Quotes about severity
page 3

“This was a nightmare scenario for any bodyguard: stuck in the middle of a transparent tube, several miles underwater, with a murdering band of fugitives at one end and an enthralled but still highly skilled police officer at the other.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Atlantis Complex

“The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the ability to reach it.” – Chloe Traeger”

Jill Shalvis (1963) American writer

Source: Head Over Heels

“He grinned at me so unexpectedly I forgot to flap for a second and dropped several feet."You looove me," he crooned smugly holding his arms out wide, he added,"You love me this much.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

Love

“What one person does, several people usually consider.”

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (1984) Novelist

People, Personality

“I've been going insane reading my students' papers. Apparently several of them think the Hubble Space Telescope is used to search the universe for hubbles."
~ Ithana Aaronson”

Jeanne Birdsall (1951) American children's writer

Source: The Penderwicks on Gardam Street

Search, Thinking, Universe, Reading

“If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince

Fear

“They were more severely infected than the men, because while men were always getting furious, they calmed down in the end; women, who appeared to be silent, acquiescent, when they were angry flew into a rage that had no end.”

Elena Ferrante book My Brilliant Friend

Source: My Brilliant Friend

Women, Men, Appearance, Rage

“Our state cannot be severed, we are one,
One flesh; to lose thee were to lose myself.”

John Milton book Paradise Lost

Source: Paradise Lost

“There's release in knowing the truth no matter how anguishing it is. You come finally to the irreducible thing, and there's nothing left to do but pick it up and hold it. Then, at last, you can enter the severe mercy of acceptance.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Mermaid Chair

Source: The Mermaid Chair

Truth

“If it should turn out that we have mishandled our own lives as several civilizations before us have done, it seems a pity that we should involve the violet and the tree frog in our departure.”

Loren Eiseley (1907–1977) US philosopher (1907-1977)

Departure, Tree

“There's a fine edge to new grief, it severs nerves, disconnects reality--there's mercy in a sharp blade. Only with time, as the edge wears, does the real ache begin.”

Christopher Moore (1957) American writer of comic fantasy

Reality, Time

“I know I walk in and out of several worlds each day.”

Joy Harjo (1951) American writer

World

“I suck,” I said, after several minutes of uncomfortable silence into our drive.
“Is that some kind of vampire joke?” Trey
asked.”

Richelle Mead book Silver Shadows

Source: Silver Shadows

Silence

“I’m about to make a wild, extreme, and severe relationship rule: the word “busy” is a load of crap and is most often used by assholes.”

Greg Behrendt (1963) American comedian

Business

“Justice. I've heard that word. I tried it out. I wrote it down. I wrote it down several times and always it looked like a damn cold lie to me. There is no justice.”

Jean Rhys book Wide Sargasso Sea

Source: Wide Sargasso Sea

Lie, Justice, Time

“She likes to read, she reads all the time, and she prefers to be reading several things at once, she says it gives endless perspective and dimension.”

Ali Smith book Autumn

Source: Autumn

Time, Reading

“The door swung open and Kate walked in. Her jeans and T-shirt were splattered with blood and she was carrying a severed vampire head. The T-shirt has a smiley face on it.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Gunmetal Magic

“To paraphrase several sages: Nobody can think and hit someone at the same time.”

Susan Sontag Regarding the Pain of Others

Source: Regarding the Pain of Others

Thinking, Time

“The pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it, and it kills in many instances because its anguish can no longer be borne.”

