Quotes about rest

A collection of quotes on the topic of rest, use, doing, life.

Quotes about rest

Corrie ten Boom photo
Osamu Dazai photo
Ronald Reagan photo

“Live simply, love generously, care deeply, speak kindly, leave the rest to God.”

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

“A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that gentle hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.”

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

Thiis was published without credit in The Best Loved Poems of the American People (1936) with the title "Friendship", and since that time has sometimes been misattributed http://www.geonius.com/eliot/quotes.html to Eliot; it is actually an adaptation of lines by Dinah Craik, in A Life for a Life (1859):
Misattributed
Context: Oh, the comfort —
the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person —
having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words,
but pouring them all right out,
just as they are,
chaff and grain together;
certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them,
keep what is worth keeping,
and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.

Adolf Hitler photo

“While the Zionists try to make the rest of the World believe that the national consciousness of the Jew finds its satisfaction in the creation of a Palestinian state, the Jews again slyly dupe the dumb Goyim. It doesn't even enter their heads to build up a Jewish state in Palestine for the purpose of living there; all they want is a central organisation for their international world swindler, endowed with its own sovereign rights and removed from the intervention of other states: a haven for convicted scoundrels and a university for budding crooks.
It is a sign of their rising confidence and sense of security that at a time when one section is still playing the German, French-man, or Englishman, the other with open effrontery comes out as the Jewish race.”

1920s, Zweites Buch (1928)
Source: Mein Kampf
Context: Jewry is a Folk with a racial core that is not wholly unitary. Nevertheless, as a Folk, it has special intrinsic characteristics which separate it from all other Folks living on the globe. Jewry is not a religious community, but the religious bond between Jews; rather is in reality the momentary governmental system of the Jewish Folk. The Jew has never had a territorially bounded State of his own in the manner of Aryan States. Nevertheless, his religious community is a real State, since it guarantees the preservation, the increase and the future of the Jewish Folk. But this is solely the task of the State. That the Jewish State is subject to no territorial limitation, as is the case with Aryan States, is connected with the character of the Jewish Folk, which is lacking in the productive forces for the construction and preservation of its own territorial State.

George Raymond Richard Martin photo
Elizabeth Barrett Browning photo

“Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) English poet, author

Aurora Leigh http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/barrett/aurora/aurora.html (1857)
Context: And truly, I reiterate,.. nothing's small!
No lily-muffled hum of a summer-bee,
But finds some coupling with the spinning stars;
No pebble at your foot, but proves a sphere;
No chaffinch, but implies the cherubim:
And, — glancing on my own thin, veined wrist, —
In such a little tremour of the blood
The whole strong clamour of a vehement soul
Doth utter itself distinct. Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries,
And daub their natural faces unaware
More and more, from the first similitude.

Bk. VII, l. 812-826.

Esther Perel photo

“Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness.”

Esther Perel (1958) Belgian Psychotherapist and Author

Source: Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

Charles Bukowski photo
Dilma Rousseff photo

“We cannot rest while Brazilians are going hungry, while families are living in the streets, while poor children are abandoned to their own fates and while crack and crack dens rule.”

Dilma Rousseff (1947) 36th President of Brazil

First speech http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/01/dilma-rousseff-wins-brazil-president after being elected President, October 31.
2010

Leonardo DiCaprio photo
Taylor Swift photo
Michael Jackson photo
Jiddu Krishnamurti photo

“From childhood we are trained to have problems. When we are sent to school, we have to learn how to write, how to read, and all the rest of it.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

Source: 1980s, That Benediction is Where You Are (1985), p. 18
Context: From childhood we are trained to have problems. When we are sent to school, we have to learn how to write, how to read, and all the rest of it. How to write becomes a problem to the child. Please follow this carefully. Mathematics becomes a problem, history becomes a problem, as does chemistry. So the child is educated, from childhood, to live with problems — the problem of God, problem of a dozen things. So our brains are conditioned, trained, educated to live with problems. From childhood we have done this. What happens when a brain is educated in problems? It can never solve problems; it can only create more problems. When a brain that is trained to have problems, and to live with problems, solves one problem, in the very solution of that problem, it creates more problems. From childhood we are trained, educated to live with problems and, therefore, being centred in problems, we can never solve any problem completely. It is only the free brain that is not conditioned to problems that can solve problems. It is one of our constant burdens to have problems all the time. Therefore our brains are never quiet, free to observe, to look. So we are asking: Is it possible not to have a single problem but to face problems? But to understand those problems, and to totally resolve them, the brain must be free.

