Quotes about presence (1101 quotes, page 11)

“Prior to any questioning, the person must be warned that he has a right to remain silent, that any statement he does make may be used as evidence against him, and that he has a right to the presence of an attorney, either retained or appointed.”

Earl Warren (1891–1974) United States federal judge

Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436, 445 (1965) - Opinion of the Court
Context: Prior to any questioning, the person must be warned that he has a right to remain silent, that any statement he does make may be used as evidence against him, and that he has a right to the presence of an attorney, either retained or appointed. The defendant may waive effectuation of these rights, provided the waiver is made voluntarily, knowingly and intelligently. If, however, he indicates in any manner and at any stage of the process that he wishes to consult with an attorney before speaking there can be no questioning. Likewise, if the individual is alone and indicates in any manner that he does not wish to be interrogated, the police may not question him. The mere fact that he may have answered some questions or volunteered some statements on his own does not deprive him of the right of refrain from answering any further inquiries until he has consulted with an attorney and thereafter consents to be questioned.

Question , Personality

“But this was different. He could sense something here, within the circle cast by the light of the fire. A presence.
Presences…”

Charles de Lint (1951) author

Source: Into the Green (1993), Ch. 36 p. 233
Context: He had seen trances before — wise men far in the east, who could feign death; a herbwife as she bent over her patient, searching for invisible hurts.
But this was different. He could sense something here, within the circle cast by the light of the fire. A presence.
Presences...

Sense , Light

“What led manyness nearly to destroy oneness was the presence of slavery in many of the states.”

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

2000s, Is Diversity Good? (2003)
Context: The motto of the United States is "e pluribus unum", or "from many, one." Originally, this referred to the one union formed from the many states. It became the motto of the country because we had to fight a great civil war to prevent the manyness of the states from destroying the oneness of the union. What led manyness nearly to destroy oneness was the presence of slavery in many of the states. The diversity that tolerated the difference between slavery and freedom had become intolerable. A crisis had been reached in which, according to the greatest American, the house divided had to cease being divided. It had to become either all free or all slave.

“Approximately, three billion people of the world live on less than 2.5 dollars a day, and over a billion people live without having even one sufficient meal on a daily basis. Forty-percent of the poorest world populations only share five percent of the global income, while twenty percent of the richest people share seventy-five percent of the total global income. More than twenty thousand innocent and destitute children die every day in the world because of poverty. What is the justification for the presence of hundreds of US military and intelligence bases in different parts of the world...? An assembly of people in contradiction with the inner human instincts and disposition who also have no faith in God and in the path of the divine prophets, replace their lust for power and materialistic ends with heavenly values. To them, only power and wealth prevail, and every attempt must bring into focus these sinister goals...”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956) 6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Ahmadinejad United Nations Speech: Full Text Transcript, https://www.ibtimes.com/ahmadinejad-united-nations-speech-full-text-transcript-317114 International Business Times, 22 Oct 2011
2011

God , Faith , Wealth , Intelligence

“The rich have a horror of Poverty because they have a dim foreboding of the expiatory interchange implied by her presence.”

Léon Bloy (1846–1917) French writer, poet and essayist

Source: Pilgrim of the Absolute (1947), p. 125

“Gauguin interests me very much as a man - very much. For a long time now it has seemed to me that in our nasty profession of painting we are most sorely in need of men with the hands and the stomachs of workmen. More natural tastes - more loving and more charitable temperaments - than the decadent dandies of the Parisian boulevards have. Well, here we are without the slightest doubt in the presence of a virgin creature with savage instincts. With Gauguin blood and sex prevail over ambition.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Letter http://webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/18/B19a.htm to Émile Bernard, ca. 2 November, 1888.
1880s, 1888

Painting , Time , Nature , Sex

“O nation, wake up! O government, wake up! Everybody wake up! You are all in the Presence of God. Tomorrow (in the next world), you will be called to account. Do not ignore the blood of our martyrs, and do not quarrel over position or status.”

Ruhollah Khomeini (1902–1989) Religious leader, politician

Theology and Mysticism

World , God

“Now for the first time I fully realized that I was in the presence of a man from space - A HUMAN BEING FROM ANOTHER WORLD! The beauty of his form surpassed anything I had ever seen. And the pleasantness of his face freed me of all thought of my personal self. I felt like a little child in the presence of one with great wisdom and much love, and I became very humble within myself ... for from him was radiating a feeling of infinite understanding and kindness, with supreme humility.”

George Adamski (1891–1965) American ufologist

Flying Saucers Have Landed

Time , Understanding , Personality , Beauty

“Propaganda tries to surround man by all possible routes in the realm of feelings as well as ideas, by playing on his will or on his needs, through his conscious and his unconscious, assailing him in both his private and his public life. It furnishes him with a complete system for explaining the world, and provides immediate incentives to action. We are here in the presence of an organized myth that tries to take hold of the entire person. Through the myth it creates, propaganda imposes a complete range of intuitive knowledge, susceptible of only one interpretation, unique and one-sided, and precluding any divergence. This myth becomes so powerful that it invades every arena of consciousness, leaving no faculty or motivation intact. It stimulates in the individual a feeling of exclusiveness, and produces a biased attitude.”

Jacques Ellul book Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes

Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1962)

Personality , Knowledge , Motivation , World

“Women are stripped to the skin in the presence of leering, white-skinned, black-hearted brutes and lashed into insensibility and strangled to death from the limbs of trees. A girl child of fifteen years was lynched recently by these brutal bullies. Where has justice fled? The eloquence of Wendell Phillips is silent now. John Brown’s body lies moldering in the grave. But will his spirit lie there moldering, too? Brutes, inhuman monsters—you heartless brutes—you whom nature forms by molding you in it, deceive not yourselves by thinking that another John Brown will not arise.”

Lucy Parsons (1853–1942) American communist anarchist labor organizer

"Southern Lynching" (April 1892)

Tree , Justice , Girl , Heart

“I wanted to put presence into absence. I was very frustrated that black British women weren’t visible in literature. I whittled it down to 12 characters – I wanted them to span from a teenager to someone in their 90s, and see their trajectory from birth, though not linear. There are many ways in which otherness can be interpreted in the novel – the women are othered in so many ways and sometimes by each other. I wanted it to be identified as a novel about women as well.”

