Quotes about son
page 5

“I sang to my dear dead mother
and she instantly understood me,
and pressing a kiss to my forehead said
as into her arms she pulled me:
Believe then in truth, or in fantasy, –
if you'll only believe in it utterly!
For truth is what you believe it to be.
My son, believe in your dream!”

Eino Leino (1878–1926) Finnish poet and journalist

Eino Leino, "Smiling Apollo," in: Antti Tuomainen (2015), Dark As My Heart, p. 87

Truth, Dreams, Kiss, Dead

“I know that there are a lot of areas inside me which I need to analyse. But I need time. I can't be rushed into it. Even if it keeps lingering in the back of my mind always. I keep joking, fooling around on the sets, trying to push everything away for a later day scrutiny. I don't even want to acknowledge those dark corners of my insides as yet. And if at all I do it, I'll do it for no one else but myself. Not my wife, not my parents. Maybe my children - maybe just my son. Nobody else. Of course, there is also another way of looking at things. Supposing I did not have this pressure of talking to the media, maybe people like you and others would have always thought of me as somebody else. I don't know what opinion of me you have now. I don't know what you felt before you met me, how you felt while you were interviewing me and how you feel today and how you'll feel tomorrow. But I'm sure there will be a difference. Because forming an opinion without meeting a person and judging your instincts and impressions after meeting him are two different things. Most people I've met of late have gone back thinking exactly the contrary of what they thought earlier. I've tried to be as honest as I can with you. I can tell you that I've never spoken like this to anyone before. I wonder if you're convinced. You don't look it. Maybe I will convince you someday.”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

Children, People, Fools, Way

“Greet your son Aristocleides from me. I pray he may not turn out like you, since you, too, were once an irreproachable young man.”

Apollonius of Tyana (15–100) Ancient Greek philosopher

to Gordias, Epp. Apoll. 46
Letters

“The message of Vietnam is not that Americans will not take casualties; it is that the American people do not want the lives of their sons and daughters wasted.”

Ralph Peters (1952) American military officer, writer, pundit

Source: 2000s, Beyond Terror: Strategy in a Changing World (2002), p. 287

People, Daughters

“Madam, don't bring up your sons to detest the United States government. Recollect that we form one country now. Abandon all these local animosities, and make your sons Americans.”

Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) Confederate general in the Civil War

Advice to a Confederate widow who expressed animosity towards the northern U.S. after the end of the American Civil War, as quoted in The Life and Campaigns of General Lee https://archive.org/stream/lifeandcampaign00chilgoog/lifeandcampaign00chilgoog_djvu.txt (1875) by Edward Lee Childe, p. 331. Also quoted in "Will Confederate Heritage Advocates Take Robert E. Lee’s Advice?" https://web.archive.org/web/20140918064605/http://cwcrossroads.wordpress.com/2014/07/17/will-confederate-heritage-advocates-take-robert-e-lees-advice/ (July 2014), by Brooks D. Simpson, Crossroads, WordPress. This quote is sometimes paraphrased as: "Madam, do not train up your children in hostility to the government of the United States. Remember, we are all one country now. Dismiss from your mind all sectional feeling, and bring them up to be Americans."

Country

“Tell your son to stop trying to fill your head with science — for to fill your heart with love is enough!”

Richard Feynman book The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

Note to the mother of Marcus Chown, who had admired the profile of Feynman presented in the BBC TV Horizon program "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" (1981). Written after Chown asked Feynman to write her a birthday note, hoping it would increase her interest in science. Photo of note published in No Ordinary Genius: The Illustrated Richard Feynman (1996), by Christopher Sykes, p. 161. In a " Quantum theory via 40-tonne trucks http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/quantum-theory-via-40tonne-trucks-how-science-writing-became-popular-1866934.html", The Independent (17 January 2010), and in a audio interview on BBC 4 (September 2010), Chown recalled the note as: "Ignore your son's attempts to teach you physics. Physics is not the most important thing, love is."

Love, Science, Heart

“Eventually there was a split between my parents about me. My mother obviously knew what was going on with me and the girls my friends lined up. She never came out and said anything directly, but she let me know she was concerned. Things were different between me and my father. He assumed that when I was eighteen, I would just go into the Army and they would straighten me out. He accepted some of the things my mother condemned. He felt it was perfectly all right to make out with all the girls I could. In fact, he was proud I was dating the fast girls. He bragged about them to his friends. 'Jesus Christ, you should see some of the women my son's coming up with'. He was showing off, of course. But still, our whole relationship had changed because I'd established myself by winning a few trophies and now had some girls. He was particularly excited about the girls. And he liked the idea that I didn't get involved. 'That's right, Arnold', he'd say, as though he'd had endless experience, 'never be fooled by them'. That continued to be an avenue of communication between us for a couple of years. In fact, the few nights I took girls home when I was on leave from the Army, my father was always very pleasant and would bring out a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947) actor, businessman and politician of Austrian-American heritage

Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/067122879X (1977), New York: Simon & Schuster. 1970s, Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder (1977)

Women, Fools, Home, Girl

“How do you think it is on a Jewish mother? It’s horrible for her to see her son facing these accusations.”

Dov Charney (1969) Canadian-born U.S. based fashion designer/businessman

Ellenson, Ruth (2005). "Unfashionable Crisis" http://www.jewishjournal.com/home/preview.php?id=14419 The Jewish Journal (accessed August 8, 2006)

Thinking

“Within the Veil was he born, said I; and there within shall he live, — a Negro and a Negro's son. Holding in that little head — ah, bitterly! — the unbowed pride of a hunted race, clinging with that tiny dimpled hand — ah, wearily! — to a hope not hopeless but unhopeful, and seeing with those bright wondering eyes that peer into my soul a land whose freedom is to us a mockery and whose liberty is a lie.”

W.E.B. Du Bois book The Souls of Black Folk

Source: The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ch. XI: Of the Passing of the First-Born

Lie, Hope, Soul, Freedom

“From all the properties of man and of nature, from all the various branches of science, from all the deductions of human reason, the general corollary, admitted by Hindus, Arabs, and Tartars, by Persians, and by Chinese, is the supremacy of an all-creating and all-preserving spirit, infinitely wise, good, and powerful, but infinitely removed from the comprehension of his most exalted creatures; nor are there in any language (the ancient Hebrew always excepted) more pious and sublime addresses to the being of beings, more splendid enumerations of his attributes, or more beautiful descriptions of his visible works, than in Arabick, Persian, and Sanscrit, especially in the Koran, the introductions to the poems of Sadi', Niza'm'i and Firdaus'i, the four Védas, and many parts of the numerous Puránas: but supplication and praise would not satisfy the boundless imagination of the Vedánti and Sufi theologists, who blending uncertain metaphysicks with undoubted principles of religion, have presumed to reason confidently on the very nature and essence of the divine spirit, and asserted in a very remote age, what multitudes of Hindus and Muselmans assert… that all spirit is homogeneous, that the spirit of God is in kind the same with that of man, though differing from it infinitely in degree, and that, as material substance is mere illusion, there exists in this universe only one generick spiritual substance, the sole primary cause, efficient, substantial and formal of all secondary causes and of all appearances whatever, but endued in its highest degree, with a sublime providential wisdom, and proceeding by ways incomprehensible to the spirits which emane from it; an opinion which Gotama never taught, and which we have no authority to believe, but which, as it is grounded on the doctrine of an immaterial creator supremely wise, and a constant preserver supremely benevolent, differs as widely from the pantheism of Spinoza and Toland, as the affirmation of a proposition differs from the negation of it; though the last named professor of that insane philosophy had the baseness to conceal his meaning under the very words of Saint Paul, which are cited by Newton for a purpose totally different, and has even used a phrase, which occurs, indeed, in the Véda, but in a sense diametrically opposite to that, which he would have given it. The passage to which I allude is in a speech of Varuna to his son, where he says, "That spirit, from which these created beings proceed; through which having proceeded from it, they live; toward which they tend and in which they are ultimately absorbed, that spirit study to know; that spirit is the Great One."”

