose of this declaration. As surely as one year passes from this day, and this right is not fully, frankly and unequivocally considered, we shall proceed to call another convention expressly to frame a new constitution and to erect a new government, complete in all its parts and to take measures to maintain it as effectually as men do theirs. [¶] We mean treason; we mean secession, and on a thousand times grander scale than was that of the south. We are plotting revolution; we will overslough this bogus republic and plant a government of righteousness in its stead, which shall not only profess to derive its power from consent of the governed, but shall do so in reality.”

Victoria Woodhull (1838–1927) American suffragist

A Lecture on Constitutional Equality, also known as The Great Secession Speech, speech to Woman's Suffrage Convention, New York, May 11, 1871, excerpt quoted in Gabriel, Mary, Notorious Victoria: The Life of Victoria Woodhull, Uncensored (Chapel Hill, N.Car.: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1st ed. 1998 ISBN 1-56512-132-5, pp. 86–87 & n. [13] (ellipsis or suspension points in original & "[for]" so in original) (author Mary Gabriel journalist, Reuters News Service). Also excerpted, differently, in Underhill, Lois Beachy, The Woman Who Ran for President: The Many Lives of Victoria Woodhull (Bridgehampton, N.Y.: Bridge Works, 1st ed. 1995 ISBN 1-882593-10-3, pp. 125–126 & unnumbered n.

Charles Boarman photo

“My dear Father, Charley wrote you in his letter to his Aunt Laura thanking you for your kindness in sending us a nice Christmas present. You must not think because I have not written you myself before this that I appreciated your kindness less. I have been so troubled with pains and weakness in my arm and hand as to be almost useless at times. I think it was nursing so much when the children were sick. I was so relieved when Anna's note to Charly arrived yesterday telling Frankie was better. It would have been dreadful for Mother to have gone out west at this miserable season of the year. I was wretchedly uneasy. I do hope poor Franky will get along nicely now. It will make him much more careful about exposing himself having had this severe attack. Charley received the enclosed letters Anna sent from Sister Eliza and Toad[? ]. I was very glad to get them. It is quite refreshing to read Sister Eliza's letters. They are so cheerful and happy. I had a letter from her on Friday. This Custom House investigating committee is attracting a great deal of attention and time here. It holds its sessions at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Mr. Broome was up on Tuesday evening until ten o'clock but was not called upon. It is very slow. He has been for three weeks passed preparing the statement for those summoned from the Public Stores. Mr. Broome sends Laura a paper to look at—The Fisk tragedy. What is Nora doing with herself this winter. She might write to me sometimes. Give much love to Mother. Ask her for her receipt for getting fat. I would like to gain some myself. It is so much nicer to grow fleshy as you advance in life than to shrivel and dry up. The children are all well and growing very fast. Lloyd has to study very hard this year. His studies are quite difficult. I suppose Charley Harris is working hard too. Mr. Broome sent you a paper with the Navy Register in this week. I received your papers and often Richard calls and gets them. I must close. Mr. Broome and children join me in love to you, Mother, Laura, Anna, Nora, Charly & all.
With much love,
Your devoted child, Mary Jane
I enclose Nancy letter which was written some time ago.”

Charles Boarman (1795–1879) US Navy Rear Admiral

Mary Jane Boarman in a Sunday letter to her father (January 21, 1872)
The people mentioned in Mary Jane's letter were her children Lloyd, Charley, and Nancy; her husband, William Henry Broome; her sisters Eliza, Anna, Laura, and Nora; her brother Frankie; and her nephew frontier physician Dr. Charles "Charley" Harris, son of her sister Susan.
John Broome and Rebecca Lloyd: Their Descendants and Related Families, 18th to 21st Centuries (2009)

Mitt Romney photo
Anne Rice photo

“The worst takes its time to come, and then to pass.”

Pandora (1998)

Leo Tolstoy photo
Andrei Sakharov photo
Aldous Huxley photo
Winston S. Churchill photo
Gerald of Wales photo

“Whatever else may come to pass, I do not think that on the Day of Direst Judgement any race other than the Welsh, or any other language, will give answer to the Supreme Judge of all for this small corner of the earth.”
Nec alia, ut arbitror, gens quam haec Kambrica, aliave lingua, in die districti examinis coram Judice supremo, quicquid de ampliori contingat, pro hoc terrarum angulo respondebit.