Bernardine Evaristo (1959) British writer

On her novel Girl, Woman, Other in “Bernardine Evaristo: ‘I want to put presence into absence’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/27/bernardine-evaristo-girl-woman-other-interview in The Guardian (2019 Apr 27)

Way , Birth , Literature , Women

“There was so much joy in the making of this film, despite the fact that it’s about such a sad, traumatic experience…We all felt like we were part of something so real and so necessary. It was a joy to go on set every day and tell these real people’s story. Doing this movie, I discovered that joy is not the negation of pain, but rather acknowledging the presence of pain and feeling happiness in spite of it.”

Lupita Nyong'o (1983) Mexican-Kenyan actress and film director

On making the film 12 Years a Slave in “LUPITA NYONG’O” https://www.interviewmagazine.com/film/lupita-nyongo in Interview Magazine (2013 Nov 5)

Pain , People , Joy , Sadness

“As a Rioplatense person of European decent, I feel strongly about the urgency of retelling the stories of our nation’s histories, the Argentinian and Uruguayan national stories and cultural stories, in ways that fully recognize the presence of black people. Which is a huge part of the greater story of the Americas as well. You cannot tell the story of the Americas without the story of black people and the transatlantic slave trade — that mass atrocity. Alongside, of course, the genocide of indigenous people. And also the cultural richness and artistic production and stories of resilience and power that, too, come out of those harsh realities that are at the origin of the Americas.”

Carolina de Robertis (1975) American writer

On telling the histories of Uruguay and Argentina in “A Conversation with Carolina De Robertis on Immigration, Sexuality, and the True Origins of the Tango” https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/conversation-carolina-de-robertis-immigration-sexuality-true-origins-tango/ in Los Angeles Review of Books (2016 Apr 20)

History , Personality , People , Reality

“He was only ten. It seemed to him that he could see them, the two of them, shadowy in the limbo from which time emerged and became time: the old bear absolved of mortality and himself who shared a little of it. Because he recognised now what he had smelled in the huddled dogs and tasted in his own saliva, recognised fear as a boy, a youth recognises the existence of love and passion and experience which is his heritage but not yet his patrimony, from entering by chance the presence of perhaps even merely the bedroom of a woman who has loved and been loved by many men.”

William Faulkner book Go Down, Moses

The Bear section 1 (p. 195)
Go Down, Moses (1942)

Chance , Time , Dogs , Boy

“Fear is illusory; it cannot live. Courage is eternal, it will not die. Perils, calamities, dangers are the certain lot of every man who is a denizen of this world. Therefore, O Man! Fortify your mind with courage and patience. Fortitude, courage, presence of mind will sustain you through all dangers.”

Swami Sivananda (1887–1963) Indian philosopher

World , Courage , Fear , Patience

“We came to the bridge which had marked the terminal point of two previous attempts. On one of those attempts, King had turned his people back at this spot. On the other attempt, the state troopers had ridden into the crowd with clubs, and bullwhips, and tear gas. We paused there a moment, just to remember, and then we moved out on the highway. It was a divided highway, and the North side was reserved for us. Every few yards a soldier stood with a rifle and bayonet. Army cars drove ahead of us and behind us. In the air five helicopters circled endlessly, occasionally swooping down just above a clump of trees or bushes. Radios and walkie-talkies crackled orders back and forth. State troopers drove by in squad cars, two to a car. One drove, and the other quite ostentatiously took pictures of the marches. This is an Alabama form of intimidation. I kept remembering that these were the same state troopers who had two weeks earlier had ridden mercilessly into a defenseless mass of people! I marveled again at the power of the federal government whose presence stood between us and another massacre.”

Maurice Davis (1921–1993) American rabbi

Brotherhood Postponed (1965)

Tree , Cars , People , Tear

“Sylvia went furthest in the sense that her secret was most dangerous to her. She desperately needed to reveal it. You can’t overestimate her compulsion to write like that. She had to write those things — even against her most vital interests. She died before she knew what The Bell Jar and the Ariel poems were going to do to her life, but she had to get them out. She had to tell everybody... like those Native American groups who periodically told everything that was wrong and painful in their lives in the presence of the whole tribe. It was no good doing it in secret; it had to be done in front of everybody else. Maybe that’s why poets go to such lengths to get their poems published. It’s no good whispering them to a priest or a confessional. And it’s not for fame, because they go on doing it after they’ve learned what fame amounts to. No, until the revelation’s actually published, the poet feels no release. In all that, Sylvia was an extreme case, I think.”

Ted Hughes (1930–1998) English poet and children's writer

The Paris Review interview

Pain , Learning , Secret , Thinking

“We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us... We must recover the sense of the majesty of the creation and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

"A Native Hill"
The Long-Legged House (1969)

Sense , World , Change

“Islam has till today retained a lot of its medieval self- righteousness. While native Americans who claim back ancestral sacred places may have to confront economical interests, juridical technicalities or other small-human opposition against their demands, there is now hardly any ideologically motivated resistance against respecting their culture and their historical sensitivities. But in India, and in the countries which Islam has carved out of if, there is still a strong presence of an ideological drive to islamize India, and to make this clear by wresting all kinds of real and symbolical concessions from the Hindus, and by refusing them any concession whatsoever in return. The symbols of humiliation that have been inflicted on the Hindus, are being defended.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

1990s, Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)

Country , Strong , Self-confidence , Motivation

“Books are the true levelers. They give to all who will faithfully use them the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am. No matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling. If the Sacred Writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof, … I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live.”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

Self-Culture (1838)

Books , Time

“I feared his visit. I was twenty-four, and the religious revival within myself was at its height. Earlier that summer, I had discovered Kierkegaard, and each week I brought back to the apartment one more of the Princeton University Press’s elegant and expensive editions of his works. They were beautiful books, sometimes very thick, sometimes very thin, always typographically exhilarating, with their welter of title pages, subheads, epigraphs, emphatic italics, italicized catchwords taken from German philosophy and too subtle for translation, translator’s prefaces and footnotes, and Kierkegaard’s own endless footnotes, blanketing pages at a time as, crippled, agonized by distinctions, he scribbled on and on, heaping irony on irony, curse on curse, gnashing, sneering, praising Jehovah in the privacy of his empty home in Copenhagen. The demons with which he wrestled—Hegel and his avatars—were unknown to me, so Kierkegaard at his desk seemed to me to be writhing in the clutches of phantoms, slapping at silent mosquitoes, twisting furiously to confront presences that were not there.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

The Astronomer by John Updike from Pigeon Feathers: and other stories p. 125 1959, 1962 Ballantine Books

Home , Time , Beauty , Universe

“The earth is our mother, our habitation, and our tomb. In the presence of these facts, it would seem the highest sanity for us to be kind and merciful to each other, and to cultivate without hypocrisy the charming chivalry of the Golden Rule. The task of understanding and managing the tendencies which surround and beat upon us and in the midst of which we writhe and supplicate is certainly sufficient in itself without our turning upon and cudgeling each other.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Social Ideal, pp. 159–160

Understanding

“On the whole, people tend to take prisons for granted. It is difficult to imagine life without them At the same time, there is reluctance to face the realities hidden within them, a fear of thinking about what happens inside them. Thus, the prison is present in our lives and, at the same time, it is absent from our lives. To think about this simultaneous presence and absence is to begin to acknowledge the part played by ideology in shaping the way we interact with our social surroundings. We take prisons for granted but are often afraid to face the realities they produce.”

