Quotes about presence
page 6

“I find in myself, perhaps, a type of the general feeling of my constituents toward yours. I am sure I feel no hostility to you, senators from the North. I am sure there is not one of you, whatever sharp discussion there may have been between us, to whom I cannot now say, in the presence of my God, I wish you well; and such, I am sure, is the feeling of the people whom I represent toward those whom you represent. I therefore feel that I but express their desire when I say I hope, and they hope, for peaceful relations with you, though we must part. They may be mutually beneficial to us in the future, as they have been in the past, if you so will it. The reverse may bring disaster on every portion of the country; and if you will have it thus, we will invoke the God of our fathers, who delivered them from the power of the lion, to protect us from the ravages of the bear; and thus, putting our trust in God, and in our own firm hearts and strong arms, we will vindicate the right as best we may.”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

1860s, Speech before the U.S. Senate (1861)

God, Hostility, People, Peace

“No, we don’t have faith in reason and science in the same way as “Cru” members have faith in God. I see “faith” according to Walter Kaufmann’s definition: strong belief in propositions for which there is insufficient evidence to command the assent of every reasonable person. We have confidence in science because it has led us to provisional truths—it works. Cru doesn’t even know if there’s any God, or, if there is a divine presence, that it’s the Abrahamic god rather than the Hindu god, Yahweh, or Wotan. And we use reason in the same way: it leads us to truth. Revelation, dogma, and authority do not, for if they did there would be only one religion rather than thousands with their disparate and often conflicting doctrines.”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

" Atheism grows on campus http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/02/10/religion-dispatches-on-atheism/" February 10, 2013

God, Truth, Faith, Religion

“We miss [Rehavam Ze'evi's] clear, ideological voice, his leadership, his larger than life presence.”

Reuven Rivlin (1939) Israeli politician, 10th President of Israel

Israel national news http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/160988#.U5g1Uvl_uci, 16 October 2012

Life

“We are a violent society. Our foreign policy is based on violence. Barack Obama is out there, being this charming, incredibly warm human being, and you know as well as I do, that he represents a nation whose primary directive is kill. Kill, loot, pillage, take. You don't believe that? Then let me ask you something. Does Cuba have a military presence in 140 countries? No. Does Russia? No. Does China? No. Does-- go ahead, pick one! Go ahead! There's one country on earth that has a military presence in 140 countries. And it's us. And why do we have it there? Why do we have them there? This is a violent society!”

Mike Malloy (1942) American radio broadcaster

On Foreign Policy

Country

“Rise in the presence of a gray head.”

Adolph Freiherr Knigge book Über den Umgang mit Menschen

Vor einem grauen Haupte sollst du aufstehen!
Über den Umgang mit Menschen (1788)

“Baseball's owners must be the only U. S. citizens whose parents never told them the story of the boy who cried wolf. Their perennial cry of evaporating profits and imminent catastrophe in the presence of of rapidly growing revenues and escalating franchise values is hard to take seriously.”

Andrew Zimbalist (1947) American economist

Source: Baseball And Billions - Updated edition - (1992), Chapter 3, Franchise Finances, p. 47.

Boy, Parent, Wolf, Cry

“The mother's yearning, that completest type of the life in another life which is the essence of real human love, feels the presence of the cherished child even in the debased, degraded man.”

George Eliot book Daniel Deronda

Bk. 2, Ch. 13
Daniel Deronda (1876)

Love, Life, Feeling

“I should dearly love that the world should be ever so little better for my presence. Even on this small stage we have our two sides, and something might be done by throwing all one's weight on the scale of breadth, tolerance, charity, temperance, peace, and kindliness to man and beast. We can't all strike very big blows, and even the little ones count for something.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Stark Munro Letters

The Stark Munro Letters (1894)

Love, World, Peace

“Christianity depends finally on consciousness and experience. From other departments of the mind she may retire at times or seem to, but never from this. Sitting here, if allowed to, on the throne of the soul, she occasionally walks into the other rooms and sets them in order; and accustomed lo her presence, sooner or later the soul finds every department flooded with her light.”

Erastus Otis Haven (1820–1881) American Methodist Episcopal bishop

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 134.

Soul, Light, Time, Dependency

“The worship of money is the lowest of all human emotions, but it is shared not only by the bourgeoisie, but also by the great majority of us… Little people, humble people, even those who are practically penniless. And I, with all my indignation, all my passion for destruction, I, too, am not free of it. I who am oppressed by wealth, who realise it to be the source of all misery, all my vices and hatred, all the bitterest humiliations that I have to suffer, all my impossible dreams and all the endless torment of my existence, still, all the time, as soon as I find myself in the presence of a rich person, I cannot help looking up to him, as some exceptional and splendid being, a kind of marvelous divinity, and in spite of myself, stronger than either my will of my reason, I feel rising from the very depths of my being, a sort of incense of admiration for this wealthy creature, who is all too often as stupid as he is pitiless. Isn’t it crazy? And why… why?”

Octave Mirbeau (1848–1917) French journalist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, novelist, and playwright

Diary ot a Chambermaid

Money, People, Stupidity, Dreams

“Now and always as in that morning twilight on the Galilean lake Christ comes to men. Everywhere He is present, everywhere revealing Himself. Now, as then, our eyes are holden by our own fault, so that we recognize not the merciful Presence which is all around us. Now, as then, it is they who are nearest to Christ by love who see Him first. Still Jesus joins Himself to us; still He walks with us; still He instructs us, speaking to us by His word, His providences, His Spirit; still He seeks to enter into our sorrows and trials, and to console and cheer us. But we know Him not. Our eyes are holden by unbelief. We do not press Him to abide with us. Hence He is grieved, and we are left alone in the night.”

Richard Fuller (minister) (1804–1876) United States Baptist minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 96.

Love, Men, Christ, Night

“The presence of evil, once scented, tends to bring out all that is most irrational and uncontrollable in the public imagination. It is a catalyst for pea-brained theories, gimcrack scholarship, and the credulous cosmologies of hysteria.”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

The God of Dark Laughter https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/04/09/the-god-of-dark-laughter, The New Yorker (April 9, 2001)

Imagination, Evil

“The Russian Armies and all the peoples of the Russian Republic have rallied to the defence of their hearths and homes. … The aggressor is surprised, startled, staggered. For the first time in his experience mass murder has become unprofitable. He retaliates by the most frightful cruelties. As his armies advance, whole districts are being exterminated. Scores of thousands—literally scores of thousands—of executions in cold blood are being perpetrated by the German police-troops upon the Russian patriots who defend their native soil. Since the Mongol invasions of Europe in the sixteenth century, there has never been methodical, merciless butchery on such a scale, or approaching such a scale. And this is but the beginning. Famine and pestilence have yet to follow in the bloody ruts of Hitler's tanks. We are in the presence of a crime without a name.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Broadcast (24 August 1941), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill, 1939–1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), p. 1173
The Second World War (1939–1945)

People, Home, Time

“As men, we are all equal in the presence of death.”

