Quotes about place
page 5

“… For a lifetime was but a moment in that place, and each man dreams his own heaven.

And in the darkness David closed his eyes, as all that was lost was found again.”

John Connolly The Book of Lost Things

Source: The Book of Lost Things

Dreams

“It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

World

“This country will not be a permanently good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a reasonably good place for all of us to live in.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Chicago, IL http://www.trsite.org/content/pages/speaking-loudly (17 June 1912) 1910s

Country

“When I ask how old your toddler is, I don't need to hear '27 months.' 'He's two' will do just fine. He's not a cheese. And I didn't really care in the first place.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

“The christian religion is a parody on the worship of the Sun, in which they put a man whom they call Christ, in the place of the Sun, and pay him the same adoration which was originally paid to the Sun.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

An Essay on the Origin of Free-Masonry (1803-1805); found in manuscript form after Paine's death and thought to have been written for an intended part III of The Age of Reason. It was partially published in 1810 and published in its entirety in 1818.
1800s

Religion, Sun, Christ

“the world is not a pleasant place to be without someone to hold and be held by.”

Nikki Giovanni (1943) American writer and academic

World

“There is not a woman born who desires to eat the bread of dependence, no matter whether it be from the hand of father, husband, or brother; for anyone who does so eat her bread places herself in the power of the person from whom she takes it.”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist

Dependency, Personality

“Never make your home in a place. Make a home for yourself inside your own head. You'll find what you need to furnish it- memory, friends you can trust, love of learning, and other such things. That way it will go with you wherever you journey.”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Chapter 42, “Beneath the Uduntree” (p. 718).
Context: “Never make your home in a place,” the old man had said, too lazy in the spring warmth to do more than wag a finger. “Make a home for yourself inside your own head. You’ll find what you need to furnish it—memory, friends you can trust, love of learning, and other such things.” Morgenes had grinned. “That way it will go with you wherever you journey. You’ll never lack for a home—unless you lose your head, of course...”

Love, Way, Home, Learning

“Real museums are places where Time is transformed into Space.”

Orhan Pamuk book The Museum of Innocence

Source: The Museum of Innocence

Time

“All battles are fought by scared men who'd rather be some place else.”

John Wayne (1907–1979) American film actor

Men

“It is God to whom and with whom we travel, and while He is the end of our journey, He is also at every stopping place.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

God, Travel

“Quite often somebody will say, 'What year do your books take place?' and the only answer I can give is, in childhood.”

Beverly Cleary (1916) American writer of children's books

Books, Childhood

“My dear, here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that.”

Lewis Carroll book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Source: Alice in Wonderland

“I don't see why I should bow my head when I could hold it high, or place it in the hands of my enemies when I can defeat them.”

José Rizal (1861–1896) Filipino writer, ophthalmologist, polyglot and nationalist

“That's why I call this place the Haunted Bookshop. Haunted by the ghosts of the books I haven't read. Poor uneasy spirits, they walk and walk around me. There's only one way to lay the ghost of a book, and that is to read it.”

Christopher Morley book The Haunted Bookshop

Source: The Haunted Bookshop

Books, Way, Reading

“There is a place in the heart that will never be filled; a space. And even during the best moments, and the greatest times, we will know it.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Time, Heart

“Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Source: Alice Through the Looking Glass

“I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him. Be honest, but hate no one; overturn a man's wrongdoing, but do not overturn him unless it must be done in overturning the wrong. Stand with a man while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

The last sentence is from the 16 October 1854 Peoria speech, slightly paraphrased. No known contemporary source for the rest. It first appears, attributed to Lincoln, in US religious/inspirational journals in 1907-8, such as p123, Friends Intelligencer: a religious and family journal, Volume 65, Issue 8 (1908)
Misattributed

Hate, Parting

“The great events of the world take place in the brain…”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

World

“There is no place like home.”

L. Frank Baum book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Source: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Home

“Now I become myself. It’s taken time, many years and places.”

May Sarton (1912–1995) American poet, novelist, and memoirist

Time

“All you really need to know for the moment is that the universe is a lot more complicated than you might think, even if you start from a position of thinking it's pretty damn complicated in the first place.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

Thinking, Universe

“Well, in the first place girls never marry the men they flirt with. Girls don't think it right.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

Men, Girl, Thinking

“That is what I have always understood to be the essence of anarchism: the conviction that the burden of proof has to be placed on authority, and that it should be dismantled if that burden cannot be met.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

“Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

Death

“Someday you will name me,
then gently place those burning
holy roses in my hair.

