Quotes about return
page 9

“The slavery debate has been really a death-struggle from that moment. Mr. Clay thought not. Mr. Clay was a shrewd politician, but the difference between him and Calhoun was the difference between principle and expediency. Calhoun's sharp, incisive genius has engraved his name, narrow but deep, upon our annals. The fluent and facile talents of Clay in a bold, large hand wrote his name in honey upon many pages. But time is already licking it away. Henry Clay was our great compromiser. That was known, and that was the reason why Mr. Buchanan's story of a bargain with J. Q. Adams always clung to Mr. Clay. He had compromised political policies so long that he had forgotten there is such a thing as political principle, which is simply a name for the moral instincts applied to government. He did not see that when Mr. Calhoun said he should return to the Constitution he took the question with him, and shifted the battle-ground from the low, poisonous marsh of compromise, where the soldiers never know whether they are standing on land or water, to the clear, hard height of principle. Mr. Clay had his omnibus at the door to roll us out of the mire. The Whig party was all right and ready to jump in. The Democratic party was all right. The great slavery question was going to be settled forever. The bushel-basket of national peace and plenty and prosperity was to be heaped up and run over. Mr. Pierce came all the way from the granite hills of New Hampshire, where people are supposed to tell the truth, to an- nounce to a happy country that it was at peace — that its bushel-basket was never so overflowingly full before. And then what? Then the bottom fell out. Then the gentlemen in the national rope -walk at Washington found they had been busily twining a rope of sand to hold the country together. They had been trying to compromise the principles of human justice, not the percentage of a tariff; the instincts of human nature and consequently of all permanent government, and the conscience of the country saw it. Compromises are the sheet-anchor of the Union — are they? As the English said of the battle of Bunker Hill, that two such victories would ruin their army, so two such sheet- anchors as the Compromise of 1850 would drag the Union down out of sight forever.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Death, Happiness, People, Truth

“It is forbidden to be merciful to them. You must send missiles to them and annihilate them. They are evil and damnable. […] The Lord shall return the Arabs' deeds on their own heads, waste their seed and exterminate them, devastate them and vanish them from this world.”

Ovadia Yosef (1920–2013) Israeli rabbi

Undated sermon calling for the annihilation of Arabs; a Shas spokesman stated Yosef only meant "Arab murderers and terrorists" Rabbi calls for annihilation of Arabs, news.bbc.co.uk, BBC News, 10 April 2001, 2007-09-23 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1270038.stm,

World, Evil

“I must tell the House that the Falkland Islands and their dependencies remain British territory. No aggression and no invasion can alter that simple fact. It is the Government's objective to see that the islands are freed from occupation and are returned to British administration at the earliest possible moment…We cannot allow the democratic rights of the islanders to be denied by the territorial ambitions of Argentina.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech in the House of Commons (3 April 1982) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104910 First term as Prime Minister

Housing, Dependency

“GENTLEMEN: Before the Senate adjourns, I desire to return my thanks for the very kind and complimentary resolution unanimously passed on Saturday last, and to assure the Senate that so long as I shall have the honor of continuing Presiding Officer, my highest ambition will be to retain the personal regard and confidence of my colleagues. In pursuance of the resolution adopted on Saturday last, I now declare the Senate adjourned sine die”

William R. King

The Congressional globe, 33rd United States Congress (1853-04-11)

Confidence, Personality

“.. Is it indisputable that several aesthetic declarations of our French comrades (the Cubists) display a sort of masked academicism. It is not, indeed, a return to the Academy to declare that the subject, in painting, has a perfectly insignificant value?... To paint from the posing model as an absurdity, and an act of mental cowardice, even if the model be translated upon the picture in linear, spherical and cubic forms..”

Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) Italian painter and sculptor

Source: 1912, Les exposants au public', 1912, pp. 2, 3.

Painting

“I recall playing practical jokes with John Wayne. I once got a whole bunch of keys and had little tags made that said, "If lost, please return to John Wayne, RKO Studios. Reward." And I just dropped them all over town. [He got a lot of] phone calls, people showing up at the studio. He never learned who did it.”

Laraine Day (1920–2007) American actress

Classic Images Magazine, "Talking with Laraine Day", May 31, 1996.

People, Learning

“I suppose the love of life which periodically deserts most men was returning: like sexual desire, it moves in cycles.”

Graham Greene book The Lawless Roads

The Lawless Roads (1939)

Love, Life, Men

“I have recently returned from an expedition to scientific societies of the West. Their members exhibited intense interest in delicate instruments of my invention which demonstrate the indivisible unity of all life. The Bose crescograph has the enormity of ten million magnifications. The microscope enlarges only a few thousand times; yet it brought vital impetus to biological science. The crescograph opens incalculable vistas.”

Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858–1937) Bengali polymath, physicist, biologist, botanist and archaeologist

India's Great Scientist, J.C. Bose

Life, Science, Time

“C being what it is lacks support for multiple return values, so the notion that it is meaningful to pass pointers to memory objects into which any random function may write random values without having a clue where they point, has not been debunked as the sheer idiocy it really is.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: Allegro CL foreign function interface http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/2ec281a4f469bb35 (Usenet article). Usenet articles

Support, Memory

“It appears that in the lapse of ages, the sea alternately encroaches on and retreats from the land, and the districts it formerly occupied become the habitation of terrestrial animals and vegetables;—but other revolutions succeed, the sea returns to its ancient bed, and the countries from which it retires, are again fitted for the reception of their former inhabitants.”

Gideon Mantell (1790–1852) British scientist and obstetrician

The Fossils of the South Downs; or Illustrations of the Geology of Sussex (1822)

Age, Appearance, Animals, Sea

“The Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba, perhaps better known by its nickname “Gitmo,” is an affront to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the legacy of our national heritage. It should be closed now, and all the people detained there returned to the place where they were seized. In this I wholeheartedly endorse the view of my friend and fellow veteran R. J. Harris who says that Guantanamo is a stain on the U. S. and the U. S. military. Like R. J., I’m ashamed of our leadership for allowing it. The prison facility at Guantanamo Bay does more than just blur the line between the good guys and the bad guys; it erases the line entirely.”

R. Lee Wrights (1958–2017) American gubernatorial candidate

" Gitmo's Gotta Go http://www.libertyforall.net/?p=7236," Liberty For All (4 February 2012, retrieved 25 February 2012). Republished http://original.antiwar.com/lee-wrights/2012/02/06/gitmos-gotta-go/ by Antiwar.com (7 February 2012). 2012

People, Guy

“The shot by [Andy] Bathgate nearly ripped my nose off. I told Toe [Blake] I would only return if I could wear the mask, so there was no choice. He never wanted me to wear the mask because he thought it would make me too complacent.”

Jacques Plante (1929–1986) Canadian ice hockey player

Plante refers to November 1, 1959, when he debuted the first practical goaltender mask. Quoted in Kevin Shea, "One on One with Jacques Plante," http://www.legendsofhockey.net/html/spot_oneononep197802.htm Legends of Hockey.net (2005-05-24)

“Professor Edgeworth, of All Souls', avoided conversational English, persistently using words and phrases that one expects to meet only in books. One evening, Lawrence returned from a visit to London, and Edgeworth met him at the gate. "Was it very caliginous in the metropolis?""Somewhat caliginous, but not altogether inspissated," Lawrence replied gravely.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

Source: Goodbye to All That (1929), Ch. 28.