Publilio Siro Latin writer

Maxim 1
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave

Death, Men

“In short, while there can be no doubt about the presence of some Muslims in Sind, Gujarat and on the western coast of India, their number till the end of the tenth century was almost microscopic. In Hindustan proper, east of the river Indus, there were hardly any Musalmans in C. E. 1000.”

K. S. Lal book Indian Muslims: Who Are They

Indian Muslims: Who Are They (1990)

“The mirror by the door was not a mirror by the door, it was an altar where he stood for only a moment to put on his cap before going out. The red rocking chair was a rocking of his own hips as he sat in the kitchen. Still, there was nothing of his — his own — that she could find. It was as if she were afraid she had hallucinated him and needed proof to the contrary. His absence was everywhere, stinging everything, giving the furnishings primary colors, sharp outlines to the corners of rooms and gold light to the dust collecting on table tops. When he was there he pulled everything toward himself. Not only her eyes and all her senses but also inanimate things seemed to exist because of him, backdrops to his presence. Now that he had gone, these things, so long subdued by his presence, were glamorized in his wake.”

Toni Morrison book Sula

Sula (1973)

Color, Sense, Light

“Life should be a constant vision of God's presence. Here is our defense against being led away by the gauds and shows of earth's vulgar attractions.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 277.

Life, God

“On the 24th of the same month I went to see the fort of Kangra, and gave an order that the Qazi, the Chief Justice (Mir'Adl), and other learned men of Islam should accompany me and carry out in the fort whatever was customary, according to the religion of Muhammad. Briefly, having traversed about one koss, I went up to the top of the fort, and by the grace of God, the call to prayer and the reading of the Khutba and the slaughter of a bullock which had not taken place from the commencement of the building of the fort till now, were carried out in my presence. I prostrated myself in thanksgiving for this great gift, which no king had hoped to receive, and ordered a lofty mosque to be built inside the fort' ….'After going round the fort I went to see the temple of Durga, which is known as Bhawan. A world has here wandered in the desert of error. Setting aside the infidels whose custom is the worship of idols, crowds of the people of Islam, traversing long distances, bring their offerings and pray to the black stone (image)' Some maintain that this stone, which is now a place of worship for the vile infidels, is not the stone which was there originally, but that a body of the people of Islam came and carried off the original stone, and threw it into the bottom of the river, with the intent that no one could get at it. For a long time the tumult of the infidels and idol-worshippers had died away in the world, till a lying brahman hid a stone for his own ends, and going to the Raja of the time said: 'I saw Durga in a dream, and she said to me: They have thrown me into a certain place: quickly go and take me up.”

Jahangir (1569–1627) 4th Mughal Emperor

The Raja, in the simplicity of his heart, and greedy for the offerings of gold that would come to him, accepted the tale of the brahman and sent a number of people with him, and brought that stone, and kept it in this place with honour, and started again the shop of error and misleading
Kangra (Himachal Pradesh) , Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, translated into English by Alexander Rogers, first published 1909-1914, New Delhi Reprint, 1978, Vol. II, pp. 223-25.

Men, God, People, World

“I think that the West is the most powerful reality in the history of this country. It's always had a power, a presence, an attraction that differentiated it from the rest of the United States. Whether the West was a place to be conquered, or the West as it is today, a place to be protected and nurtured. It is the regenerative force of America.”

J. S. Holliday (1924–2006) American historian

The West (1996)

History, Thinking, Reality, Country

“Before us, art relied on memory, an anxious re-evocation of an Object lost (happiness, love, a landscape), and hence was nostalgic, static, charged with suffering and distance. With Futurism, instead, art is turning into art-action, which is to say, into will, optimism, aggression, possession, penetration, delight, brutal reality within art (example: onomatopoiea; —example: noise-tuners = motors), geometrical splendor of forces, projections forward. Thus, art is becoming Presence, new Object, new reality created with the abstract elements of the universe. The hands of the passéist artist used to suffer for the sake of the lost Object; our hand will twitch for the new Object to be created. That is why the new Object (the plastic complex) has miraculously appeared in your hands.”

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944) Italian poet and editor, founder of the Futurist movement

Quote in: Fortunato Depero & Giacomo Balla 'The Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe' in: Direzione del Movimento Futurista, March 11, 1915. Transl. Caroline Tisdall, 1973.
1910's

Love, Happiness, Art, Optimism

“I was attracted to studies of cancer families because epidemiological studies show that virtually all cancers manifest a tendency to aggregate in families. Close relatives of a cancer patient are at increased risk of that neoplasm, and perhaps other forms of cancer. The excess site-specific cancer risk is exceptionally high for carriers of certain cancer genes, in whom the attack rate can approach 100 percent. In candidate cancer families, the possibility that clustering is on the basis of chance must be excluded through epidemiological studies that establish the presence of an excess cancer risk. Predisposed families are candidates for laboratory studies to identify the inherited susceptibility factors. These investigations have led to the identification and isolation of human cancer genes, the tumor suppressor genes. These cancer genes are among more than 200 single-gene traits associated with the development of cancer. Approximately a dozen inherited susceptibility genes have been definitively identified, and many more are being sought. From studies of retinoblastoma and other rare cancers, important new information was generated about the fundamental biology of cancers that arise in many patients. Isolation of an inherited cancer susceptibility gene provides opportunities for presymptomatic testing of at-risk relatives. However, testing of healthy individuals also raise important issues regarding informed consent, confidentiality and potential for adverse psychological, social and economic effects.”

Frederick Pei Li (1940–2015) American physician

Frederick Li - Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/frederick-li/.

Family, Study, Chance

“Because his living presence became such an uncommonly global one, that ministry [Jackson’s individual spiritual concerns] reflected universal ecumenical principles dressed up in ultra-modern dance grooves, love songs to nature, lyrical eulogies in the form of musical elegies, and sermons sung with passionate intensity and suffering eloquence.”

Aberjhani (1957) author

(from Work and Soul in Michael Jackson’s This Is It).
From Articles, Essays, and Poems, On Michael Jackson

Love, Music, Nature, Suffering

“A great man's manias must be respected, because the time required to combat them is too precious to waste. A departmental head and his chief reach a state of symbiosis; the clever official knows that words must never be spoken in the chief's presence because they stir up painful complexes or rouse his anger. He knows how to present a proposition so that the chief will be interested and give a favorable opinion. He is clearly aware of the latter's mistakes and weaknesses, respects him no less for them, but he does his best to make up for deficiencies.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Working

Pain, Time, Anger

“What stuck in the minds of these men who had become murderers was simply the notion of being involved in something historic, grandiose, unique ("a great task that occurs once in two thousand years"), which must therefore be difficult to bear. This was important, because the murderers were not sadists or killers by nature; on the contrary, a systematic effort was made to weed out all those who derived physical pleasure from what they did. The troops of the Einsatzgruppen had been drafted from the Armed S. S., a military unit with hardly more crimes in its record than any ordinary unit of the German Army, and their commanders had been chosen by Heydrich from the S. S. élite with academic degrees. Hence the problem was how to overcome not so much their conscience as the animal pity by which all normal men are affected in the presence of physical suffering. The trick used by Himmler — who apparently was rather strongly afflicted by these instinctive reactions himself — was very simple and probably very effective; it consisted in turning these instincts around, as it were, in directing them toward the self. So that instead of saying: What horrible things I did to people!, the murderers would be able to say: What horrible things I had to watch in the pursuance of my duties, how heavily the task weighed upon my shoulders!”