[Songs of Longing]”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Source: Rainer Maria Rilke - Sämtliche Werke (Complete Works)

“Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.”

Frédéric Bastiat book The Law

Source: The Law (1850)
Context: Life, faculties, production — in other words, individuality, liberty, property — this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.

Life, Men, Law

“If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place. Primary reality is within; secondary reality without.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

Reality

“weren’t you always
distracted by expectation, as if every event
announced a beloved? (Where can you find a place
to keep her, with all the huge strange thoughts inside you
going and coming and often staying all night.)…”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Duino Elegies

First Elegy (as translated by Stephen Mitchell)
Source: Duino Elegies (1922)
Context: Yes—the springtimes needed you. Often a star
was waiting for you to notice it. A wave rolled toward you
out of the distant past, or as you walked
under an open window, a violin
yielded itself to your hearing. All this was mission.
But could you accomplish it? Weren't you always
distracted by expectation, as if every event
announced a beloved? (Where can you find a place
to keep her, with all the huge strange thoughts inside you
going and coming and often staying all night.)

Night

“What did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think. I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)
Context: I never thought about things at all, everything changed, the distance that wedged itself between me and my happiness wasn't the world, it wasn't the bombs and burning buildings, it was me, my thinking, my cancer of never letting go, is ignorance bliss, I don't know, but it's so painful to think, and tell me, what did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think, I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it. (p. 17)

Happiness, Thinking, Time

“What more could you want? How about dominion over this 'beautiful place'? Beauty doesn't last. Friends and family decay. Power is the only thing that goes on forever."
Jack answered with his gut. "No, love goes on forever.”

P. C. Cast book Awakened

Source: Awakened

Love, Family, Beauty

“When in the end, the day came on which I was going away, I learned the strange learning that things can happen which we ourselves cannot possibly imagine, either beforehand, or at the time when they are taking place, or afterwards when we look back on them.”

Karen Blixen (1885–1962) Danish writer

Source: Out of Africa / Shadows on the Grass

Imagination, Learning, Time

“No mistake about it. Ice is cold; roses are red; I'm in love. And this love is about to carry me off somewhere. The current's too overpowering; I don't have any choice. It may very well be a special place, some place I've never seen before. Danger may be lurking there, something that may end up wounding me deeply, fatally. I might end up losing everything. But there's no turning back. I can only go with the flow. Even if it means I'll be burned up, gone forever.”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

Love

“Credulous: having views about the world, the universe and humanity's place in it that are shared only by very unsophisticated people and the most intelligent and advanced mathematicians and physicists.”

Terry Pratchett book Hogfather

Source: Hogfather

People, World, Intelligence, Universe

“The book is a film that takes place in the mind of the reader. That's why we go to movies and say, "Oh, the book is better.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Books

“The hardest thing in the world is believing someone can change. It's always easier to go along with the way things are than to admit that you might have been wrong in the first place.”

Jodi Picoult Change of Heart

Source: Change of Heart

World, Way, Change

“have you ever seen a genius out there looking for a job? it's the saddest thing in the world. no one will hire him. there is only one place where he is always welcome- at the bottom.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

World

“"Well there goes my plan for selling them on eBay," Clary muttered.
"Selling them on what?"
Clary smiled blandly at him. "A mythical place of great magical power."”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Clary and Jace, pg. 98
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones (2007)

Smile

“In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Love, Feeling

“Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Relationship

“If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter One (17 February 1903) as translated by M. D. Herter Norton (1993)
Source: Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

Life, Indifference

“It's overwhelming. I feel as if I am living in an illusion a dream where all things are possible. Amazing things do happen I know but always to someone else always in some far off place and time.”

Christopher Paolini (1983) American author

Dreams, Feeling, Time

“Science can teach us, and I think our hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supporters, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make the world a fit place to live.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

"Fear, the Foundation of Religion"
1920s, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)
Source: Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
Context: Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing – fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand-in-hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by the help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hears can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a fit place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it.

