Quotes about return
page 11

Helen Keller photo
Keir Hardie photo
Frederick Winslow Taylor photo

“I have read with very great interest Mr. Metcalfe's paper, as we at the Midvale Steel Co. have had the experience, during the past ten years, of organizing a system very similar to that of Mr. Metcalfe. The chief idea in our system, as in his, is, that the authority for doing all kinds of work should proceed from one central office to the various departments, and that there proper records should be kept of the work and reports made daily to the central office, so that the superintending department should be kept thoroughly informed as to what is taking place throughout the works, and at the same time no work could be done in the works without proper authority. The details of the system have been very largely modified as time went on, and a consecutive plan, such as Mr. Metcalfe proposed, would have been of great assistance to us in carrying out our system. There are certain points, however, in Mr. Metcalfe's plan, which I think our experience shows to be somewhat objectionable. He issues to each of the men a book, something like a check-book, containing sheets which they tear out, and return to the office after stating on them the work which they have done. We have found that any record which passes through the average workman's hands, and which he holds for any length of time, is apt either to be soiled or torn. We have, therefore, adopted the system of having our orders sent from the central office to the small offices in the various departments of the works, in each of which there is a clerk who takes charge of all orders received from, and records returned to, the central office, as well as of all records kept in the department.”

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915) American mechanical engineer and tennis player

F.W. Taylor (1886), " Comment to "The Shop-Order System of Accounts https://archive.org/stream/transactionsof07amer#page/475/mode/1up," by Henry Metcalfe in: Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Vol 7 (1885-1886), p. 475; Partly cited in: Charles D. Wrege, ‎Ronald G. Greenwood (1991), Frederick W. Taylor, the father of scientific management. p. 204.

Slavoj Žižek photo
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani photo

“There is no doubt that America is a superpower of the world and we cannot ignore them. I think that Americans should gradually begin to adopt positive behavior rather than doing evil. They should not expect an immediate reaction in return for their positive measures. It will take time.”

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (1934–2017) Iranian politician, Shi'a cleric and Writer

Remarks in an interview about Iran nuclear program and the United States http://regimechangeiran.blogspot.com/2005/05/rafsanjani-urges-us-to-begin-thaw-in.html (May 19, 2005)
2005

“And silence their mourning
With vows of returning
But never intending to visit them more.
No never, no never, intending to visit them more.”

Nahum Tate (1652–1715) Anglo-Irish poet and playwright

Dido and Aeneas (opera; music by Henry Purcell)

Paramahansa Yogananda photo
Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux photo

“Honor is like an island, rugged and without a beach; once we have left it, we can never return.”

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636–1711) French poet and critic

L'honneur est comme une ile escarpée et sans bords ;
On n'y peut plus rentrer dès qu'on en est dehors.
Satire 10, l. 167
Satires (1716)

Whittaker Chambers photo
Paul Tillich photo
John Gray photo
Johannes Bosboom photo

“The same year [1835] I made my debut at the Exposition in Rotterdam with [his painting] "the St. Janskerk in ’s Hertogenbosch, the interior", which immediately found a merchant... The approval by this, [and] the renewed appreciation I got in Felix 38, now concerning a 'church with incident sunlight', together with my personal characteristic tendency to reproduce the impressions which church buildings gave me, led me gradually to choose and prefer this genre [church-interiors], [and to visit] Belgium in '37 and repeatedly to return there, attracted by the abundance of study [many churches], that this country offered me..”