Hannah Arendt book Eichmann in Jerusalem

Source: Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), Ch. VI.

Men, People, Pleasure, Nature

“[Regarding the 'Advance to Contact'] The simple truth about war is that if you are on the attack, you can't do a damned thing until you find your enemy, and the only way to do that is to push on, at whatever speed seems prudent, until you see or hear him, or he makes his presence known by letting fly at you.”

George MacDonald Fraser book Quartered Safe Out Here

Source: Quartered Safe Out Here (1992), p. 120.

War, Truth, Way, Speed

“It doesn't matter that [Christians] aren't paying attention to their religious doctrine, because marriage is not a sacred institution; it's a human invention. I'm married for the same reason other atheists like Penn Jillette are; it's partly for tax purposes, but also rights for partnership, possession, deathbed presence, inheritance and other benefits that civil unions just don't provide. But even if we made civil unions exactly identical to marriage, why can't we call it a marriage? "Because the Bible defines a marriage as one man and one woman". No, it doesn't! It is so irritating when everybody says that, because it's so wrong. First of all, the Bible doesn't define marriage at all. Secondly, if it did, that's not the description that it gives; the way the Bible describes marriage is creepy, criminal and cruel. According to the Bible, anyone you "cleave into" more than once becomes your bride if she happens to be living with you, and there's no limit on how many of them you can have, so it seems to me that the Bible defines marriage as one man and however many women that man can afford to keep in his house.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Youtube, Other, Biblical Family Values https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bldw8X5apnY (July 11, 2015)

Women, Marriage, Way, Housing

“The Mozart Festival Opera's production of Don Giovanni made the three hours fly. The miming between Stefano de Peppo and Vytautas Juozapaitis as Don Giovanni was great physical comedy that had the audience laughing out loud. Juozapaitis possessed the voice, swagger and stage presence to match and dominate Leporello, and his costumes are among the best I've seen. I think Mozart would have approved.”

Vytautas Juozapaitis (1963) Lithuanian opera singer

Christopher Hyde, "Mozart would have approved", Portland Press Herald (March, 2005) http://www.jennykellyproductions.com/prod_mozart_review.htm

Thinking, Flying

“[Pao-yu] says the strangest things for a mere child—for instance, that girls are made of water while men are made of clay and that's why he feels purified and invigorated in the presence of the one and contaminated and oppressed when in the presence of the other.”

Wang Chi-chen (1899–2001)

Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (1958), p. 22

Men, Feeling, Girl, Water

“In a vision I beheld the fullness of God in which I beheld and comprehended the whole creation, that is, what is on this side and what is beyond the sea, the abyss, the sea itself, and everything else. And in everything that I saw, I could perceive nothing except the presence of the power of God, and in a manner totally indescribable. And my soul in an excess of wonder cried out: "This world is pregnant with God!" Wherefore I understood how small is the whole of creation -- that is, what is on this side and what is beyond the sea, the abyss, the sea itself, and everything else -- but the power of God fills it all to overflowing.”

Angela of Foligno (1248–1309) Italian saint

Source: The Memorial and Instructions, pp. 169-170

God, World, Soul, Sea

“I was... questioning the students when something else caught my attention. First, dimly, then more vividly, I began to sense the presence of an invisible personality beside me. That is, I didn't see him, but felt his emotional reality quite as strongly as physical vision could ever show it. I'd "met" this same person in several previous classes when he told me mentally that he represented a past life of mine. Then, supposedly, I'd been some kind of jealous leader, demanding utmost loyalty. My friend Sue had been one of my followers. Now he wanted to confront her, feeling that she was going her own way this time and not following in her footsteps, as he thought she should have.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Adventures In Consciousness: An Introduction to Aspect Psychology (1975), p. 8

Life, Way, Feeling, Question

“In Afghanistan, a determined people are working to overcome decades of tyranny, and protect their newly free society. They have strong support from all 26 nations of the NATO Alliance. I appreciate the United Nations' decision this week to renew the mandate for the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. The United Nations is also an active civilian presence in Afghanistan, where experts are doing important work helping to improve education, facilitate humanitarian aid, and protect human rights. We must continue to help the Afghan people defend their young democracy so the Taliban does not return to power, and Afghanistan is never again a safe haven for terror.”

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

2000s, 2008, Address to the United Nations General Assembly (September 2008)

People, Education, Democracy, Support

“Salvation is an individual's personal encounter with God's Presence.”

Roger Haight (1936) American theologian

Source: Dynamics Of Theology, Chapter Ten, Method in theology, p. 204

God, Personality

“One of the great tests of a band, of course, was its manner of playing "God Save the King." … The English did it with effortless superiority, as though to say "We have frequently played this air in the presence of the King-Emperor and have reason to believe that he was perfectly satisfied." The American band gave an impression that every man was treacherously muttering the words of "My Country 'Tis of Thee" into his instrument; which was, of course, intolerable. I have probably misjudged this band, for like most children I was a patriotic bigot.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

I Remember Creatore (1948) Reminiscences on Giuseppe Creatore and his band http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/search.php?queryType=%40attr+1%3D1016+&query=Creatore

God, Children, Country

“She was perfectly quiet now, but not asleep — only soothed by sweet porridge and warmth into that wide-gazing calm which makes us older human beings, with our inward turmoil, feel a certain awe in the presence of a little child, such as we feel before some quiet majesty or beauty in the earth or sky — before a steady glowing planet, or a full-flowered eglantine, or the bending trees over a silent pathway.”

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

Source: Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861), Chapter 13 (at page 118)

Beauty, Feeling, Flowers, Tree

“Propensities for crime are irrelevant in a discussion about the murder of an individual — Ms. Kathryn Steinle and all other victims of criminals who should not be in the U. S. For these deaths have nothing to do with aggregate crime rates; they're about individuals who should be alive: a baby that should have been born, a girl who should be among the living, young men and women who should not be dead. To justify the crime-probabilities line-of-inquiry in the context of killer Francisco Sanchez' presence that day on the San Francisco pier, you would need to show that had Sanchez been deported or jailed or turned back at the border—his victim, Ms. Steinle, would nevertheless have suffered the same fate at the hands of a native murderer. The same eventuality would need to be demonstrated with respect to each individual victim of a criminal alien. The implication is crushingly stupid.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"The Hispandering Effect," http://www.quarterly-review.org/the-hispandering-effect/ The Quarterly Review, July 12, 2015. 2010s, 2015

Death, Women, Men, Fate

“At its beginnings there was very powerful meditation on the presence of Christ in the oppressed Indians, which objectively pointed toward a christology of the "body of Christ." Guamán Poma, for example, said, "By faith we know clearly that where there is a poor person there is Jesus Christ himself," and Bartolomé de las Casas declared, "In the Indies I leave Jesus Christ, our God, being whipped and afflicted, and buffeted and crucified, not once but thousands of times, as often as the Spaniards assault and destroy those people." But this original christological insight did not thrive, and what became the tradition was a christology based on the dogmatic formulas, in which— however well they were known and understood— what was stressed was the divinity of Christ rather than his real and lived humanity.”