Gerald of Wales (1146) Medieval clergyman and historian

Book 2, chapter 10, p. 274.
Giraldus quotes these words from an unnamed Welshman.
Descriptio Cambriae (The Description of Wales) (1194)

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling photo

“Man watches his history on the screen with apathy and an occasional passing flicker of horror or indignation.”

Conor Cruise O'Brien (1917–2008) Irish politician

In Irish Times, Dublin (July 15, 1969) ; as quoted in The Columbia Book of Quotations, ed. Robert Andrews, Columbia University Press (1993), p. 900 : ISBN 0231071949, 9780231071949

Henry Campbell-Bannerman photo

“…the concentration of human beings in towns…is contrary to nature, and…this abnormal existence is bound to issue in suffering, deterioration, and gradual destruction to the mass of the population…countless thousands of our fellow-men, and still a larger number of children…are starved of air and space and sunshine. …This view of city life, which is gradually coming home to the heart and understanding and the conscience of our people, is so terrible that it cannot be put away. What is all our wealth and learning and the fine flower of our civilisation and our Constitution and our political theories – what are all these but dust and ashes, if the men and women, on whose labour the whole social fabric is maintained, are doomed to live and die in darkness and misery in the recesses of our great cities? We may undertake expeditions on behalf of oppressed tribes and races, we may conduct foreign missions, we may sympathise with the cause of unfortunate nationalities; but it is our own people, surely, who have the first claim upon us…the air must be purified…the sunshine must be allowed to stream in, the water and the food must be kept pure and unadulterated, the streets light and clean…the measure of your success in bringing these things to pass will be the measure of the arresting of the terrible powers of race degeneration which is going on in the countless sunless streets.”

Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1836–1908) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Belmont (25 January 1907), quoted in John Wilson, C.B.: A Life of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (London: Constable, 1973), p. 588
Prime Minister

Marshall McLuhan photo

“The Eskimo, like any pre-literate, leaps easily from the Paleolithic stone age to the electric age, by-passing the Neolithic specialism.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

1970s, Culture Is Our Business (1970)

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Hillary Clinton photo
David Bowie photo
Nicholas Wade photo
Gordon B. Hinckley photo
Lucy Stone photo

“All over this land women have no political existence. Laws pass over our heads that we can not unmake. Our property is taken from us without our consent. The babes we bear in anguish and carry in our arms are not ours.”

Lucy Stone (1818–1893) American abolitionist and suffragist

Speech as president of a national convention of the Woman's National Loyal League (14 May 1863)

Theodore Kaczynski photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
David Brin photo

“Anyone who loves nature, as I do, cries out at the havoc being spread by humans, all over the globe. The pressures of city life can be appalling, as are the moral ambiguities that plague us, both at home and via yammering media. The temptation to seek uncomplicated certainty sends some rushing off to ashrams and crystal therapy, while many dive into the shelter of fundamentalism, and other folk yearn for better, “simpler” times. Certain popular writers urgently prescribe returning to ancient, nobler ways.
Ancient, nobler ways. It is a lovely image... and pretty much a lie. John Perlin, in his book A Forest Journey, tells how each prior culture, from tribal to pastoral to urban, wreaked calamities upon its own people and environment. I have been to Easter Island and seen the desert its native peoples wrought there. The greater harm we do today is due to our vast power and numbers, not something intrinsically vile about modern humankind.
Technology produces more food and comfort and lets fewer babies die. “Returning to older ways” would restore some balance all right, but entail a holocaust of untold proportion, followed by resumption of a kind of grinding misery never experienced by those who now wistfully toss off medieval fantasies and neolithic romances. A way of life that was nasty, brutish, and nearly always catastrophic for women.
That is not to say the pastoral image doesn’t offer hope. By extolling nature and a lifestyle closer to the Earth, some writers may be helping to create the very sort of wisdom they imagine to have existed in the past. Someday, truly idyllic pastoral cultures may be deliberately designed with the goal of providing placid and just happiness for all, while retaining enough technology to keep existence decent.
But to get there the path lies forward, not by diving into a dark, dank, miserable past. There is but one path to the gracious, ecologically sound, serene pastoralism sought by so many. That route passes, ironically, through successful consummation of this, our first and last chance, our scientific age.”

Afterword (p. 563)
Glory Season (1993)

C. A. R. Hoare photo
Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon photo
Vyasa photo

“How the false truths of the years of youth have passed!
Have passed at full speed like trains which never stopped
There where I stood and waited, hardly aware,
How little I knew, or which of them was the one
To mount and ride to hope or where true hope arrives.”