“There is a God and I'm going to serve him for the rest of my life.”

Rachel Scott (1981–1999) American murder victim

Source: Letter to Mark Bodiford http://racheljoyscott.tumblr.com/post/159838052080/rachels-suicide-journal-entry-to-mark-bodiford (1998)

Daniel Kahneman photo

“Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.”

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Chapter 19, "The illusion of understanding", page 201 (ISBN 9780141033570).

Sylvia Plath photo

“How we need another soul to cling to, another body to keep us warm. To rest and trust; to give your soul in confidence: I need this, I need someone to pour myself into.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Variant: How we need that security. How we need another soul to cling to, another body to keep us warm. To rest and trust; to give your soul in confidence: I need this. I need someone to pour myself into.
Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 2

Leonard Ravenhill photo
Neil deGrasse Tyson photo
Beatrix Potter photo
Jodi Picoult photo
Hesiod photo
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu photo
Henry Kissinger photo

“If Tehran insists on combining the Persian imperial tradition with contemporary Islamic fervor, then a collision with America — and, indeed, with its negotiating partners of the Six — is unavoidable. Iran simply cannot be permitted to fulfill a dream of imperial rule in a region of such importance to the rest of the world.”

Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) United States Secretary of State

"The Next Steps With Iran" in The Washington Post (31 July 2006), p. A15 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/30/AR2006073000546.html
2000s

Emil Zátopek photo

“Essentially, we distinguish ourselves from the rest. If you want to win something, run the 100 meters. If you want to experience something, run a marathon.”

Emil Zátopek (1922–2000) Czech Olympic long-distance runner

Attributed in "Making a run at the Olympic dream", an unsigned article from The StarPhoenix, 9 May 2007, at canada.com (CanWest MediaWorks Publications Inc.) http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/news/sports/story.html?id=b111ee9e-182a-4cff-831a-f784cc7bb37e

Voltaire photo

“It is sad that often, to be a good patriot, one must be the enemy of the rest of mankind.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

Il est triste que souvent, pour être bon patriote, on soit l'ennemi du reste des hommes.
"Country"
Citas, Dictionnaire philosophique (1764)

Pauline Kael photo

“In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising.”

Pauline Kael (1919–2001) American film critic

Newsweek (1973-12-24).

Hasan al-Basri photo
Babur photo
Mahatma Gandhi photo

“Truth alone will endure, all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Basic Education (1951) p. 89
Posthumous publications (1950s and later)
Context: Truth alone will endure, all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time. I must continue to bear testimony to truth even if I am forsaken by all. Mine may today be a voice in the wilderness, but it will be heard when all other voices are silenced, if it is the voice of Truth.

Herodotus photo

“Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.”

Herodotus (-484–-425 BC) ancient Greek historian, often considered as the first historian

This statement is not to be found in the works of Herodotus. It appears in the acknowledgements to Mark Twain's A Horse's Tale (1907) preceded by the words "Herodotus says", but Twain was simply summarizing what he took to be Herodotus' attitude to historiography.
Misattributed

Sun Tzu photo

“If your enemy is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.”

Sun Tzu (-543–-495 BC) ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher from the Zhou Dynasty

"If his forces are united, separate them" is also interpreted: "If sovereign and subject are in accord, put division between them."
Source: The Art of War, Chapter I · Detail Assessment and Planning

George Eliot photo

“Oh, the comfort —
the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person —
having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words,
but pouring them all right out,
just as they are,
chaff and grain together;
certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them,
keep what is worth keeping,
and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.”