William Styron book Darkness Visible

Source: Darkness Visible (1990), III
Context: This general unawareness of what depression is really like was apparent most recently in the matter of Primo Levi, the remarkable Italian writer and survivor of Auschwitz who, at the age of sixty-seven, hurled himself down a stairwell in Turin in 1987. Since my own involvement with the illness, I had been more than ordinarily interested in Levi’s death, and so, late in 1988, when I read an account in The New York Times about a symposium on the writer and his work held at New York University, I was fascinated but, finally, appalled. For, according to the article, many of the participants, worldly writers and scholars, seemed mystified by Levi’s suicide, mystified and disappointed. It was as if this man whom they had all so greatly admired, and who had endured so much at the hands of the Nazis — a man of exemplary resilience and courage — had by his suicide demonstrated a frailty, a crumbling of character they were loath to accept. In the face of a terrible absolute — self-destruction — their reaction was helplessness and (the reader could not avoid it) a touch of shame.
My annoyance over all this was so intense that I was prompted to write a short piece for the op-ed page of the Times. The argument I put forth was fairly straightforward: the pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it, and it kills in many instances because its anguish can no longer be borne. The prevention of many suicides will continue to be hindered until there is a general awareness of the nature of this pain. Through the healing process of time — and through medical intervention or hospitalization in many cases — most people survive depression, which may be its only blessing; but to the tragic legion who are compelled to destroy themselves there should be no more reproof attached than to the victims of terminal cancer.

Depressing, Pain, Suffering

“College is the best time of your life. When else are your parents going to spend several thousand dollars a year just for you to go to a strange town and get drunk every night?”

David Wood (1946) British philosopher, born 1946

Life, Parent, Time, Night

“Every search begins with beginner’s luck. And every search ends with the victor’s being severely tested.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

“Were-Hunters are different from humans. (Ravyn)
You mean other than the fact that you live for several hundred years, can turn into animals, time travel, and wave your hand to make freaky stuff happen? (Susan)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dark Side of the Moon

Travel, Time, Animals

“For every action, there’s an infinity of outcomes. Countless trillions are possible, many milliards are likely, millions might be considered probable, several occur as possibilities to us as observers—and one comes true.”

China Miéville book The Scar

Part 6 “Morning Walker”, chapter 34 (p. 394)
Source: The Scar (2002)

“It is part of the human nature always to judge others very severely and, when the wind turns against us, always to find an excuse for our own misdeeds, or to blame someone else for our mistakes.”

Paulo Coelho book Like the Flowing River

Source: Like the Flowing River

Nature, Parting

“The awareness of the damage done by severe mental illness—to the individual himself and to others—and fears that it may return again play a decisive role in many suicides”

Kay Redfield Jamison (1946) American bipolar disorder researcher

Source: Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide

Fear, Decision, Suicide

“There are too many people in the world as it is, but the supply of ancient manuscripts is severely limited.”

Elizabeth Peters Crocodile on the Sandbank

Source: Crocodile on the Sandbank

People, World

“One moment several things are possible, the next moment only one happens, and the rest don't exist. Except that other worlds have sprung into being, on which the did happen.”

Philip Pullman book Northern Lights

Source: The Golden Compass

World

“[Harry] had always suffered from a vague restlessness, a longing for adventure that she told herself severely was the result of reading too many novels when she was a small child.”

Robin McKinley book The Blue Sword

Source: The Blue Sword

Suffering, Reading

“How well I know with what burning intensity you live. You have experienced many lives already, including several you have shared with me- full rich lives from birth to death, and you just have to have these rest periods in between.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Death, Birth

“God never witholds from His child that which His love and wisdom call good. God's refusals are always merciful -- "severe mercies" at times but mercies all the same. God never denies us our hearts desire except to give us something better.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Love, Wisdom, God, Time

“I believe that in judging our actions we are more severe than professional judges. We judge not only our actions, but our thoughts, our intentions, our secret curses, our hidden hate.”

Anaïs Nin book A Spy in the House of Love

Variant: We are more severe judges of our own acts... We judge our thoughts, our intents, our secret curses, our secret hates, not only our acts.
Source: A Spy in the House of Love

Hate, Secret

“That night as I lay in bed, I thought of several things I could have said and mourned the fact that my wit usually bloomed late, peaking when it no longer mattered, during the solitary hours close to midnight.”

Siri Hustvedt (1955) novelist, essayist, poet

Source: The Blindfold

Night

“Reading is like looking through several windows which open to an infinite landscape…. For me life without reading would be like being in prison, it would be as if my spirit were in a straightjacket; life would be a very dark and narrow place.”

Isabel Allende (1942) Chilean writer

Life, Reading

“Death is another bar which lies several steps below the normal world. I'm at its threshold, but not yet in it. Its doorway is doorless.”