Delmore Schwartz (1913–1966) American poet

"I am a Book I neither Wrote nor Read" http://www.pbs.org/hollywoodpresents/collectedstories/writing/write_ds_poetry.html
Selected Poems: Summer Knowledge (1959)

Mark Twain photo

“If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world's list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvellous fight in the world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?”

Concerning the Jews (Harper's Magazine, Sept. 1899)

Jose Peralta photo
Clement Attlee photo
Naomi Klein photo

“Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage.”
Taciturnitas stulto homini pro sapientia est.

Publilio Siro Latin writer

Maxim 914
Sentences

Rand Paul photo

“Robert Siegel: You've said that business should have the right to refuse service to anyone, and that the Americans with Disabilities Act, the ADA, was an overreach by the federal government. Would you say the same by extension of the 1964 Civil Rights Act?Rand Paul: What I've always said is that I'm opposed to institutional racism, and I would've, had I've been alive at the time, I think, had the courage to march with Martin Luther King to overturn institutional racism, and I see no place in our society for institutional racism.Robert Siegel: But are you saying that had you been around at the time, you would have hoped that you would have marched with Martin Luther King but voted with Barry Goldwater against the 1964 Civil Rights Act?Rand Paul: Well, actually, I think it's confusing on a lot of cases with what actually was in the civil rights case because, see, a lot of the things that actually were in the bill, I'm in favor of. I'm in favor of everything with regards to ending institutional racism. So I think there's a lot to be desired in the civil rights. And to tell you the truth, I haven't really read all through it because it was passed 40 years ago and hadn't been a real pressing issue in the campaign, on whether we're going to vote for the Civil Rights Act.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

Rand Paul Says He Has A Tea Party 'Mandate'
All Things Considered
National Public Radio
2010-05-19
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126985068

William Collins photo
Kenneth Grahame photo
James Jeans photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
John C. Dvorak photo

“If [Apple] is smart it will call the iPhone a "reference design" and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else's marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands of any marketplace failures. It should do that immediately before it's too late.”

John C. Dvorak (1952) US journalist and radio broadcaster

"Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone" in MarketWatch (28 March 2007) http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-should-pull-the-plug-on-the-iphone
2000s

Charles Dickens photo
Bernhard Riemann photo
Henry Abbey photo
David Icke photo
Václav Havel photo

“There used to be a time when this country's president could have delivered the same New Year's Address he had given a year before, and nobody would have noticed.
Fortunately, that time has passed.”

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

New Year's Address to the Nation (1991)

Cesare Pavese photo

“Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

“I think the motives of the legislature in passing an Act of Parliament are to be taken to be proper motives.”

Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet (1763–1841) British judge

1 St. Tr. (N. S.) 312.
Trial of Hunt and others (King v. Hunt) (1820)

“Of course it’s commendable that the UN would – albeit by a stunted majority – again pass resolutions that highlight gross human rights violations in North Korea, Burma and the Iran,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based monitoring group UN Watch.”

Hillel Neuer Canadian activist

UN Watch quotes for human rights votes today on Iran, Burma, North Korea https://www.unwatch.org/un-watch-quotes-human-rights-votes-today-iran-burma-north-korea/, Jewish Press, November 21, 2011

Leonard Nimoy photo
Stafford Cripps photo
George MacDonald photo
Benjamin Rush photo
Erik Naggum photo

“C being what it is lacks support for multiple return values, so the notion that it is meaningful to pass pointers to memory objects into which any random function may write random values without having a clue where they point, has not been debunked as the sheer idiocy it really is.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: Allegro CL foreign function interface http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/2ec281a4f469bb35 (Usenet article).
Usenet articles

Umberto Boccioni photo

“Our bodies penetrate the sofas upon which we sit and the sofas penetrate our bodies. The motorbus rushes into the houses which it passes, and in their turn the houses throw themselves upon the bus and are blended with it.”

Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) Italian painter and sculptor

As quoted in Futurism, ed. By Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 64.
1910, Manifesto of Futurist Painters,' April 1910

John Stuart Mill photo
Francis Escudero photo
Titian photo
Stephen Crane photo
James Callaghan photo
Adolphe Quetelet photo
Robert Solow photo
Noam Chomsky photo
Edward St. Aubyn photo
Bob Dylan photo

“People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around — the music and the ideas.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

The Guardian (13 February 1992)

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel photo

“Architecture is treated as crystallisation; sculpture, as the organic modelling of the material in its sensuous and spatial totality; painting, as the coloured surface and line; while in music, space, as such, passes into the point of time possessed of content within itself, until finally the external medium is in poetry depressed into complete insignificance.”