Books, Soul

“As long as we go back often to Nature herself, and practice the art of then forgetting for the time the fictions and hypotheses necessary in the partial treatments of our specialities,—as long as we thereby allow Nature and her facts to speak to us for themselves,—so long shall we, after each fresh contact, return to our labors with renewed strength and clarified vision.”

Ralph Vary Chamberlin (1879–1967) American biologist (1879-1967)

"Science and Reality" (1931) Bios Vol. 2, No. 1 , p. 40

Art, Nature, Time, Forgetting

“The fundamental core of contemporary Darwinism, the theory of DNA-based reproduction and evolution, is now beyond dispute among scientists. It demonstrates its power every day, contributing crucially to the explanation of planet-sized facts of geology and meteorology, through middle-sized facts of ecology and agronomy, down to the latest microscopic facts of genetic engineering. It unifies all of biology and the history of our planet into a single grand story. Like Gulliver tied down in Lilliput, it is unbudgable, not because of some one or two huge chains of argument that might — hope against hope — have weak links in them, but because it is securely tied by thousands of threads of evidence anchoring it to virtually every other area of human knowledge. New discoveries may conceivably lead to dramatic, even "revolutionary" shifts in the Darwinian theory, but the hope that it will be "refuted" by some shattering breakthrough is about as reasonable as the hope that we will return to a geocentric vision and discard Copernicus.”

Daniel Dennett book Darwin's Dangerous Idea

Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995)

Hope, History, Knowledge

“[A]nd between this top-quality programming are the most miserable adverts in the world – former Mancunian top cop John Stalker trying to sell you sun awnings; trying to get you to blot out every ray of light from the world for those in the grip of manic depression – 'Hello, I'm John Stalker. Are you, like me, tired of the pitiless glare of an English summer; maddened by the relentless gaze of cruel Helios; sick of lurking in your house all summer long, like a mad bloke in a siege situation - such as I would have dealt with in my high-flying career? Well, suffer no longer. Install Gloom Master sun awnings - summer bang to rights!' Terrible! Then it all gets worse with those terrible loan adverts. These awful, tragic, hollow-eyed wraiths come on, telling you these awful stories - 'I'm up to my eyes in debt, and, curiously, no reputable company would give me another loan! Then I discovered Dodgy Bastards. They've given me a million pounds, and all they want in return are my kidneys.' No, don't do it! And then - worse than that - the accident insurance adverts - 'Where there's blame, there's a claim”

Linda Smith (1958–2006) comedian

when people who've had these accidents come on like medieval beggars, and wave their stumps at you for money with these outlandish stories - 'I slipped on a banana skin and successfully sued the Dominican Republic...' (Wrap up Warm tour, May 2004)
Stand-up

Money, People, World, Light

“All mammals nurse their young, and breast milk benefits a newborn infant in ways above and beyond nutrition. In fact, until 1 to 2 years of age, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the World Health Organization, the Institute of Medicine and more promote breast-feeding as optimal. Unfortunately, breast-feeding until that age is often difficult, if not impossible, because mothers have to return to work, and children go off to preschool or day care. So we often replace human milk with the milk of cows or other animals. But at a certain point, we have to acknowledge that we are the only mammals on the planet that continue to consume milk after childhood, often in great amounts. More and more evidence is surfacing, however, that milk consumption may not only be unhelpful, it might also be detrimental. … there’s very little evidence that most adults need it. There’s also very little evidence that it’s doing them much good.”

Aaron Carroll American pediatrician

"Got Milk? Might Not Be Doing You Much Good", in The New York Times (17 November 2014) http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/18/upshot/got-milk-might-not-be-doing-you-much-good.html?_r=0

Children, Health, Age, World

“It is time to return to those core values, time to get back to basics: to self-discipline and respect for the law, to consideration for others, to accepting responsibility for yourself and your family, and not shuffling it off on other people and the state.”

John Major (1943) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Nicholas Wood, Jill Sherman, Sheila Gunn, "Major gives seal of approval to Tories' right-wing agenda", The Times, 9 October 1993
Conservative Party conference speech, 8 October 1993. The phrase was associated with personal morality and backfired when a succession of senior Conservatives fell to scandals that winter.
1990s, 1993

People, Family, Law, Time

“Instead of gambling on the eternal impossibility of the revolution and on the fascist return of a war-machine in general, why not think that a new type of revolution is in the course of becoming possible, and that all kinds of mutating, living machines conduct wars, are combined and trace out a plane of consistance which undermines the plane of organization of the World and the States?”

Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) French philosopher

from Dialogues with Claire Parnet, p. 147 [emphasis in original].

War, World, Thinking

“The party first makes a correct return to the best of his ability but is considered to be a simpleton and fool. His word or explanations are not accepted or are looked upon with suspicion by the Assessing Authority, who may be his inferior perhaps in status. Arbitrary and unwarranted deductions are made and the poor party is unfairly over-assessed without hope of getting any proper relief. If he appeals the Superior Officer supports his subordinate and it may take years, expense and the ruling of a High Court to see that Justice is done. So what can be the result in such a case? At the next encounter you may be sure the party will be ready to match his skill against his instigator and to throw as many red herrings as he can on the trail. It will now require all the subtlety, knowledge and acumen of the authorities to arrive at the proper conclusion, and failure is generally the result. Lakhs of rupees of Income Tax dues remain outstanding and years of litigation follow and eventually the Tax is time-barred and non recoverable.”

Peter de Noronha (1897–1970) Indian businessman

The Pageant of Life (1964), On Income Tax

Justice, Hope, Fools, Failure

“It is certainly true that Hitler returned from the war as a man without a compass and embarked on a path of self-discovery. Yet opportunism and expediency and vague political idea coexisted and at times competed with each other, within Hitler.”

Thomas Weber (historian) (1974) German historian

Source: Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi (2017), p. 67

War, Idea, Time

“And what this could mean, as illustrated by what happened in 1854, the first real test of the Fugitive Slave Act? There was a slave named Anthony Burns in Virginia who stowed away on board a coastal vessel that then sailed to Boston. And Anthony Burns, who was apparently quite literate but not very smart, wrote a letter to his brother back in Virginia telling him where he was. Well, before Anthony Burns was returned to the State of Virginia, the President, Franklin Pierce, had sent an artillery regiment of marines to Boston. He had federalized the National Guard of Boston. He had 3,000 soldiers surrounding them, making sure that nobody could break the jail and let Anthony Burns out. This was an example of the way in which the federal police power would be used to make sure that slaves were returned to their masters or that slaves couldn’t escape from their masters. So this is the real issue.”

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

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The Right of Secession Is Not the Right of Revolution

Way

“People, your government has returned to you!”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

New Year's Address to the Nation (1990)

People

“I used to work in this building for years and on returning here I intend to do everything possible to secure normal human life for the Armenian people.”

Karen Demirchyan (1932–1999) Soviet politician

June 10, 1999. Quoted in "New Armenian speaker emphasizes human factor" - BBC Archive.