Kathy Acker (1947–1997) American novelist, playwright, essayist, and poet

Source: Pussy, King of the Pirates

Death, World

“He had seen me several times, and had intended to call on me long before, but a peculiar combination of circumstances had prevented it.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Time

“The future has several names. For the weak, it is impossible; for the fainthearted, it is unknown; but for the valiant, it is ideal.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Variant: The future has many names: For the weak, it means the unattainable. For the fearful, it means the unknown. For the courageous, it means opportunity.
Source: Les Misérables

Future

“Nothing can be more cruel than the leniency which abandons others to their sin. Nothing can be more compassionate than the severe reprimand which calls another Christian in one’s community back from the path of sin.”

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

Source: Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community

Communication

“I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence.”

Amy Hempel (1951) Short story writer

“… You can only subject people to anguish who have a conscience. You can only punish people who have hopes to frustrate or attachments to sever; who worry what you think of them. You can really only punish people who are already a little bit good.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

People, Hope, Thinking

“Did the Order return your sense of humor as part of the severance package?”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Slays

Sense, Parting

“In a calm, clear voice, she suggested that the wyrsa in question could do several highly improbable, athletically difficult and possibly biologically impractical things involving its own mother, a few household implements, and a dead fish.”

Mercedes Lackey (1950) American novelist and short story writer

Source: The Silver Gryphon

Question, Fish, Dead

“Except, now that I don’t have a car, I can’t really make good on my birthday promise.”

Sydney thought about it for several moments. “Well. I’ve got a car.”

An hour later, I vowed I’d never make fun of that Mazda again.”

Richelle Mead book The Fiery Heart

Source: The Fiery Heart

Cars, Birthday

“I believe there is a reason such as autism, severe manic-depression, and schizophrenia remain in our gene pool even though there is much suffering as a result.”

Temple Grandin (1947) USA-american doctor of animal science, author, and autism activist

Source: Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism

Suffering

“All knots that lovers tie
Are tied to sever.
Here shall your sweetheart lie,
Untrue for ever.”

A.E. Housman (1859–1936) English classical scholar and poet

Source: More Poems

Lie, Lovers

“Every human being must find his own way to cope with severe loss, and the only job of a true friend is to facilitate whatever method he chooses.”

Caleb Carr (1955) Novelist, screenwriter, military historian

Way, Loss

“It is a well-documented fact that guys will not ask for directions. This is a biological thing. This is why it takes several million sperm cells… to locate a female egg, despite the fact that the egg is, relative to them, the size of Wisconsin.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Guy

“I like the fact of John McCain's head being severed. Like that it will fit so much more nicely up George Bush's butt!”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

“You really don’t want to take that tone with me. (Varyk)
Well, I do have several others we can choose from. Contemptuous. Angry. Snide. Aggravated. How about I just settle on extreme sarcasm and we call it even? (Dev)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Bad Moon Rising

“When death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.”

George Eliot book Adam Bede

Source: Adam Bede

Death

“I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack me at once.”

Ashleigh Brilliant (1933) American author and cartoonist

Time

“By then she was dead. In fact, she may have been dead a while ago. Physically, several seconds ago, mentally, ages ago.”

Koushun Takami book Battle Royale

Source: Battle Royale

Age, Dead

“Faith's most severe tests come not when we see nothing, but when we see a stunning array of evidence that seems to prove our faith vain.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Source: These Strange Ashes

Faith

“But it isn’t a rough draft either. The one I turned in several months ago was rough. There were some bad plot holes, some logical inconsistencies, pacing problems, and not nearly enough lesbian unicorns.”

Patrick Rothfuss (1973) American fantasy writer

Problem

“He had known several men who blew their heads off, and he had pondered it much. It seemed to him it was probably because they could not take enough happiness just from the sky and the moon to carry them over the low feelings that came to all men.”

Larry McMurtry Lonesome Dove

Source: Lonesome Dove

Men, Feeling, Happiness

“The Mathemagician nodded knowingly and stroked his chin several times. “You’ll find,” he remarked gently, “that the only thing you can do easily is be wrong, and that’s hardly worth the effort.”