William Jones (1746–1794) Anglo-Welsh philologist and scholar of ancient India

"On the Philosophy of the Asiatics" (1794)

Wisdom, God, Age, Religion

“Becoming more callous and hardened when God thunders verbally from heaven, they obstinately persist in their rebellion. It is only when actually smitten by his hand that they are forced, whether they will or not, to fear. This fear the sacred writers term servile, and oppose to the free and voluntary fear which becomes sons.”

John Calvin book Institutes of the Christian Religion

Book 3, Chapter 2, Section 27, p. 480
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)

God, Fear

“The hon. Gentleman, and other hon. Gentlemen, are pleased to designate me as the arch enemy of the farmers. Sir, I have as good a right as any hon. Gentleman in this House to identify myself with the order of farmers. I am a farmer's son. The hon. Member for Sussex has been speaking to you as the farmer's friend; I am the son of a Sussex farmer; my ancestors were all yeomen of the class who have been suffering under this system; my family suffered under it, and I have, therefore, as good or a better right than any of you to stand up as the farmer's friend, and to represent his wrongs in this House.”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1843/feb/17/distress-of-the-country-adjourned-debate in the House of Commons (17 February 1843). 1840s

Family, Suffering, Housing

“My tears, O Ryno! are for the dead; my voice for those that have passed away. Tall thou art on the hill; fair among the sons of the vale. But thou shalt fall like Morar; the mourner shall sit on thy tomb. The hills shall know thee no more; thy bow shall lie in thy hall, unstrung!
Thou wert swift, O Morar! as a roe on the desert; terrible as a meteor of fire. Thy wrath was as the storm. Thy sword in battle, as lightning in the field. Thy voice was a stream after rain; like thunder on distant hills. Many fell by thy arm; they were consumed in the flames of thy wrath. But when thou didst return from war, how peaceful was thy brow! Thy face was like the sun after rain; like the moon in the silence of night; calm as the breast of the lake when the loud wind is laid.
Narrow is thy dwelling now! dark the place of thine abode! With three steps I compass thy grave, O thou who wast so great before. Four stones, with their heads of moss, are the only memorial of thee. A tree with scarce a leaf, long grass, which whistles in the wind, mark to the hunter's eye the grave of the mighty Morar.”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

"The Songs of Selma"
The Poems of Ossian

War, Lie, Peace, Art

“O fortunate one, thy vow hath become successful. The lord of the celestials hath been gratified, and is willing to give thee a son such as thou desirest, of superhuman achievements and great fame. He will be the oppressor of all enemies and possessed of great wisdom. Endued with a great soul, in splendour equal unto the Sun, invincible in battles, and of great achievements, he will also be extremely handsome. O thou of fair hips and sweet smiles, the lord of the celestials hath become gracious to thee. Invoking him, bring thou forth a child who will be the very home of all Kshatriya virtues.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Pandu to Kunti
The Mahabharata/Book 1: Adi Parva/Section CXXIII

Wisdom, Smile, Home, Soul

“Dear friends, on 9 October 2012, the Taliban shot me on the left side of my forehead. They shot my friends, too. They thought that the bullets would silence us, but they failed. And out of that silence came thousands of voices. The terrorists thought they would change my aims and stop my ambitions. But nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born. I am the same Malala. My ambitions are the same. My hopes are the same. And my dreams are the same. Dear sisters and brothers, I am not against anyone. Neither am I here to speak in terms of personal revenge against the Taliban or any other terrorist group. I am here to speak for the right of education for every child. I want education for the sons and daughters of the Taliban and all the terrorists and extremists. I do not even hate the Talib who shot me.”

Malala Yousafzai (1997) Pakistani children's education activist

UN speech, June 2013

Life, Hate, Education, Fear

“It’s funny about career choices. I had to fight to test for the Janet Leigh role in Walking My Baby Back Home. Janet couldn’t dance at the time and I could—but she was a bigger name. I also fought to get the role Piper Laurie had in Son of Ali Baba. Luckily, I lost that one. The one I didn’t want to do was Revenge of the Creature. Science-Fiction was considered bottom of the barrel in those days. Of course, that’s the picture I am most remembered for. It’s very ironic!”

Lori Nelson (1933) Actress, model

Interview with Lori Nelson http://www.westernclippings.com/interview/lorinelson_interview.shtml

Home, Revenge, Science, Time

“While the film Life of Christ was rolling past before my eyes I was mentally visualizing the gods, Shri Krishna, Shri Ramachandra their Gokul and Ayodhya.. I was gripped by a strange spell. I bought another ticket and saw the film again. This time I felt my imagination taking shape in the screen. Could this really happen? Could we the sons of India, ever be able to see Indian images on the screen. The whole night passed in this mental agony.”

Dadasaheb Phalke (1870–1944) Indian producer-director-screenwriter

After watching the film The Life of Christ in 1910 quoted in *[Ganti, Tejaswini, Bollywood: A Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema, http://books.google.com/books?id=2GAdCp1VAf0C&pg=PA8, 5 March 2013, Routledge, 978-1-136-84929-9, 92]
Quote

Life, God, Imagination, Time

“Deacon Uriel Gadd was a man of integrity, granite-rough and lichen-coated. The punishment in his rheumatism, clearly sent of God, and the defection of his son Elijah, had weakened him only in making him somewhat less contemptuous of his sentimental son Aaron. All other persons he divided into fools, scoundrels and the blessedly elect, with only himself indisputably in the last class.”

Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright

The God-Seeker (1949), Ch. 6

God, Fools, Personality

“When, I was just a baby,
My mama told me, son
Always be a good boy,
Don't ever play with guns.
But I shot a man in Reno
Just to watch him die.
When I hear that whistle blowin'
I hang my head and cry.”

Johnny Cash (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter

Folsom Prison Blues
Song lyrics, Johnny Cash with His Hot and Blue Guitar (1957)

Boy, Baby, Cry

“Where did you set your standard of faith? Do you desire the greatest blessing? I know you do. Are you willing to take up the cross? Do you know what Jesus said? He said, "He who loves his mother, his father, his wife, his brothers and sisters, his children more than me is not worthy of me. To come with me, you must bear your own cross." Jesus Christ, of course, was a pathfinder. He opened up the territory, the new way. In order to be adopted as a true son and daughter of God, those who followed his path must walk the same way. The time has come when the tears of civilized people are necessary. The tears of the millionaire are needed, The tears of the men of talent, the men of knowledge are needed. And their sweat. And even their blood. This is the only way we can expedite the restoration of the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

Process of Restoration http://www.tparents.org/Moon-Talks/sunmyungmoon65/SM650213.htm, (1965-02-13)

Love, Men, God, Children

“Great Iraqi men and women, members of the families of the martyrs, You have offered the homeland the best thing you could afford. Thus you have come to merit love and gratitude from all Iraqis and from its plains, mountains, skies and waters. You are good sons of this country. You have offered to the country great men who have averted harm from the country and paved its way to glory and greatness.”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

President Saddam Hussein's Speech on National Day (1981)

Love, Women, Men, Family

“My son is 22 years old. If he had not become a Communist at 22, I would have disowned him. If he is still a Communist at 30, I will do it then.”

Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929) French politician

On being told his son had joined the Communist Party, as quoted in Try and Stop Me (1944) by Bennet Cerf
A statement similar in theme has also been attributed to Clemenceau:
A young man who isn't a socialist hasn't got a heart; an old man who is a socialist hasn't got a head.
As quoted in "Nice Guys Finish Seventh" : False Phrases, Spurious Sayings, and Familiar Misquotations (1992) by Ralph Keyes.
W. Gurney Benham in A Book of Quotations (1948) cites a statement by François Guizot as the earliest known expression of this general idea, stating that Clemenceau merely adapted the saying substituting socialiste for republicain:
N'être pas républicain à vingt ans est preuve d'un manque de cœur ; l'être après trente ans est preuve d'un manque de tête.
Not to be a republican at twenty is proof of want of heart; to be one at thirty is proof of want of head.
Variations on this general idea have also been attributed or misattributed to many others, most commonly Winston Churchill, who is not known to have actually made any similar statement.
Post-Prime Ministerial

“And she conceived and bore to Zeus, who delights in the thunderbolt, two sons, Magnes and Macedon, rejoicing in horses, who dwell round about Pieria and Olympus.”

Hesiod Greek poet

Catalogues of Women and Eoiae 3 (Loeb, H.G. Evelyn-White).
Catalogue of Women or Eoiae

Horse

“"One thing more, son. Do you believe in God?"
Slowly Frost put the spoon back into the bowl.
He asked: "You really want an answer?"
"I want an answer," said the man. "I want an honest one."
"The answer," said Frost, "is that I don't know. Not, certainly, in the kind of God that you are thinking of. Not the old white-whiskered, woodcut gentleman. But a supreme being — yes, I would believe in a God of that sort. Because it seems to me there must be some sort of force or power or will throughout the universe. The universe is too orderly for it to be otherwise. When you measure all this orderliness, from the mechanism of the atom at one end of the scale, out to the precision of the operation of the universe at the other end, it seems unbelievable that there is not a supervisory force of some kind, a benevolent ruling force to maintain that sort of order."”

Clifford D. Simak (1904–1988) American writer, journalist

Why Call Them Back From Heaven? (1967)

God, Thinking, Universe

“Yes, I'm complacent now, with my well enough paid job, with a wife I can almost talk to, with a three-year-old son all dark eyes and tousled hair and endearing clumsiness. We go driving on Sunday afternoons, through suburbs just like our own, past houses just like our own, an endlessly recurring, mesmerising daydream under the flawless blue sky. And I whistle an old song of yours, even if I never dare let the words past my lips:There's nothing wrong with The Family
That a flame-thrower can't fix
And there's nothing wrong with the salt of the Earth
That couldn't be cured with a well-aimed BRICK.</blockquote”

Greg Egan (1961) Australian science fiction writer and former computer programmer

Worthless http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/worth.htm, published in the anthology In Dreams (1992) Fiction

Family, Past, Housing

“There is a power in the soul, quite separate from the intellect, which sweeps away or recognizes the marvelous, by which God is felt. Faith stands serenely far above the reach of the atheism of science. It does not rest on the wonderful, but on the eternal wisdom and goodness of God. The revelation of the Son was to proclaim a Father, not a mystery. No science can sweep away the everlasting love which the heart feds, and which the intellect does not even pretend to judge or recognize.”

Frederick William Robertson (1816–1853) British writer and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 220.

Love, Wisdom, God, Faith

“On oilrigs men who only work an 8-hour day are contemptuously called nine-to-fivers. In stark contrast, women are more likely not to take risks, even when the risks are minimal. What's the message to our sons? Our praise of our sons when they risk physical danger teaches them that a willingness to be physically abused creates love. Abuse-as-love? Yes.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. 39.

Love, Women, Men

“Your culture is different to ours. We're not ready for all this in Brazil because no father would ever take pride in having a gay son. Pride? Happiness? Celebrating if his son turns out gay? No way. Look, you have to have some sort of moral compass bearing in your life. They want to reach our children in order to turn the children into gay adults to satisfy their sexuality in the future. So these are the fundamentalist homosexual groups that are trying to take over society.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

Interview to Stephen Fry in October 2013. Jair Bolsonaro provoca polêmica em documentário do ator Stephen Fry sobre homofobia https://vejasp.abril.com.br/blog/pop/jair-bolsonaro-provoca-polemica-em-documentario-do-ator-stephen-fry-sobre-homofobia/. Veja SP (23 October 2013).

Life, Children, Way, Future

“What a son I’ve made. The midwives must have turned me in my labor so that I lay on your brain and crushed it.”

Tanith Lee book The Storm Lord

Book 5, “The Serpent Wakes” Chapter 21 (p. 286)
The Storm Lord (1976)

“There once was upon a time a poor widow who had an only son Jack, and a cow called Milky-White.”

Joseph Jacobs book English Fairy Tales

English Fairy Tales (1890), Preface to English Fairy Tales, Jack and the Beanstalk

Time

“In general I might agree with you:
women should not contemplate war,
should not weigh tactics impartially,
or evade the word enemy,
or view both sides and denounce nothing.
Women should march for peace,
or hand out white feathers to arouse bravery,
spit themselves on bayonets
to protect their babies,
whose skulls will be split anyway,
or, having been raped repeatedly,
hang themselves with their own hair.
These are the functions that inspire general comfort.
That, and the knitting of socks for the troops
and a sort of moral cheerleading.
Also: mourning the dead.
Sons, lovers, and so forth.
All the killed children.”

Margaret Atwood book Morning in the Burned House

Morning in the Burned House (1995), The Loneliness of the Military Historian

Women, War, Children, Peace

“Careful as we may be with our sons,
We cannot be certain they will not turn bandits and thieves.
We would all bring up our daughters to be ladies,
But who can say that they will not end up in courtesans' quarters?”

Wang Chi-chen (1899–2001)

Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (1958), p. 14

Daughters

“I don't know how this will end. All I know is Nanhoï's love. My son is my life. I believe in the magic of this love. He is the embodiment of life to me. The embodiment of beauty. Through him I'll find redemption and salvation. Then the wound in my soul - the wound I thought would never scar over - will stop bleeding. I thought I would have to tear it open once it began to heal. Back then, when I felt I couldn't stop being what is called an actor, when I told myself I was only doing it for the money and that it could be worse. Now, today, I'd rather be poor, but without nightmares and without the torture. If only I could! I wish I'd never been an actor! I wish I'd never had success! I'd rather have been a streetwalker, selling my body, than selling my tears and my laughter, my grief and joy.”

