“It's hard to hold the hand of anyone who is reaching for the sky just to surrender”
Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter
“It's hard to hold the hand of anyone who is reaching for the sky just to surrender”
Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
"Fear, the Foundation of Religion"
1920s, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)
Source: Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
Context: Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing – fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand-in-hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by the help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hears can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a fit place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it.
“up above the world you fly, like a tea tray in the sky…”
Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), IV Perspective of Disappearance
“My heart, the bird of the wilderness, has found its sky in your eyes.”
Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath
31 <br class="br"> The Gardener http://www.spiritualbee.com/love-poems-by-tagore/ (1915)
Norah Jones (1979) American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist
"Lonestar", Come Away with Me (2002)
Song lyrics
Adam Mickiewicz book Dziady
Do mamy lecim do mamy! Cóż to, mamo nie znasz Józia? Ja to Józio ja ten samy. A to moja siostra Rózia. My teraz w raju latamy, Tam nam lepiej niż u mamy. Patrz jakie główki w promieniu, Ubiór z jutrzenki światełka, A na oboim ramieniu Jak u motylków skrzydełka, w raju wszystkiego dostatek, Co dzień to inna zabawka, gdzie stąpim wypływa trawka, gdzie dotkniem rozkwita kwiatek. Lecz choć wszystkiego dostatek dręczy nad nuda i trwoga. Ach mamo dla twoich dziatek zamknięta do nieba droga! <br class="br">Part two. <br class="br">Dziady (Forefathers' Eve) http://www.ap.krakow.pl/nkja/literature/polpoet/mic_fore.htm
“To live in a saint's heart? I'm afraid of setting the sky ablaze.”
Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist
Tears and Saints (1937)
W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright
The Wild Swans At Coole http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1712/, st. 1 <br class="br">The Wild Swans at Coole (1919)
Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter
"The Stranger Song" (1966)
Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967)
Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician
Brand New Day
Song lyrics, Moondance (1970)
“There’s a magic in the distance, where the sea-line meets the sky.”
Alfred Noyes (1880–1958) English poet
Forty Singing Seamen
Poems (1906)
“Let's not talk about Communism. Communism was just an idea, just pie in the sky.”
Boris Yeltsin (1931–2007) 1st President of Russia and Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR
Comment during a visit to the United States, as quoted in The Independent [London] (12 September 1989)
1980s
Etty Hillesum (1914–1943) Jewish diarist
8 June 1943, p. 602
Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Four: The Beauty of the Heavens
Meera Bai Hindu mystic poet
Mira Bai, Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West http://books.google.co.in/books?id=ENaRTjQRMaIC&pg=PT329
Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist
All from The Vow of the Peacock - First Canto
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)
James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician
"Carthon", pp. 163–164
The Poems of Ossian
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XX Humorous Writings
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) British philologist and author, creator of classic fantasy works
English and Welsh (1955)
Meindert DeJong book The House of Sixty Fathers
The House of Sixty Fathers (1956)
Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French
Robert G. Ingersoll, The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child
About
W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright
The Magi http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1652/ <br class="br">Responsibilities (1914)
Cristoforo Colombo (1451–1506) Explorer, navigator, and colonizer
22 December 1492
Journal of the First Voyage
Yves Klein (1928–1962) French artist
Source: before 1960, "Yves Klein, 1928 – 1962, Selected Writings", p. 14
George Linley (1798–1865) British writer
Song, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). This song was written and composed by Linley for Mr. Augustus Braham, and sung by him. It is not known when it was written,—probably about 1830. Another song, entitled "Though lost to Sight, to Memory dear," was published in London in 1880, purporting to have been written by Ruthven Jenkyns in 1703 and published in the "Magazine for Mariners". That magazine, however, never existed, and the composer of the music acknowledged, in a private letter, that he copied the words from an American newspaper. The reputed author, Ruthven Jenkyns, was living, under another name, in California in 1882.