Angela Davis Are Prisons Obsolete?

Source: Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003), Chapter One

Fear , Time , Imagination , People

“It came to me in the very horror of the immediate presence that the act would be, seeing and facing what I saw and faced, to keep the boy himself unaware. The inspiration—I can call it by no other name—was that I felt how voluntarily, how transcendently, I might.”

Henry James book The Turn of the Screw

It was like fighting with a demon for a human soul, and when I had fairly so appraised it I saw how the human soul—held out, in the tremor of my hands, at arm's length—had a perfect dew of sweat on a lovely childish forehead.
Source: The Turn of the Screw (1898), Ch. XXIV.

Boy

“It is manifest that every soul has a certain continuity with the soul of the Universe, so that it must be understood to exist and to be included not only there where it liveth and feeleth, but it is also by its essence and substance diffused throughout immensity. The power of each soul is itself somehow present afar in the Universe. It is not mixed, yet is there in some presence.”

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) Italian philosopher, mathematician and astronomer

Cause, Principle, and Unity (1584)

Universe , Soul

“If it were right to overstep a little the limits of apodictic certainty befitting metaphysics, it would seem worth while to trace out some things pertaining not merely to the laws but even to the causes of sensuous intuition, which are only intellectually knowable. Of course the human mind is not affected by external things, and the world does not lie open to its insight infinitely, except as far as itself together with all other things is sustained by the same infinite power of one. Hence it does not perceive external things but by the presence of the same common sustaining cause; and hence space, which is the universal and necessary condition of the joint presence of everything known sensuously, may be called the phenomenal omnipresence, for the cause of the universe is not present to all things and everything, as being in their places, but their places, that is the relations of the substances, are possible, because it is intimately present to all. Furthermore, since the possibility of the changes and successions of all things whose principle as far as sensuously known resides in the concept of time, supposes the continuous existence of the subject whose opposite states succeed; that whose states are in flux, lasting not, however, unless sustained by another; the concept of time as one infinite and immutable in which all things are and last, is the phenomenal eternity of the general cause} But it seems more cautious to hug the shore of the cognitions granted to us by the mediocrity of our intellect than to be carried out upon the high seas of such mystic investigations, like Malebranche, whose opinion that we see all things in God is pretty nearly what has here been expounded.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section IV On The Principle Of The Form Of The Intelligible World

God , Time , Law , Success

“Let the letters a b c denote the three angular points of a rectilineal triangle. If the point did move continuously over the lines ab, bc, ca, that is, over the perimeter of the figure, it would be necessary for it to move at the point b in the direction ab, and also at the same point b in the direction bc. These motions being diverse, they cannot be simultaneous. There-fore, the moment of presence of the movable point at vertex b, considered as moving in the direction ab, is different from the moment of presence of the movable point at the same vertex b, considered as moving in the same direction bc. But between two moments there is time; therefore, the movable point is present at point b for some time, that is, it rests. Therefore it does not move continuously, which is contrary to the assumption. The same demonstration is valid for motion over any right lines including an assignable angle. Hence a body does not change its direction in continuous motion except by following a line no part of which is straight, that is, a curve, as Leibnitz maintained.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section III On The Principles Of The Form Of The Sensible World

Time , Parting , Change

“A hateful man who perhaps more than any other person exemplifies the backward side of Brazil that is still a huge and tragically worrying presence in this great nation.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

Journalist Andrew Downie. The Most Misogynistic, Hateful Elected Official in the Democacratic World: Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro https://theintercept.com/2014/12/11/misogynistic-hateful-elected-official-democacratic-world-brazils-jair-bolsonaro/. The Intercept (11 December 2014).

Personality , Hate

“Those who see the existence of all mankind in their own person are miserable. Obviously, that man will disappear as an individual. The need for any person to be satisfied and happy to live is to work not for himself but for the future. An insightful man can only act this way. Full enjoyment and happiness in life, but the honor, presence, happiness of future generations can be found.”

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938) Turkish army officer, revolutionary, and the first President of Turkey

He told Romanian Foreign Minister Victor Antonescu on 20 March 1937 http://web.archive.org/web/20180628120602/http://www.atam.gov.tr/ataturkun-soylev-ve-demecleri/romanya-disisleri-bakani-antonescu-ile-konusma

Way , Personality , Future , Life

“There is no one physical characteristic by which an Adept can be infallibly distinguished from other men, but he always appears impressive, noble, dignified, holy and serene, and anyone meeting him could hardly fail to recognize that he was in the presence of a remarkable man. He is the strong but silent man, speaking only when he has a definite object in view, to encourage, to help or to warn, yet he is wonderfully benevolent and full of a keen sense of humour— humour always of a kindly order, used never to wound, but always to lighten the troubles of life. The Master Morya once said that it is impossible to make progress on the occult Path without a sense of humour, and certainly all the Adepts whom I have seen have possessed that qualification.”

Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) English theosophist

Source: The Masters and the Path (1925), Ch. 2

Strong , Help , Appearance , Sense

“The political and economic transformation which will be initiated as a result of Maitreya’s and the Masters’ presence will free humanity from age-old inhibitions and limitations, and galvanize it into a great leap forward in consciousness. Conscious, meaningful living will replace the present confusion, doubt and fear. A confident, courageous willingness to explore both inner and outer worlds will supplant the present weakening cynicism and make possible the evolutionary advance I have sought to describe: the emergence of a new and better civilization and of a new and better humanity.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The Great Approach (2001)

Courage , Confidence , Self-confidence , Age

“Not the least among the arguments whose consideration should dispose us to welcome among us the peoples of all countries, nationalities and colors, is the fact that all races and varieties of men are improvable. This is the grand distinguishing attribute of humanity, and separates man from all other animals. If it could be shown that any particular race of men are literally incapable of improvement, we might hesitate to welcome them here. But no such men are anywhere to be found, and if they were, it is not likely that they would ever trouble us with their presence.”