Klaus Kinski (1926–1991) German actor

Source: Kinski Uncut : The Autobiography of Klaus Kinski (1996), p. 316

Love, Life, Money, Beauty

“Let no one charge us with capricious inconsistency in our actions against Albinus, and let no one think that I am disloyal to this alleged friend or lacking in feeling toward him. 2. We gave this man everything, even a share of the established empire, a thing which a man would hardly do for his own brother. Indeed, I bestowed upon him that which you entrusted to me alone. Surely Albinus has shown little gratitude for the many benefits I have lavished upon him. 3. Now |87 he is collecting an army to take up arms against us, scornful of your valor and indifferent to his pledge of good faith to me, wishing in his insatiable greed to seize at the risk of disaster that which he has already received in part without war and without bloodshed, showing no respect for the gods by whom he has often sworn, and counting as worthless the labors you performed on our joint behalf with such courage and devotion to duty. 4. In what you accomplished, he also had a share, and he would have had an even greater share of the honor you gained for us both if he had only kept his word. For, just as it is unfair to initiate wrong actions, so also it is cowardly to make no defense against unjust treatment. Now when we took the field against Niger, we had reasons for our hostility, not entirely logical, perhaps, but inevitable. We did not hate him because he had seized the empire after it was already ours, but rather each one of us, motivated by an equal desire for glory, sought the empire for himself alone, when it was still in dispute and lay prostrate before all. 5. But Albinus has violated his pledges and broken his oaths, and although he received from me that which a man normally gives only to his son, he has chosen to be hostile rather than friendly and belligerent instead of peaceful. And just as we were generous to him previously and showered fame and honor upon him, so let us now punish him with our arms for his treachery and cowardice. 6. His army, small and island-bred, will not stand against your might. For you, who by your valor and readiness to act on your own behalf have been victorious in many battles and have gained control of the entire East, how can you fail to emerge victorious with the greatest of ease when you have so large a number of allies and when virtually the entire army is here. Whereas they, by contrast, are few in number and lack a brave and competent general to lead them. 7. Who does not know Albinus' effeminate nature? Who does not know that his way |88 of life has prepared him more for the chorus than for the battlefield? Let us therefore go forth against him with confidence, relying on our customary zeal and valor, with the gods as our allies, gods against whom he has acted impiously in breaking his oaths, and let us be mindful of the victories we have won, victories which that man ridicules.”

Septimius Severus (145–211) Emperor of Ancient Rome

Herodian, Book 3, Chapter 6.

Life, God, Hate, Hostility

“Among Noah's sons was one who covered the shame of his father, but the Hegelians are still tearing away the cloak which time and oblivion had sympathetically thrown over the shame of their Master.”

Heinrich Christian Friedrich Schumacher (1757–1830) Danish scientist

In a letter to Gauss. As quoted in Carl Friedrich Gauss: Titan of Science (2004) by Guy Waldo Dunnington. p. 361-362
Quoted

Tear, Time

“If ever I have a son in life, I'll call him in one day
Sit him down upon my knee and here is what I'll say.

You might lose your lover, people do sometime.
Oh, but it won't make sense for you to sit around cryin'.
Son, don't you know that when you fall in love,
Sometimes, you're gonna have the blues.
Well it may take years, but you're gonna shed some tears.
'Cause everybody's got to pay some dues, now, now.
Everybody's got to pay some dues.”

Smokey Robinson (1940) American R&B singer-songwriter and record producer

Everybody's Gotta Pay Some Dues, written by Smokey Robinson and Ronald White (1961)
Song lyrics, With The Miracles

Love, Life, People, Lovers

“I asked my dad what afflicted meant and he said 'Sickness son, and things that don't fit.”

Frank McCourt book Angela's Ashes

Angela's Ashes (1996)

Affliction

“When my son is taping for his permanent collection, he sits there and pauses his machine and when he is finished with it, he has a marvelous Clint Eastwood movie and there is no sign of a commercial. It is a brand new movie and he can put three of those on one 6-hour tape.”

Jack Valenti (1921–2007) President of the MPAA

Testimony to the US House of Representatives (1982)

“Every man of learning wishes, that his son may be learned; and that not so much from a view to pecuniary advantage, as from a desire to have him supplied with the means of useful instruction and liberal amusement.”

James Beattie (1735–1803) Scottish poet, moralist and philosopher

"Remarks on the Utility of Classical Learning" (written in 1769), published in Essays, Vol. II (1776), p. 524.

Learning

“These same interior, enlightened persons Have the love of God before them in their inward vision Whenever they want, as drawing or calling in towards unity. For they see and feel that the Father with the Son by means of the Holy Spirit stand embraced with all the elect and are brought back with eternal love into the unity of their nature. This unity is constantly drawing or calling in all that has been born out of it naturally or by grace. And therefore these enlightened people are lifted up with free mind above reason to a bare vision devoid of images (The imageless place of spirit vision). There lives the eternal invitation of God’s unity, and with imageless naked understanding they go beyond all works and all practices and all things to the summit of their spirit. There their naked understanding is penetrated with eternal clarity as the air is penetrated by the light of the sun. The bare elevated will is transformed and penetrated with fathomless love just as iron is penetrated by the fire. And the bare elevated memory finds itself caught and established In a fathomless absence of images. Thus the created image is united threefold wise above reason to its eternal image, Which is the source of its being and of its life.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Little Book of Enlightenment (c. 1364)

Love, Life, God, People

“A good friend of my son's is a son to me.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, Ethan of Athos (1986)

“So cruel prison how could betide, alas,
As proud Windsor? where I, in lust and joy,
With a King's son, my childish years did pass,
In greater feast than Priam's sons of Troy.
Where each sweet place returns a taste full sour.”

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516–1547) English Earl

Source: Prisoned in Windsor, He Recounteth his Pleasure there Passed, Line 1

Joy

“There is a distinguishing difference of meaning between Jesus and Christ. His given name was Jesus; his honorific title was "Christ." In his little human body called Jesus was born the vast Christ Consciousness, the omniscient Intelligence of God omnipresent in every part and particle of creation. This Consciousness is the "only begotten Son of God," so designated because it is the sole perfect reflection in creation of the Transcendental Absolute, Spirit or God the Father.
It was of that Infinite Consciousness, replete with the love and bliss of God, that Saint John spoke when he said: "As many as received him [the Christ Consciousness], to them gave he power to become the sons of God." Thus according to Jesus' own teaching as recorded by his most highly advanced apostle, John, all souls who become united with Christ Consciousness by intuitive Self-realization are rightly called sons of God….”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

The Second Coming of Christ: The Resurrection of the Christ Within You, (2004) by Yogananda

Love, God, Soul, Intelligence

“It was the test of loyal citizenship among the Romans to seek out in every part of the world that which was most rare and valued, and bring it back to Rome as a gift. Thus her sons went forth and returned laden with richest trophies to lay at her feet. They brought to her pearls from India, gold chariots from Babylon, elephants from interior Africa, high-breasted virgins from the Greek isles, Phidian marbles from Athens. Paul also would be a bringer of gifts to the Rome that had honored him and his fathers with the high honor of citizenship. And the gift he would bring and lay at her feet would be the richest of them all—a religion.”

Bouck White (1874–1951) American author and novelist

Source: The Call of the Carpenter (1914), p. 229

World, Religion, Parting

“All that the Eternal Father teaches and reveals is His being, His nature, and His Godhead, which He manifests to us in His Son, and teaches us that we are also His Son.”

Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) German theologian

Sermon IV : True Hearing
Meister Eckhart’s Sermons (1909)

Nature

“…I had no love for politics. I treasured the privacy of my family life. My mother respected both these sentiments. Then my brother, Sanjay was killed in the prime of his life. It broke a mother’s heart. It did not break a Prime Minister’s will. Without even a day’s break, she carried on her noble task single-minded in fulfilling her pledge to her people
There is a loneliness that only a bereaved mother can know…she called to me in her loneliness. I went to her side. At her instance, I left my love for flying at her instance I joined her as a political aide. From her I learned my first political lessons. It was she who urged me to respond to the insistent demand from the constituency and the part to take my brother’s place as Member of Parliament for Amethi. With her blessings I was made General Secretary of my party asking me to accept the challenge of stepping into her shoes.
In accepting this challenge I fulfilled a national duty and a filial duty of a son to a mother.”