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

Thiis was published without credit in The Best Loved Poems of the American People (1936) with the title "Friendship", and since that time has sometimes been misattributed http://www.geonius.com/eliot/quotes.html to Eliot; it is actually an adaptation of lines by Dinah Craik, in A Life for a Life (1859):
Oh, the comfort — the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person — having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.
Misattributed

Mitski photo

“By the time it was done my heart was pounding like I just saw the rest of my life. I was fucking doomed.”

Mitski (1990) Japanese-American singer-songwriter

On Mitski’s epiphany regarding her musical abilities after writing her first song in “Taking All Of Mitski” in Impose https://www.imposemagazine.com/features/mitski-interview
Music and songwriting

Vladimir Lenin photo
Rita Rudner photo
James Baldwin photo

“If a society permits one portion of its citizenry to be menaced or destroyed, then, very soon, no one in that society is safe. The forces thus released in the people can never be held in check, but run their devouring course, destroying the very foundations which it was imagined they would save.

But we are unbelievably ignorant concerning what goes on in our country--to say nothing of what goes on in the rest of the world--and appear to have become too timid to question what we are told. Our failure to trust one another deeply enough to be able to talk to one another has become so great that people with these questions in their hearts do not speak them; our opulence is so pervasive that people who are afraid to lose whatever they think they have persuade themselves of the truth of a lie, and help disseminate it; and God help the innocent here, that man or womn who simply wants to love, and be loved. Unless this would-be lover is able to replace his or her backbone with a steel rod, he or she is doomed. This is no place for love. I know that I am now expected to make a bow in the direction of those millions of unremarked, happy marriages all over America, but I am unable honestly to do so because I find nothing whatever in our moral and social climate--and I am now thinking particularly of the state of our children--to bear witness to their existence. I suspect that when we refer to these happy and so marvelously invisible people, we are simply being nostalgic concerning the happy, simple, God-fearing life which we imagine ourselves once to have lived. In any case, wherever love is found, it unfailingly makes itself felt in the individual, the personal authority of the individual. Judged by this standard, we are a loveless nation. The best that can be said is that some of us are struggling. And what we are struggling against is that death in the heart which leads not only to the shedding of blood, but which reduces human beings to corpses while they live.”

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

Source: nothing personal

George Best photo

“I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.”

George Best (1946–2005) British footballer

Reported in " Best: Decline of the golden boy http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4090840.stm", BBC News (June 14 2005).

Helen Hayes photo

“If you rest, you rust.”

Helen Hayes (1900–1993) actress

My Life in Three Acts (1990) Ch. 19
Variant: If you rest, you rust.

Homér photo
Oscar Wilde photo

“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Variant: A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
Source: The Critic as Artist (1891), Part II

Marianne Williamson photo
Abbie Hoffman photo

“TODAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE”

Abbie Hoffman (1936–1989) American political and social activist

Source: Revolution for the Hell of It (1968), p. 184.

Fernando Pessoa photo
Vladimir Nabokov photo

“And the rest is rust and stardust.”

Variant: I shall be dumped where the weed decays, And the rest is rust and stardust
Source: Lolita

Eliphas Levi photo

“Everything is possible to him who wills only what is true! Rest in Nature, study, know, then dare; dare to will, dare to act and be silent!”

Eliphas Levi (1810–1875) French writer

Source: Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual

Christopher Paolini photo
H.P. Lovecraft photo
Dorothy Canfield Fisher photo
Carlos Ruiz Zafón photo
Ezra Pound photo
George Orwell photo
Malcolm X photo

“I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965)
Context: I told the Englishman that my alma mater was books, a good library. Every time I catch a plane, I have with me a book that I want to read—and that’s a lot of books these days. If I weren’t out here every day battling the white man, I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity—because you can hardly mention anything I’m not curious about.

Chapter 11, paragraph 59 http://www.uri.edu/library/inscriptions/almamater.html

Jeff Buckley photo
Jacques-Yves Cousteau photo
William Shakespeare photo
Beatrix Potter photo
Ingeborg Bachmann photo

“Miranda doesn't dream, she simply rests. When Miranda's eyes are at ease, her mind is at peace.”