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

The fact that the Chinese and other nations desire to come and do come is a proof of their capacity for improvement and of their fitness to come.
1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Country , People , Animals , Color

“The independence of Haiti is recognized; her Minister sits beside our Prime Minister, Mr. Seward, and dines at his table in Washington, while colored men are excluded from the cars in Philadelphia; showing that a black man’s complexion in Washington, in the presence of the Federal Government, is less offensive than in the city of brotherly love. Citizenship is no longer denied us under this government.”

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

1860s, Should the Negro Enlist in the Union Army? (1863)

Cars , Color , Love , Making love

“He who comes into the presence of God to pray must divest himself of all vainglorious thoughts, lay aside all idea of worth; in short, discard all self- confidence, humbly giving God the whole glory, lest by arrogating any thing, however little, to himself, vain pride cause him to turn away his face.”

John Calvin book Institutes of the Christian Religion

Book 3, Chapter 20, Section 8
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)

Idea , God , Confidence , Self-confidence

“Let the first rule of right prayer then be, to have our heart and mind framed as becomes those who are entering into converse with God. This we shall accomplish in regard to the mind, if, laying aside carnal thoughts and cares which might interfere with the direct and pure contemplation of God, it not only be wholly intent on prayer, but also, as far as possible, be borne and raised above itself. … When I say it must be raised above itself, I mean that it must not bring into the presence of God any of those things which our blind and stupid reason is wont to devise, nor keep itself confined within the little measure of its own vanity, but rise to a purity worthy of God.”

John Calvin book Institutes of the Christian Religion

Book 3, Chapter 20, Section 4
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)

God , Heart , Stupidity

“It is a mistake to believe in my presence... If I take a seat at a party, I can see, even from afar, that only a ghost is sitting there.”

Hugo Ball (1886–1927) German author, poet and one of the leading Dada artists

Quote from his text 'Flucht aus der Zeit', September 1915, p. 44; as quoted by Debbie Lewer in 'Papers of Surrealism Issue 6 Autumn 2007', p. 10
It was in 1915, shortly before Hugo Ball left Berlin for Zurich
before 1916

“Although at the time I knew but little of the crimes he had committed, it was obvious to me that Himmler, as far as I was concerned, was intolerable. This I had to make quite clear to him, and one way or the other, I had to have a swift and final showdown with him. On the evening of April 30, shortly after the receipt of the telegram I told my ADC to telephone to Himmler, from whom I had parted in Luebeck only a few hours before, and ask him to come to Ploen forthwith. To my ADC he retorted with a blunt refusal, but when I myself spoke to him and told him that his presence was essential, he eventually consented to come.”

Karl Dönitz (1891–1980) President of Germany; admiral in command of German submarine forces during World War II

Source: Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days (1959), p. 443

Way , Time , Parting , Making love

“Yes, Professor, knowledge and understanding are quite different. Only understanding can lead to being, whereas knowledge is but a passing presence in it. New knowledge displaces the old and the result is, as it were, a pouring from the empty into the void.”

G. I. Gurdjieff (1866–1949) influential spiritual teacher, Armenian philosopher, composer and writer

All and Everything: Meetings with Remarkable Men (1963)

Knowledge , Understanding

“In the presence of God himself man stands always like a solitary tree in the wilderness.”

Martin Buber (1878–1965) German Jewish Existentialist philosopher and theologian

Source: For The Sake of Heaven (1945), p. 95

God , Tree

“The anti‐Semite understands nothing about modern society. He would be incapable of conceiving of a constructive plan; his action cannot reach the level of the methodical; it remains on the ground of passion. To a long‐term enterprise he prefers an explosion of rage analogous to the running amuck of the Malays. His intellectual activity is confined to interpretation; he seeks in historical events the signs of the presence of an evil power. Out of this spring those childish and elaborate fabrications which give him his resemblance to the extreme paranoiacs. In addition, anti‐Semitism channels evolutionary drives toward the destruction of certain men, not of institutions. An anti‐Semitic mob will consider it has done enough when it has massacred some Jews and burned a few synagogues. It represents, therefore, a safety valve for the owning classes, who encourage it and thus substitute for a dangerous hate against their regime a beneficent hate against particular people. Above all this naive dualism is eminently reassuring to he anti‐Semite himself. If all he has to do is to remove Evil, that means that the Good is already given.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Anti-Semite and Jew

He has no need to seek it in anguish, to invent it, to scrutinize it patiently when he has found it, to prove it in action, to verify it by its consequences, or, finally, to shoulder he responsibilities of the moral choice be has made. It is not by chance that the great outbursts of anti‐Semitic rage conceal a basic optimism. The anti‐Semite as cast his lot for Evil so as not to have to cast his lot for Good. The more one is absorbed in fighting Evil, the less one is tempted to place the Good in question. One does not need to talk about it, yet it is always understood in the discourse of the anti‐Semite and it remains understood in his thought. When he has fulfilled his mission as holy destroyer, the Lost Paradise will reconstitute itself. For the moment so many tasks confront the anti‐Semite that he does not have time to think about it. He is in the breach, fighting, and each of his outbursts of rage is a pretext to avoid the anguished search for the Good.
Pages 31-32
Anti-Semite and Jew (1945)

Hate , Understanding , People , Spring

“The American Left champions causes such as gay rights (including gay marriage), equality for women (suffrage, the right to work, etc.), and religious freedom (usually in the form of freedom from religion). Yet, fundamentalist Islam opposes nearly everything the American Left stands for. In many Islamic countries, homosexuality is punishable by death. In Iran, a top government official recently said that torture followed by death is the appropriate punishment for being gay. In Saudi Arabia, women can’t vote, run for public office, or drive cars. Women are routinely jailed and beaten for merely being in the presence of a man not related to them. The Saudi version of Dr. Phil provides televised lessons to men on how to properly beat their wives. In many Islamic countries, women are forced into arranged marriages and held as property by their husbands, something not exactly in line with progressive Western thinking. In some Muslim countries, women aren’t even allowed to decide what clothes to wear. To reveal even the smallest patch of skin is a crime. Religious freedom is often nonexistent under Islamic rule. In countries like Afghanistan and Iran, people who convert from Islam to another religion face public execution. So why does the American Left hate Christianity yet love Islam?”

Chuck Hustmyre (1963) American journalist

2000s, 2009, The Left's love affair with Islam (2009)

Clothes , Religion , Hate , Freedom

“I can recall the first time I missed your presence at home and discovered that you were out hunting for a job scrubbing floors in order to bring home some food for the family. I knew that something was very wrong with life, but I had no idea what to do about it to make it any different. It was only when I grew up and I too had to go around begging for work to live that I realized the wrongs had to be corrected.”