Rajiv Gandhi (1944–1991) sixth Prime Minister of India

In Memorable Quotes from Rajiv Gandhi and on Rajiv Gandhi (2009) http://books.google.co.in/books?id=L5bTCgLM1lYC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false, Quote 37 Quote

Love, Life, People, Family

“I have spared no effort to establish upon a solid and enduring basis those sentiments of union and concord which are so indispensible for the progress and advancement of all those who dwell in my native land, and, so long as I live, I propose to use all the means at my command to see to it that both races cast a stigma upon the disagreeable events that took place on the Sonoma frontier in 1846. If before I pass on to render an account of my acts to the Supreme Creator, I succeed in being a witness to a reconciliation between victor and vanquished, conquerors and conquered, I shall die with the conviction of not having striven in vain. In bringing this chapter to a close, I will remark that, if the men who hoisted the “Bear Flag” had raised the flag that Washington sanctified by his abnegation and patriotism, there would have been no war on the Sonoma frontier, for all our minds were prepared to give a brotherly embrace to the sons of the Great Republic, whose enterprising spirit had filled us with admiration. Ill-advisedly, however, as some say, or dominated by a desire to rule without let or hindrance, as others say, they placed themselves under the shelter of a flag that pictured a bear, an animal that we took as the emblem of rapine and force. This mistake was the cause of all the trouble, for when the Californians saw parties of men running over their plains and forests under the “Bear Flag,” they thought that they were dealing with robbers and took the steps they thought most effective for the protection of their lives and property.”

Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo (1807–1890) Californian military commander, politician, and rancher

As quoted by George Mason University's History Matters: “More Like A Pig Than a Bear”: Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo Is Taken Prisoner During the Bear Flag Revolt, 1846
Historical and Personal Memoirs Relating to Alta California (1875)

Men, War, Effort, Animals

“Pandu was married to Kunti, the adopted daughter of King Kuntibhoja. Her real father was King Sura of the Yadava clan. Kuntibhoja had adopted her and used her to serve a Brahmin visiting his court. This Brahmin [Durvasa] was known both for his irascibility and his great magical powers. Kunti served him so well that he blessed the king and gave Kunti several mantras with which she could call any god to father her child. In her childish curiosity, Kunti used one mantra and called Surya, the sun-god. He appeared immediately and begot a son on her. Frightened, Kunti put the child in a box, with gold and jewelery, and set it in the river. The boy was found and adopted by the suta Adhiratha, and became known as Karna.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Source: The End Of An Epoch, p. 12.

God, Boy, Appearance, Sun

“Would the delicate ladies who devour sanguinary beef-steaks like to see their sons working as slaughtermen? If not, then they have no right to put this task upon some other woman's son. We have no right to impose upon a fellow-citizen work which we ourselves should decline to do. It may be said that we force no one to undertake this abominable means of livelihood; but that is a mere tergiversation, for in eating this horrible food we are making a demand that some one shall brutalize himself, that some one shall degrade himself below the level of humanity.”

Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) English theosophist

Source: Vegetarianism and Occultism (1913), p. 27

Food

“Europe is no longer Europe, it is Eurabia, a colony of Islam, where the Islamic invasion does not proceed only in a physical sense, but also in a mental and cultural sense… I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true. There must be some human truth that is beyond religion… I am disgusted by the anti-Semitism of many Italians, of many Europeans… Look at the school system of the West today. Students do not know history! They don't know who Churchill was! In Italy, they don't even know who Cavour was!… Servility to the invaders has poisoned democracy, with obvious consequences for the freedom of thought, and for the concept itself of liberty… State-run television stations contribute to the resurgent anti-Semitism, crying only over Palestinian deaths while playing down Israeli deaths, glossing over them in unwilling tones… The increased presence of Muslims in Italy and in Europe is directly proportional to our loss of freedom… The Muslims refuse our culture and try to impose their culture on us. I reject them, and this is not only my duty toward my culture-it is toward my values, my principles, my civilization… The struggle for freedom does not include the submission to a religion which, like the Muslim religion, wants to annihilate other religions… The West reveals a hatred of itself, which is strange and can only be considered pathological; it now sees only what is deplorable and destructive… These charlatans care about the Palestinians as much as I care about the charlatans. That is not at all… When I was given the news, I laughed. The trial is nothing else but a demonstration that everything I've written is true… President Bush has said, 'We refuse to live in fear.'…Beautiful sentence, very beautiful. I loved it! But inexact, Mr. President, because the West does live in fear. People are afraid to speak against the Islamic world. Afraid to offend, and to be punished for offending, the sons of Allah. You can insult the Christians, the Buddhists, the Hindus, the Jews. You can slander the Catholics, you can spit on the Madonna and Jesus Christ. But, woe betide the citizen who pronounces a word against the Islamic religion.”

Oriana Fallaci (1929–2006) Italian writer

A Sermon for the West">From "A Sermon for the West" By Oriana Fallaci - Oct. 22, 2002 Address to an audience at the American Enterprise Institute

Love, Death, People, Truth

“A travelling kiss whose journey was cut short by dismay when Karna realised that his mother had revealed herself to him only to secure the safety of her five other, more beloved sons - the Pandavas - poised on the brink of their epic battle with their one hundred cousins. It is then that Kunti sought to protect by announcing to Karna that she was his mother. She had a promise to extract. She invoked the Love Laws.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Source: The God of Small Things, p. 233.

Love, Law, Travel, Kiss

“Akbar was the first emperor to abolish Jizyah with one stroke of pen, along with all its associations and implications, including the distinction of Muslim and Dhimmî into the bargain. His son and grandson followed his example in regard to Jizyah, generally speaking, but reimposed upon the Hindus all the other restrictions and disabilities suffered by them before.”

Harsh Narain (1921–1995) Indian writer

Jizyah and the spread of Islam, 1990, chapter 3.

Suffering

“I always come back to variations of the question that my son asked me when he was three. We were sitting in a jacuzzi, and he said, "Dad, why do we exist?" There is no other question. Nobody has any other question. We have variations of this one question, from three onwards. So when you spend time in a company, in a bureaucracy, in an organization and you're saying, boy -- how many people do you know who on their death beds said, boy, I wish I had spent more time at the office? So there's a whole thing of having the courage now -- not in a week, not in two months, not when you find out you have something -- to say, no, what am I doing this for? Stop everything. Let me do something else. And it will be okay, it will be much better than what you're doing, if you're stuck in a process.”

Ricardo Semler (1959) Brazilian businessman

TED: "How to run a company with (almost) no rules" https://www.ted.com/talks/ricardo_semler_how_to_run_a_company_with_almost_no_rules/ (October 2014)

Death, People, Boy, Courage

“Even amidst the violent attacks launched against us for months past, we call upon the sons of the Arab people dwelling in Israel to keep the peace and to play their part in building the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its institutions, provisional and permanent.”

David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973) Israeli politician, Zionist leader, prime minister of Israel

Israel's Proclamation of Independence, read on (14 May 1948)

People, Peace, Past, Parting

“On the king’s gate the moss grew gray;
The king came not. They called him dead
And made his eldest son one day
Slave in his father’s stead.”

Helen Hunt Jackson (1830–1885) Novelist, poet, writer, activist

Coronation.