Ingeborg Bachmann (1926–1973) Austrian poet and author

Source: Simultan: Erzählungen

Irenaeus photo
Basava photo

“Consume according to your requirements and contribute the rest to the society through Dasoha.”

Basava (1134–1196) a 12th-century Hindu philosopher, statesman, Kannada Bhakti poet of Lingayatism

Basavanna's Preachings

Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“Those words are a promise to every citizen that he shall share in the dignity of man. This dignity cannot be found in a man's possessions; it cannot be found in his power, or in his position. It really rests on his right to be treated as a man equal in opportunity to all others. It says that he shall share in freedom, he shall choose his leaders, educate his children, and provide for his family according to his ability and his merits as a human being.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, The American Promise (1965)
Context: This was the first nation in the history of the world to be founded with a purpose. The great phrases of that purpose still sound in every American heart, North and South: "All men are created equal" — "government by consent of the governed" — "give me liberty or give me death." Well, those are not just clever words, or those are not just empty theories. In their name Americans have fought and died for two centuries, and tonight around the world they stand there as guardians of our liberty, risking their lives. Those words are a promise to every citizen that he shall share in the dignity of man. This dignity cannot be found in a man's possessions; it cannot be found in his power, or in his position. It really rests on his right to be treated as a man equal in opportunity to all others. It says that he shall share in freedom, he shall choose his leaders, educate his children, and provide for his family according to his ability and his merits as a human being.

Dante Alighieri photo
Konrad Adenauer photo

“We will never forget. If it takes us five or ten or twenty years, we will never rest until we get our revenge.”

Konrad Adenauer (1876–1967) German statesman, Federal Chancellor of Germany, politician (CDU)

As quoted by General Sir Charles Fergusson in a memorandum (10 July 1945), recalling conversations with Adenauer in 1918-1919, at the end of World War I. As published in Adenauer : The Father of the New Germany (2000) by Charles Williams, p. 293 books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=7mhpKYpugJsC&pg=PA293

Socrates photo
Juan Donoso Cortés photo

“There is no man, let him be aware of it or not, who is not a combatant in this hot contest; no one who does not take an active part in the responsibility of the defeat or victory. The prisoner in his chains and the king on his throne, the poor and the rich, the healthy and the infirm, the wise and the ignorant, the captive and the free, the old man and the child, the civilized and the savage, share equally in the combat. Every word that is pronounced, is either inspired by God or by the world, and necessarily proclaims, implicitly or explicitly, but always clearly, the glory of the one or the triumph of the other. In this singular warfare we all fight through forced enlistment; here the system of substitutes or volunteers finds no place. In it is unknown the exception of sex or age; here no attention is paid to him who says, I am the son of a poor widow; nor to the mother of the paralytic, nor to the wife of the cripple. In this warfare all men born of woman are soldiers.
And don’t tell me you don’t wish to fight; for the moment you tell me that, you are already fighting; nor that you don’t know which side to join, for while you are saying that, you have already joined a side; nor that you wish to remain neutral; for while you are thinking to be so, you are so no longer; nor that you want to be indifferent; for I will laugh at you, because on pronouncing that word you have chosen your party. Don’t tire yourself in seeking a place of security against the chances of war, for you tire yourself in vain; that war is extended as far as space, and prolonged through all time. In eternity alone, the country of the just, can you find rest, because there alone there is no combat. But do not imagine, however, that the gates of eternity shall be opened for you, unless you first show the wounds you bear; those gates are only opened for those who gloriously fought here the battles of the Lord, and were, like the Lord, crucified.”

Juan Donoso Cortés (1809–1853) Spanish author, political theorist and diplomat

Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism (1879)

Roger Bacon photo
Walter Raleigh photo
George Orwell photo
Frédéric Bastiat photo
Martin Luther photo
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo
Józef Piłsudski photo

“To be defeated and not submit, is victory; to be victorious and rest on one's laurels, is defeat.”