World, Support, Thinking, Effort

“A part of my depression lies, I think, in my unanswered question: Where is home? I feel a sense, always, of trying to find my way back to a place that doesn't exist.”

Sally Brampton (1955–2016) British writer

Source: Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression

Way, Feeling, Home, Question

“What once bound him
Will make him flee
Place of power-joining of five

Night
Spirit
Blood
Humanity
Earth

Joined not to conquer,
Instead to overcome
Night leads to Spirit
Blood binds Humanity
And Earth completes.”

Kristin Cast book Hunted

Source: Hunted

Night

“Socialism only works in two places: Heaven where they don't need it and hell where they already have it.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Hell

“When every benefit received is a right, there is no place for good manners, let alone for gratitude.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

What is Poverty? http://www.city-journal.org/html/9_2_oh_to_be.html (Spring 1999). City Journal (1998 - 2008)

Gratitude

“If God exists, not seeking God must be the gravest error imaginable. If one decides to sincerely seek for God and doesn't find God, the lost effort is negligible in comparison to what is at risk in not seeking God in the first place.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

God, Error, Imagination, Effort

“A weed is a plant out of place.”

Jim Thompson book The Killer Inside Me

Source: The Killer Inside Me

“Emotions arise in the place where your mind and body meet”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“I hope you liked them, Reader; that they did for you what any good story should do--make you forget the real stuff weighing on your mind for a little while and take you away to a place you've never been. It's the most amiable sort of magic I know.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Hope, Forgetting

“Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”

Thomas Paine book Rights of Man

Part 2.7 Chapter V. Ways and means of improving the condition of Europe, interspersed with miscellaneous observations
Source: 1790s, Rights of Man, Part 2 (1792)
Context: I speak an open and disinterested language, dictated by no passion but that of humanity. To me, who have not only refused offers, because I thought them improper, but have declined rewards I might with reputation have accepted, it is no wonder that meanness and imposition appear disgustful. Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.

Happiness, World, Religion, Personality

“All artists, whether they know it or not create from a place of inner stillness, a place of no mind.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Variant: All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness.
Source: Stillness Speaks

“The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt.”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian

Source: The Hungering Dark

Life

“Laugh at yourself, but don't ever aim your doubt at yourself. Be bold. When you embark for strange places, don't leave any of yourself safely on shore. Have the nerve to go into unexplored territory.”

Alan Alda (1936) actor and United States Army officer

“To those devoid of imagination a blank place on the map is a useless waste; to others, the most valuable part.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Conservation Esthetic", p. 176.
Source: A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There
Context: The trophy-recreationist has peculiarities that contribute in subtle ways to his own undoing. To enjoy he must possess, invade, appropriate. Hence the wilderness that he cannot personally see has no value to him. Hence the universal assumption that an unused hinterland is rendering no service to society. To those devoid of imagination a blank place on the map is a useless waste; to others, the most valuable part.

Imagination, Parting

“There is no place to which we could flee from God, which is outside of God.”

Paul Tillich (1886–1965) German-American theologian and philosopher

God

“Anger has its place, but it will not serve you here, the way of the warrior is the way of knowing. Of that knowledge requires you to use anger, then you use anger, but you cannot wrest forth knowledge by losing your temper.”

Christopher Paolini book Inheritance

Source: Inheritance

Way, Knowledge, Anger

“All through life, be sure and put your feet in the right place, and then stand firm.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

As recalled by Rebecca R. Pomroy in Echoes from hospital and White House (1884), by Anna L. Boyden, p. 61 http://books.google.com/books?id=7LZiAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA61&dq=feet Posthumous attributions Variant: Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.

Life

“What do we know but that we face one another in this place?”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

“I want to leave, to go somewhere where I should be really in my place, where I would fit in… but my place is nowhere; I am unwanted.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Source: Nausea

“The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering. It cheapens and degrades the human experience, when it should inspire and elevate.”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

Interviewed by J. T. LeRoy, "Strange Innocence," Vanity Fair, July 2001

World, Suffering

“for women live much more in the past… they attach themselves to places;”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

Women, Past

“If you have had an unfortunate experience, forget it. If you have made a failure in speech, your song, your book, your article, if you have been placed in an embarrassing position, if you have fallen and hurt yourself by a false step, if you have been slandered and abused, do not dwell upon it. There is not a single redeeming feature in these memories, and the presence of their ghosts will rob you of many a happy hour. There is nothing in it. Drop them. Forget them. Wipe them out of your mind forever. If you have been indiscreet, imprudent, if you have been talked about, if your reputation has been injured so that you fear you can never outgrow it or redeem it, do not drag the hideous shadows, the rattling skeletons about with you, Rub them off from the shite of memory. Wipe them out. Forget them. Start with a clean slate and spend all your energies in keeping it clean for the future.”