Life, People

“Better off? The point is illustrated by the great African American boxer Muhammad Ali. In the early 1970s Muhammad Ali fought for the heavyweight title against George Foreman. The fight was held in the African nation of Zaire; it was insensitively called the "rumble in the jungle." Ali won the fight, and upon returning to the United States, he was asked by a reporter, "Champ, what did you think of Africa?" Ali replied, "Thank God my granddaddy got on that boat!" There is a characteristic mischievous pungency to Ali's remark, yet it also expresses a widely held sentiment. Ali recognizes that for all the horror of slavery, it was the transmission belt that brought Africans into the orbit of Western freedom. The slaves were not better off—the boat Ali refers to brought the slaves through a horrific Middle Passage to a life of painful servitude—yet their descendants today, even if they won't admit it, are better off. Ali was honest enough to admit it.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Source: Books, America: Imagine a World without Her (2014), Ch. 8. Most likely a misattribution. A Newsweek article at the time of the match attributed the quote "Thank God our grandpappies caught that boat!" to George Foreman's manager Dick Sadler. "It Takes a Heap of Salongo", Newsweek (September 23, 1974), p. 72.

Life, God, Pain, Thinking

“After the Sultan had purified Hind from idolatry, and raised mosques therein, he determined to invade the capital of Hind, to punish those who kept idols and would not acknowledge the unity of Allah. He collected his warriors and distributed money amongst them. He marched with a large army in the year 404 H., 1013 AD during a dark night … The Sultan returned, marching in the rear of this immense booty, and slaves were so plentiful that they became very cheap; and men of respectability in their native land, were degraded by becoming slaves of common shopkeepers. But this is the goodness of Allah, who bestows honours on his religion and degrades infidelity…”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

Nardin (Punjab) . Capital of the Hindu Shahis after they lost Udbhandapur near Peshawar. Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 37-39
Quotes from Tarikh Yamini (Kitabu-l Yamini) by Al Utbi

Men, Money, Religion, Night

“We shall approach practical objectives through a series of approximations. Keeping the maximization of the rate of return as the central theoretical objective, we shall develop a number of subsidiary objectives (which the economists call proxy variables) which contribute in different ways to improvement in the return and which are also measurable in business practice. A firm which meets high performance in most of its subsidiary objectives will substantially enhance its long-term rate of return. (The defect in our approach is that we cannot prove that the result will be a ‘‘maximum’’ possible overall return.) As will be seen, this road has its own obstacles: the difficulties of long term maximization are replaced by the problem of reconciling claims of conflicting objectives.”

Igor Ansoff (1918–2001) American mathematician

Source: Corporate Strategy, 1965, p. 47; cited in: Graham Kenny, (2012),"From the stakeholder viewpoint: designing measurable objectives", Journal of Business Strategy, Vol. 33 Iss: 6 pp. 40-46

Way, Business, Problem

“Quaint though this attitude seems now, it was unquestionably the prevalent one in the nineteenth century, and it would be over-bold to say that it will never return to favour, for the range of human folly is infinite.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

“Now and then, especially at night, solitude loses its soft power and loneliness takes over. I am grateful when solitude returns.”

Donald Hall (1928–2018) American writer

"Between Solitude and Loneliness," The New Yorker, October 15, 2016

Solitude, Loneliness, Night

“I used to assume history and memory would always triumph over temporary aberrations and return to their rightful place. It now appears the opposite is true.”

Yan Lianke (1958) Chinese novelist and satirist

"On China's State-Sponsored Amnesia"

History, Appearance, Memory

“Moreover, in order that we may be aroused and exhorted all the more to carry this out, Scripture makes known that there are not one, not two, nor a few foes, but great armies, which wage war against us. For Mary Magdalene is said to have been freed from seven demons by which she was possessed [Mark 16:9; Luke 8:2], and Christ bears witness that usually after a demon has once been cast out, if you make room for him again, he will take with him seven spirits more wicked than he and return to his empty possession [Matt. 12:43-45]. Indeed, a whole legion is said to have assailed one man [Luke 8:30]. We are therefore taught by these examples that we have to wage war against an infinite number of enemies, lest, despising their fewness, we should be too remiss to give battle, or, thinking that we are sometimes afforded some respite, we should yield to idleness.
But the frequent mention of Satan or the devil in the singular denotes the empire of wickness opposed to the Kingdom of Righteousness. For as the church and fellowship of the saints has Christ as Head, so the faction of the impious and impiety itself are depicted for us together with their prince who holds supreme sway over them. For this reason, it was said: "Depart, …you cursed, into the eternal fire, prepared for the devil and his angels"”

John Calvin book Institutes of the Christian Religion

Matt. 25:41 “Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion” https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1611644453 Book 1, ch.14, sect. 14, edited by John T. McNeill pp.173-174. Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)

War, Angels, Thinking, Christ

“I consider my painting finished when my eyes goes to a particular spot on the canvas. But if I put the picture away about thirty feet on the wall and the movements keep returning to me and the eye seems to be responding to something living, then it is finished.”

William Baziotes (1912–1963) American painter

Source: 1950s, Artists' Session at Studio 35, (1950), p. 213

Painting

“New beginnings and new shoots
Spring again from hidden roots
Pull or stab or cut or burn,
Love must ever yet return.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"Marigolds".
Fairies and Fusiliers (1917)

Love, Spring

“I feel that over the past 15 years, there has been a steady move toward more populist work. I do feel - and of course I'm completely biased - that this year was a return to the better days of the 80s and early 90s. It was a very good short list and a decent jury; it didn't have any stand-up comedians or media celebs on it, and I think that's what the Man Booker prize should be. There are plenty of other rewards for middle-brow fiction. There should be one decent prize for [pause] real books.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

14th time lucky (2005)

Books, Feeling, Thinking, Past

“The programmers who write improvements to GCC (or Emacs, or Bash, or Linŭ, or any GPL-covered program) are often employed by companies or universities. When the programmer wants to return his improvements to the community, and see his code in the next release, the boss may say, "Hold on there — your code belongs to us! We don't want to share it; we have decided to turn your improved version into a proprietary software product."
Here the GNU GPL comes to the rescue. The programmer shows the boss that this proprietary software product would be copyright infringement, and the boss realizes that he has only two choices: release the new code as free software, or not at all. Almost always he lets the programmer do as he intended all along, and the code goes into the next release.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

1990s, Copyleft: Pragmatic Idealism (1998)

Communication, Universe

“In Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Fauves – Matisse, Derain – were using bright colours in their full intensity, which continued with Kandinsky, Malevich, Kirchner, Léger and Mondrian. They employed all the colours of the spectrum. In the 1940's and 1950's the majority of the Abstract Expressionists in New York rebelled against this European use of colour and mostly used mixed colours. That is, the Abstract Expressionists did use bright colours sometimes, but they tended to paint wet-on-wet, which muddled their hues. As Matisse would say, a small patch of any one colour is far less intense than a large one of the same colour. I returned in 1954 [from Paris] to New York and showed paintings done in France at the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1956 with bright colours that wouldn’t really be used until the Pop artists in the 1960's. My idea of using colour at its full intensity, which began with Colors for a Large Wall, hasn’t changed in the 60 years that I’ve been painting.”

Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015) American painter, sculptor, and printmaker

1981 - 2008
Source: 'Colour Chart I', interview with Christoph Grunenberg, 1 May 2009; 'Sixty years at full intensity', Tate 2009

Color, Idea, Change, Painting

“Old-fashioned values may count when conservatives appear on the stump, but once conservatives are in office the only old-fashioned situation they care to revive is an economic regimen of low wages and lax regulations. Over the last three decades they have smashed the welfare state, reduced the tax burden on corporations and the wealthy, and generally facilitated the country’s return to a nineteenth-century pattern of wealth distribution. Thus the primary contradiction of the backlash: it is a working-class movement that has done incalculable, historic harm to working class people.The leaders of the backlash may talk Christ, but they walk corporate. Values may "matter most" to voters, but they always take a backseat to the needs of money once the elections are won. This is a basic earmark of the phenomenon, absolutely consistent across its decades-long history. Abortion is never halted. Affirmative action is never abolished. The culture industry is never forced to clean up its act.”