Dead

“Arriving in Berlin, I found myself in my element, and began to breathe freely. Jerusalem and Lessing had given us letters of introduction to the greatest men in Berlin; but they knew us already, Leisewitz as author of "Julius Von Tarent," and myself as author of my Dissertation. We had daily the choice of the first society; covers were laid for us in the first families daily, for dinner as well as supper. Von Zetlitz sent a general invitation that covers were laid for us every day during our stay in Berlin. Most of the time we could spare was divided between physicians and philosophers, of which the latter had the greater share. Spalding, Mendelsohn, Eberhard, Engel, Nicolai, Reichard, and Madame Bamberger, daughter of Doctor Sack, Bishop of Berlin, honoured us with their most sincere friendship. The latter, a highly gifted and accomplished lady, possessed the rare art of spreading over the most abstract hypothesis and theorem the brightest and most charming light; Jerusalem, the father of the ill-fated Werther (see the "Sorrows of Werther," by Goethe), used to send her his works to correct, and she alone was able to console and comfort him, when he was informed of the death of his beloved son. This amiable lady assumes in common life the character of a plain woman, and when at court, as friend of the Queen and the Princess Amalie, she won all hearts by her truly noble man ners and unconstrained courtesy: at court beloved, she was admired, nay, adored in the philosophical clubs. But do not think that here alone we spent all our time; Madame Bamberger knew how to blend study with amusement; she issued frequently cards of invitation to select parties, for suppers and balls, and her house was the point of union of all that was learned, beautiful, and amiable. Thus Berlin became my Paradise. I had the most tempting offers from the Minister of State to stay here; but the illness of my father obliged me, after a stay of three months, to return home. I visited Lessing on my journey back; stayed two days, which were the most interesting of all days I ever remember.”

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

My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Life, Death, Men, Friendship

“To this day we cannot enjoy the blessing brought to us in Christ without thinking at the same time of that which God gave as adornment and honour to Mary, in willing her to be the mother of his only-begotten Son.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

New Testament Commentaries, John 1.32; as quoted in Thomas F. Torrance, "A Harmony of Matthew, Mark and Luke” https://books.google.com/books/about/A_harmony_of_the_Gospels_Matthew_Mark_an.html?id=0diPvgAACAAJ (St. Andrew's Press, Edinburgh, 1972), p.32. and "The Gospel of St. John: The Story of the Son of God" https://books.google.com/books?isbn=113704120X St John Variant: And at this day, the blessedness brought to us by Christ cannot be the subject of our praise, without reminding us, at the same time, of the distinguished honor which God was pleased to bestow on Mary, in making her the mother of his Only Begotten Son.

God, Thinking, Time, Christ

“At daybreak I found on my sculptor's turntable a little mischievous form [a small plaster form of Impish Form, Arp made in 1949], alert and somewhat obese, with a stomach like a lute. It seemed to me like an imp. I called it that. And all of a sudden one day this little character, this imp, through a Venezuelan medium, found itself to be the father of a giant [Arp enlarged it]. This giant son resembles its father like an egg resembles another egg, a fig another fig, a bell another bell.”

Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist

Source: 1960s, Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs (1966), p. 431

“If Theodore Roosevelt is the great champion of democracy —the arch foe of autocracy, what business had he as the guest of honor of the Prussian Kaiser? And when he met the Kaiser, and did honor to the Kaiser, under the terms imputed to him, wasn’t it pretty strong proof that he himself was a Kaiser at heart? Now, after being the guest of Emperor Wilhelm, the Beast of Berlin, he comes back to this country, and wants you to send ten million men over there to kill the Kaiser; to murder his former friend and pal. Rather queer, isn’t it? And yet, he is the patriot, and we are the traitors. I challenge you to find a Socialist anywhere on the face of the earth who was ever the guest of the Beast of Berlin, except as an inmate of his prison—the elder Liebknecht and the younger Liebknecht, the heroic son of his immortal sire.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

The Canton, Ohio Speech, Anti-War Speech (1918)

Men, Democracy, Business, Strong

“Your armed forces have toppled the reactionary, backward and corrupt regime. With one strike your heroic army has toppled idols and destroyed them in one of Providence's fateful moments. As of now Libya shall be free and sovereign, a republic under the name of the Libyan Arab Republic. No oppressed or deceived or wronged, no master and no slave; but free brothers in a society over which, God willing, shall flutter the banner of brotherhood and equality. And thus shall we build glory, revive heritage and avenge a wounded dignity. Sons of the Bedouins, sons of the desert, sons of the ancient cities, sons of the countryside, sons of the villages, the hour of work has struck and so let us forge ahead.”

Muammar Gaddafi (1942–2011) Libyan revolutionary, politician and political theorist

Radio broadcast from Benghazi (1 September 1969), quoted in The Libyan Revolution: Its Origins and Legacy (2009) by Nicholas Hagger
Speeches

God, Fate

“The Holy Spirit is the coming of the man Jesus, who is the Son of God, to other men who are not this but with whom He still associates* And the witness of the Holy Spirit is the disclosure to these men, and therefore their discovery, of the fact that because they are associated with Him they can be called what they are certainly not called of themselves, and be what they can certainly never become or be of themselves children of God, children of light who in the midst of death are freed from the fear of death because as sinners they are freed from the curse of sin, and as such messengers to all those who, because they do not see the light, are still in darkness, but are not to remain in this darkness.”

Karl Barth book Church Dogmatics

4:2
Church Dogmatics (1932–1968)

Death, Men, God, Children

“A man can never have too much Time to himself, nor too little to do. Had I a little son, I would christen him Nothing-To-Do; he should do nothing. Man, I verily believe, is out of his element as long as he is operative. I am altogether for the life contemplative.”

Charles Lamb Last Essays of Elia

“The superannuated man”
Last Essays of Elia (1833)

Life, Time

“More and more violently, with the impotent rage of the wild beast, who wishes to maintain in the backyards of all her colonial possession, each and every sinecure upon which the American way of life was erected. Let them take heed, those sons of the Pentagon and of North American monopolies who until now have paraded their arrogance up down the lands of America… Cuba is no longer a solitary island… defended only by the vulnerable breasts of her sons… Cuba is now, in addition, a proud Caribbean island defended by the missiles of the greatest military power in history.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

As quoted in Venceremos! The Speeches and Writings of Ernesto Che Guevara (1968) by John Gerassi, p. 109-110

Life, Way, History, Rage

“…we … know very well that we never learn unless we like our lesson, and never behave ourselves unless inspired by precept and example. The history of every nation is the heritage of its sons and daughters; and the story of its struggles, sufferings, misdeeds, and glorious atonements is the story that keeps alive in all our hearts that sentiment of patriotism, without which we are speeding swiftly on our path to national corruption and decay.”

Agnes Repplier (1855–1950) American essayist

in "Old Wine and New" (May 1896)

History, Suffering, Learning, Heart

“As during the time of kings it would have been naive to think that the king’s firstborn son would be the fittest to rule, so in our time it is naive to think that the democratically elected ruler will be the fittest. The rule of succession is not a formula for identifying the best ruler, it is a formula for conferring legitimacy on someone or other and thus forestalling civil conflict.”