Orison Swett Marden (1850–1924) American writer

Masterful Personality (1923).

Happiness, Books, Fear, Failure

“My ideal of a woman is a combination of sacrifice, care and purity at one place. Sacrifice without a hope for reward, without showing any dissatisfaction and purity like Ceaser’s wife, which does not bring any regret.”

Premchand (1880–1936) Hindi writer

He wrote many of his novels in Hindi on his avowed words, in page=90.
Portrayal of Women in Premchands Stories A Critique

Hope

“I ask how far away the eye can discern a non-luminous body, as, for instance, a mountain. It will be very plainly visible if the sun is behind it; and could be seen at a greater or less distance according to the sun's place in the sky.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), IV Perspective of Disappearance

Mountain, Sun

“The painter who draws merely by practice and by eye, without any reason, is like a mirror which copies every thing placed in front of it without being conscious of their existence.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), I Prolegomena and General Introduction to the Book on Painting

Drawing

“After the tests [Nuclear tests by India], I had said there was no imminent danger to India's security environment which necessitated us to undertake the tests. But the tests have taken place. Therefore, naturally, as a member of the nation, I have to see the situation in the post-nuclear age. It is now no use discussing whether the tests should have been undertaken or not. But India's nuclear policy from 1988, in fact from 1974, is totally justified.”

I. K. Gujral (1919–2012) Indian politician

The Rediff Interview/I K Gujral

Age, Nature

“What was observed by us in the third place is the nature or matter of the Milky Way itself, which, with the aid of the spyglass, may be observed so well that all the disputes that for so many generations have vexed philosophers are destroyed by visible certainty, and we are liberated from wordy arguments.”
Quòd tertio loco à nobis fuit obſeruatum, eſt ipſiuſmet LACTEI Circuli eſſentia, ſeu materies, quam Perſpicilli beneficio adeò ad ſenſum licet intueri, vt & altercationes omnes, quæ per tot ſæcula Philoſophos excrucia runt ab oculata certitudine dirimantur, nosque à verboſis dſputationibus liberemur.

Galileo Galilei book Sidereus Nuncius

Original text as reproduced in Edward Tufte, Beautiful Evidence (Cheshire, Connecticut: Graphics Press LLC, 2006), 101 (p. 3 of 4, insert between pp. 16V & 17R. Original manuscript renders the "q" in "nosque" with acute accent.)
Translation by Albert Van Helden in Sidereus Nuncius (Chicago, 1989), 62
Sidereus Nuncius (Venice, 1609)

Way, Nature

“The story of how anti-Hindu laws were enacted… is long. In summary form, it consists of 1) banishing Brahmins on pain of being made prisoners on the galleys; 2) confiscating the properties of those Hindus who sent their families to neighbouring lands for fear of conversion; 3) prohibiting the performance of Hindu rites and ceremonies; 4) banning Hindu priests and preachers from doing their religious duties; 5) compelling Hindus to attend church services and listen to Christian doctrines; 6) depriving Hindus of their traditional rights and privileges in village communities; 7) forcing the baptism of Hindu orphans; and 8) ordering Hindus not to ride on horseback or in palanquins. The laws were so designed as to humiliate the Hindus in every conceivable manner… Missionary records, however, refer to many famous Hindu temples being converted into churches at these places… Even private temples in Hindu homes were prohibited and “transgressors” were severely punished…”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

St. Francis Xavier: The man and his mission. 1985.