Anaximander (-610–-547 BC) pre-Socratic Greek philosopher
As quoted in "Science Attests the Accuracy of the Bible" in The Watchtower (1 October 1980)
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic
"Israfel", st. 8 (1831).
Eugène Boudin (1824–1898) French painter
Diary-note of Boudin, 3 December, 1856; as cited in the description of his painting 'Sky, Setting Sun, Bushes in Foreground' http://www.muma-lehavre.fr/en/collections/artworks-in-context/eugene-boudin/boudin-skies, by the Muma-museum, Le Havre <br class="br">A quote from Boudin's personal diary sheds remarkable light on a small group of his sky studies <br class="br">1850s - 1870s
Sia (musician) (1975) Australian singer
Diamonds, Unapologetic (2012). Cowritten with Benjamin Levin, Mikkel Eriksen and Tor Hermansen.
Songs
“You are the grandson of the sky and sea.”
Tu caeli pelagique nepos.
Source: Achilleid, Book I, Line 869; Ulysses to Achilles.
“God gave the sea the danger and the abyss,
but it was in it that He mirrored the sky.”
Fernando Pessoa book Mensagem
Poem "Mar Português", Verses 11-12
Message
Original: Deus ao mar o perigo e o abismo deu,
Mas nele é que espelhou o céu.
Ali book Nahj al-Balagha
Nahj al-Balagha
Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter
as quoted in Discovering Art, – The life time and work of the World’s greatest Artists, MONET; K.E. Sullivan, Brockhamptonpress, London 2004, p. 10
after Monet's death
Eugène Boudin (1824–1898) French painter
Quote of Boudin, as cited by Dalya Alberge, in 'Life's a beach: Boudin...' in 'Independent online' http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/lifes-a-beach-boudin-was-well-a-bit-on-the-dull-side-but-his-paintings-were-wild-and-beautiful-dalya-1471851.html, 9 February 1993 <br class="br">undated quotes
Eden ahbez (1908–1995) American songwriter and recording artist
Tape recording to Joe Romersa
Shadowbox Studio
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath
"Of Water, which flows turbid and mixed with Soil and Dust; and of Mist, which is mixed with the Air; and of Fire which is mixed with its own, and each with each."
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XX Humorous Writings
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977) Indian guru
Bhagavad-Gita As It Is, Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1972. Chapter 10, verse 21, purport. Vedabase http://www.vedabase.com/en/bg/10/21 <br class="br">Quotes from Books: Loving God, Quotes from Books: Regression of Science
“Sky—what a scowl of cloud
Till, near and far,
Ray on ray split the shroud:
Splendid, a star!”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era
The two Poets of Croisic.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Eliyahu M. Goldratt (1947–2011) Israeli physicist and management guru
Goldratt, E. M. (2008). The Choice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Choice_(philosophy_book) North River Press. p. 157
Rabindranath Tagore book Gora
Rabindranath Tagore, Gora, translated into English, Calcutta, 1961. Quoted from Goel, S. R. (2016). History of Hindu-Christian encounters, AD 304 to 1996. Chapter 13 ISBN 9788185990354 https://web.archive.org/web/20120501043412/http://voiceofdharma.org/books/hhce/
Vitaly Ginzburg (1916–2009) Russian Physicist
in his Nobel lecture, December 8, 2003, at Aula Magna, Stockholm University.
Alberto Moravia book L'Ennui
In principio, dunque, era la noia, volgarmente chiamata caos. Iddio, annoiandosi della noia, creò la terra, il cielo, l'acqua, gli animali, le piante, Adamo ed Èva; i quali ultimi, annoiandosi a loro volta in paradiso, mangiarono il frutto proibito. Iddio si annoiò di loro e li cacciò dall'Eden.
La noia (Milano: Bompiani, 1960) pp. 10-11; Angus Davidson (trans.) Boredom (New York: New York Review of Books, 1999) p. 8.
Malcolm Lowry book Under the Volcano
Source: Under the Volcano (1947), Ch. X (p. 292)
Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker
Bruce Lee: The Lost Interview (1971)
H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author
Letter to James F. Morton (10 February 1923), published in Selected Letters Vol. I (1965), p. 208
Non-Fiction, Letters, to James Ferdinand Morton, Jr.