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

Effort, Time

“… but it is good to be several floors up in the dead of night wondering whether you are any good or not and the only decision you can make is that you did it…”

Frank O'Hara book Lunch Poems

Source: Lunch Poems

Decision, Night, Dead

“Several of the girls at the party had had sex, something which sounded appealing but only if it could happen with blindfolds in a time warp plus amnesia”

Aimee Bender (1969) Novelist, short story writer

Source: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Sex, Girl, Time

“Anyone who is going to be a writer knows enough at fifteen to write several novels.”

May Sarton (1912–1995) American poet, novelist, and memoirist

“For several long moments we remained locked together, and I think I covered her hair with small sacred kisses, her perfume crucifying me with memories.”

Anne Rice book Merrick

Source: Merrick

Kiss, Thinking, Memory

“Witihin seconds the headhunter had lost control of his car and it squealed, sliding sideways right into several other cars.
Cool!' said the Gasman.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: School's Out—Forever

Cars

“The Blue Beetle was not a clown car," I said severely. "It was a machine of justice.”

Jim Butcher book Skin Game

Source: Skin Game

Justice, Cars

“The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.”

Donna Tartt book The Secret History

Source: The Secret History

Mountain, Understanding, Dead

“When we face pain in relationships our first response is often to sever bonds rather than to maintain commitment.”

Bell Hooks book All About Love: New Visions

Source: All About Love: New Visions

Pain

“One can be in love with several people at the same time, feel the sorrow with each, and not betray any of them.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

Love, People, Feeling, Time

“Why are we so attached to the severities of the past? Why are we so proud of having endured our fathers and our mothers, the fireless days and the meatless days, the cold winters and the sharp tongues? It's not as if we had a choice.”

Hilary Mantel book Wolf Hall

Source: Wolf Hall

Winter, Past

“Now, I had been frightened on several different occasions in my life. The most frightening of these involved an elevator and a mime.”

Brandon Sanderson Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

Source: Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

Life

“Writing a book has about it some of the anxiety of telling a joke and having to wait several years to know whether or not it was funny.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Books, Waiting

“Phone calls like ours only happen when you've spent several years hurting and being hurt, until every work you utter or hear becomes coded and loaded, as complicated and full of subtext as a bleak and brilliant play.”

Nick Hornby book How to Be Good

Source: How to Be Good

Hurt

“When I dream, I dream of him. For several nights now he’s come to me, waving from a distant shore as if he’s been waiting patiently for me to arrive. He doesn’t utter a word, but his smile says everything: I’ve missed you.”

Libba Bray book The Sweet Far Thing

Source: The Sweet Far Thing

Smile, Dreams, Distant, Waiting

“We loved killing time and had perfected several ways of doing so. We wandered the hallways carrying papers that indicated some mission of business when in reality we were in search of free candy.”

Joshua Ferris Then We Came to the End

Source: Then We Came to the End

Love, Way, Search, Business

“The severing of an established connection is exponentially more painful than the rejection of an attempted connection.”

David Foster Wallace book The Broom of the System

Source: The Broom of the System

Pain

“I was not a hypocrite, with one real face and several false ones. I had several faces because I was young and didn't know who I was or wanted to be.”

Milan Kundera The Joke

Source: The Joke

Falseness

“Look beneath the surface; let not the several quality of a thing nor its worth escape thee.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

VI, 3
Source: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VI

“A good book should leave you…. slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it.”

William Styron (1925–2006) American novelist and essayist

Interview in Writers at Work, First Series (1958), edited by George Plimpton
Variant: A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it.
Source: Conversations with William Styron

Books, Reading

“I wanted to wake you straightaway, but I knew I had to wait several hours to ensure you were safely recovered."
"What! How long has it been?"
"Five minutes. I got bored.”

Jonathan Stroud book The Golem's Eye

Source: The Golem's Eye

Waiting

“It seemed as if some subtle current of recognition had passed between them… not as if they had met before… but as if they had come close several times until finally an impatient Fate had forced their paths to intersect.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Secrets of a Summer Night

Fate, Time

“Basil Stag Hare tut-tutted severely as he remarked to Ambrose Spike, 'Tch, tch. Dreadful table manners. Just look at those three wallahs, kicking up a hullaballoo like that! Eating's a serious business.”