Die Architektur ist dann die Kristallisation, die Skulptur die organische Figuration der Materie in ihrer sinnlich-räumlichen Totalität; die Malerei die gefärbte Fläche und Linie; während in der Musik der Raum überhaupt zu dem in sich erfüllten Punkt der Zeit übergeht; bis das äußere Material endlich in der Poesie ganz zur Wertlosigkeit herabgesetzt ist.
Part III https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ae/ch03.htm
Lectures on Aesthetics (1835)

Joseph Joubert photo
Zadie Smith photo
Winston S. Churchill photo

“…to-morrow the proclamation of her sovereignty will command the loyalty of her native land and of all other parts of the British Commonwealth and Empire. I, whose youth was passed in the august, unchallenged and tranquil glories of the Victorian Era, may well feel a thrill in invoking, once more, the prayer and the Anthem, GOD SAVE THE QUEEN.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Broadcast (7 February 1952) upon the accession of Elizabeth II, quoted in Winston Churchill, Stemming the Tide: Speeches 1951 and 1952 (London: Cassell & Co, 1953), p. 240
Post-war years (1945–1955)

Winston S. Churchill photo
John Ruysbroeck photo

“And there you In a new embrace, with a new torrent of eternal love: all the elect, angels and men, from the last to the first are embraced It is a living and fruitful unity, which is the source and the fount of all life All creatures are there without themselves as in their eternal origin, One essence and one life with God These enlightened people are lifted up with free mind above reason…To the summit of their spirit Their naked understanding is penetrated with eternal clarity as the air is penetrated by the light of the sun. The bare elevated will is transformed and penetrated with fathomless love, just as iron is penetrated by the fire [God] gives Himself in the soul’s essence…Where the soul’s powers are unified…And undergo God’s transformation in simplicity. In this place all is full and overflowing, for the spirit feels itself as one truth and one richness. And one unity with God All spirits thus raised up Melt away and are annihilated by reason of enjoyment in God’s essence They fall away from themselves and are lost in a bottomless unknowingWith God they will ebb and flow, and will always be in repose…They are drunk with love and have passed away into God in a dark luminosity must accept that the Persons yield and lose themselves whirling in essential love, that is, in enjoyable unity; nevertheless, they always remain according to their personal properties In the working of the Trinity. You may thus understand that the divine nature is eternally at rest and without mode according to the simplicity of its essence. It is why all that God has chosen and enfolded with eternal personal love, he has possessed essentially, enjoyably in unity, with essential love.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Little Book of Enlightenment (c. 1364)

Woody Allen photo
Revilo P. Oliver photo
Michele Simon photo
Hendrik Verwoerd photo
Francis Fukuyama photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo

“The excesses of love soon pass, but its insufficiencies torment us forever.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Love

Max Scheler photo

“"This law of the release of tension through illusory valuation gains new significance, full of infinite consequences, for the ressentiment attitude. To its very core, the mind of ressentiment man is filled with envy, the impulse to detract, malice, and secret vindictiveness. These affects have become fixed attitudes, detached from all determinate objects. Independently of his will, this man's attention will be instinctively drawn by all events which can set these affects in motion. The ressentiment attitude even plays a role in the formation of perceptions, expectations, and memories. It automatically selects those aspects of experience which can justify the factual application of this pattern of feeling. Therefore such phenomena as joy, splendor, power, happiness, fortune, and strength magically attract the man of ressentiment. He cannot pass by, he has to look at them, whether he “wants” to or not. But at the same time he wants to avert his eyes, for he is tormented by the craving to possess them and knows that his desire is vain. The first result of this inner process is a characteristic falsification of the world view. Regardless of what he observes, his world has a peculiar structure of emotional stress. The more the impulse to turn away from those positive values prevails, the more he turns without transition to their negative opposites, on which he concentrates increasingly. He has an urge to scold, to depreciate, to belittle whatever he can. Thus he involuntarily “slanders” life and the world in order to justify his inner pattern of value experience.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

John Hirst photo

“Much of what now passes for social science is concerned not to explain human differences but to explain them away.”

John Hirst (1942–2016) Australian historian

Sense and Nonsense in Australian History (2005)

Ezra Pound photo
Thomas Wolfe photo