Johannes Bosboom (1817–1891) Dutch painter

citaat van Johannes Bosboom, in orogineel Nederlands: In hetzelfde jaar [1835] had ik op de Expositie te Rotterdam gedebuteerd met 'de St. Janskerk te 's Hertogenbosch van binnen', die terstond een kooper vond.. .De bijval hiermee behaald, [en] de hernieuwde bekrooning in Felix 38) nu voor eene 'kerk met inVallend zonlicht', gevoegd bij mijn bijzondere neiging om de indrukken weer te geven, die kerkgebouwen op mij maakten, leidde er mij gaandeweg toe dit genre [schilderijen van kerk-interieurs] bij voorkeur te kiezen; [en om] in '37 in Belgie te gaan bezoeken en herhaaldelijk daar weer te keeren, aangetrokken door den overvloed van studie [veel kerken], dien dat land mij aanbood..
Source: 1880's, Een en ander betrekkelijk mijn loopbaan als schilder, p. 11

Johannes Kepler photo
William Gibson photo
Nathanael Greene photo
Harold Wilson photo
Anthony Burgess photo

“I was only the returned Oriental eccentric, drunk at that…”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

William Somervile photo
Victor Villaseñor photo
Karl Kraus photo

“If I return some people's greetings, I do so only to give them their greeting back.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

James G. Watt photo
Marcus Aurelius photo
Ai Weiwei photo
Éric Pichet photo
Emily Brontë photo

“Then let my winds caress thee —
Thy comrade let me be —
Since naught beside can bless thee
Return and dwell with me”

Emily Brontë (1818–1848) English novelist and poet

Shall Earth No More Inspire Thee (May 1841)

Anne Bradstreet photo
Chinua Achebe photo
Nathanael Greene photo
Jane Roberts photo

“My life's a cup of sugar I borrowed before time began and forgot to return.”

January 1979.
Catch For Us The Foxes (2004)

James Russell Lowell photo

“My young friend who was taught that she was so sinful the only way an angry God could be persuaded to forgive her was by Jesus dying for her, was also taught that part of the joy of the blessed in heaven is watching the torture of the damned in hell. A strange idea of joy. But it is a belief limited not only to the more rigid sects. I know a number of highly sensitive and intelligent people in my own communion who consider as a heresy my faith that God's loving concern for his creation will outlast all our willfulness and pride. No matter how many eons it takes, he will not rest until all of creation, including Satan, is reconciled to him, until there is no creature who cannot return his look of love with a joyful response of love… Origen held this belief and was ultimately pronounced a heretic. Gregory of Nyssa, affirming the same loving God, was made a saint. Some people feel it to be heresy because it appears to deny man his freedom to refuse to love God. But this, it seems to me, denies God his freedom to go on loving us beyond all our willfulness and pride. If the Word of God is the light of the world, and this light cannot be put out, ultimately it will brighten all the dark corners of our hearts and we will be able to see, and seeing, will be given the grace to respond with love — and of our own free will.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

The Crosswicks Journal, The Irrational Season (1977)

George W. Bush photo
Qutb al-Din Aibak photo

“Ibn Asir only says that Qutbuddin Aibak made ‘war against the provinces of Hind… He killed many, and returned with prisoners and booty.” In Banaras, according to the same author, “the slaughter of the Hindus was immense, none was spared except women and children,”16 who would have been enslaved as per practice.”

Qutb al-Din Aibak (1150–1210) Turkic peoples king of Northwest India

No wonder that slaves began to fill the households of every Turk from the very beginning of Muslim rule in India. Fakhr-i-Mudabbir informs us that as a result of the Muslim achievements under Muhammad Ghauri and Qutbuddin Aibak, “even a poor householder (or soldier) who did not possess a single slave before became the owner of numerous slaves of all description …” Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 7 (quoting Kamil-ut-Tawarikh, E and D, II, p. 250-1; Tarikh-i-Fakhruddin Mubarak Shah, p. 20.)

Frances Kellor photo
Henry Adams photo
Heinrich von Treitschke photo
Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
Cyrano de Bergerac photo
Betsy DeVos photo

“I have decided to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence. Now I simply concede the point. They are right. We do expect something in return. We expect to foster a conservative governing philosophy consisting of limited government and respect for traditional American virtues.”