Thomas Frank book What's the Matter with Kansas?

Ibid. (p. 6).
What's the Matter with Kansas? (2004)

Money, History, Fashion, Appearance

“Islamization of Europe is an unavoidable consequence, indeed, an inevitability, once Europe ceased to reproduce itself. The descendants of the men who went out from Europe to conquer and Christianize the world have decided to leave the world. The culture of death triumphs, as the poor but fecund Muslims, expelled centuries ago, return to inherit the estate.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

2000s, State of Emergency (2006)

Death, Men, World

“When I ventured to criticise, the other day, this system I was, I am afraid, misunderstood. As a Conservative, I am naturally in favour of returning into private ownership and private management all those means of production and distribution which are now controlled by state capitalism. I am sure they will be more efficient. What I ventured to question was the using of these huge sums as if they were income.

I know now, I have learnt now from the letters that I have received, that I am quite out of date. Modern economists have decided there is no difference between capital and income. I am not so sure. In my younger days, I and perhaps others of your Lordships had friends, good friends, very good fellows indeed too, who failed to make this distinction. For a few years everything went on very well, and then at last the crash came, and they were forced to retire out to some dingy lodging-house in Boulogne, or if the estate were larger and the trustees more generous, to a decent accommodation at Baden-Baden.”

Harold Macmillan (1894–1986) British politician

Hansard, House of Lords, 5th series, vol. 468, cols. 390-1.
Speech in the House of Lords, 14 November 1985.
1980s

Question, Nature, Housing

“You also remember well who first burned the bridges of your railroad, who forced Union men to give up their slaves to work on the rebel forts at Bowling Green, who took wagons and horses and burned houses of persons differing with them honestly in opinion, when I would not let our men burn fence rails for fire or gather fruit or vegetables though hungry, and these were the property of outspoken rebels. We at that time were restrained, tied by a deep seated reverence for law and property. The rebels first introduced terror as a part of their system, and forced contributions to diminish their wagon trains and thereby increase the mobility and efficiency of their columns. When General Buell had to move at a snail's pace with his vast wagon trains, Bragg moved rapidly, living on the country. No military mind could endure this long, and we are forced in self defense to imitate their example. To me this whole matter seems simple. We must, to live and prosper, be governed by law, and as near that which we inherited as possible. Our hitherto political and private differences were settled by debate, or vote, or decree of a court. We are still willing to return to that system, but our adversaries say no, and appeal to war. They dared us to war, and you remember how tauntingly they defied us to the contest. We have accepted the issue and it must be fought out. You might as well reason with a thunder-storm.”

William T. Sherman (1820–1891) American General, businessman, educator, and author.

1860s, 1864, Letter to James Guthrie (August 1864)

Men, War, Law, Time

“For six years, the only consistent thing about our national drug policy has been its inconsistency. Harsher penalties, urine testing, hysteria, budget cuts and the simplistic "Just Say No!' campaign (the equivalent of telling manic depressives to "just cheer up") have returned drug education and treatment to the Reefer Madness era.”

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

"Reefer Madness" in The Nation (21 November 1987) http://www.marijuanalibrary.org/Nation_Hoffman_112187.html.

Education, Penalty, Madness

“Value stock returns are impossible to estimate using the traditional methods, because most of the excessive return arises from the slow improvement in valuations that occurs as doggy stocks become less doggy over time.”

William J. Bernstein (1948) economist

Source: The Four Pillars of Investing (2002), Chapter 2, Measuring The Beast, p. 68.

Time

“Every male copulating with a woman returns to his origins in the womb. Goethe postponed intercourse until he was forty. This must be related to his self-imposed distance from his forceful mother. To refuse phallic penetration is to refuse surrender to the female matrix.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 257

“Almost 3 years have elapsed since the end of the greatest of all wars, but peace and stability have not returned to the world. We were well aware that the end of the fighting would not automatically settle the problems arising out of the war. The establishment of peace after the fighting is over has always been a difficult task. And even if all the Allies of World War II were united in their desire to establish a just and honorable peace, there would still be great difficulties in the way of achieving that peace.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Special Message to the Congress on the Threat to the Freedom of Europe (1948)

War, World, Peace, Way

“For as the blood of Christ had been shed on this earth, and had ascended to heaven for the salvation of sinners, and was now returning to earth again in the form of dew - and as the leaves on the trees bore the impression of the figures I had seen in the heavens, it was plain to me that the Saviour was about to lay down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and the great day of judgement was at hand.”

Nat Turner (1800–1831) American slave rebellion leader

The Confessions of Nat Turner (1831)

Men, Tree, Christ

“I was perversely delighted to see the Catholic Church and the Vatican go after nuns because I think they made a major error. People are quite clear in viewing nuns as the servants and the teachers and the supporters of the poor. You contrast that with the fact that the Vatican did virtually nothing about long-known pedophiles, and it’s just too much.
Their stance on abortion is also quite dishonest historically, because as the Jesuits (who always seem to be more honest historians of the Catholic Church) point out, the Church approved of and even regulated abortion well into the mid-1800s. The whole question of ensoulment was determined by the date of baptism. But after the Napoleonic Wars there weren’t enough soldiers anymore and the French were quite sophisticated about contraception. So Napoleon III prevailed on Pope Pius IX to declare abortion a mortal sin, in return for which Pope Pius IX got all the teaching positions in the French schools and support for the doctrine of papal infallibility. … My favorite line belongs to an old Irish woman taxi driver in Boston. Flo Kennedy and I were in the backseat talking about Flo’s book, Abortion Rap (1971), and the driver turned around and said, “Honey, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” I wish I’d gotten her name so we could attribute it to her.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

The Humanist interview (2012)

Men, War, People, Books

“Money will accomplish much in business, love and war but it isn't worth a cent in nature. You could plant all the doubloons lost in the Spanish Main on a New England farm and you would not raise a single ear of corn the more therefor. You could take the golden eagles of America and put them in the alfalfa fields of Indiana and you would not get a single blade more of grass. The moral is that nature has her own way of fixing valuation; and her valuation is the way of return made from the soil. She does not care the least what men may say, by way of trade and barter, that she is worth. Her worth in her own scales consists in her ability to produce something that will minister to the needs, the comforts and even to the luxuries of her children.”