Pain, Fear, Family, Law

“There comes a point when the confused or abused person hears a voice saying in his head, Oh well, might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, and, depending on the particular situation in which he finds him he either spends his last bit of money on a lottery ticket, or places on the gaming table the watch he inherited from his father and silver cigarette case that was a gift from his mother, or bets everything he has on red even though he knows that red has come up five times in a row”

José Saramago book The Cave

Source: The Cave (2000), p. 14 (Vintage 2003)

Money, Game, Time, Dependency

“And freedom will win -- not because it’s inevitable, not because it is ordained, but because these basic human yearnings for dignity and justice and democracy do not go away. They can be suppressed. At times, they can be silenced, but they burn in every human heart in a place where no regime could ever reach, a light that no army can ever extinguish. And so long as free peoples summon the confidence and the courage and the will to defend the values that we cherish, then freedom will always be stronger and our ideas will always prevail no matter what.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Remarks to the People of Estonia (September 2014)

People, Justice, Democracy, Confidence

“Sometimes the most important changes start in small places. The tides of history can leave people in conflict and exile and poverty. It takes time for those circumstances to change. But the recognition of a common humanity, the reconciliation of people bound by blood and a belief in one another -- that’s where progress begins. Understanding, and listening, and forgiveness.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2016, Remarks to the People of Cuba (March 2016)

People, History, Forgiveness, Understanding

“The first condition of unity is a subjective principle; and this principle in the Positive system is the subordination of the intellect to the heart: Without this the unity that we seek can never be placed on a permanent basis, whether individually or collectively. It is essential to have some influence sufficiently powerful to produce convergence amid the heterogeneous and often antagonistic tendencies of so complex an organism as ours.”

Auguste Comte (1798–1857) French philosopher

Source: A General View of Positivism (1848, 1856), p. 24

Heart

“True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noise; it arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 15 (March 17, 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

Friendship, Happiness, Nature

“I don't take off my helmet a lot of the time - that's one of the really good things about riding a bike. I can go all over the place and no one knows who I am.”

Hugh Laurie (1959) British actor, comedian, writer, musician and director

Source: [2002-06-13, http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-920254-details/A+brighter+life+for+Hugh+Laurie/article.do;jsessionid=KnM3FNTSkpv0R3P22WrQBPZQ00jxPTkDtG2htfqq0LvwTtnLx4by!-81402767, A brighter life for Hugh Laurie, thisislondon.co.uk from the Evening Standard, 2006-08-21]

Time

“Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship … To restrict the art of healing to one class of men and deny equal privileges to others will constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic and have no place in a republic … The Constitution of this republic should make the special privilege for medical freedom as well as religious freedom.”

Benjamin Rush (1745–1813) American physician, educator, author

As quoted by Terry Dorian, Total Health and Restoration: A 180-Day Journey (2002), p. 49. Other versions include: [The] Constitution of this republic should make special provisions for medical freedom as well as religious freedom ... To restrict the art of healing to one class of men and deny equal privilege to another will constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic. They are fragments of monarchy and have no place in a republic. [in Robert L. Schwartz, "Laetrile: The Battle Moves into the Courtroom," American Bar Association Journal, February 1979, p. 226, no citation given] Unless we put medical freedom into the constitution the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship and force people who wish doctors and treatment of their own choice to submit to only what the dictating outfit offers. Laws restricting the practice of the healing art to one class of physicians and denying equal privileges to others, constitutes the Bastilles of Medicine, for they prevent progress. They are relics of Monarchy, and therefore have no place in a Republic. [in Thomas Morgan, "National Board of Health. The Other Side of the Question, As It Appears to Thomas Morgan," Youngstown Vindicator, 27 January 1911, p. 6] This quote is often cited with regards to Rush, and can rarely be found attributed to his autobiography, but does not exist in that book http://books.google.com/books?id=EkTM9Kn9F4IC&q=%22into+the+constitution%22#v=onepage&q=%22into%20the%20constitution%22&f=false http://hpy.sagepub.com/content/16/1/89.abstract. The quote contains words and phrasing that seem anachronistic to late 18th century America. Misattributed