Bill Bailey (Spanish Civil War veteran) (1910–1995) American labor activist

The Kid from Hoboken: An Autobiography by Bill Bailey (1993)

Home , Family , Time , Food

“A strident socialist, he made his presence felt in the political life of our country in the past four decades but with the unique distinction of not having held any ministerial office.”

Chandra Shekhar (1927–2007) Indian politician

In p. ix
The Long March: Profile of Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar

Past , Life , Country

“Simply the best defender in the world. Whenever he is on the pitch, his presence reassures the others, from the goalkeeper to the attackers.”

Thiago Silva (1984) Brazilian footballer

Raí, 2013 http://rmcsport.bfmtv.com/info/366036/psg-thiago-silva-la-perfection-au-bresilien/
From former and current footballers

World

“Sometimes God comes into the soul when it has neither called, prayed, or summoned him. and he instills into the soul and uncommon fire and love and sweetness in which it delights and rejoices greatly. The soul believes that the presence of God himself has cause this consolation, but this is not certain. But then the soul perceives that God is within itself - although it cannot see him inwardly - because it does sense and take delight in that his grace is present. Yet even this is not certain.”

Angela of Foligno (1248–1309) Italian saint

The Memorial and Instructions

God , Soul , Sense , Love

“Cannavaro has that unmistakable presence as a leader and in my impression, is exactly like that tough and cool-headed defense he shows on the pitch.”

Fabio Cannavaro (1973) Italian footballer

Iker Casillas, when asked to describe Cannavaro after joining Real Madrid http://www.cannaddicted.com/English/Fabio/Quotes.htm

“When people are content, they are difficult to maneuver. We are perennially discontent and offered placebos as remedies. My intention in writing this book is to make you feel better, to offer you a solution to the way you feel. I am confident that this is necessary. When do you ever meet people that are happy? Genuinely happy? Only children, the mentally ill, and daytime television presenters. My belief is that it is possible to feel happier, because I feel better than I used to. I am beginning to understand where the solution lies, primarily because of an exhausting process of trial and mostly error. My qualification to write a book on how to change yourself and change the world is not that I’m better than you, it’s that I’m worse. Not that I’m smarter, but that I’m dumber: I bought the lie hook, line, and sinker. My only quality has been an unwitting momentum, a willingness to wade through the static dissatisfaction that has been piped into my mind from the moment I learned language. What if that feeling of inadequacy, isolation, and anxiety isn’t just me? What if it isn’t internally engineered but the result of concerted effort, the product of a transmission? An ongoing broadcast from the powerful that has colonized my mind? Who is it in here, inside your mind, reading these words, feeling that fear? Is there an awareness, an exempt presence, gleaming behind the waterfall of words that commentate on every event, label every object, judge everyone you come into contact with? And is there another way to feel? Is it possible to be in this world and feel another way? Can you conceive, even for a moment, of a species similar to us but a little more evolved, that have transcended the idea that solutions to the way we feel can be externally acquired? What would that look like? How would that feel—to be liberated from the bureaucracy of managing your recalcitrant mind. Is it possible that there is a conspiracy to make us feel this way?”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

Confidence , Reading , Making love , Understanding

“Please respect our need to grieve privately. My heart is broken. I am the mother of the most tender-hearted, high-spirited, beautiful little girl who is the spitting image of her father. All that I can cling to is his presence inside her that reveals itself every day. His family and I watch Matilda as she whispers to trees, hugs animals, and takes steps two at a time, and we know that he is with us still. She will be brought up with the best memories of him.”

Heath Ledger (1979–2008) Australian actor

[Michelle Williams: Heath Ledger Has Broken My Heart, http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23147754-5001021,00.html, The Daily Telegraph, Web, news.com.au, February 1, 2008, 2008-02-01, http://web.archive.org/web/20080206234312/http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23147754-5001021,00.html, 2008-02-06]</ref>
[Michelle Williams Breaks Silence on Heath's Death, http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20175486,00.html, People, Web, people.com (Time Inc.), February 1, 2008, 2008-02-02]

Family , Tree , Time , Girl

“Value fulfillment itself is most difficult to describe, for it combines the nature of a loving presence - a presence with the innate knowledge of its own divine complexity - with a creative ability of infinite proportions that seeks to bring to fulfillment even the slightest, most distant portion of its own inverted complexity. Translated into simpler terms, each portion of energy is endowed with an inbuilt reach of creativity that seeks to fulfill its own potentials in all possible variations - and in such a way that such a development also furthers the creative potentials of each other portion of reality.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 884, Page 138
Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment, Volume One (1986)

Nature , Knowledge , Distant , Reality

“It is not easy to write of my good friend, John Muir. The impression of his personality was so strong on those who knew him that all words seem cheap beside it. Those who never knew him can never, through any word of ours, be brought to realize what they have missed. … He had a quaint, crisp way of talking, his literary style in fact, and none of the nature lovers, the men who know how to feel in the presence of great things and beautiful, have expressed their craft better than he.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

David Starr Jordan, first President of Stanford University (page 8)
Sierra Club Bulletin - Memorial Issue

Personality , Beauty , Strong , Nature

“He thought human life a poor thing at best, after the freshness of youth and of unsatisfied curiosity had gone by. This was a topic on which he did not often speak, especially, it may be supposed, in the presence of young persons: but when he did, it was with an air of settled and profound conviction. He would sometimes say, that if life were made what it might be, by good government and good education, it would be worth having: but he never spoke with anything like enthusiasm even of that possibility.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/48/mode/1up p. 48

Life , Personality , Education , Youth

“My state of mind was not humility, but neither was it arrogance. I never thought of saying to myself, I am, or I can do, so and so. I neither estimated myself highly nor lowly. I did not estimate myself at all. If I thought anything about myself, it was that I was rather backward in my studies, since I always found myself so, in comparison with what my father expected from me. I assert this with confidence, though it was not the impression of various persons who saw me in my childhood. They, as I have since found, thought me greatly and disagreeably self-conceited; probably because I was disputatious, and did not scruple to give direct contradictions to things which I heard said. I suppose I acquired this bad habit from having been encouraged in an unusual degree to talk on matters beyond my age, and with grown persons, while I never had inculcated in me the usual respect for them. My father did not correct this ill-breeding and impertinence, probably from not being aware of it, for I was always too much in awe of him to be otherwise than extremely subdued and quiet in his presence.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)

https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/33/mode/1up pp. 33–34

Personality , Age , Study , Self-confidence

“If I stopped at this point, I would be merely stating a fact, and not telling the truth. You see, a fact is merely the absence of contradiction, but truth is the presence of coherence. Truth is the relatedness of facts. Now it is a fact that we’ve come a long, long way, but it isn’t the whole truth. In order to tell the truth, it would be necessary to add the other part, and I’m afraid that if I stopped at this point, I would leave you the victims of a dangerous optimism. If I stopped here, I would leave you the victims of an illusion wrapped in superficialities. So in order to tell the truth, it is necessary to move on and not only say that we’ve come a long, long way, but that we’ve a long, long way to go before the American dream is a reality, before this problem is solved.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)