Thomas R. Marshall (1854–1925) American politician who served as the 28th Vice President of the United States

Recollections of Thomas R. Marshall: A Hoosier Salad (1925), Chapter V

Love, Men, Money, War

“It was a doctrine old as the common law, maintained by our Anglo-Saxon ancestors centuries before it was planted in the American Colonies, that taxation and representation were inseparable correlatives, the one a duty based upon the other as a right But the neglect of the government to provide a system which made the Parliamentary representation conform to the increase of population, and the growth and decadence of cities and boroughs, had, by almost imperceptible degrees, disfranchised the great mass of the British people, and placed the legislative power in the hands of a few leading families of the realm. Towards the close of the last century the question of Parliamentary reform assumed a definite shape, and since that time has constituted one of the most prominent features in British politics. It was found not only that the basis of representation was unequal and unjust, but that the right of the elective franchise was granted to but few of the inhabitants, and was regulated by no fixed and equitable rule. Here I may quote from May's Constitutional History: 'In some of the corporate towns, the inhabitants paying scot and lot, and freemen, were admitted to vote; in some, the freemen only; and in many, none but the governing body of the corporation. At Buckingham and at Bewdley the right of election was confined to the bailiff and twelve burgesses; at Bath, to the mayor, ten aldermen, and twenty-four common-councilmen; at Salisbury, to the mayor and corporation, consisting of fifty-six persons. And where more popular rights of election were acknowledged, there were often very few inhabitants to exercise them. Gatton enjoyed a liberal franchise. All freeholders and inhabitants paying scot and lot were entitled to vote, but they only amounted to seven. At Tavistock all freeholders rejoiced in the franchise, but there were only ten. At St. Michael all inhabitants paying scot and lot were electors, but there were only seven. In 1793 the Society of the Friends of the People were prepared to prove that in England and Wales seventy members were returned by thirty-five places in which there were scarcely any electors at all; that ninety members were returned by forty-six places with less than fifty electors; and thirty-seven members by nineteen places having not more than one hundred electors. Such places were returning members, while Leeds, Birmingham, and Manchester were unrepresented; and the members whom they sent to Parliament were the nominees of peers and other wealthy patrons. No abuse was more flagrant than the direct control of peers over the constitution of the Lower House. The Duke of Norfolk was represented by eleven members; Lord Lonsdale by nine; Lord Darlington by seven; the Duke of Rutland, the Marquis of Buckingham, and Lord Carrington, each by six. Seats were held in both Houses alike by hereditary right.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1860s, Oration at Ravenna, Ohio (1865)

People, Family, Law, Quotes

“Protocols:
Number 3, para. 5
All people are chained to heavy toil by poverty more firmly than ever they were chained by slavery and serfdom; from these, one way and another, they might free themselves, these could be settled with, but from want they will never get away. We have included in the constitution such rights as to the masses appear fictitious and not actual rights. All these so-called “People’s Rights” can exist only in idea, an idea which can never be realized in practical life. What is it to the proletariat laborer, bowed double over his heavy toil, crushed by his lot in life, if talkers get the right to babble, if journalists get the right to scribble nonsense side by side with good stuff, once the proletariat has no other profit out of the constitution save only those pitiful crumbs which we fling them from out table in return for their voting in favor of what we dictate, in favor of the men we place in power, the servants of our agenteur…. Republican Rights for a poor man are no more than a bitter piece of irony.
Graves: Aha!…A very obvious cop, almost word for word and a careful insertion of modern language such as “People’s Rights” and “Republican Rights.””

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), p.77

Life, Men, People, Way

“The return to solid values is always hard… Distress, panic, and hard times have marked our pathway in returning to solid values.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

Speech (22 June 1874) US Congressional Record, 43rd Congress, 2nd session
1870s

Time

“All that is harmony for you, my Universe, is in harmony with me as well. Nothing that comes at the right time for you is too early or too late for me. Everything is fruit to me that your seasons bring, Nature. All things come of you, have their being in you, and return to you.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book IV, 23
Original: Πᾶν μοι συναρμόζει ὃ σοὶ εὐάρμοστόν ἐστιν, ὦ κόσμε· οὐδέν μοι πρόωρον οὐδὲ ὄψιμον ὃ σοὶ εὔκαιρον. πᾶν μοι καρπὸς ὃ φέρουσιν αἱ σαὶ ὧραι, ὦ φύσις· ἐκ σοῦ πάντα, ἐν σοὶ πάντα, εἰς σὲ πάντα. ἐκεῖνος μέν φησιν·

Nature, Universe, Time, Season

“One of the greatest investments of our lifetime has been New York City real estate, and investors made the highest returns when they bought stuff during the 1970s and 1980s when people were getting mugged. The lesson is that you make the most money when you buy stuff that's out of consensus.”

Mary Meeker (1959) American venture capitalist and securities analyst

Newsweek: "Climbing Back Up" http://www.newsweek.com/climbing-back-126731 (29 August 2004)

Money, People

“The elder culture that is being improvised all around us day by day… promises to be the road toward a saner, more compassionate, more sustainable world—altogether, a more important turning point than ever presented itself in the 1960s… This, at last, is what the dissenting idealism of the 1960s was, in its highest and brightest expression, all about: a transformation of values that may finally reveal the goal of industrialization… In raising that possibility I cling to one hope. They grew up… reveling in their willingness to search beyond the limits of convention. …What Boomers left undone in their youth, they will return to take up in their maturity… we have won years back from death. That gives us the grand project of using those extra years to build a culture that is morally remarkable.”

Theodore Roszak (1933–2011) American social historian, social critic, writer

The Making of an Elder Culture (2009)

Death, Youth, World, Hope

“Self is man's main business; all outside of self is uncertain, all comes from self, all returns to self.”

George Moore (novelist) (1852–1933) Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist

Source: Memoirs of My Dead Life http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8mmdl10.txt (1906), Ch. 12: Sunday Evening in London

Business

“The essential parts of Christianity are the articles of faith by the denial or ignorance of which we cease to be Christians. The principal of these are: the spiritual deliverance through the suffering and death of Christ; Resurrection from death in confirmation of the sufficient suffering of Christ; and, the return of Christ for reward and punishment, as the fruit and consequence of the deliverance. He who grapples with or disproves these first principles attacks the substance (or essence) of the object.”

Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) German philosopher

Source: Fragments from Reimarus: Consisting of Brief Critical Remarks on the Object of Jesus and His Disciples as Seen in the New Testament, p. 69

Death, Faith, Suffering, Christ

“Yet even here all these peoples have remained rooted in their sacred homelands for centuries. Though oppressed and colonized by outsiders, they have never been expelled en masse, and so the theme of restoration to the homeland has played little part in the conceptions of these peoples. There are, however, two peoples, apart from the Jews, for whom restoration of the homeland and commonwealth have been central: the Greeks and the Armenians, and together with the Jews, they constitute the archetypal Diaspora peoples, or what John Armstrong has called ‘mobilized diasporas° Unlike diasporas composed of recent mi migrant workers—Indians, Chinese and others in Southeast Asia, East Africa and the Caribbean— mobilized diasporas are of considerable antiquity, are generally polyglot and multi-skilled trading communities and have ancient, portable religious traditions. Greeks, Jews, and Armenians claimed an ancient homeland and kingdom, looked back nostalgically to a golden age or ages of great kings, saints, sages and poets, yearned to return to ancient capitals with sacred sites and buildings, took with them wherever they went their ancient scriptures, sacred scripts and separate liturgies, founded in every city congregations with churches, clergy and religious schools, traded across the Middle East and Europe using the networks of enclaves of their co-religionists to compete with other ethnic trading networks, and used their wealth, education and economic skills to offset their political powerlessness)”

Anthony D. Smith (1939–2016) British academic

Source: Myths and Memories of the Nation (1999), Chapter: Greeks, Armenians and Jews.