Jon Sobrino (1938) Spanish theologian

Source: Jesus the Liberator (1991), p. 11

God, People, Faith, Affliction

“However, the absence of perfect concealment does not imply the presence of active advertisement, and if fertility were advertised in humans, we would presumably not need to employ sophisticated experimental methods to demonstrate its detectability.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: The Ape that Thought It Was a Peacock: Does Evolutionary Psychology Exaggerate Human Sex Differences? (2013), p. 151

Perfection

“We are working around the clock to ensure Baltimore City remains at peace, as it has throughout the day. The presence of the National Guard, Maryland State Police, and other law enforcement officials will continue in the days to come to ensure order is fully restored for the citizens of Baltimore.”

Larry Hogan (1956) American politician

" Governor Larry Hogan Mobilizes State Resources To Support Baltimore City Law Enforcement Response http://governor.maryland.gov/2015/04/28/governor-larry-hogan-mobilizes-state-resources-to-support-baltimore-city-law-enforcement-response/" (28 April 2015).

Peace, Law

“Art is the illusion of disorientation, the illusion of liberty, the illusion of presence, the illusion of the sacred, the illusion of Nature. … Not the painting of Buren, Mosset, Parmentier or Toroni…. Art is a distraction, art is false. Painting begins with Buren, Mosset, Parmentier, Toroni.”

Daniel Buren (1938) sculptor from France

Daniel Buren, Olivier Mosset, Michel Parmentier and Niele Toroni, at the Paris Biennale in October 1967. Translated and cited in: Lucy R. Lippard, Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972, New York: Praeger, (1973), p. 30.
1960s

Art, Nature, Painting, Falseness

“Even the matter of religious liberty, which has cost the world more tears, more blood and more agony, than any other interest, will be helped by his presence. I know of no church, however tolerant; of no priesthood, however enlightened, which could be safely trusted with the tremendous power which universal conformity would confer. We should welcome all men of every shade of religious opinion, as among the best means of checking the arrogance and intolerance which are the almost inevitable concomitants of general conformity. Religious liberty always flourishes best amid the clash of competition of rival religious creeds.”

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

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Men, World, Tear, Universe

“I've done you a piece of good service, Nancy," he began: then seeing me, he acknowledged my presence by a slight bow. I should have been invisible to Hatfield, or any other gentleman of those parts. "I've delivered your cat," he continued, "from the hands, or rather the gun, of Mr. Murray's gamekeeper.”

Anne Brontë book Agnes Grey

Source: Agnes Grey (1847), Ch. XII : The Shower

Cats, Parting

“Protocols:
Number 15, para. 6
You cannot imagine to what extent the wisest of the goyim can be brought to a state of unconscious naivete in the presence of this condition of high conceit of themselves, and at the same time how easy it is to take the heart out of them…. These tigers in appearance have the souls of sheep and the wind blows freely through their heads. We have set them on the hobby-horse of an idea about the absorbtion of individuality by the symbolic unit of Collectivism….”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Soul, Imagination, Idea, Appearance

““For the ultimate and real meaning of the argument is, that a soul or mind or person, purely as such, is itself the fountain of its percipient experience, and so possesses what has been happily named "life in itself." Proof of the presence in us of a priori or spontaneous cognition, then, is proof of just this self-causative life.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Human Immortality: its Positive Argument

Life, Soul, Personality

“ Of all forms of symbolism, language is the most highly developed, most subtle, and most complicated. It has been pointed out that human beings, by agreement, can make anything stand for anything. Now, human beings have agreed, in the course of centuries of mutual dependency, to let the various noises that they can produce […] stand for specified happenings in their nervous systems. We call that system of agreements language. For example, we who speak English have been so trained that, when our nervous systems register the presence of a certain kind of animal, we may make the following noise: "That's a cat." Anyone hearing us expects to find that, by looking in the same direction, he will experience a similar event in his nervous system -- one that will lead him to make an almost identical noise. Again, we have been so trained that when we are conscious of wanting food, we make the noise "I'm hungry."”

S. I. Hayakawa book Language in Thought and Action

Source: Language in Thought and Action (1949), Language as Symbolism, pp. 26-27

Food, Cats, Animals, Dependency

“(…) There is something exceptional, unique, about the present event, which the previous, or the coming do not have. (…) What makes the present so different? Obviously, my presence. I am real for I am always now, in the present, and what is with me now shares in my reality.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Present moment
Source: "I am That." P.7.

Reality

“When I look up at the starry heavens at night and reflect upon what it is that I really see there, I am constrained to say, "There is no God." The mind staggers in its attempt to grasp the idea of a being that could do that. It is futile to attempt it. It is not the works of some God that I see there. I am face to face with a power that baffles speech. I see no lineaments of personality, no human traits, but an energy upon whose currents solar systems are but bubbles. In the presence of it man and the race of man are less than motes in the air. I doubt if any mind can expand its conception of God sufficiently to meet the astounding disclosures of modern science. It is easier to say there is no God. The universe is so unhuman, that is, it goes its way with so little thought of man. He is but an incident, not an end. We must adjust our notions to the discovery that things are not shaped to him, but that he is shaped to them. The air was not made for his lungs, but he has lungs because there is air; the light was not created for his eye, but he has eyes because there is light. All the forces of nature are going their own way; man avails himself of them, or catches a ride as best he can. If he keeps his seat he prospers; if he misses his hold and falls he is crushed.”

John Burroughs (1837–1921) American naturalist and essayist

Source: The Light of Day (1900), Ch. XII: God and Nature

God, Way, Idea, Nature

“I have never had to look up a definition of honor. I knew instinctively what it was. It is something I had the day I was born, and I never had to question where it came from or by what right it was mine. If I was stripped of my honor, I would choose death as certainly and unemotionally as I clean my shoes in the morning. Honor is the presence of God in man.”

Pat Conroy The Lords of Discipline

Source: The Lords of Discipline (1980), p. 46. Said by character General Bentley Durrell.

Death, God, Shoe, Question

“For the Devil, the presence of learned one is by far more painful than a thousand worshipers.”

Ali al-Rida (770–818) eighth of the Twelve Imams

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.2, p. 16.
Regarding Knowledge & Wisdom, Religious

Pain, Learning

“The richest soil that was ever prepared would not grow a single blade of grass or the tiniest Weed if that soil were absolutely dry. …There must be water in the soil to dissolve out and transfer its elements in order that the rootlets of the plant shall be able to make the slightest use of these elements. …But …a plant may grow and thrive for a time quite without the presence of soil if its roots are placed in water. … some of the richest soils in the world are those that are absolutely barren and fully merit the designation of desert lands because water is lacking”

Luther Burbank (1849–1926) American botanist, horticulturist and pioneer in agricultural science

How Plants are Trained to Work for Man (1921) Vol. 5 Gardening

World, Grass, Water, Time

“The Church of God becomes concrete and visible only in a community of people who have experienced the presence of God and responded to his saving activity.”