Betsy DeVos (1958) 11th United States Secretary of Education

in Roll Call, 1997 BETSY DEVOS, TRUMP’S BIG-DONOR EDUCATION SECRETARY http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/betsy-devos-trumps-big-donor-education-secretary, The New Yorker (November 23, 2016)

John Gray photo

“In consequence of the great fear which fell upon Jaipál, who confessed he had seen death before the appointed time, he sent a deputation to the Amír soliciting peace, on the promise of his paying down a sum of money, and offering to obey any order he might receive respecting his elephants and his country. The Amir Subuktigín consented on account of mercy he felt towards those who were his vassals, or for some other reason which seemed expedient to him. But the Sultán Yamínu-d daula Mahmúd addressed the messengers in a harsh voice, and refused to abstain from battle, until he should obtain a complete victory suited to his zeal for the honour of Islám and the Musulmáns, and one which he was confident God would grant to his arms. So they returned, and Jaipál being in great alarm, again sent the most humble supplications that the battle might cease saying, "You have seen the impetuosity of the Hindus and their indifference to death, whenever any calamity befalls them, as at this moment. If therefore, you refuse to grant peace in the hope of obtaining plunder, tribute, elephants and prisoners, then there is no alternative for us but to mount the horse of stern determination, destroy our property, take out the eyes of our elephants, cast our children into fire, and rush out on each other with sword and spear, so that all that will be left to you to conquer and seize is stones and dirt, dead bodies, and scattered bones."”

Sabuktigin (942–997) Founder of the Ghaznavid Empire

Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, Volume II, pp. 20-21. Translation of Tarikh-i-Yamini of al-Utbi.

Marsden Hartley photo

“They want Americans to be American, and yet they offer little or no spiritual sustenance for their growth and welfare [quote on the critics who push to stop his long European stay and to return]”

Marsden Hartley (1877–1943) American artist

letter to Adelaide Kuntz, June 23, 1928, Archives of American Art; as quoted in Marsden Hartley, by Gail R. Scott, Abbeville Publishers, Cross River Press, 1988, New York p. 81
1921 - 1930

Fritz Leiber photo
Arthur Helps photo

“The greatest luxury of riches is that they enable you to escape so much good advice. The rich are always advising the poor; but the poor seldom return the compliment.”

Arthur Helps (1813–1875) British writer

Source: Brevia: Short Essays and Aphorisms. (1871), p. 181

Donald J. Trump photo
Robinson Jeffers photo

“I have seen these ways of God: I know of no reason
For fire and change and torture and the old returnings.”

Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962) American poet

"Apology for Bad Dreams" in The Women at Point Sur (1927)

Joseph Massad photo
Allan Kardec photo
Peter Kropotkin photo
Iltutmish photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Nathanael Greene photo
Robert Jordan photo
Thomas Chandler Haliburton photo

“Everything has altered its dimensions, except the world we live in. The more we know of that, the smaller it seems. Time and distance have been abridged, remote countries have become accessible, and the antipodes are upon visiting terms. There is a reunion of the human race; and the family resemblance now that we begin to think alike, dress alike, and live alike, is very striking. The South Sea Islanders, and the inhabitants of China, import their fashions from Paris, and their fabrics from Manchester, while Rome and London supply missionaries to the ‘ends of the earth,’ to bring its inhabitants into ‘one fold, under one Shepherd.’ Who shall write a book of travels now? Livingstone has exhausted the subject. What field is there left for a future Munchausen? The far West and the far East have shaken hands and pirouetted together, and it is a matter of indifference whether you go to the moors in Scotland to shoot grouse, to South America to ride and alligator, or to Indian jungles to shoot tigers-there are the same facilities for reaching all, and steam will take you to either with the equal ease and rapidity. We have already talked with New York; and as soon as our speaking-trumpet is mended shall converse again. ‘To waft a sigh from Indus to the pole,’ is no longer a poetic phrase, but a plain matter of fact of daily occurrence. Men breakfast at home, and go fifty miles to their counting-houses, and when their work is done, return to dinner. They don’t go from London to the seaside, by way of change, once a year; but they live on the coast, and go to the city daily. The grand tour of our forefathers consisted in visiting the principle cities of Europe. It was a great effort, occupied a vast deal of time, cost a large sum of money, and was oftener attended with danger than advantage. It comprised what was then called, the world: whoever had performed it was said to have ‘seen the world,’ and all that it contained. The Grand Tour now means a voyage round the globe, and he who has not made it has seen nothing.”

Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1796–1865) Canadian-British politician, judge, and author

The Season-Ticket, An Evening at Cork 1860 p. 1-2.

Aleister Crowley photo
Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi photo

“History knew a midnight, which we may estimate at about the year 1000 A. D., when the human race lost the arts and sciences even to the memory. The last twilight of paganism was gone, and yet the new day had not begun. Whatever was left of culture in the world was found only in the Saracens, and a Pope eager to learn studied in disguise in their unversities, and so became the wonder of the West. At last Christendom, tired of praying to the dead bones of the martyrs, flocked to the tomb of the Saviour Himself, only to find for a second time that the grave was empty and that Christ was risen from the dead. Then mankind too rose from the dead. It returned to the activities and the business of life; there was a feverish revival in the arts and in the crafts. The cities flourished, a new citizenry was founded. Cimabue rediscovered the extinct art of painting; Dante, that of poetry. Then it was, also, that great courageous spirits like Abelard and Saint Thomas Aquinas dared to introduce into Catholicism the concepts of Aristotelian logic, and thus founded scholastic philosophy. But when the Church took the sciences under her wing, she demanded that the forms in which they moved be subjected to the same unconditioned faith in authority as were her own laws. And so it happened that scholasticism, far from freeing the human spirit, enchained it for many centuries to come, until the very possibility of free scientific research came to be doubted. At last, however, here too daylight broke, and mankind, reassured, determined to take advantage of its gifts and to create a knowledge of nature based on independent thought. The dawn of the day in history is know as the Renaissance or the Revival of Learning.”

Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi (1804–1851) German mathematician

"Über Descartes Leben und seine Methode die Vernunft Richtig zu Leiten und die Wahrheit in den Wissenschaften zu Suchen," "About Descartes' Life and Method of Reason.." (Jan 3, 1846) C. G. J. Jacobi's Gesammelte werke Vol. 7 https://books.google.com/books?id=_09tAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA309 p.309, as quoted by Tobias Dantzig, Number: The Language of Science (1930).

Viktor Schauberger photo
Ursula K. Le Guin photo
Philip K. Dick photo
James Buchanan photo

“Sir, if you are as happy in entering the White House as I shall feel on returning to Wheatland, you are a happy man indeed.”

James Buchanan (1791–1868) American politician, 15th President of the United States (in office from 1857 to 1861)

Said to Abraham Lincoln on the ride back from Lincoln's inauguration as president (4 March 1861); as quoted in James Buchanan (2004) by Jean H. Baker, Pg 140; This or slightly paraphrased variants or abbreviated versions have also been been reported as having been said before the inauguration:
Sir, if you are as happy in entering the White House as I shall feel on returning [home], you are a happy man indeed.
If you are as happy entering the presidency as I am in leaving it, then you are truly a happy man.
As quoted in Presidential Leadership : Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House (2004) edited by James Taranto and Leonard Leo
Earlier variant: Some knave or fool got up a lie from the whole cloth and it was telegraphed over the country that I was about to purchase or had purchased a place somewhere else and would not return to Wheatland. If my successor should be as happy in entering the White House as I shall feel on returning to Wheatland he will indeed be a happy man. I am just now in my own mind chalking out the course of my last message. In it, should Providence continue his blessing, I shall have nothing to record but uninterrupted success for my country. The trouble about the slavery question would all have been avoided, had the Country submitted to the decision of the Supreme Court delivered two or three days after my inaugural.
Letter to William Carpenter (13 September 1860); as published in Historical Papers and Addresses of the Lancaster County Historical Society.

Sara Teasdale photo

“Oh Earth, you gave me all I have,
I love you, I love you, — oh what have I
That I can give you in return —
Except my body after I die?”

Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) American writer and poet

"June Night"
Flame and Shadow (1920)

Edgar Rice Burroughs photo
Tommaso Campanella photo

“If You return to earth, come armed Lord,
because enemies are preparing other crosses
—not Turks, not Jews—but those of Your own kingdom”

Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639) Italian philosopher, theologian, astrologer, and poet

"To Jesus Christ", as cited in Roush, Sherry, 2011, Selected Philosophical Poems of Tommaso Campanella, University of Chicago Press, p. 18.

Tomas Kalnoky photo
Bruno Schulz photo
Gloria Estefan photo

“Masculine process has at its foundation externalization. The young boy is focused away from his inner and personal self and into achievement, performance, competition, success, emotional control (being "cool"), autonomy (not being dependent or needy), fearlessness, action, and an ethic that only values time spent in doing. Anything else is suspect and viewed as lazy, worthless, time-wasting, or meaningless.Externalization, or the process of being pushed outside of oneself, amplifies and eventually becomes disconnection. Personal relationships are then objectified and founded on the role another can play in his life. Relationships are based on doing and are therefore fairly readily interchangeable with anyone else who can do.Disconnection leads men to the experience of being loners, where it's "lonely at the top," and freedom, space, and "doing one's thing," are the rationalized values. Disconnection transforms a man into someone who has everything he wanted externally, but has nothing that is bonded or connected on a personal level. He is "out of touch," so he doesn't know why he's unhappy, and may conclude that the cause of his malaise is that he needs "more." He sets out to get it, but when he gets it he feels deader and more isolated than ever.The end stage of this journey of masculine process is personal oblivion, which can occur early in his life or may not appear full blown until he's an older man, depending on how extreme his externalized process is. At this point, personal connection becomes impossible. He doesn't know he rationalizes his personal emptiness with cynical philosophies and escapes painful awareness through non-relationships he can control by buying. In the end state of oblivion, he is beyond personal reach and can only relate in abstract, depersonalized, intellectualized ways. The only way he is "loved" is in return for providing or taking care of others.”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

The Personal Journey of Masculinity: From Externalization to Disconnection to Oblivion, pp. 10–11
What Men Still Don't Know About Women, Relationships, and Love (2007)

Aron Ra photo
Adam Morrison photo
Thorstein Veblen photo
Jozef Israëls photo

“Lord, oh Lord, will I return to you once, being a genuine artist. Will all those Art lovers once behold my works with reverence and the laurel of Art then adorn my head... I experience so ardently all the beauty of my noble career... And once again I call to you, it would be much better not to live at all than being disappointed in my feeling.”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

translation from original Dutch text: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat uit de brief van Jozef Israëls, in het Nederlands): God God zal ik nog eenmaal als een waarachtig kunstenaar tot u keeren. Zullen nog eenmaal al die Kunstminnaren mijne werken met eerbied aanschouwen en de lauwer der Kunst mijn schedel sieren.. .Ik voel zo vurig al het schoone mijner edele loopbaan.. .Ach nogmaals roep ik tot u, laat mij veel liever niet leven dan in mijne gevoelen teleurgesteld te worden.
In a letter of Jozef Israels from Amsterdam, 16 July 1843, to his friend in Groningen, pharmacist Essingh; from RKD: Archive, A.S. Kok, The Hague
Quotes of Jozef Israels, 1840 - 1870