James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician
"Carric-thura"
The Poems of Ossian
“I don't believe. I never have, not in big beards in the sky.”
Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author
"I create gods all the time - now I think one might exist" (2008)
W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright
The Sorrow Of Love http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1691/, st. 1 <br class="br">The Rose (1893)
“Star of resplendent front! Thy glorious eye
Shines on me still from out yon clouded sky.”
Sarah Helen Whitman (1803–1878) United States poet
Arcturus (To Edgar Allan Poe).
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician
"All of Us"
A Picnic of Poems in Allah's Green Garden (2011)
Origen (185–254) Christian scholar in Alexandria
On First Principles, Bk. 4, ch. 2, par 16
On First Principles
Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter
1859 letter to Eugène Boudin, June 3, 1859; as cited in Rodolphe Rapetti (1990) Monet, p. 11
Monet wrote Boudin this letter just after he visited the 1859 Salon.
1850 - 1870
Vangelis (1943) Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, pop rock, and orchestral music
1989
W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright
The Ragged Wood http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1673/ <br class="br">In The Seven Woods (1904) <br class="br">Context: p>O hurry where by water among the trees<br>The delicate-stepping stag and his lady sigh,<br>When they have but looked upon their images--<br>Would none had ever loved but you and I!Or have you heard that sliding silver-shoed<br>Pale silver-proud queen-woman of the sky,<br>When the sun looked out of his golden hood?--<br>O that none ever loved but you and I!O hurry to the ragged wood, for there<br>I will drive all those lovers out and cry—<br>O my share of the world, O yellow hair!<br>No one has ever loved but you and I.</p
Rajneesh (1931–1990) Godman and leader of the Rajneesh movement
My Way: The Way of the White Clouds (1995)
Context: Find moments when you are not, and those will be the moments when you will be for the first time... really. So I am the white cloud, and the whole effort is to make you also white clouds drifting in the sky. Nowhere to go, coming from nowhere, just being there this very moment — perfect. I don't teach you any ideals, I don't teach you any oughts. I don't say to you be this, become that. My whole teaching is simply this: Whatsoever you are, accept it so totally that nothing is left to be achieved, and you will become a white cloud.
H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author
Fiction, The Other Gods (1921)
Context: The moon is dark, and the gods dance in the night; there is terror in the sky, for upon the moon hath sunk an eclipse foretold in no books of men or of earth's gods...' There is unknown magic on Hatheg-Kla, for the screams of the frightened gods have turned to laughter, and the slopes of ice shoot up endlessly into the black heavens whither I am plunging... Hei! Hei! At last! In the dim light I behold the gods of earth!
“Men will seem to see new destructions in the sky.”
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath
Of dreams
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XX Humorous Writings
Context: Men will seem to see new destructions in the sky. The flames that fall from it will seem to rise in it and to fly from it with terror. They will hear every kind of animals speak in human language. They will instantaneously run in person in various parts of the world, without motion. They will see the greatest splendour in the midst of darkness. O! marvel of the human race! What madness has led you thus! You will speak with animals of every species and they with you in human speech. You will see yourself fall from great heights without any harm and torrents will accompany you, and will mingle with their rapid course.
Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright
Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part I, Book III, Ch. 3.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley book Mathilda
Matilda (1819)
Context: My greatest pleasure was the enjoyment of a serene sky amidst these verdant woods: yet I loved all the changes of Nature; and rain, and storm, and the beautiful clouds of heaven brought their delights with them. When rocked by the waves of the lake my spirits rose in triumph as a horseman feels with pride the motions of his high fed steed.
But my pleasures arose from the contemplation of nature alone, I had no companion: my warm affections finding no return from any other human heart were forced to run waste on inanimate objects.
H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author
Fiction, The Call of Cthulhu (1926)
Context: They worshipped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first men, who formed a cult which had never died. This was that cult, and the prisoners said it had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the mighty city of R'lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway. Some day he would call, when the stars were ready, and the secret cult would always be waiting to liberate him.