Optimism , Dreams , Truth , Problem

“For Egypt, the greatest horror was the destruction or abduction of the cult images. In the eyes of the Israelites, the erection of images meant the destruction of divine presence; in the eyes of the Egyptians, this same effect was attained by the destruction of images. In Egypt, iconoclasm was the most terrible religious crime; in Israel, the most terrible religious crime was idolatry. In this respect Osarseph alias Akhenaten, the iconoclast, and the Golden Calf, the paragon of idolatry, correspond to each other inversely, and it is strange that Aaron could so easily avoid the role of the religious criminal. It is more than probable that these traditions evolved under mutual influence. In this respect, Moses and Akhenaten became, after all, closely related.”

Jan Assmann (1938) German egyptologist

Jan Assmann, From Akhenaten to Moses: Ancient Egypt and Religious Change, pg. 76, 2014, The American University in Cairo Press.

Relation ships

“Absence and presence have very primal effects upon us. Too much presence suffocates; a degree of absence spurs our interest. We are marked by the continual desire to possess what we do not have—the object projected by our fantasies. Learn to create some mystery around you, to use strategic absence to make people desire your return, to want to possess you. Dangle in front of others what they are missing most in life, what they are forbidden to have, and they will go crazy with desire. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Overcome this weakness in yourself by embracing your circumstances, your fate.”

Robert Greene (1959) American author

Chap. 5 : Become an Elusive Object of Desire
The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

Fate , Grass , People , Learning

“We have never been a drug-free society and we never will be. Recognizing this fact, and recognizing the fact that these harmful drugs are here to stay, we should try to employ an approach that will most effectively reduce the deaths, disease, crime, and misery caused by their presence in our communities.”

James P. Gray (1945) American judge

Source: Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs, 2011, p. 9

Communication , Death , Disease

“The power of the feeling is the gathering which edifies, the being seized by oneself, its blazing up, its fulguration, is the becoming of the being, the triumphant sudden appearance of the revelation. What becomes of, in the triumph of this sudden appearance, in the fulguration of the presence, in the Parousia and, lastly, when there is something instead of nothing, that’s the joy.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Original: (fr) La puissance du sentiment est le rassemblement édificateur, l’être saisi par soi, son embrasement, sa fulguration, est le devenir de l’être, le surgissement triomphant de la révélation. Ce qui advient, dans le triomphe de ce surgissement, dans la fulguration de la présence, dans la Parousie et, enfin, quand il y a quelque chose plutôt que rien, c’est la joie.
Source: Michel Henry, L'Essence de la manifestation, 1963, t. 2, § 70, p. 831
Source: Books on Phenomenology of Life, The Essence of Manifestation (1963)

Joy , Appearance , Feeling

“That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur, other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompence. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Stanza 3
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798)

Loss , Soul , Time , Sun

“We want Jesus as the visibly resurrected one, as the splendid, transfigured Jesus. We want his visible power and glory, and we no longer want to return to the cross, to believing against all appearances, to suffering in faith … it is good here... let us make dwellings. …
The disciples are not allowed to do this. God's glory comes quite near in the radiant cloud of God's presence, and the Father's voice says: "This is my beloved son; listen to him!" … There is no abiding in and enjoying his visible glory here. Whoever recognizes the transfigured Jesus, whoever recognizes Jesus as God, must also immediately recognize Him as the crucified human being, and should hear him, obey him. Luther's vision of Christ: "the crucified Lord!"”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

… Now the disciples are overcome by fear. Now they comprehend what is going on. They were, after all, still in the world, unable to bear such glory. They sinned against God's glory.

p. 3
Meditations on the Cross (1996), Back to the Cross

God , Faith , Suffering , Christ

“The most extensive deletions are ordered in regard to the chapter on ‘Aurangzeb’s policy on religion’. Every allusion to what he actually did to the Hindus, to their temples, to the very leitmotif of his rule – to spread the sway of Islam – are directed to be excised from the book. He is to be presented as one who had an aversion – an ordinary sort of aversion, almost a secular one – to music and dancing, to the presence of prostitutes in the court, and that it is these things he banished... In a word, no forcible conversions, no massacres, no destruction of temples. Just that Hinduism had created an exploitative, casteist society. Islam was egalitarian. Hence the oppressed Hindus embraced Islam!
Muslim historians of those times are in raptures at the heap of kafirs who have been dispatched to hell. Muslim historians are forever lavishing praise on the ruler for the temples he has destroyed, for the hundreds of thousands he has got to see the light of Islam. Law books like The Hedaya prescribe exactly the options to which these little textbooks alluded. All whitewashed away.
Objective whitewash for objective history. And today if anyone seeks to restore truth to these textbooks, the shout, ‘Communal rewriting of history’.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud (1998)

Hell , Religion , Time , Law

“I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

"The Peace of Wild Things" in Green River Review, No. 1 (1968)

Peaceful , Time , Waiting , Light

“Is it not apparent that the policy of sanctions involves, I do not say war, but a risk of war? Is it not apparent that that risk must increase in proportion to the effectiveness of the sanctions and also by reason of the incompleteness of the League? Is it not also apparent from what has happened that in the presence of such a risk nations cannot be relied upon to proceed to the last extremity of war unless their vital interests are threatened?”

Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the 1900 Club at Grosvenor House, London (10 June 1936) on the Italo-Abyssinian War, quoted in The Times (11 June 1936), p. 10
Chancellor of the Exchequer

War

“In every parganah officers have come from the thanahs with orders from the Presence for the destruction of idols.”

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

Quotes from late medieval histories, 1670s
Source: A letter preserved in the Yasho-Madhav temple of Dhamrai in the Dacca district, dated 27 June, 1672, and printed in J. M. Ray’s Bengali History of Dacca, i. 389. quoted in Sarkar, Jadunath (1972). History of Aurangzib: Volume III. App. V.