Brian Jacques Redwall

Source: Redwall

Business

“Look at it this way," Ms. Terwilliger said, after several moments of thought. "The callistana thinks of you two as its parents.”

Richelle Mead book The Indigo Spell

Source: The Indigo Spell

Way, Thinking, Parent

“CHOOSING WELL IS DIFFICULT, AND MOST DECISIONS HAVE SEVERAL different dimensions.”

Barry Schwartz (1946) American psychologist

The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

Decision

“We live only a few conscious decades, and we fret ourselves enough for several lifetimes.”

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

Source: Hitch-22: A Memoir

“He taught me there's a place on a man's back where, if you sink a blade in, you can pierce his heart and sever his spine, all at once,' Sebastian had said. 'I guess we got the same birthday present that year, big brother,' Jace thought. 'Didn't we?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Birthday, Heart

“An a priori decision to eliminate spiritual intelligence from consideration is no more justifiable than a decision to admit it by fiat or on faith. After all, once one includes the understanding of the personal realm within a study of intelligence, such human proclivities as the spiritual must legitimately be considered. There certainly are no easy grounds for a decision, but several other intelligences deal with phenomena other than sheer physical matter. If the abstract realm of mathematics constitutes a reasonable area of intelligence (and few would challenge that judgment), why not the abstract realm of the spiritual?”

Howard Gardner (1943) American developmental psychologist

Source: Intelligence reframed: Multiple intelligences for the 21st century, 1999, p. 51

Faith, Intelligence, Mathematics, Understanding

“Where feudalism is concrete and organic, with man dominated by the image of the land, capitalism is abstract and calculating in spirit, and severs man from the earth.”

William Barrett (philosopher) book Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy

Source: Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (1958), Chapter Two, The Encounter With Nothingness, p. 26

“I think there was a layer of several inches of crystal clear ice, probably in the form of metallic hydrogen, about 10-20 miles up. It could have been held up by the earth’s magnetic field or the internal air pressure like a giant inflatable building or even helped by the centrifugal force of the spinning earth. It could also have had its own spin to help suspend it. Maybe a combination of effects.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 44

Thinking, Help

“To SEE and accept the boundaries of the human mind without vain rebellion, and in these severe limitations to work ceaselessly without protest — this is where man's first duty lies.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God

The Saviors of God (1923)

“I'd had a long talk with Bob Silverberg, who was very influential on my early career. He'd, out of the kindness of his heart, at a convention told me that he thought I'd made several mistakes in the way I was disposing of my stories. And I said, "I don't understand what you mean, but I'll be glad to buy you a few drinks, if you'll tell me about it". So we adjourned to the bar and sat there a couple of hours. He was drinking Bloody Marys back then; I was drinking Black Russians. And he told me all sorts of things which carried me over the next several years; it was a lot of information for a couple of drinks. He told me that the first thing I should do if I wanted to write full-time was to get a really good agent. He said that after a while the business end of writing takes too much of the writing time. Better to pay someone ten percent and find that you're still more than ten percent ahead in the end.
Which is true. My present agent says that he always feels that a good agent during the course of a year should earn back for his client at least the ten percent he takes by way of commission, so the client's really nothing out. And what he should ideally do is make him more money than the ten percent.”

Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) American speculative fiction writer

Phlogiston interview (1995)

Money, Way, Feeling, Drink

““This is the first award I received…In fact, I consider this priceless. This was presented to me by Sri. Godavarma Bhattan Thampuran of Kodungallur (Cranganore) Palace years ago. I was only 22 then. Those were days when Kodungallur used to witness the best assembly of scholars in Sanskrit and the sasthras. Present on that day were several highly learned men and women. The stage was in front of Sringapuram temple. I presented Bhagavad Dooth Prabhantham Koothu. My interpretation of one of the slokas was a little more elaborate than and different from the custom-worn treatment. The audience liked it. In appreciation, Bhattan Thampuran removed this ring from his finger and put it on mine. The spontaneous gesture in recognition of my art naturally is the most precious to me ”
-Guru Māni Mādhava Chākyār, about his prized possession- the golden ring from the great scholar H. H Bhattan Thampuran”