Men, Law, Art, Freedom

“It should not be hidden from you that the people of Islam had suffered from aggression, iniquity and injustice imposed on them by the Zionist-Crusaders alliance and their collaborators; to the extent that the Muslims blood became the cheapest and their wealth as loot in the hands of the enemies. Their blood was spilled in Palestine and Iraq. The horrifying pictures of the massacre of Qana, in Lebanon are still fresh in our memory. Massacres in Tajikistan, Burma, Kashmir, Assam, Philippines, Pattani, Ogaden, Somalia, Eritrea, Chechnya, and in Bosnia-Herzegovina took place, massacres that send shivers in the body and shake the conscience. All of this and the world watch and hear, and not only didn't respond to these atrocities, but also with a clear conspiracy between the USA and its' allies and under the cover of the iniquitous United Nations, the dispossessed people were even prevented from obtaining arms to defend themselves. The people of Islam awakened and realized that they are the main target for the aggression of the Zionist-Crusaders alliance. All false claims and propaganda about "Human Rights" were hammered down and exposed by the massacres that took place against the Muslims in every part of the world.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

1990s, Declaration of War against the Americans (1996)

People, World, Suffering, Memory

“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let the pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

Originates in a 2007 blog post by Iain S. Thomas entitled The Fur http://www.iwrotethisforyou.me/2007/08/fur.html Misattributed

Pain, Hate, World, Beauty

“We later learned that all the nineteen passengers in the non-smoking compartment had been killed. When the plane had hit the water a hole had been made in the plane and the water had rushed in. I had told a friend at Oslo who was finding me a place that he must find me a place where I could smoke, remarking jocularly, 'If I cannot smoke, I shall die.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Unexpectedly, this turned out to be true.
1960s, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (1967-1969)

Learning, Water

“Those who trusted at the wrong time and place will in turn mistrust at the wrong time and place.”

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) Austrian writer

Der am unrechten Orte vertraute, wird dafür am unrechten Orte mißtrauen.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 29.

Time

“A falling-down wreck on the edge of town, curtains permanently drawn, that would turn out to have been home to some ancient recluse who'd been surviving on ramen and toenail clippings since time immemorial, though no one realizes it until a property appraiser or an overly ambitious census taker barges in to find the poor soul returning to dust in a La-Z-Boy. People get too old to care for a place, their family writes them off for one reason or another—it's sad, but it happens.”

Ransom Riggs book Miss Peregrine's Home of Peculiar Children

Source: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2011), Chapter 3, Page 79

People, Sadness, Family, Home

“We began to stir against slavery. Hearts grew soft, here, there, and yonder. There was no place in the land where the seeker could not find some small budding sign of pity for the slave. No place in all the land but one—the pulpit. It yielded at last; it always does. It fought a strong and stubborn fight, and then did what it always does, joined the procession—at the tail end. Slavery fell. The slavery text remained; the practice changed, that was all.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Bible Teaching and Religious Practice http://books.google.com/books?id=sujuHO_fvJgC&pg=PA568&dq=twain+%22Bible+Teaching+and+Religious+Practice%22&cd=1#v=onepage&q=twain%20%22Bible%20Teaching%20and%20Religious%20Practice%22&f=false. "Bible Teaching and Religious Practice" (1923)

Strong, Change, Heart, Fight

“I don't believe in democracy. In the second place, neither did our white forefathers. I believe, as they did, in a republican authoritarian republic with a limited electorate - just like the one the writers of our Constitution meant this country to be. When these white Christian patriots sat down to write the Declaration of Independence, there were no black citizens for them to worry about.”

George Lincoln Rockwell (1918–1967) American politician, founder of the American Nazi Party

Interview with Alex Haley

Democracy, Country

“Treating women as second-class citizens is a bad tradition. It holds you back. There’s no excuse for sexual assault or domestic violence. There’s no reason that young girls should suffer genital mutilation. There’s no place in civilized society for the early or forced marriage of children. These traditions may date back centuries; they have no place in the 21st century. These are issues of right and wrong -- in any culture. But they’re also issues of success and failure. Any nation that fails to educate its girls or employ its women and allowing them to maximize their potential is doomed to fall behind in a global economy.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Remarks to the Kenyan People (July 2015)

Women, Marriage, Children, Education

“I spent a lot of time on my — in my farewell address talking about the state of our democracy. It goes without saying that essential to that is a free press. That is part of how this place, this country, this grand experiment of self-government has to work. It doesn’t work if we don’t have a well-informed citizenry, and you are the conduit through which they receive the information about what’s taking place in the halls of power. So America needs you and our democracy needs you. We need you to establish a baseline of facts and evidence that we can use as a starting point for the kind of reasoned and informed debates that ultimately lead to progress. And so my hope is is that you will continue with the same tenacity that you showed us, to do the hard work of getting to the bottom of stories and getting them right and to push those of us in power to be the best version of ourselves and to push this country to be the best version of itself.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