People, Age, Education, School

“I returned last week…from visiting the Italian front. I was up with the Eighth Army, that Army which will always seem to me to epitomize the unity of our Commonwealth and Empire. I saw there in Italy Canadians, South Africans, and New Zealanders. I recalled talking with General Alexander the great deeds of the Australians. As I saw our lads from all our countries so fine and gallant, I was thrilled with pride.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the conference of representatives of the British and Dominion Labour parties, Westminster, London (12 September 1944), quoted in The Times (13 September 1944), p. 8.
War Cabinet

Country

“Hasan Nizami writes that after the suppression of a Hindu revolt at Kol (Aligarh) in 1193 AD, Aibak raised “three bastions as high as heaven with their heads, and their carcases became food for beasts of prey. The tract was freed from idols and idol-worship and the foundations of infidelism were destroyed.” In 1194 AD Aibak destroyed 27 Hindu temples at Delhi and built the Quwwat-ul-Islãm mosque with their debris. According to Nizami, Aibak “adorned it with the stones and gold obtained from the temples which had been demolished by elephants”. In 1195 AD the Mher tribe of Ajmer rose in revolt, and the Chaulukyas of Gujarat came to their assistance. Aibak had to invite re-inforcements from Ghazni before he could meet the challenge. In 1196 AD he advanced against Anahilwar Patan, the capital of Gujarat. Nizami writes that after Raja Karan was defeated and forced to flee, “fifty thousand infidels were despatched to hell by the sword” and “more than twenty thousand slaves, and cattle beyond all calculation fell into the hands of the victors”. The city was sacked, its temples demolished, and its palaces plundered. On his return to Ajmer, Aibak destroyed the Sanskrit College of Visaladeva, and laid the foundations of a mosque which came to be known as ADhãî Din kã JhoMpaDã. Conquest of Kalinjar in 1202 AD was Aibak’s crowning achievement. Nizami concludes: “The temples were converted into mosques… Fifty thousand men came under the collar of slavery and the plain became black as pitch with Hindus.””

Hasan Nizami Persian language poet and historian

Hasan Nizami, quoted from Goel, Sita Ram (2001). The story of Islamic imperialism in India. ISBN 9788185990231 Ch. 6

Men, Food, Hell

“Men who shrink from penetration of the female body are paralyzed by justifiable apprehension, since they are returning to our uncanny site of origin.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 79

Men

“Evil reports of a churlish wilderness, a pitiless climate, disease, misery, and death, had heralded the arrival of De Monts. The outlay had been great, the returns small; and when he reached Paris, he found his friends cold, his enemies active and keen.”

Francis Parkman (1823–1893) American historian

Pt. II, Ch. 4 Lescarbot and Champlain
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)

Death, Disease, Evil

“Why is it that, next to the birth day of the Saviour of the World, your most joyous and most venerated festival returns on this day? … Is it not that, in the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birth-day of the Saviour? That it forms a leading event in the progress of the gospel dispensation? Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer’s mission upon earth? That it laid the corner stone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity, and gave to the world the first irrevocable pledge of the fulfilment of the prophecies, announced directly from Heaven at the birth of the Saviour and predicted by the greatest of the Hebrew prophets six hundred years before?”

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)

Newburyport Oration (4 July 1837)

World, Birthday, Birth

“…for the Dasavatharam’, she was my coach for my American accent. She had just returned from the US and was the perfect medium to help her father's Madrasi accent to be transformed into a yankee accent. She was a bully. She made me do many retakes in the dubbing. And after dubbing, she wanted me to correct some more of my accent. Everyone thought that was taking it a little too far.”

Kamal Haasan (1954) Indian actor

About his second daughter Akshara
Aamir's choice of films makes Kamal Haasan happy

Help, Perfection

“In 1925, Goebbels and Strasser argued in the Nazi daily, Völkischer Beobachter, that only the introduction of a ‘socialist dictatorship’ could save Germany from chaos. ‘Lenin scarified Marx.’ Goebbels wrote, ‘and in return gave Russia freedom.’ Of his own Nazi Party, he wrote in 1929 that it was a party of ‘revolutionary socialists.”

Richard Pipes (1923–2018) American historian

Source: Russia Under The Bolshevik Regime (1994), p. 260

Freedom

“When I finished with LSE, Laski, of his own, gave me a letter of introduction for Panditji. On reaching Delhi I sought an appointment with the PM. I suppose, because I was an Indian student returning home from London, I was given a time-slot. It was here in Parliament House that he met me. We talked for a few minutes about London and things like that and I could soon see that it was time for me to leave. So I said goodbye and as I left the room I handed over the letter from Laski, and stepped out into the great circular corridor outside. When I was half way round, I heard the sound of someone clapping from the direction I had just come. I turned to see Panditji (Nehru) beckoning me to come back. He had opened the letter as I left his room and read it. [Nehru asked:] "Why didn't you give this to me earlier?" [and I replied:] "Well, sir, I am sorry. I thought it would be enough if I just handed it over while leaving."”

K. R. Narayanan (1920–2005) 9th Vice President and the 10th President of India

After a few more questions, he asked me to see him again and very soon I found myself entering the Indian Foreign Service. Source: Gopal Gandhi Of a Certain Age: Twenty Life Sketches http://books.google.co.in/books?id=Inp4jPFUHUkC&pg=PA178, Penguin Books India, 2011, p. 178

Way, Home, Question, Time

“Alexander: No spunk, simple as that! Your brother's an army deserter!
Michael: Oh yes, I've resigned my commission.
Alexander: He's refusing to return to duty.
Michael: On grounds of ill health, Papa. I'm sick of the Army.
Alexander: No discipline, that's the problem!
Michael: No, it's riddled with discipline, that's the problem. That and Poland.”

Tom Stoppard (1937) British playwright

The Coast of Utopia: Voyage (2002)

Health, Problem

“Be so kind and write me by return, with drawing and explanation, how I can make a [photo] camera. - as I then saw at your home. (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner's brief, in het Nederlands:) Wees zoo goed en meld me per omgaande, met teekening en uitleg, hoe ik een [foto]-camera kan maken. - zooals ik toen bij jou gezien heb.
Quote of Breitner's letter to his friend H. van der Weele, 14 July 1883 or 1889; as cited by R. Bergsma, & P.H. Hefting, in George Hendrik Breitner 1857-1923, Bussum 1994, p. 21
There are different opinions about the year Breitner started using a photo-camera; they all differ between 1883 and 1889
before 1890

Home, Photo, Drawing

“Thrice three protections,
Returning to the old places,
With a steed used to the field.”

Taliesin (534–599) Welsh bard

Book of Taliesin (c. 1275?), The Song of the Horses

“Let's consider first Hayek's claim that prices in free market capitalism do not give people what they morally deserve. Hayek's deepest economic insight was that the basic function of free market prices is informational. Free market prices send signals to producers as to where their products are most in demand (and to consumers as to the opportunity costs of their options). They reflect the sum total of the inherently dispersed information about the supply and demand of millions of distinct individuals for each product. Free market prices give us our only access to this information, and then only in aggregate form. This is why centralized economic planning is doomed to failure: there is no way to collect individualized supply and demand information in a single mind or planning agency, to use as a basis for setting prices. Free markets alone can effectively respond to this information.
It's a short step from this core insight about prices to their failure to track any coherent notion of moral desert. Claims of desert are essentially backward-looking. They aim to reward people for virtuous conduct that they undertook in the past. Free market prices are essentially forward-looking. Current prices send signals to producers as to where the demand is now, not where the demand was when individual producers decided on their production plans. Capitalism is an inherently dynamic economic system. It responds rapidly to changes in tastes, to new sources of supply, to new substitutes for old products. This is one of capitalism's great virtues. But this responsiveness leads to volatile prices. Consequently, capitalism is constantly pulling the rug out from underneath even the most thoughtful, foresightful, and prudent production plans of individual agents. However virtuous they were, by whatever standard of virtue one can name, individuals cannot count on their virtue being rewarded in the free market. For the function of the market isn't to reward people for past good behavior. It's to direct them toward producing for current demand, regardless of what they did in the past.
This isn't to say that virtue makes no difference to what returns one may expect for one's productive contributions. The exercise of prudence and foresight in laying out one's production and investment plans, and diligence in carrying them out, generally improves one's odds. But sheer dumb luck is also, ineradicably, a prominent factor determining free market returns. And nobody deserves what comes to them by sheer luck.”