Kurien Kunnumpuram (1931–2018) Indian theologian

Kunnumpuram, Kurien, 2011 “Theological Exploration,” Jnanadeepa: Pune Journal of Religious Studies 14/2 (July-Dec 2011)
On the Church

God, People, Communication

“I still, in presence of life… have reactions — as many as possible… It's, I suppose, because I am that queer monster, the artist, an obstinate finality, an inexhaustible sensibility. Hence the reactions — appearances, memories, many things, go on playing upon it with consequences that I note and "enjoy" (grim word!) noting. It all takes doing — and I do. I believe I shall do yet again — it is still an act of life.”

Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic

Letter to Henry Adams (21 March 1914).

Life, Appearance, Memory

“I will give you more and stronger ones. But if you still persist in refusing to listen to reason and decline to do my bidding, and if you wish deliberately to rush to your ruin, then I will shortly, in your presence, order your Castle to be stormed. (Here he pointed with one hand towards Fort Provintia.) My smart boys will attack it, conquer it, and demolish it in such a way, that not one stone will remain standing. If I wish to set my forces to work, then I am able to move Heaven and Earth; wherever I go, I am destined to win. Therefore take warning, and think the matter well over.”

Koxinga (1624–1662) Chinese military leader

Formosa under the Dutch: described from contemporary records, with explanatory notes and a bibliography of the island, 1903, William Campbell, Kegan Paul, 424, Dec. 20 2011 http://books.google.com/books?id=OpdMq-YJoeoC&pg=PA423&dq=koxinga+formosa+always+belonged+to+china&hl=en&ei=vsjiTergDM3TgAekqbzKBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CEQQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=same%20doom%20had%20they%20not%20taken%20to%20flight%20and%20gone%20out%20to%20sea.&f=false, Original from the University of Michigan(LONDON : KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO. LTD DRYDEN HOUSE, 43 GERRARD STREET, SOHO MDCCCCIII Edinburgh : T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty)

Way, Boy, Thinking

“Thus today in the presence of all awakened Ones
I invite every living being to this festival
Giving both immediate and lasting joy.
May the gods and all others rejoice.”

Šantidéva (685–763) 8th-century Indian Buddhist monk and scholar

Bodhicaryavatara

God, Joy

“Intent on one great love, perfect,
Requited and for ever,
I missed love's everywhere
Small presence, thousand-guised.”

Kathleen Raine (1908–2003) poet, critic, translator

Poem Confessions

Love, Perfection

“Other sorrows soften the heart, — poverty hardens it. Nothing like poverty for chilling the affections and repressing the spirits. Its annoyances are all of the small and mean order; its regrets all of a selfish kind; its presence is perpetual; and the scant meal, and the grudged fire, are repeated day by day, yet who can become accustomed to them?”

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

The Monthly Magazine

Heart, Selfishness

“…in his case it went further and became indifference to social distinction. Never once in forty years of intimacy did his son notice in him a trace of snobbishness. He was one of the exceedingly small number of Americans to whom an English duke or duchess seemed to be indifferent, and royalty itself nothing more than a slightly inconvenient presence. This was, it is true, rather the tone of English society in his time, but Americans were largely responsible for changing it, and Mr. Adams had every possible reason for affecting the manner of a courtier even if he did not feel the sentiment. Never did his son see him flatter or vilify, or show a sign of envy or jealousy; never a shade of vanity or self-conceit. Never a tone of arrogance! Never a gesture of pride!”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Jealousy, Feeling, Change, Time

“This man, a veteran journalist, held a position of importance in one of the lie-factories operated by the Roosevelt regime to keep the boobs pepped up with enthusiasm for sending their sons or their husbands to a senseless slaughter. At one policy conference, this man objected to a proposed lie on the grounds that it was so absurd that it would destroy public confidence, with the result that Americans would soon cease to believe anything that the agency manufactured. There was a great deal of debate over that question in this policy conference until it was ended by the agency's great expert in such matters. He was a man who, by the way, for some reason or other, had left Germany a few years before and come to bless the United States with his presence. This expert, being a bit ruffled by the debate, finally took his elegant little cigar from his mouth and said decisively, "Ve spit in ze faces of the American schwine!"”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

And that settled it. The master had spoken.
"What We Owe Our Parasites", speech (June 1968); Free Speech magazine (October and November 1995)
1990s

Lie, Way, Confidence, Question

“Dramatists have always made fun of the friendship between a husband and his wife's lover. But is it so comic? These two men undoubtedly have more to say to one another than the lover and his mistress. They get on perfectly well, and it is often the husband's presence that makes endurable the intolerable boredom of certain affairs of this sort. Cases have been known where a break occurred almost immediately following the husband's withdrawal from the scene.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Friendship

Men, Friendship, Lovers

“Friends and fellow citizens, the story of our presence here is soon and easily told. We are here in the District of Columbia, here in the city of Washington, the most luminous point of American territory; a city recently transformed and made beautiful in its body and in its spirit; we are here in the place where the ablest and best men of the country are sent to devise the policy, enact the laws, and shape the destiny of the Republic; we are here, with the stately pillars and majestic dome of the Capitol of the nation looking down upon us; we are here, with the broad earth freshly adorned with the foliage and flowers of spring for our church, and all races, colors, and conditions of men for our congregation — in a word, we are here to express, as best we may, by appropriate forms and ceremonies, our grateful sense of the vast, high, and preeminent services rendered to ourselves, to our race, to our country, and to the whole world by Abraham Lincoln.”

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

1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)

Men, World, Law, Beauty

“In many ways doth the full heart reveal
The presence of the love it would conceal.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

Poems Written in Later Life, motto (1826)

Love, Way, Heart

“To learn by example is to submit to authority. …By watching the master and emulating his efforts in the presence of his example, the apprentice unconsciously picks up the rules of the art, including those which are not explicitly known to the master himself. These hidden rules can be assimilated only by a person who surrenders himself to that extent uncritically to the imitation of another. A society which wants to preserve a fund of personal knowledge must submit to tradition. …Common Law …is the most important system of strictly traditional activities.”

Michael Polanyi (1891–1976) Hungarian-British polymath

Source: Personal Knowledge (1958), pp. 53-54

Law, Art, Knowledge, Effort

“There can have been few occasions in all our long political history when to the son of a man who counted for something in his day and generation has been vouchsafed the privilege of setting the seal on the work which the father began but had perforce to leave unfinished. Nearly 29 years have passed since Joseph Chamberlain entered upon his great campaign in favour of Imperial Preference and Tariff Reform. More than 17 years have gone by since he died, without having seen the fulfilment of his aims and yet convinced that, if not exactly in his way, yet in some modified form his vision would eventually take shape. His work was not in vain. Time and the misfortunes of the country have brought conviction to many who did not feel that they could agree with him then. I believe he would have found consolation for the bitterness of his disappointment if he could have foreseen that these proposals, which are the direct and legitimate descendants of his own conception, would be laid before the House of Commons, which he loved, in the presence of one and by the lips of the other of the two immediate successors to his name and blood.”