J.M. Coetzee book Diary of a Bad Year

Source: Diary of a Bad Year (2007), p. 14

Thinking, Time, Success

“We can be sure our beloved pope is standing today at the window of the father's house, that he sees us and blesses us. Yes, bless us, Holy Father. We entrust your dear soul to the Mother of God, your Mother, who guided you each day and who will now guide you to the glory of her son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.Today we bury his remains in the earth as a seed of immortality. Our hearts are full of sadness, yet at the same time (full) of joyful hope and profound gratitude.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

Homily during the Requiem Mass of the funeral of [Pope John Paul II], on April 8, 2005
2005

God, Sadness, Hope, Soul

“These sources of strength are with your loved ones. For many of you, your first instinct was to call home and let your moms and dads know that you were okay. Others took on the terrible duty of calling the relatives of a classmate or a colleague who had been wounded or lost. I know many of you feel awfully far away from people you lean on and people you count on during difficult times. But as a dad, I can assure you, a parent's love is never far from their child's heart. And as you draw closer to your own families in the coming days, I ask you to reach out to those who ache for sons and daughters who will never come home.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2007, Virginia Tech Prayer Vigil (April 2007)

Love, People, Family, Feeling

“You ever see that sign that says 'speed limit enforced by aircraft'? Wow. Man, you get pulled over by a plane, you're going to have a hard time talking your way out of that ticket. 'You know how fast you were going son?' Uh, 70? 'You were going 300 m. p. h. buddy, what the hell are you doing?' Sorry sir, I had that large coffee back at the truck stop — I'm fuckin' flyin'. HUGE coffee. I bought some dirt thought that would slow me down. Biggest motherfuckin' coffee you ever seen. He pumped it right up my nose. I'm just skin coverin' coffee right now.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Sane Man (1989)

Way, Coffee, Hell, Time

“The universe is God’s son.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

“God’s Son,” p. 105
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “Is It Possible to Write a Poem”

God, Universe

“I wrote a song called "Father & Son" about the son running off to do his own thing. Now the story is about my son coming back and bringing a guitar into the house. A couple of years ago, one morning after prayers, his guitar was lying around. I picked it up and my fingers knew exactly where to go. I'd written some words and when I put them to music, it moved me and I realized I could have another job to do. Things just grew from there.”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

On producing new music, after shunning the music business for over two decades, as quoted in "The Billboard Q and A: Yusuf Islam" by Nigel Williamson, in Billboard Magazine (17 November 2006)

Music, Lying, Housing

“The lords and ladies pass a ruling
That sons and girls go hand in land
From good stock and the best breeding
Paid for by the servile class.”

Paul Weller (singer) (1958) English singer-songwriter, Guitarist

The Whole Point Of No Return, from Café Bleu (1984)

Girl

“…it was Darwin’s chief contribution, not only to Biology but to the whole of natural science, to have brought to light a process by which contingencies a priori improbable, are given, in the process of time, an increasing probability, until it is their non-occurrence rather than their occurrence which becomes highly improbable. … Let the reader … attempt to calculate the prior probability that a hundred generations of his ancestry in the direct male line should each have left at least one son. The odds against such a contingency as it would have appeared to his hundredth ancestor (about the time of King Solomon) would require for their expression forty- four figures of the decimal notation; yet this improbable event has certainly happened.”

Ronald Fisher (1890–1962) English statistician, evolutionary biologist, geneticist, and eugenicist

Retrospect of criticisms of the theory of natural selection. In Evolution as a Process, eds. J.S.Huxley, A.C.Hardy and E.B.Ford, London: Allen and Unwin, 1954.
1950s

Nature, Light, Appearance, Science

“Engvall is in the park flying a kite with his son.
Passerby: Y'all flyin' a kite?
Engvall: Nope, fishin' for birds! Here's your sign.”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

Here's Your Sign Reloaded (2003)
Here's Your Sign

Bird, Flying

“Women played a greater role than might be expected in this elite warrior society, as heiresses and chatelaines in charge of castles (see Documents 44–53). Since land was the basis of status and power, estates were kept intact by being passed on to the oldest son rather than being divided among all the children. In spite of high infant mortality and short life expectancies, a family hoped that at least one son survived to inherit lands and titles. Younger sons hoped to gain an estate of their own by marrying an heiress.”

Marilyn Stokstad (1929–2016) art historian

Overview: Castles in Context
Medieval castles (2005)

Life, Women, Children, Family

“When he saw Tiny, he was delighted, and thought her the prettiest little maiden he had ever seen. He took the gold crown from his head, and placed it on hers, and asked her name, and if she would be his wife, and queen over all the flowers. This certainly was a very different sort of husband to the son of a toad, or the mole, with my black velvet and fur; so she said, "Yes," to the handsome prince. Then all the flowers opened, and out of each came a little lady or a tiny lord, all so pretty it was quite a pleasure to look at them. Each of them brought Tiny a present; but the best gift was a pair of beautiful wings, which had belonged to a large white fly and they fastened them to Tiny's shoulders, so that she might fly from flower to flower.”

Hans Christian Andersen Thumbelina

Thumbelina
Fairy Tales (1835)

Pleasure, Beauty, Flowers, Flying

“Sedov (Trotsky's son) spoke a lot about the necessity of the maximum, the closest possible connections with Tukhachevsky, inasmuch as, in Trotsky's opinion, Tukhachevsky and the military group were to be the decisive force of the counter-revolutionary action. During the conversation it was also revealed that Trotsky entertained fears regarding Tukhachevsky 's Bonapartist tendencies. In the course of one conversation Sedov said that Trotsky in this respect even expressed the fear that if Tukhachevsky successfully accomplished a military coup, it was possible that he would not allow Trotsky into Moscow.... Trotsky therefore proposed that during the coup d'etat we should everywhere place our own people, people who would be faithful to Trotskyism and who could be relied upon as regards vigilance.”

Arkady Rosengolts (1889–1938) Belarusian politician

Trial of Anti-Soviet Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites, p. 245-6. Quote from Harpal Brar's Trotskyism or Leninism?, p. 281.

People, Fear, Faith, Decision

“At that moment I railed against a God who could condemn such an innocent soul to Purgatory. What had Sedenko done that was not the result of his upbringing or his religion, which encouraged him to kill in the name of Christ? It came to me that perhaps God had become senile, that He had lost His memory and no longer remembered the purpose of placing Man on Earth. He had become petulant, He had become whimsical. He retained His power over us, but could no longer be appealed to. And where was His Son, who had been sent to redeem us? Was God’s Plan not so much mysterious as impossible for us to accept: because it was a malevolent one?”

Michael Moorcock book The War Hound and the World's Pain

Source: The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981), Chapter 7 (pp. 85-86)

God, Religion, Soul, Memory

“It's difficult to be the King's own son rather than his adopted son. That's Hun Sen. Samdech Hun Sen, as an adopted son, has the right not to listen to the King. I, as his [natural] son, don't have such a right.”

Norodom Ranariddh (1944) Cambodian politician

[Matthew Grainger, http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/relaxed-hun-sen-holds-royal-key, Relaxed Hun Sen holds the royal key, 4 September 1998, 2 September 2015, Phnom Penh Post]

Nature

“Having given her the formula of invocation only once, she hath, O king, managed to obtain two sons. Have I not been thus deceived by her, I fear, O king, that she will soon surpass me in the number of her children. This, indeed, is the way of all wicked women. Fool that I was, I did not know that by invoking the twin gods I could obtain at one birth twin children. I beseech thee, O king, do not command me any further. Let this be the boon granted (by thee) to me.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Kunti reply to Pandu who requested her on behalf of Madri for more children.
The Mahabharata/Book 1: Adi Parva/Section CXXIV

Women, God, Children, Fear

“Sisters, do you know how it is? On one hand,
the bawling baby; on the other, your husband
sliding onto your stomach,
his little son still howling at your side.
Yet, everything must be put in order,
Rushing around all helter-skelter.
Husband and child, what obligations!
Sisters, do you know how it is?”

Hồ Xuân Hương (1772–1822) Vietnamese poet

"The Condition of Women"
Spring Essence (2000)

Sister, Baby

“The Emperor Constantine, who lifted Christianity into power, murdered his wife Fausta, and his eldest son Crispus, the same year that he convened the Council of Nice to decide whether Jesus Christ was a man or the Son of God. The council decided that Christ was consubstantial with the father. This was in the year 325. We are thus indebted to a wife-murderer for settling the vexed question of the divinity of the Savior.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The Great Infidels (1881)

God, Question, Christ

“You are a fool in three letters, my son.”