Elizabeth S. Anderson (1959) professor of philosophy and womens' studies

How Not to Complain About Taxes (III): "I deserve my pretax income" http://left2right.typepad.com/main/2005/01/how_not_to_comp_1.html (January 26, 2005)

People, Way, Behavior, Exercises

“So that battle was fought as you have heard, in the fields of Maupertuis, six miles from the city of Poitiers, on the nineteenth day of September, 1356. It began in the early morning and was finished by mid-afternoon, although many of the English did not return from the pursuit until late evening…There died that day, it was said, the finest flower of French chivalry, whereby the realm of France was sorely weakened and fell into great misery and affliction, as you will hear later.”

Jean Froissart (1337–1405) French writer

Ensi fu ceste bataille desconfite que vous avés oy, qui fu ès camps de Maupetruis à deux liewes de le cité de Poitiers, le vingt unième jour dou mois de septembre, l'an de grasce Nostre Signeur mil trois cens cinquante six. Si commença environ heure de prime, et fu toute passée à none; mès encores n'estoient point tout li Englès qui caciet avoient, retourné de leur cace et remis ensamble…Et fu là morte, si com on recordoit adonc pour le temps, toute li fleur de la chevalerie de France: de quoi li nobles royaumes fu durement afoiblis, et en grant misère et tribulation eschei, ensi que vous orés recorder chi après.
Book 1, pp. 142-3.
Chroniques (1369–1400)

Flowers, Affliction

“The good he scorn'd
Stalk'd off reluctant, like an ill-used ghost,
Not to return; or if it did, in visits
Like those of angels, short and far between.”

Robert Blair The Grave

Part II, line 586. Compare: "Like angels’ visits, short and bright", John Norris, The Parting.
The Grave (1743)

Angels

“I hope I have just had simply an artist's freak, and then a lot of fever after very considerable loss of blood, as an artery was severed, but my appetite came back at once. My digestion is all right, and so from day to day serenity returns to my brain.”

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

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Arles, France, Jan. 1889; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 569), p 24 Vincent wrote this letter about two weeks after his first attack, during which he had cut off his ear 1880s, 1889

Hope, Loss

“The method for practicing this ardent love is short and easy. Its subject is constant and loving aspiration. But to be perfect, aspiration must be practice so eagerly and continually that it becomes as easy as breathing. It has a number of degrees, all of which can be reduced to four. The first consists in offering oneself and all created things to God. As far as possible, this should be done in an abstract manner. The second degree consists in making requests of the divine Spouse, asking him for his gifts in him and for his own sake. The third degree consists in being resigned and completely conformed to him. This conformity is very lofty and perfect, and is characterized by a great love. Moreover, the soul also desires it for creatures who are capable of such exalted love. The fourth degree is that of unitive love which unites the soul to God. Here the souls yearns for him and pursues him with acts of love until he opens his loving and super essential bosom to it. Here it feast upon his immense beauty in great abundance and intoxication, eating and drinking at the table of the Blessed. But since this does not last very long, the soul soon returns to itself to feed upon its former spiritual fare. From this it derives renewed strength, until God again receives it into his bosom with the same effect.”

John of St. Samson (1571–1636)

From Prayer, Aspiration, and Contemplation

Love, God, Beauty, Soul

“Al Utbi, the author of Tarikh-i-Yamini, writes how Sultan Mahmud punished Nawasa Shah: “Satan had got the better of Nawasa Shah, for he was again apostatizing towards the pit of plural worship, and had thrown off the slough of Islam, and held conversation with the chiefs of idolatry respecting the casting off the firm rope of religion from his neck. So the Sultan went swifter than the wind in that direction, and made the sword reek with the blood of his enemies. He turned Nawasa Shah out of his government, took possession of all the treasures which he had accumulated, re-assumed the government, and then cut down the harvest of idolatry with the sickle of his sword and spear. After God had granted him this and the previous victory, which were tried witnesses as to his exalted state and proselytism, he returned without difficulty to Ghazna.””

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

Utbi, in Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 2
Quotes from Tarikh Yamini (Kitabu-l Yamini) by Al Utbi

God, Religion, Victory

“The first star vehicle of the summer of 1996 is also the first major disappointment of the season. Mission: Impossible, the big-screen resurrection of the popular late-'60s/early-'70s series, fails to generate much in the way of excitement or intrigue. This globetrotting adventure looks like an opportunity for Tom Cruise to play James Bond — a role he is totally unsuited for. The writing for last year's 007 return, GoldenEye, isn't a lot better than that for Mission: Impossible, but, as an action hero, Pierce Brosnan is considerably more debonair and charismatic than Cruise.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/movies/m/mission.html of Mission: Impossible (1996). Two-and-a-half star reviews

Disappointment, Way, Star, Summer

“We [ Kandinsky and Gabriele] came here [in Murnau, near Munich] together, on a brief visit, for the first time in 1908, in June, and we were both delighted with the town and its surroundings. In August, we then returned to Murnau for two months, with Jawlensky and Marianne Werefkin.... Kandinsky fell in love with it [with the house in Murnau where Gabriele lived, till 1962] and said: 'You must buy it for our old age'. So I bought it and we then made it our home until he returned to Russia in 1914. Jawlensky and Marianne [Werefkin] used to stay with us here, and the people of Murnau called it: 'The House of the Russians”

Gabriele Münter (1877–1962) German painter

only Gabriele Münter was German, of the four artists here mentioned
Source: Interview by Edouard Roditi (1958), p. 115

Love, People, Age, Home

“for price is everywhere regulated by the return obtained by this last portion of capital, for which no rent whatever is paid.”

David Ricardo (1772–1823) British political economist, broker and politician

Source: The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1821) (Third Edition), Chapter XXIV, The Rent of Land, p. 220

“Our yesterdays present irreparable things to us; it is true that we have lost opportunities which will never return, but God can transform this destructive anxiety into a constructive thoughtfulness for the future. Let the past sleep, but let it sleep on the bosom of Christ. Leave the Irreparable Past in His hands, and step out into the Irresistible Future with Him.”

Oswald Chambers book My Utmost for His Highest

My Utmost for His Highest (1956). Section "December 31".

God, Sleep, Past, Future

“This was the beginning of something, yet I had ventured back into a world from which I had come and found it an alien world of which I was no longer a part. In a sense I had always been alien. My Druidic training had taken me deep into a past that held more than the present, and along with it had been my father’s accounts, returning home after voyages, of a world beyond our shores. I had mingled with the men of his crews, almost half of which had come from other lands, other cultures, until I had become a stranger in my own land.”

Louis L'Amour book The Walking Drum

Source: The Walking Drum (1984), Ch. 31

Men, World, Home, Sense

“What we are seeing is the rise of new oligarchies. It is almost as if the 19th century is returning to the 21st century where we are going to live in a world where most of us are disempowered, most of us permanently struggle, most of us can't make ends meet, all the while a very small elite at the top is reaping vast rewards.”