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

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1932/feb/04/import-duties in the House of Commons (4 February 1932) introducing the Import Duties Act 1932. Chancellor of the Exchequer

Love, Disappointment, Way, Feeling

“No, the Great Man does not boast himself sincere, far from that; perhaps does not ask himself if he is so: I would say rather, his sincerity does not depend on himself; he cannot help being sincere! The great Fact of Existence is great to him. Fly as he will, he cannot get out of the awful presence of this Reality. His mind is so made; he is great by that, first of all. Fearful and wonderful, real as Life, real as Death, is this Universe to him. Though all men should forget its truth, and walk in a vain show, he cannot. At all moments the Flame-image glares in upon him; undeniable, there, there!—I wish you to take this as my primary definition of a Great Man. A little man may have this, it is competent to all men that God has made: but a Great Man cannot be without it.”

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

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet

Life, Death, Men, God

“I was as afraid as the next man in my time and maybe more so. But with the years, fear had come to be regarded as a form of stupidity to be classed with overdrafts, acquiring a venereal disease or eating candies. Fear is a child's vice and while I loved to feel it approach, as one does with any vice, it was not for grown men and the only thing to be afraid of was the presence of true and imminent danger in a form that you should be aware of and not be a fool if you were responsible for others.”

Ernest Hemingway book True at First Light

Source: True at First Light (1999), Ch. 17

Love, Men, Stupidity, Fear

“It is quite ordinary for spiritual friends to be able, naturally, spontaneously, and almost effortlessly, to discern the presence of the Divine in each other. When we are really awake, we cannot miss the presence of Divine Reality; it is always calling us.”

Wayne Teasdale (1945–2004) American writer

Source: A Monk in the World: Cultivating a Spiritual Life (2003), p. 87

Nature, Reality

“The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.”

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

1960s, (1963)

People, Communication, Freedom

“My Christian brethren, if the crowd of difficulties which stand between your souls and God succeed in keeping you away, all is lost. Right into the Presence you must force your way, with no concealment, baring the soul with all its ailments before Him, asking, not the arrest of the consequences of sin, but the cleansing of the conscience " from dead works to serve the living God," so that if you must suffer, you will suffer as a forgiven man.”

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

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 432.

God, Way, Soul, Suffering

“I say, embrace fear as a friend. It is nature's gift to us. It is the best weapon for liberty. We do not give our permission to be enslaved by acknowledging its presence. Instead, it permits us to escape into the forest if we must. But it does not prevent the boy from rising off the ground one more time to defeat the bully. Fear is presented to us as a signal of danger. It permits us to escape or to fight with power beyond our ability.”

Gerry Spence (1929) American lawyer

Source: Give Me Liberty! (1998), Ch. 14 : The Magical Weapon : Withholding Permission to Be Defeated, p. 163

Fear, Boy, Nature, Time

“After some time the Sultãn started contemplating the conquest of the port of Jagat which is a place of worship for the BrahmaNas… With this resolve he started for the port of Jagat on 16 Zil-Hajjã, AH 877 (AD 14 July, 1473). He reached Jagat with great difficulty due to the narrowness of the road and the presence of forests… He destroyed the temple of Jagat…”

Nizamuddin Ahmad (1551–1594) historian

Sultãn Mahmûd BegDhã of Gujarat (AD 1458-1511) Dwarka (Gujarat)
Tabqãt-i-Akharî

Time

“Can one be a follower of Jesus Christ… and have countries attacked. The lives, reputations and possessions of people destroyed and on the slight chance of the presence of a few criminals in a village, city, or convoy for example, the entire village, city or convoy set ablaze.”

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

Paragraph 2
2006, Letter to George W. Bush, 2006

People, Chance, Christ, Country

“In this fact we have reached the essential form of every spirit or person — the organic union of the particular with the universal, of its private self-activity in the recognition of itself with its public activity in the recognition of all others. That is, self-consciousness is in the last resort a conscience, or the union of each spirit's self-recognition with recognition of all. Its self-definition is therefore definite, in both senses of the word: it is at once integral in its thorough and inconfusible difference from every other, and yet it is integral in terms of the entire whole that includes it with all the rest. Thus in both of its aspects — and both are essential to it — in a commanding sense it excludes alternative, and there is universal determinism, that is, universal and stable definiteness, just because there is universal self-determination, or genuine freedom. But this universal self-defining implies and proclaims the universal reality, the living presence in all, of one unchangeable type of being — the self-conscious intelligence; and this, presented in all really possible forms, or instances, of its one abiding nature.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Harmony of Determinism and Freedom, p.353-4

Intelligence, Nature, Reality, Sense

“Starting from Einstein's theory of general relativity, Oppenheimer and Snyder found solutions… that described what happens to a massive star when it has exhausted its supplies of nuclear energy. The star collapses gravitationally and disappears from the visible universe, leaving behind only an intense gravitational field to mark its presence. The star remains in a state of permanent free fall, collapsing endlessly inward into the gravitational pit without ever reaching the bottom. … In my opinion, the black hole is incomparably the most exciting and the most important consequence of general relativity. But Einstein … was actively hostile to the idea of black holes. … Oddly enough, Oppenheimer too in later life was uninterested in black holes, although… they were his most important contribution to science. … Oppenheimer in his later years believed that the only problem worthy of attention of a serious theoretical physicist was the discovery of fundamental equations of physics. Einstein certainly felt the same way.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

The Scientist As Rebel (2006)

Life, Hostility, Way, Star

“… We talked while the full moon mounted in the sky, words filling up the narrow space between us, as much a buffer as a link. Hours passed and then suddenly at my foot there was a wriggle of the soil. A kangaroo mouse emerged, a creature that I have never otherwise seen except fleeing at a distance. I put my hand on the man’s shoulder to call his attention to this surprise, and we fell silent and watched the strangely fearless mouse do its work for a long time, then resumed the conversation more slowly and more softly as the creature continued to refine its tunnel entrance and the mound of gravelly earth at its mouth, indifferent to our presence. Bats swooped down and snatched invisible meals from the air, and coyotes began to howl, more of them, closer and more persistently than I’ve ever heard before or since, a whole orchestra of drawn-out cries into the dawn.”

Rebecca Solnit (1961) Author and essayist from United States

A Field Guide to Getting Lost (2005)

Time, Indifference

“The Hindu religion appears … as a cathedral temple, half in ruins, noble in the mass, often fantastic in detail but always fantastic with a significance — crumbling or badly outworn in places, but a cathedral temple in which service is still done to the Unseen and its real presence can be felt by those who enter with the right spirit.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Letters, Vol. II (1949) p. 53; also in The Soul of India (1974) by Satyavrata R Patel

Religion, Appearance

“The ability to interact with a computer presence like you would a human assistant is becoming increasingly feasible.”