On the role of the press in a democracy
2017, Final News Conference as President (January 2017)

Hope, Democracy, Time, Parting

“The very fact that religions are not content to stand on their own feet, but insist on crippling or warping the flexible minds of children in their favour, forms a sufficient proof that there is no truth in them. If there were any truth in religion, it would be even more acceptable to a mature mind than to an infant mind—yet no mature mind ever accepts religion unless it has been crippled in infancy. … The whole basis of religion is a symbolic emotionalism which modern knowledge has rendered meaningless & even unhealthy. Today we know that the cosmos is simply a flux of purposeless rearrangement amidst which man is a wholly negligible incident or accident. There is no reason why it should be otherwise, or why we should wish it otherwise. All the florid romancing about man's "dignity", "immortality", &c. &c. is simply egotistical delusions plus primitive ignorance. So, too, are the infantile concepts of "sin" or cosmic "right" & "wrong". Actually, organic life on our planet is simply a momentary spark of no importance or meaning whatsoever. Man matters to nobody except himself. Nor are his "noble" imaginative concepts any proof of the objective reality of the things they visualise. Psychologists understand how these concepts are built up out of fragments of experience, instinct, & misapprehension. Man is essentially a machine of a very complex sort, as La Mettrie recognised nearly 2 centuries ago. He arises through certain typical chemical & physical reactions, & his members gradually break down into their constituent parts & vanish from existence. The idea of personal "immortality" is merely the dream of a child or savage. However, there is nothing anti-ethical or anti-social in such a realistic view of things. Although meaning nothing in the cosmos as a whole, mankind obviously means a good deal to itself. Therefore it must be regulated by customs which shall ensure, for its own benefit, the full development of its various accidental potentialities. It has a fortuitous jumble of reactions, some of which it instinctively seeks to heighten & prolong, & some of which it instinctively seeks to shorten or lessen. Also, we see that certain courses of action tend to increase its radius of comprehension & degree of specialised organisation (things usually promoting the wished-for reactions, & in general removing the species from a clod-like, unorganised state), while other courses of action tend to exert an opposite effect. Now since man means nothing to the cosmos, it is plan that his only logical goal (a goal whose sole reference is to himself) is simply the achievement of a reasonable equilibrium which shall enhance his likelihood of experiencing the sort of reactions he wishes, & which shall help along his natural impulse to increase his differentiation from unorganised force & matter. This goal can be reached only through teaching individual men how best to keep out of each other's way, & how best to reconcile the various conflicting instincts which a haphazard cosmic drift has placed within the breast of the same person. Here, then, is a practical & imperative system of ethics, resting on the firmest possible foundation & being essentially that taught by Epicurus & Lucretius. It has no need of supernatualism, & indeed has nothing to do with it.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Natalie H. Wooley (2 May 1936), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 240-241
Non-Fiction, Letters

Life, Men, Children, Truth

“He who disdained not to assume us unto Himself, did not disdain to take our place and speak our words, in order that we might speak His words.”

Aurelius Augustinus (354–430) early Christian theologian and philosopher

Source: On the Mystical Body of Christ, p.421

“World,—this man is not a slave with thee! None of thy promotions is necessary for him. His place is with the stars of Heaven: to thee it may be momentous, to him it is indifferent, whether thou place him in the lowest hut, or forty feet higher at the top of thy stupendous high tower, while here on Earth. The joys of Earth that are precious, they depend not on thee and thy promotions. Food and raiment, and, round a social hearth, souls who love him, whom he loves: these are already his. He wants none of thy rewards;”

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

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Love, World, Food, Soul

“I think the worst thing that can happen to a good actor is fame. The limelight is a tricky place, because you can't believe what's going on around you. You stop observing. You stop perceiving. You stop extending yourself, and you become isolated. Our duty as actors is to remain compassionate and curious. Fame complicates all that.”