Phillip Blond (1966) British philosopher

World

“There are good reasons to expect… a return to a concreteness of basic ideas, to simpler fundamentals easily understood, to principles that will bring exact science closer to the human perspective.”

Lancelot Law Whyte (1896–1972) Scottish industrial engineer

p, 125
Essay on Atomism: From Democritus to 1960 (1961)

Idea, Science

“I am nothing — a will-o'-the-wisp at your service — a clod of vivified dust whom its progenitors christened Amos Midwinter. I have no possession but my name, and no calling but that of philosopher. Naked I came from the earth, and naked I will return to it.”

John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician

Source: Midwinter (1923), Ch. I

“Ahmud Shah having a great curiosity to see the hill-fort of Girnal pursued the rebel in that direction… After a short time, the Raja, having consented to pay an annual tribute, made a large offering on the spot. Ahmud Shah left officers to collect the stipulated amount, and returned to Ahmadabad; on the road to which place he destroyed the temple of Somapoor, wherein were found many valuable jewels, and other property.”

Ahmad Shah I (1389–1442) Indian king who founded Ahmedabad city

Sompur (Gujrat). Tãrîkh-i-Firishta, translated by John Briggs under the title History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, first published in 1829, New Delhi Reprint 1981, Vol I, p.10

Time

“That gets us out of deciding how to spell Reg[ eE] xp?|RE... Of course, then we have to decide what ref $re returns…”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[199710171838.LAA24968@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“Weapons for what? (¿Armas, para qué?) To fight against whom? Against the revolutionary government, that has the support of the whole people? … Weapons for what? Hiding weapons for what? To blackmail the President of the Republic? To threaten to break the peace here? To create organizations of gangsters? Is it that we are going to return to gangsterism? Is it that we will return to daily shootouts in the capital? Weapons for what?”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

Speech in Havana (8 January 1959) http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1959/esp/f080159e.html

People, Peace, Support, Fight

“Companies are in the midst of a revolutionary transformation. Industrial age competition is shifting to information age competition. During the industrial age, from 1850 to about 1975, companies succeeded by how well they could capture the benefits from economies of scale and scope. Technology mattered, but, ultimately, success accrued to companies that could embed the new technology into physical assets that offered efficient, mass production of standard products.
During the industrial age, financial control systems were developed in companies, such as General Motors, DuPont, Matsushita, and General Electric, to facilitate and monitor efficient allocations of financial and physical capital. A summary financial measure such as return-on-capital employed (ROCE) could both direct a company’s internal capital to its most productive use and monitor the efficiency by which operating divisions used financial and physical capital to create value for shareholders.
The emergence of the information era, however, in the last decades of the twentieth century, made obsolete many of the fundamental assumptions of industrial age competition. No longer could companies gain sustainable competitive advantage by merely deploying new technology into physical assets rapidly, and by excellent management of financial assets and liabilities.”

David P. Norton (1941) American business theorist, business executive and management consultant

Source: The Balanced Scorecard, 1996, p. 2-3

Age, Success

“Government by thugs in the Bloody Centuries gave Barrayar many colorful historical incidents, suitable for high drama. I don't think it's a drama we wish to return to in real life.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, A Civil Campaign (1999)

Life, Color, Thinking

“But we cannot enjoy in isolation; we wish to dazzle others with that which we daily snatch from the world of sense, and in return we wish others to show us their trophies. From a reciprocity of concessions arise those mixed images, which we hasten to confront with artistic creations in order to compute what they contain of the objective; that is of the purely conventional”

Albert Gleizes (1881–1953) French painter

1910s, Du Cubisme (1912)

World, Sense

“Pro-slavery impulse still governs the Democratic Party, the party of government sinecures. It is the party that wants to use political power to tax us not for any common good, but to eat while we work. Consider the Great Society and its legacy. In the fall of 1964, I was on the speech-writing staff of the Goldwater campaign. In September and October I went on a number of forays to college campuses, where I debated spokesmen for our opponents. My argument always started from here. In 1964 the economy, thanks to the Kennedy tax cuts, was growing at the remarkable annual rate of four percent. But federal revenues were growing at 20 percent; five times as fast. The real issue in the election, I said, was what was to happen to that cornucopia of revenue. Barry Goldwater would use it to reduce the deficit and to further reduce taxes; Lyndon Johnson would use it to start vast new federal programs. At that point I could not say what programs, but I knew that the real purpose of them would be to create a new class of dependents upon the Democratic Party. The ink was hardly dry on the election returns before Johnson invented the war on poverty; and proved my prediction correct. One did not need to be cynical to see that the poor were not a reason for the expansion of bureaucracy; the expansion of bureaucracy was a reason for the poor. Every failure to reduce poverty was always represented as another reason to increase expenditures on the poor. The ultimate beneficiary was the Democratic Party. Every federal bureaucrat became in effect a precinct captain, delivering the votes of his constituents. His job was to enlarge the pool of constituents. But every increase in that pool meant a diminution of our property and our freedom.”

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

1990s, The Party of Lincoln vs. The Party of Bureaucrats (1996)

War, Failure, Freedom, Time

“So the repeal of the Missouri Compromise opened that whole territory to the ingress of slavery. That sparked the greatest political revolution in American History. In the spring of 1854, when the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed, there was no Republican Party; there were no Republican congressmen. In the four elections of 1854, 100 Republican Congressmen were returned to the Congress. At that moment, Stephen A. Douglas was looked upon as the antichrist from the point of view of the anti-slavery movement.”

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

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The Right of Secession Is Not the Right of Revolution

History, Spring

“Under this cold moonlight he felt the shimmer of self. He felt no guilt, no pain, no remorse for what he'd done. He could have killed if he wanted to, but he did not. He felt as if he understood men, their discontent, their need to see what they'd not seen before, their need to be where they'd never been. He was one of them. He'd lived in a world of killing and blood and this world was returned to him. He'd lived in the silence and ineluctable mystery of violence. He knew the hold war had on him, the gore that would never come off in this world. He knew he could have killed Mercy's brother with his hands and it was the knowledge that gave him peace.”

Robert Olmstead (1954) American writer

Source: The Coldest Night (2012), p. 243

Men, Pain, War, World

“Brother, the Great Spirit has made us all, but He has made a great difference between His white and His red children. He has given us different complexions and different customs. To you He has given the arts. To these He has not opened our eyes. We know these things to be true. Since He has made so great a difference between us in other things, why may we not conclude that He has given us a different religion according to our understanding? The Great Spirit does right. He knows what is best for His children; we are satisfied. Brother, we do not wish to destroy your religion or take it from you. We only want to enjoy our own. … Brother, we are told that you have been preaching to the white people in this place. These people are our neighbors. We are acquainted with them. We will wait a little while and see what effect your preaching has upon them. If we find it does them good, makes them honest, and less disposed to cheat Indians, we will then consider again of what you have said.
Brother, you have now heard our answer to your talk, and this is all we have to say at present. As we are going to part, we will come and take you by the hand, and hope the Great Spirit will protect you on your journey and return you safe to your friends.”

Red Jacket

Quoted from The World’s Famous Orations, Vol. VIII., Red Jacket on the Religion of the White Man and the Red https://www.bartleby.com/268/8/3.html, Speech delivered at a council of chiefs of the Six Nations in the summer of 1805 after Mr. Cram, a missionary, had spoken of the work he proposed to do among them.

Children, People, Religion, Hope