Vint Cerf (1943) American computer scientist

Source: "Your Life: Vinton Cerf" (2016), p. 30

“A number of little birds, to the amount, I believe, of twelve or fourteen, being taken from different cages, were placed upon a table in the presence of the spectators; and there they formed themselves into ranks like a company of soldiers: small cones of paper bearing some resemblance to grenadiers caps were put upon their heads, and diminutive imitations of muskets made with wood, secured under their left wings. Thus equipped, they marched to and fro several times; when a single bird was brought forward, supposed to be a deserter, and set between six of the musketeers, three in a row, who conducted him from the top to the bottom of the table, on the middle of which a small brass cannon charged with a little gunpowder had been previously placed, and the deserter was situated in the front part of the cannon; his guards then divided, three retiring on one side, and three on the other, and he was left standing by himself. Another bird was immediately produced; and, a lighted match being put into one of his claws, he hopped boldly on the other to the tail of the cannon, and, applying the match to the priming, discharged the piece without the least appearance of fear or agitation. The moment the explosion took place, the deserter fell down, and lay, apparently motionless, like a dead bird; but, at the command of his tutor he rose again; and the cages being brought, the feathered soldiers were stripped of their ornaments, and returned into them in perfect order.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 250
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Public entertainment

Fear, Bird, Light, Appearance

“To a radical Korean nationalist, the division of the nation, the race, is an intolerable state of affairs. So too is the continued presence of the foreign army that effected that division in the first place.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Interview with Isaac Chotiner (February 2017)

“Second, in the presence of this continuity of feeling, nominalistic maxims appear futile. There is no doubt about one idea affecting another, when we can directly perceive the one generally modified and shaping itself into the other. Nor can there any longer be any difficulty about one idea resembling another, when we can pass along the continuous field of quality from one to the other and back again to the point which we had marked.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

The Law of Mind (1892)

Feeling, Idea, Appearance

“Taking the points in order, it's fairly easy to demonstrate that Saddam Hussein is a bad guy's bad guy. He's not just bad in himself but the cause of badness in others. While he survives not only are the Iraqi and Kurdish peoples compelled to live in misery and fear (the sheerly moral case for regime-change is unimpeachable on its own), but their neighbors are compelled to live in fear as well.

However—and here is the clinching and obvious point—Saddam Hussein is not going to survive. His regime is on the verge of implosion. It has long passed the point of diminishing returns. Like the Ceausescu edifice in Romania, it is a pyramid balanced on its apex (its powerbase a minority of the Sunni minority), and when it falls, all the consequences of a post-Saddam Iraq will be with us anyway. To suggest that these consequences—Sunni-Shi'a rivalry, conflict over the boundaries of Kurdistan, possible meddling from Turkey or Iran, vertiginous fluctuations in oil prices and production, social chaos—are attributable only to intervention is to be completely blind to the impending reality. The choices are two and only two—to experience these consequences with an American or international presence or to watch them unfold as if they were none of our business.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2002-11-07
Machiavelli in Mesopotamia
Slate
1091-2339
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2002/11/machiavelli_in_mesopotamia.html: On the 2003 invasion of Iraq
2000s, 2002

People, Fear, Guy, Business

“In each of the cathedral churches there was a bishop, or an archbishop of fools, elected; and in the churches immediately dependent upon the papal see a pope of fools. These mock pontiffs had usually a proper suit of ecclesiastics who attended upon them, and assisted at the divine service, most of them attired in ridiculous dresses resembling pantomimical players and buffoons; they were accompanied by large crowds of the laity, some being disguised with masks of a monstrous fashion, and others having their faces smutted; in one instance to frighten the beholders, and in the other to excite their laughter: and some, again, assuming the habits of females, practised all the wanton airs of the loosest and most abandoned of the sex. During the divine service this motley crowd were not contended with singing of indecent songs in the choir, but some of them ate, and drank, and played at dice upon the altar, by the side of the priest who celebrated the mass. After the service they put filth into the censers, and ran about the church, leaping, dancing, laughing, singing, breaking obscene jests, and exposing themselves in the most unseemly attitudes with shameless impudence. Another part of these ridiculous ceremonies was, to shave the precentor of fools upon a stage erected before the church, in the presence of the populace; and during the operation, he amused them with lewd and vulgar discourses, accompanied by actions equally reprehensible. The bishop, or the pope of fools, performed the divine service habited in the pontifical garments, and gave his benediction to the people before they quitted the church. He was afterwards seated in an open carriage, and drawn about to the different parts of the town, attended by a large train of ecclesiastics and laymen promiscuously mingled together; and many of the most profligate of the latter assumed clerical habits in order to give their impious fooleries the greater effect; they had also with them carts filled with ordure, which they threw occasionally upon the populace assembled to see the procession. These spectacles were always exhibited at Christmas-time, or near to it, but not confined to one particular day.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 345
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Festival of Fools

People, Fools, Sex, Fashion

“Sin and grace, absence and presence, tragedy and comedy, they divide the world between them and where they meet head on, the Gospel happens.”

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

Telling the Truth (1977)

World

“The point to be made clear is that, whatever may be our temperament, or our power in the presence of nature, we have to render what we actually see, forgetting everything that appeared before our own time. Which, I think, should enable the artist to express his personality to the full, be it large or small. Now that I am an old man, about seventy, the sensations of colour which produce light give rise to abstractions that prevent me from covering my canvas, and from trying to define the outlines of objects when their points of contact are tenuous and delicate; with the result that my image or picture is incomplete. For another thing, the planes become confused, superimposed; hence Neo-Impressionism (initiated by Seurat and Paul Signac, ed., where everything is outlined in black, an error which must be uncompromisingly rejected. And nature, if consulted, shows us how to achieve this aim.”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Quote from Cézanne's letter to Émile Bernard, 23 October 1905; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 180
Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900

Error, Nature, Thinking, Light

“Worship thou God in such wise that if thy worship lead thee to the fire, no alteration in thine adoration would be produced, and so likewise if thy recompense should be paradise. Thus and thus alone should be the worship which befitteth the one True God. Shouldst thou worship Him because of fear, this would be unseemly in the sanctified Court of His presence, and could not be regarded as an act by thee dedicated to the Oneness of His Being. Or if thy gaze should be on paradise, and thou shouldst worship Him while cherishing such a hope, thou wouldst make God’s creation a partner with Him, notwithstanding the fact that paradise is desired by men.
Fire and paradise both bow down and prostrate themselves before God. That which is worthy of His Essence is to worship Him for His sake, without fear of fire, or hope of paradise.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

VII, 19
The Persian Bayán

Men, God, Fear, Hope

“A thousand songs from a thousand boughs
The glad birds' pleasure declare;
The rills are laughing in crystal light—
For the presence of Spring is there.”

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

(3rd March 1827) Birthday in Spring
The London Literary Gazette, 1827

Pleasure, Spring, Bird, Light

“When I was a student at Trinity College, Cambridge, in the 1950s, Sir Isaac Newton's presence was still almost palpable.”