Józef Piłsudski (1867–1935) Polish politician and Prime Minister

(Late 1920s or the 1930s) Zbigniew Brzezinski in his introduction to Wacław Jędrzejewicz’s Piłsudski: A Life For Poland. Quoted from this website http://members.lycos.co.uk/jozefpilsudski/index2.html
Attributed

Shahrukh Khan photo
Mikhail Bakunin photo
John of the Cross photo

“On a dark night, Kindled in love with yearnings — oh, happy chance! —
I went forth without being observed, My house being now at rest.
In darkness and secure, By the secret ladder, disguised — oh, happy chance! —
In darkness and in concealment, My house being now at rest.”

John of the Cross (1542–1591) Spanish mystic and Roman Catholic saint

En una noche oscura,
con ansias, en amores inflamada,
¡oh dichosa ventura!,
salí sin ser notada,
estando ya mi casa sosegada;
One dark night, fired with love's urgent longings — ah, the sheer grace! —
I went out unseen, my house being now all stilled.
In darkness, and secure, by the secret ladder, disguised, — ah, the sheer grace! — in darkness and concealment, my house being now all stilled.
Variant translation by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (1991)
Upon a darkened night the flame of love was burning in my breast
And by a lantern bright I fled my house while all in quiet rest.
Shrouded by the night and by the secret stair I quickly fled.
The veil concealed my eyes while all within lay quiet as the dead
Variant adapted for music by Loreena McKennitt (1994)
Dark Night of the Soul

Aurelius Augustinus photo

“Thou hast made us for Thyself, and the heart never resteth till it findeth rest in Thee.”

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

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 515

RuPaul photo

“You're born naked. The rest is drag.”

RuPaul (1960) Actriz de Televisa, dueña y señora de los ejidos cacaoahuateros

Quoted in Queer Quotes: On Coming Out and Culture, Love and Lust, Politics and Pride, and Much More, Teresa Theophano, ed. (2004)
Misattributed

Bertrand Russell photo
Kabir photo
Heath Ledger photo
Kālidāsa photo

“If a professor thinks what matters most
Is to have gained an academic post
Where he can earn a livelihood, and then
Neglect research, let controversy rest,
He's but a petty tradesman at the best,
Selling retail the work of other men.”

Mālavikāgnimitram, i.17. In Poems from the Sanskrit, trans. John Brough (London: Penguin, 1968), no. 165; as reported in A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations by Alan L. Mackay (Bristol: IOP Publishing, 1991), p. 136.

Dante Alighieri photo

“Each one confusedly a good conceives
Wherein the mind may rest, and longeth for it;
Therefore to overtake it each one strives.”

Canto XVII, lines 127–129 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Purgatorio

Richard Feynman photo
Frederick II of Prussia photo
Max Planck photo

“Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination.”

Max Planck (1858–1947) German theoretical physicist

As quoted in Advances in Biochemical Psychopharmacology, Vol. 25 (1980), p. 3

Chuck Close photo
Nâzım Hikmet photo
Joan Baez photo

“Here's to you, Nicola and Bart
Rest forever here in our hearts
The last and final moment is yours
That agony is your triumph”

Joan Baez (1941) American singer

Here's to You
Sacco e Vanzetti (1971)

Trevor Noah photo
Homér photo

“Some of the words you'll find within yourself,
the rest some power will inspire you to say.”

III. 26–27 (tr. Robert Fagles); Athena to Telemachus.
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)

John Locke photo
Socrates photo

“He [Socrates] would say that the rest of the world lived to eat, while he himself ate to live.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Socrates II: xxiv http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=D.+L.+2.5.24&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0258#note-link18. Original Greek: ἔλεγέ τε τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους ἀνθρώπους ζῆν ἵν᾽ ἐσθίοιεν: αὐτὸς δὲ ἐσθίειν ἵνα ζῴη.
Diogenes Laertius

Emmanuel Levinas photo

“The peace of empires issued from war rests on war. It does not restore to the alienated beings their lost identity.”

Context: The moral consciousness can sustain the mocking gaze of the political man only if the certitude of peace dominates the evidence of war. Such a certitude is not obtained by a simple play of antitheses. The peace of empires issued from war rests on war. It does not restore to the alienated beings their lost identity. For that a primordial and original relation with being is needed.

Totality and Infinity (1961)