Mani Madhava Chakyar (1899–1990) Indian actor

Awards
Source: K. A. Chandrahasan, In pursuit of excellence (Performing Arts), "The Hindu", Sunday March 26, 1989

Women, Men, Art, Nature

“The word " economy" has latterly been used in various senses; the Germans give it a very indefinite signification.
Judging from its etymology and original signification, the Greeks seem to have understood by it the establishment and direction of the menage, or domestic arrangements.
Xenophon, in his work on economy, treats of domestic management, the reciprocal duties of the members of a family and of those who compose the household; and only incidentally mentions agriculture as having relation to domestic affairs. This word is never applied to agriculture by Xenophon, nor, indeed, by any Greek author; they distinguish it by the terms, georgic geoponic.
The Romans give a very extensive and indefinite signification to the word "economy." They understand by it, the best method of attaining the aim and end of some particular thing; or the disposition, plan, and division of some particular work. Thus, Cicero speaks of oeconomia causae, oeconomia orationis; and by this he means the direction of a law process, the arrangement of an harangue. Several German authors use it in this sense when they speak of the oekonomie eines schauspiels, or eines gedichtes, the economy of a play or poem. Authors of other nations have adopted all the significations which the Romans have attached to this word, and understand by it the relation of the various parts of any particular thing to each other and to the whole—that which we are accustomed to term the organization. The word "economy" only acquires a real sense when applied to some particular subject: thus, we hear of "the economy of nature," "the animal economy," and " the economy of the state" spoken of. It is also applied to some particular branch of science or industry; but, in the latter case, the nature of the economy ought to be pointed out, if it is not indicated by the nature of the subject.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

Source: The Principles of Agriculture, 1844, Section II. The Economy, Organization and Direction of an Agricultural Enterprise, p. 54-55.

Family, Law, Understanding, Nature

“As a full-time longshoreman I am necessarily more a scribbler than a writer. But I am also so by inclination. The writing I can enjoy is the sketching of an idea in a few dozen words — two hundred at most. Elaboration and expansion are for me hard going. An article of several thousand words becomes inevitably a mosaic of ideas — a series of ideas stuck together.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Entry (1962)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)

Idea, Time

“Virtue consists in doing our duty in the several relations we sustain in respect to ourselves, to our fellow men, and to God, as known from reason, conscience, and revelation.”

James Waddel Alexander (1804–1859) American Presbyterian minister and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 611.

Men, God

“The Hindus and idol-worshippers had agreed to pay the money for toleration (zar-i zimmiya) and had consented to the poll-tax (jizya) in return for which they and their families enjoyed security. These people now erected new idol-temples in the city and the environs in opposition to the Law of the Prophet which declares that such temples are not to be tolerated. Under divine guidance I destroyed these edifices and I killed those leaders of infidelity who seduced others into error, and the lower orders I subjected to stripes and chastisement, until this abuse was entirely abolished. The following is an instance:- In the village of Maluh there is a tank which they call kund (tank). Here they had built idol-temples and on certain days the Hindus were accustomed to proceed thither on horseback, and wearing arms. Their women and children also went out in palankins and carts. There they assembled in thousands and performed idol-worship' When intelligence of this came to my ears my religious feelings prompted me at once to put a stop to this scandal and offence to the religion of Islam. On the day of the assembly I went there in person and I ordered that the leaders of these people and the promoters of this abomination should be put to death. I forbade the infliction of any severe punishments on Hindus in general, but I destroyed their idol-temples, and instead thereof raised mosques. I founded two flourishing towns (kasba), one called Tughlikpur, the other Salarpur. Where infidels and idolaters worshipped idols, Musulmans now, by God's mercy, perform their devotions to the true God. Praises of God and the summons to prayer are now heard there, and that place which was formerly the home of infidels has become the habitation of the faithful, who there repeat their creed and offer up their praises to God…..'Information was brought to me that some Hindus had erected a new idol temple in the village of Salihpur, and were performing worship to their idols. I sent some persons there to destroy the idol temple, and put a stop to their pernicious incitements to error.”