“It hardly matters why a library is destroyed: every banning, curtailment, shredding, plunder or loot gives rise (at least as a ghostly presence) to a louder, clearer, more durable library of the banned, looted, plundered, shredded or curtailed. Those books may no longer be available for consultation, they may exist only in the vague memory of a reader or in the vaguer-still memory of tradition and legend, but they have acquired a kind of immortality.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

A History of Reading (1996)
Source: The Library at Night, p. 123

Books , Memory

“May you be able to overclimb the obstacles custom, tradition, thoughtlessness, and habit have built up; may even such poor words as mine win you to the realization that there is no joy in life like the joy of discipleship, no so-called sacrifice that can be made which is not as the dross cast into the fire where gold comes out instead; oh! that in the hearts of even a few of you — one here and there scattered through this vast audience — the feeble words may light the eternal flame, and the passing movement caused by speech may grow into resolute will and a determined endeavor. Oh, then for you, too, in the near future there awaits the Finding of the Master, for you also who seek shall find; if you knock with the hammer of these Qualifications, surely the door shall swing open before you, that you may find Him, as I have been blessed enough to find Him, that you may know that service which is perfect freedom, that joy which is in the presence of the Master.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man, 1923, p. 83

Freedom , Light , Future , Heart

“Quickly or slowly, according as that probation is lived nobly or poorly, another summons comes to him, when the Master sees that he has gained to a considerable extent the Qualifications which are necessary, and needs a further fuller teaching in order that he may apply his knowledge more efficiently to life. Again he is called; again he sees his Master. And then the Master accepts him as disciple, no longer on probation, but accepted and approved; now his consciousness is to begin to blend with the consciousness of his Master, and he is to feel His presence more clearly.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man (1923), p.63

Knowledge , Life , Feeling

“It should also be remembered that the Bible is written in the language of symbols, a special category of literature designed both to conceal and to reveal spiritual truths. Blindness is a symbol for temporary unawareness of spiritual light. The Christ partly represents spiritual intuitiveness. When one who is spiritually blind becomes intuitively awakened and active or, symbolically, enters the presence of the Christ and is healed by him, the scales are said to have fallen from his eyes. This I believe to be the true symbolical interpretation; for I look upon the story as one of the many beautiful miniature mystery dramas to be found in the Bible, portraying in allegory and symbol the soul’s awakening from darkness to light. Nevertheless, symbolism apart, the answer given by the Lord was, as stated above, doctrinally and technically correct.”

Geoffrey Hodson (1886–1983) New Zealand occultist

Reincarnation & Christianity (1967)

Soul , Light , Beauty , Truth

“This is life to come, —
Which martyred men have made more glorious
For us who strive to follow. May I reach
That purest heaven, — be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,
And in diffusion ever more intense!
So shall I join the choir invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world.”

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

O May I Join the Choir Invisible (1867)

Soul , Smile , Music , World

“O may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge men's search
To vaster issues.”

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

O May I Join the Choir Invisible (1867)

Night , Dead , Search , Star

“I often think of others who hunger and thirst for something more, for whom the Catholic Church is a very intimidating but compelling presence. They must overcome misunderstandings about what the Catholic Church teaches, and fears about what it might mean to live in the Catholic Church. Patient pastoral work can resolve much of this.”

Jeffrey N. Steenson (1952) American bishop

Source: Seeking the pearl of great price https://mercatornet.com/seeking_the_pearl_of_great_price/8854/ (October 22, 2009)

Hunger , Fear , Thinking

“God speaks, we listen, and that's the whole process of discernment. Everybody has discernment all their life, what have I been blind to, and what do I need to do to recognize the presence of God in my life?”

William Joseph Dendinger (1939) Catholic bishop

Bishop William J. Dendinger - The Samaritan Woman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk1eGos_--Y (April 10, 2014)

God , Life

“Apocalypse does not point to a fiery Armageddon but to the fact that our ignorance and our complacency are coming to an end… The exclusivism of there being only one way in which we can be saved, the idea that there is a single religious group that is in sole possession of the truth—that is the world as we know it that must pass away. What is the kingdom? It lies in our realization of the ubiquity of the divine presence in our neighbors, in our enemies, in all of us.”

Joseph Campbell book Thou Art That

Source: Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor

“Let us learn from the lips of death the lessons of life. Let us live truly while we live, live for what is true and good and lasting. And let the memory of our dead help us to do this. For they are not wholly separated from us, if we remain loyal to them. In spirit they are with us. And we may think of them as silent, invisible, but real presences in our households.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Life and Destiny (1913)

Thinking , Memory , Dead , Life

“The support of the communities implies concrete assistance to young couples because it can offer them knowledge and an important wealth of experience, while encouraging them, above all, to open themselves to the presence of God in their lives, a presence that will help them to support their love in a long, faithful, and fruitful marriage. When the parish communities take this responsibility seriously the ministry of marriage preparation has the potential to be a life-giving joy for communities and families. Their love is contagious and does everyone good.”

Peter Doyle (bishop) (1944) Catholic bishop

Marriage Preparation in the light of “Amoris Laetitia”: The experience of the Office for Life, Family, and Marriage of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales http://www.laityfamilylife.va/content/laityfamilylife/en/news/2018/la-preparazione-al-matrimonio-alla-luce-di-amoris-laetitia--lesp.html (23 August 2018)

Family , God , Faith , Marriage

“We are living in a moment in which our physicality, our being there is replaced by our virtual images and our voice, even this impalpable. Our being flesh and blood has to deal with the absence that is the true presence in these times”

Salvatore Garau (1953) Italian artist

referring to his 'I Am', The invisible sculpture, Garau make in 2021 during Covid19 era
Quote of Garau, in https://it.finance.yahoo.com/notizie/venduta-scultura-che-non-esiste-110928142.html 'Venduta scultura che non esiste: Salvatore Garau e l’immateriale' 2021, Yahoo Finance, May 2021

Time

“The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.”

Epictetus (50–138) philosopher from Ancient Greece

People , Powerful

“I give thanks to God for the presence and help of cardinal Ratzinger, who is a trusted friend.”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

Autobiography of John Paul II, firstly presented on May 2004 in Rome.
Source: Sandro Magister, L'Espresso - May 27, 2004 http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/7042%26eng%3dy.html/
Other Quotes by Pope John Paul II

Help , God

“Building your presence across all social media platforms is the single greatest opportunity to stand out.”

Vladimer Botsvadze

“The illusion of presence of light deceives us that we see but we don't. When darkness emerges, our eyes are useless -Edy kasawuli”

Edykasawuli7

Light

“I feel like I realized that power after I came out, after the #MeToo movement, and that was kind of scary. But it’s like, wow, my presence is very big in gymnastics but also online, just in the world in general. So I have to be a bit careful about what I say.”