Báb photo
Huldrych Zwingli photo

“They rightly adminish us that Christ taught that our speech should be Yea, Yea, and Nay, Nayl yet they do not seem to me to understand it clearly, or if they do understand it to obeu it. For though in many places they should often have said Yea, it has never been Yea. When those leaders were banished, against whom we wrote as best we could, and asked for an oath they would not reply except to the effect that through the faith which they had in God they knew they would never return, and yet they soon returned. 'The Father,' each said, 'led me back through His will.' I know very well that it was the father - of lies who led them back; but they pretend to know it was the Heavenly Father. Here is something worth telling: when that George (whom they call a second Paul) of the House of Jacob [Blaurock], was cudgelled with rods among us even to the infernal gate and was asked by an officer of the Council to take oath and lift up his hands [in affirmation], he at first refused, as he had often done before and had persisted in doing. Indeed he had always said that he would rather die than take an oath. The officer of the Council then ordered him forthwith to lift his hands and make oath at once, 'or do you, policemen,' he said, 'lead him to prison.' But now persuaded by rods this George of the House of Jacob raised his hand to heven and followed the magistrate in the recitation of the aoth. So here you have the question confronting you, Catabaptists, whether that Pail of yours did or did not transgress the law. The law forbids to sweat about the least thing: he swore, so he transgressed the law. Hence this knot is knit: You would be speerated from the world, from lies, from those who walk not according to the resurection of Christ but in dead works? How then is it that you have not excommunicated that Apostate? Your Yea is not Yea with you nor your Nay, Nay, but the contrary; your Yea is Nay and your Nay, Yea. You follow neither Christ nor your own constitution.”

Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) leader of the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland, and founder of the Swiss Reformed Churches

As quoted in ibid, p. 263-264

Arthur Seyss-Inquart photo

“The National Socialist Party in Austria never tried to hide its inclination for a greater Germany. That Austria would one day return to the Reich was a matter of course for all National Socialists and for true Germans in Austria.”

Arthur Seyss-Inquart (1892–1946) austrian chancellor and politician, convicted of crimes against humanity in Nuremberg Trials and sentenced …

Speech in Berlin, April 7, 1938. Quoted in "The Trial of the Germans" - by Eugene Davidson - History - 1997

Ramakrishna photo
Alan Keyes photo
Thomas Jefferson photo
Louisa May Alcott photo
Ze Frank photo
Dong Fuxiang photo

“I shall send people to urge them to return home.”

Dong Fuxiang (1839–1908) Chinese general

Familiar strangers: a history of Muslims in Northwest China, Jonathan Neaman Lipman, 2004, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 157, 0-295-97644-6, 2010-06-28 http://books.google.com/books?id=90CN0vtxdY0C&pg=PA157&dq=Fuxiang+said,+%22I+shall+send+people+to+urge+them&hl=en&ei=cceaTOXCKYT48Aa2xa1S&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAA#v=snippet&q=%22I%20shall%20send%20people%20to%20urge%20them%20to%20return%20home&f=false,

William James photo

“Every Jack sees in his own particular Jill charms and perfections to the enchantment of which we stolid onlookers are stone-cold. And which has the superior view of the absolute truth, he or we? Which has the more vital insight into the nature of Jill's existence, as a fact? Is he in excess, being in this matter a maniac? or are we in defect, being victims of a pathological anesthesia as regards Jill's magical importance? Surely the latter; surely to Jack are the profounder truths revealed; surely poor Jill's palpitating little life-throbs are among the wonders of creation, are worthy of this sympathetic interest; and it is to our shame that the rest of us cannot feel like Jack. For Jack realizes Jill concretely, and we do not. He struggles toward a union with her inner life, divining her feelings, anticipating her desires, understanding her limits as manfully as he can, and yet inadequately, too; for he also is afflicted with some blindness, even here. Whilst we, dead clods that we are, do not even seek after these things, but are contented that that portion of eternal fact named Jill should be for us as if it were not. Jill, who knows her inner life, knows that Jack's way of taking it - so importantly - is the true and serious way; and she responds to the truth in him by taking him truly and seriously, too. May the ancient blindness never wrap its clouds about either of them again! Where would any of us be, were there no one willing to know us as we really are or ready to repay us for our insight by making recognizant return? We ought, all of us, to realize each other in this intense, pathetic, and important way.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

"What Makes a Life Significant?"
1910s, Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals (1911)

Richard Rumelt photo
André Maurois photo
Lord Dunsany photo
Amir Khusrow photo
Lee Strobel photo
A.E. Housman photo