Omar Bradley (1893–1981) United States Army field commander during World War II
Closing words, p. 554.
A Soldier's Story (1951)
Context: A canvas map lay under my helmet with its four silver stars. Only five years before on May 7, as a lieutenant colonel in civilian clothes, I had ridden a bus down Connecticut Avenue to my desk in the old Munitions building. I opened the mapboard and smoothed out the tabs of the 43 divisions now under my command. They stretched across a 640-mile front of the 12th Army Group. With a china-marking pencil, I wrote in the new date: D plus 335. I walked to the window and ripped open the blackout blinds. Outside the sun was climbing into the sky. The war in Europe had ended.
Charles Mackay (1814–1889) British writer
"Eternal Justice", Stanza 4
Legends of the Isles and Other Poems (1851)
Context: They may veil their eyes, but they cannot hide
The sun’s meridian glow;
The heel of a priest may tread thee down,
And a tyrant work thee woe:
But never a truth has been destroyed;
They may curse it, and call it crime;
Pervert and betray, or slander and slay
Its teachers for a time.
But the sunshine aye shall light the sky,
As round and round we run;
And the truth shall ever come uppermost,
And justice shall be done.
John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter
Last interview (1980)
Context: I’m 40, I wanna talk to the people my age. I’m happy if the young people like it, and I’m happy if the old people like it, I’m talkin’ to guys and gals that have been through what we went through, together — the sixties group that has survived. Survived the war, the drugs, the politics, the violence on the street – the whole she-bang – that we’ve survived it and we’re here. And I’m talkin’ to them. And the "Woman" song is to Yoko, but it’s to all women. And, because my role in society – or any artist or poet’s role – is to try to express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel, not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all. And it’s like that’s the job of the artist in society, not to... they’re not some alienated being living on the outskirts of town. It’s fine to live on the outskirts of town, but artists must reflect what we all are. That’s what it’s about – artists, or poets or whatever you wanna call it. And that’s what I’m tryin’ to express on behalf of all the men to all the women, through my own feelings about women – when it dawned on me, "God! It is the other half of the sky" as the late-great Chairman MacDougal said, right? I mean, they are the other half of the sky, and without them there is nothing. And without us there’s nothing. There’s only the two together creating children, creating society. So what’s all this B. S. about, you know, "women are this" and "men are that" – we’re all human, man. We’re all human. And, I am tryin’ to say it to Yoko, but to all women, you know? On behalf of all men, in a way. If that’s taken it too much on meself, I feel that artists are that – they’re reflections of society... Mirrors.
Zendaya (1996) American actress, singer, model, and dancer
"Zendaya Reveals Why She Became a Vegetarian: It's 'Definitely Not Because I Love Vegetables'" https://people.com/food/zendaya-vegetarian-diet/, People (9 December 2016).
Augustus (-63–14 BC) founder of Julio-Claudian dynasty and first emperor of the Roman Empire
Marcus Antonius, taunting Augustus for his conduct during the Sicilian war against Sextus Pompey in 36 BC; in Suetonius, Divus Augustus, paragraph 16. Translation: Robert Graves, 1957.
Marcelo Gleiser (1959) Brazilian physicist
Source: https://news.dartmouth.edu/news/2016/03/quoted-marcelo-gleiser-stories-about-universe
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
"Fear, the Foundation of Religion"
1920s, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)
Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister
1930s, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932)
spirituality and wisdom
C.G. Jung book Man and His Symbols
I would rather say that they are not "true" enough, for these are conceptions of a kind that have accompanied human life from prehistoric times, and that still break through into consciousness at any provocation.
Man and His Symbols (1964)
Kanye West (1977) American rapper, singer and songwriter
Family Business
Lyrics, The College Dropout (2004)
“The sky leans on me, me, the one upright among all horizontals.”
Sylvia Plath book Crossing the Water
Source: Crossing the Water