John Moffat book Reinventing Gravity

Source: Reinventing Gravity (2008), Chapter 1, The Greeks To Newton, p. 24

“Testing shows the presence, not the absence of bugs”

Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930–2002) Dutch computer scientist

Dijkstra (1969) J.N. Buxton and B. Randell, eds, Software Engineering Techniques, April 1970, p. 16. Report on a conference sponsored by the NATO Science Committee, Rome, Italy, 27–31 October 1969. http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/brian.randell/NATO/nato1969.PDF Possibly the earliest documented use of the famous quote. 1960s

“Somebody has said that woman's place is in the wrong. That's fine. What the wrong needs is a woman's presence and a woman's touch. She is far better equipped than men to set it right.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

"The Duchess and the Bugs", 'Lanterns & Lances (1961).
From Lanterns and Lances‎

Men

“When a man becomes steadfast in his abstention from harming others, then all living creatures will cease to feel enmity in his presence”

Patañjali (-200–-150 BC) ancient Indian scholar(s) of grammar and linguistics, of yoga, of medical treatises

The Mahābhāṣya

Feeling

“Infinite God, age after age, throughout all cycles, wills through His Infinite Mercy to effect His presence amidst mankind by stooping down to human level in the human form, but His physical presence amidst mankind not being apprehended, He is looked upon as an ordinary man of the world. When He asserts, however, His Divinity on earth by proclaiming Himself the Avatar of the Age, He is worshipped by some who accept Him as God; and glorified by a few who know him as God on Earth. But it invariably falls to the lot of the rest of humanity to condemn Him, while He is physically in their midst.
Thus it is that God as man, proclaiming Himself as the Avatar, suffers Himself to be persecuted and tortured, to be humiliated and condemned by humanity for whose sake His Infinite Love has made him stoop so low, in order that humanity, by its very act of condemning God's manifestation in the form of Avatar should, however, indirectly, assert the existence of God in His Infinite Eternal state.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

The Highest of the High (1953)

Love, God, Age, World

“The second Transformers movie came out this year. I didn't fight for a ticket. I'd caught the first one by accident. It was like being pinned to the ground while an angry dishwasher shat in your face for two hours. Any human dumb enough to voluntarily sit through a second helping of that unremitting fecal spew really ought to just get up and leave the planet via the nearest window before their continued presence does lasting damage to the gene pool.”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

The Guardian, 3 August, 2009 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/03/hollywood-ideas-charlie-brooker Guardian columns

Help, Fight

“…it is recognised in England that home drinking is no real pleasure. We pray in a church and booze in a pub: profoundly sacerdotal at heart, we need a host in both places to preside over us. In Catholic churches as in continental bars the host is there all the time. But the Church of England kicked out the Real Presence and the licensing laws gave the landlord a terrible sacramental power. Ted was giving me grace of his own free will, holding back death – which is closing time – making a lordly grant of extra life.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

Life, Death, Pleasure, Law

“Woman's great strength lies in being late or absent. Presence immediately reveals the weak points of our beloved; when she is absent she become one of the sylph-like figures of our adolescence whom we endowed with perfection.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Loving

Perfection

“The God of All Life was really more like a light than anything else, and the whole divine arena just lit up as if a universal spotlight was turned on from the inside of things, bathing every visible object. Everything Emir saw was lit up as if even the blades of grass had bulbs inside them, though bulbs hadn't been invented yet or spotlights either. Still, a new kind of superlight splashed out over the arena. More than this, the light itself was somehow kindly and alive, as if the God of All Life was everywhere at once, made of light, but with a presence inside that was invisible.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Emir's Education In The Proper Use of Magical Powers (1979), p. 65-66

Life, God, Light, Grass

“The real is the present, conceived not as a mathematical point between the present and the past, but as the union of present and past in a duration or permanence that is at the same time change. Thus the past as past and the future as future do not exist at all, but are purely ideal; the past as living in the present and the future as germinating in the present are wholly real and indeed are just the present itself. It is because of the presence of these two elements in the present… that the present is a concrete and changing reality and not an empty mathematical point.”

R. G. Collingwood (1889–1943) British historian and philosopher

Source: "Some Perplexities about time: with an attempted solution" (1925), p. 149. as cited in: Jonathan Gorman, "The transmission of our understanding of historical time." Historia Social y de la Educación 1.2 (2012): 129-152.

Mathematics, Reality, Change, Time

“"A curse," said Lee. "Been in our family for generations. The Lees have always been perverts. I shall never forget the unspeakable horror that froze the lymph in my glands when the baneful word seared my reeling brain: 'homosexual'. I was a homosexual. I thought of the painted simpering female impersonators I'd seen in a Baltimore nightclub. Could it be possible I was one of those subhuman things? I walked the streets in a daze like a man with a light concussion- just a minute, Doctore Kildare, this isn't your script. I might as well have destroyed myself, ending an existence which seemed to offer nothing but grotesque misery and humiliation. Nobler, I thought to die a man than life on, a sex monster. It was a wise old queen - Bob, we called her- who taught me that I had a duty to live and to bear my burden proudly for all to see, to conquer prejudice and ignorance and hate with knowledge and sincerity and love. Whenever you are threatened by a hostile presence, you emit a thick cloud of love like an octopus squirts out ink."”

William S. Burroughs (1914–1997) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer

Source: Queer: A Novel (1985), Chapter Three

Love, Life, Hate, Hostility

“Well, now the American people have returned the Republican party to power; and the question is, what will it do? … For a dozen years and more the Republican party has seemed in a measure paralyzed in the presence of high-handed fraud and brutal violence toward its newly-made citizens. The question now is, will it regain its former health, activity, and power? Will it be as true to its friends in the South as the Democratic party has been to its friends in that section, or will it sacrifice its friends to conciliate its enemies? … Not only the negro but all honest men, north and south, must hold the Republican party in contempt, if it fails to do its whole duty at this point. The Republican party has made the colored man free; and the Republican party must make him secure in his freedom, or abandon its pretensions.”

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

Speech http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-nations-problem/

Men, People, Health, Color

“Only cultureless societies can exist without presiding presences. No presence can preside when all are subject to abandonments quick as their adoptions. Our passionate truths are so provisional, they move so quickly with the electrified times, that none can prepare us to receive them deeply into ourselves, as character.”

Philip Rieff (1922–2006) American sociologist

Fellow Teachers (1973)

Truth, Passion, Time

“Second, in order that a macroscopic apparatus can be influenced by the presence of a microscopic event it has to be prepared in a metastable initial state—think of the Wilson camera and the Geiger counter. The microscopic event triggers a macroscopically visible transition into the stable state. Of course this is irreversible and is accompanied by a thermodynamic increase of entropy.”

Nico van Kampen (1921–2013) Dutch theoretical physicist

The Scandal of Quantum Mechanics (2008)

Thinking

“Bureau of Ordnance, Richmond
January 17, 1864
General Lee:
I have the honor to present to you with this letter Mr. Andries Rhoodie of Rivington, North Carolina, who has demonstrated in my presence a new rifle, which I believe may prove to be of the most significant benefit conceivable to our soldiers. As he expressed the desire of making your acquaintance & as the Army of Northern Virginia will again, it is likely, face hard fighting in the months ahead, I send him on to you that you may judge both him & his remarkable weapon for yourself. I remain,
Your most ob't servant,
Josiah Gorgas
Colonel”

Harry Turtledove book The Guns of the South

Source: The Guns of the South (1992), p. 5

Fight

“We have so often been disappointed that we must not be too sure of anything, save of God’s help and presence which He will never withhold.”

James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) Missionary in China

(A.J. Broomhall. Hudson Taylor and China’s Open Century, Book Five: Refiner’s Fire. London: Hodder and Stoughton and Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1985, 78).

God, Disappointment, Help

Quotes about presence page 6

Quotes about presence
page 6