Simone Biles (1997) American gymnast

"Simone Biles and the Weight of Perfection" in The New York Times (24 July 2021) https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/24/sports/olympics/simone-biles-gymnastics.html

World , Feeling

“A society that acquiesces in the presence in its midst of a vast permanent army of unemployed is a society that has ceased to believe in itself.”

G. D. H. Cole (1889–1959) British historian, economist, writer

The Next Ten Years in Economic and Social Policy (1929), p. 46

“If you have no fear of shouting nor writing down someone's name, then you have got nothing to fear in their presence.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Fear

“The sense of the sacred is the capacity to perceive, or feel, the presence of the Celestial in earthly symbols, whether sacramental or natural; and this implies the sense of dignity as well as of devotion.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[2016, La conscience de l’Absolu, Hozhoni, 57, 978-2-37241-020-5]
Spiritual life, Sense of the sacred

Nature , Sense , Feeling

“Fear walks out of the door when there is hope around. My fear start trembling when it senses the presence of hope and When fear sees the hand of hope in my hands, it runs away.”

Shabdon Ka Jahan

Hope , Sense , Fear

“5 per cent it is, and I have told the unions that they have all the weapons. We are naked in their presence and we need their co-operation.”

James Callaghan (1912–2005) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; 1976-1979

Prime Minister
Source: Remarks to the Cabinet on official pay policy (20 July 1978), quoted in Tony Benn, Conflicts of Interest: Diaries 1977–80 (1990), p. 326

“[People].. would have become aware of the purpose and presence of God in every part of creation and in themselves, to such an extent that they would be incapable of separating ‘religion’ from science, education or government. The integration would have become complete.”

Vera Stanley Alder (1898–1984) British artist

Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Chapter IV The Spiritual Cabinet

God , People , Education , Science

“Above all practice the presence of God in prayer. Divine Mind has given us all potentialities, in prayer we recognize it as the source of these, and with a right understanding of our relation to it our soul grows great with infinite capacity, all potentiality. "With God all things are possible."”

Charles Fillmore (1854–1948) American mystic

"All things whatsoever the Father hath are mine."
Source: Teach Us to Pray with Cora Fillmore (1941)

Soul , God , Understanding

“We live in a world where the Taliban has a huge presence on Twitter, yet your favorite American president has been silenced”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Source: " Trump announces social media platform launch plan, SPAC deal https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/20/trump-announces-social-media-platform-launch-plan-spac-deal.html" (October 20, 2021)

Silence , World

“Now whom you forgive anything, I also forgive. For if indeed I have forgiven anything, I have forgiven that one for your sakes in the presence of Christ, lest Satan should take advantage of us; for we are not ignorant of his devices.”

book Bible

Source: 2 Corinthians 2:10-11, NKJV

Forgiveness , Christ

“Once in a while you’re momentarily conscious of being happy. But I’m superstitious, and I picture Fate—best be respectful, and use a capital F—as a misty presence somewhere up in the sky but not too far away. Always listening, alert and ready to punish forbidden optimism.”

Jack Finney book From Time to Time

Source: From Time to Time (1995), Chapter 1 (p. 38)

Fate , Happiness , Optimism

“I must get out on the trails once more that wind through shadowy haunts and cool,
Away from the presence of wall and door, and see myself in a crystal pool;
I must get out with the silent things, where neither laughter nor hate is heard,
Where malice never the humblest stings and no one is hurt by a spoken word.”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

Source: All That Matters (1922), p.11 - The Call, stanza 2.

Hurt , Hate , Laughter

“Where is a self-revelation of this sort achieved? In Life, as its essence, since Life is nothing other than that which reveals itself – not something that might have an added property of self-revealing, but the very fact of self-revealing, self-revelation as such. Everywhere that something like a self-revelation is produced there is Life. Everywhere there is Life, this self-revelation is produced. If, then, the Revelation of God is a self-revelation that owes nothing to the truth of the world, and if we ask where such a self-revelation is achieved, the answer is unequivocal: in Life and in Life alone. Therefore we are in the presence of the first fundamental equation of Christianity: God is Life – he is the essence of Life, or if one prefers, the essence of Life is God. Saying this we already know what God is, but we do not know it through the effect of some knowledge or learning – we do not know it through thought, against the background of the truth of the world. Rather we know it, and we can know it, only in and through Life itself. We can know the essence of God only in God. But this observation is premature.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Books on Religion and Christianity, I am the Truth. Toward a philosophy of Christianity (1996)
Source: Michel Henry, I am the Truth. Toward a Philosophy of Christianity, translated by Susan Emanuel, Stanford University Press, 2003, p. 27-28

Knowledge , Life , God , Learning

“In trying to work for you, we might have failed to take good care of your souls as expected. We ask for your forgiveness in this Year of Mercy. We ask a bit a bit of amnesty from you. We should humbly acknowledge before God and his people the fact that in the history of our priesthood, the dark presence of sin is also found, so there is the need for us in this Year of Mercy to commit ourselves fully to the search for holiness.”

Robert Ndlovu (1955) Archbishop of Harare

Source: Archbishop of Harare celebrates Chrism Mass http://www.archivioradiovaticana.va/storico/2016/03/24/archbishop_of_harare_celebrates_chrism_mass/en-1217797 (24 March 2016)

Soul , God , History , Search

“Every nearest to Divine presence is given spiritual acumen in proportion to his proximity to Divine sanctuary.”

Sari al-Saqati (772–867) Iraqi sufi

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam, p. 43

“The problem of locating photos often confirms the indifference to women’s presence in history, as reflected in the media, books, historical records, museums, university libraries.”

Elizabeth Martinez (1925) American community organizer, activist, author, and educator

Source: (es) El problema de localizar fotografías confirma la indiferencia ante la presencia de las mujeres en la historia, cosa que se refleja constantemente en los medios, libros, archivos históricos, museos y bibliotecas universitarias.

Photo , History , Universe , Books

“The Christian presence in the East, even in Aleppo is thousands of years old, since the time of the Apostles; therefore, it is very important that it continues, because this also benefits the universal Church - not only the East.”

Joseph Tobji (1971) archeparch of Maronite Catholic Archeparchy of Aleppo

War and economic crisis in Aleppo cause Christians to flee https://www.vaticannews.va/en/church/news/2021-12/syria-war-christian-tobji-joseph.html (13 December 2021)

Time , Universe