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

Delhi and Environs , Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. Elliot and Dowson. Vol. III, p. 380-81
Quotes from the Futuhat-i-Firuz Shahi

Death, Women, Money, God

“If one approaches a problem with order and method there should be no difficulty in solving it — none whatever,’ said Pirot severely.”

Agatha Christie book Death in the Clouds

Death in the Clouds (1935)

Problem

“The investigation of the form and brightness of the rings or rays surrounding the image of a star as seen in a good telescope, when a diaphragm bounded by a rectilinear contour is placed upon the object-glass, though sometimes tedious is never difficult. The expressions which it is necessary to integrate are always sines and cosines of multiples of the independent variable, and the only trouble consists in taking properly the limits of integration. Several cases of this problem have been completely worked out, and the result, in every instance, has been entirely in accordance with observation. These experiments… have seldom been made except by those whose immediate object was to illustrate the undulatory theory of light. There is however a case of a somewhat different kind; which in practice recurs perpetually, and which in theory requires for its complete investigation the value of a more difficult integral; I mean the usual case of an object-glass with a circular aperture. The desire of submitting to mathematical investigation every optical phænomenon of frequent occurrence has induced me to procure the computation of the numerical values of the integral that presents itself in this inquiry: and I now beg leave to lay before the Society the calculated table, with a few remarks upon its application.”

George Biddell Airy (1801–1892) English mathematician and astronomer

Star, Mathematics, Problem, Light

“One reason that Christian theology is so detached from larger intellectual or artistic movements is that it has not suffered consciously a crisis of its expressive forms. At a cultural moment when most humanistic disciplines—not to say, literature and all of the fine arts—have passed through several generations of radical formal innovation, theology is still written as if the conventional forms posed no problems.”

Mark D. Jordan (1953)

Christian Rhetoric: Scraps for a Manifesto

Art, Literature, Problem, Suffering

“The major cuts in federal and provincial transfers to social service agencies, health care, education, and social housing over the past several years have not bee matched by an explosion in private giving. Nor will they ever be.”

Bob Rae (1948) Canadian politician

Source: The Three Questions - Prosperity and the Public Good (1998), Chapter Five, The Second Question: Charity and Welfare-The Old Debate Is New Again,, p. 91

Health, Education, Bee, Past

“The accepted cultivated speech of the contemporary language that Pāṇini describes in his Aṣṭādhyāyī must have coexisted with more vernacular varieties of speech in which there were features belonging to the Middle Indo-Aryan division of the language group. Several facts support this view.”

Pāṇini ancient Sanskrit grammarian

Prof. George Cardona in:"Indo-Aryan languages".

Support

“Socialists have all too often failed to take ecological issues seriously enough. However, this is not a fault of socialists alone, as the fault applies even more to the liberal tradition taken as a whole. But whatever we choose to say about socialism in the twentieth century, it has to be emphasized that no one can be truly socialist and indeed Marxist in the twenty-first century and fail to acknowledge the full severity of the planetary ecological crisis. We are either at the forefront of the struggle to protect the earth as a place of human habitation (and as a home for innumerable species) or we are on the side of the system’s creative exterminism of the Earth system as we know it.”

John Bellamy Foster (1953) Sociology professor and Marxist writer

Interview with Left Voice (2017)

Home

“But business cycles as a subject for study have enjoyed a revival for at least a decade now, stimulated in part by the severity of the 1974-75 and 1981-82 recessions and in part by the intellectual ferment surrounding the development of the "equilibrium business cycle model" and the attention paid to the seminal work of Robert E. Lucas, Jr., contained in his book Studies in Business Cycle Theory (1981). Indeed, there is no longer any need to lament the passing of economics courses explicitly carrying the title "Business Cycles," since the topic of business cycle behavior and analysis has so infiltrated courses carrying the title "Macroeconomics" that the two subjects have become almost interchangeable. 2 In this light it is fitting that the major research program of the NBER in this area is called "Economic Fluctuations" rather than "Macroeconomics."”

Robert J. Gordon (1940) American economist

Source: The American Business Cycle, 1986, p. 2