Vera Farmiga (1973) American actress

As quoted in " A Film of One's Own http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/03/magazine/03actesses.html" by Lynn Hirschberg at The New York Times (September 3, 2006)

Thinking

“Hearing, one day, that a poor young girl of her acquaintance had been enticed to a fashionable house of ill-fame, she ran to the place, entered the house, and claimed the girl. She found there several gentlemen of the Court, whom she rebuked with a severity, the justice of which they confessed by sudden and precipitate flight; she then took the young girl by the hand and led her from the abode of shame.”

Josephine Butler (1828–1906) British feminist

1874 https://attackingthedevil.co.uk/related/thoughts.php

Justice, Girl, Fashion, Housing

“While the impressionists make a table to give one particular moment and subordinate the life of the table to its resemblance to this moment, we synthesize every moment (time, place, form, color-tone) and thus build the table.”

Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) Italian painter and sculptor

1914 - 1916, Pittura e scultura futuriste' Milan, 1914

Life, Color, Time

“Beneficence is a duty. He who often practices this, and sees his beneficent purpose succeed, comes at last really to love him whom he has benefited. When, therefore, it is said, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," this does not mean, "Thou shalt first of all love, and by means of love (in the next place) do him good"; but: "Do good to thy neighbour, and this beneficence will produce in thee the love of men (as a settled habit of inclination to beneficence)."”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Metaphysical Elements of Ethics (1780). Translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, translation available at Philosophy.eserver.org http://philosophy.eserver.org/kant/metaphys-elements-of-ethics.txt. From section "Preliminary Notions of the Susceptibility of the Mind for Notions of Duty Generally", Part C ("Of love to men")

Love, Men

“Insurrection is the exclusive right of the people and of the citizen. Every foreigner, every man clothed with public authority, is outlawed if he proposes it and must be put to death as a usurper of sovereignty and as interested in fomenting troubles for the purpose of doing evil or of adorning himself. Insurrections taking place under a despotism are always salutary. Those which break out in a free state are sometimes dangerous for liberty itself, because the revolt usurps its sublime pretexts and its sacred name. Revolts in free states leave long and painful wounds which bleed a whole century.”

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) military and political leader

(1794) [Source: Saint-Just, Fragments sur les institutions républicaines]

Death, Pain, People, Evil

“Painting is something that takes place among the colors, and … one has to leave them alone completely, so that they can settle the matter among themselves. Their intercourse: this is the whole of painting. Whoever meddles, arranges, injects his human deliberation, his wit, his advocacy, his intellectual agility in any way, is already disturbing and clouding their activity.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Letter to his wife, reprinted in Rilke’s Letters on Cézanne (1952, trans. 1985). (October 21, 1907)
Rilke's Letters

Color, Way, Painting

“We all conceal
A god within us, we all deal
With heaven direct, from whose high places we derive
The inspiration by which we live.”
Est deus in nobis, et sunt commercia caeli: Sedibus aetheriis spiritus ille venit.

Ovid book Ars amatoria

Book III, lines 549–550 (tr. James Michie)
Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love)

God

“The Disciples say to Yeshua: Tell us how our end shall be. Yeshua says: Have you then discovered the origin, so that you inquire about the end? For at the place where the origin is, there shall be the end. Blest is he who shall stand at the origin”

Thomas the Apostle Apostle of Jesus Christ

18
Gospel of Thomas (c. 50? — c. 140?)

“No new temple was allowed to be built nor any old one to be repaired, so that the total disappearance of all places of Hindu worship was to be merely a question of time. But even this delay, this slow operation of Time, was intolerable to many of the more fiery spirits of Islam, who tried to hasten the abolition of ‘infidelity’ by anticipating the destructive hand of Time and forcibly pulling down temples.”

Jadunath Sarkar (1870–1958) Indian historian

Jadunath Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, Volume III, Calcutta, 1928. https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.62677/2015.62677.The-History-Of-Aurangzib-Voliii-Second-Edition_djvu.txt

Question, Time

“One who is blind throws away even a garland of flower placed on his head, thinking it is a snake.”

Kālidāsa Abhigyanashakuntalam

Abhijñānaśākuntalam (The Sign of Shakuntala)

Flowers, Thinking

“We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places, and by different workmen — Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance — and when we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly matte the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortices exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few, — not omitting even scaffolding — or, if a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring such piece in — in such a case we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow was struck.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1850s, The House Divided speech (1858)

Time, Housing

Quotes about place page 5

Quotes about place
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