Molière book Tartuffe

Vous êtes un sot en trois lettres, mon fils.
Act I, sc. i
Tartuffe (1664)

Fools

“All which she entreats, for His Sake, to be done,
Who suffer'd to save them, Christ Jesus, His Son,—
In respect to the World, the Redeemer of All;
"To the Church of the Faithful, most chiefly," saith Paul;
And to them who shall suffer, whoever they be,
In the Spirit of Christ, in the highest Degree.
How ought such a Goodness all Minds to prepare
For an hearty "Amen" to this Catholic Pray'r!”

John Byrom (1692–1763) Poet, inventor of a shorthand system

Source: Miscellaneous Poems (1773), A Paraphrase on the Prayer used in The Church Liturgy for All Sorts and Conditions Of Men, IX

World, Faith, Suffering, Christ

“Christopher Wren, the leading architect of London's reconstruction after the great fire of 1666, lies buried beneath the floor of his most famous building, St. Paul's cathedral. No elaborate sarcophagus adorns the site. Instead, we find only the famous epitaph written by his son and now inscribed into the floor: “si monumentum requiris, circumspice”—if you are searching for his monument, look around. A tad grandiose, perhaps, but I have never read a finer testimony to the central importance—one might even say sacredness — of actual places, rather than replicas, symbols, or other forms of vicarious resemblance.”

Stephen Jay Gould book The Lying Stones of Marrakech

"A Tale of Two Work Sites", p. 251
The Lying Stones of Marrakech (2001)

Search, Reading

“Rep. Jared Polis of Colorado has announced the birth of a new son, making him the only openly gay member of Congress to be a parent.”

Jared Polis (1975) American entrepreneur, philanthropist, and US Representative

[Gay congressman announces birth of new son, Associated Press, December 1, 2011, Houston Chronicle]
About

Birth, Parent

“1948 Black Mountain College N. C. Disciplined by Albers. Learned photography. Worked hard but poorly for Albers. Made contact with music and modern dance. Felt too isolated, Sue [Weil, they married soon, then] and I moved to NYC. Went to Art Students League. Vytlacil & Kantor. Best work made at home. Wht. Painting with no.'s best example. Summer 1950, Outer Island Conn. Married Sue Weil. Christoher (son) Born July 16, 1951 in NYC. First one man show Betty Parsons's”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

Source: 1980's, Off the Wall: Robert Rauschenberg and the Art world of Our Time, 1980, pp. 55-56 : Autobiographic notes

Art, Music, Home, Mountain

“At any rate, whether we expect another invasion or not, our views of the human future must be greatly modified by these events. We have learned now that we cannot regard this planet as being fenced in and a secure abiding place for Man; we can never anticipate the unseen good or evil that may come upon us suddenly out of space. It may be that in the larger design of the universe this invasion from Mars is not without its ultimate benefit for men; it has robbed us of that serene confidence in the future which is the most fruitful source of decadence, the gifts to human science it has brought are enormous, and it has done much to promote the conception of the commonweal of mankind. It may be that across the immensity of space the Martians have watched the fate of these pioneers of theirs and learned their lesson, and that on the planet Venus they have found a securer settlement. Be that as it may, for many years yet there will certainly be no relaxation of the eager scrutiny of the Martian disk, and those fiery darts of the sky, the shooting stars, will bring with them as they fall an unavoidable apprehension to all the sons of men.”

H. G. Wells book The War of the Worlds

Book II, Ch. 10 (Ch. 27 in editions without Book divisions): The Epilogue
The War of the Worlds (1898)

Men, Fate, Confidence, Star

“But there was in my father's mind another sentiment, less creditable to him, than the wish to give me the best education to be had. I mean those social aspirations which he continued to nourish, though by his removal to the remote situation of Hauxwell, and consequent detachment from the Castle, he was no longer able to gratify them. He had the instinct of good society, and liked to live with gentlemen, and to know what was going on in the upper world. His acquaintance with the peerage was accurate; he must have read Debrett at that time more than the Bible. Hence, in estimating colleges he was led to take the footman's view, and to prefer one which was frequented by the sons of gentlemen.”

Mark Pattison (1813–1884) English author and Church of England priest

Source: Memoirs (1885), Chapter I, pp. 22–24

World, Education, Time, Reading

“Well Dad, send the money,
See what I can see,
Try to find a Cadillac,
A Sixty-two or three.
Just something that won't worry us
To keep it on the road.
Sincerely, your beloved son,
Henry Junior Ford”

Chuck Berry (1926–2017) American rock-and-roll musician

"Dear Dad" (1965)
Song lyrics

Money, Sincerity

“The Spirit of God now speaks within our own spirit in its hidden immersion: ‘Go out, into a state of eternal contemplation and blissful enjoyment after God’s own manner.’ All the richness which is in God by nature is something which we lovingly possess in God –and God in us– through the infinite love which is the Holy Spirit... There the spirit is caught up in the embrace of the Holy Trinity and eternally abides within the superessential Unity in a state of rest and blissful enjoyment. In this same Unity, considered now as regards its fruitfulness, the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father, while all creatures are in them both.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

James A. Wiseman, Jan Van Ruusbroec (Classics of Western spirituality, 1985), p. 148
The Spiritual Espousals (c. 1340)

Love, God, Nature

“And you mother still close to me,
you know that it is not enough to live an ordered and honest life.
You have been faithful for years to bring order into our house.
As soon as the dawn appeared in the night sky,
you rose towards the tasks awaiting you –
in the silence of a mental prayer.
Perhaps it is not enough even the overwhelming love,
to which you gave the sober expression of concrete acts.
The sacred wool, the steaming milk and the bed
composed with inimitable care by your hands.
Going back in time you recounted to your children their births,
and the birthdays have slowly vanished.
The beginning is now found from a thousand beginnings,
with the ancient, with the unknown, with Christ.
A present act includes them all,
opening after the events have passed.
And there is a severe duty for struggle,
something in our own life could be wrenched away by it.
The guards will soon appear,
and they will take me to my cell with the high window.
You will still be with me,
as mother and inexhaustible human presence.
Giving freely of your love, you still knew that your son is freedom.
You were a nearness, that always found something to do.
I have watched you unflinching under hardness and spite,
always moving, and acting,
holding back your inner rebellion you had pity on rage.
Now we are together to work and open all around.
In the loving gift to the world which ever crucifies us
is our fulfilment.
Seeing its limitations, still to treasure everything
is the gesture of infinite miracle,
and you were right: order comes from this principle,
the earthly goods, as our brothers the prophets tell us,
will be given unto us.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

Love, Life, Children, World

“The editor perhaps may consider himself justified by numerous precedents among the several partisans of different Christian sects in applying the name of heathen to one who takes the Precepts of Jesus as his principal guide in matters of religious and civic duties; as Roman Catholics bestow the appellation of heretics or infidels on all classes of Protestants; and the Protestants do not spare the title idolater to Roman Catholics; Trinitarians deny the name Christian to Unitarians, while the latter retort by stigmatising the worshippers of the son of man as Pagans who adore a created and dependent being.”

Ram Mohan Roy (1772–1833) Indian religious, social, and educational reformer, and humanitarian

His reply after being called a heathen by John Marshman. Quoted from Goel, S. R. (2016). History of Hindu-Christian encounters, AD 304 to 1996. Chapter 8 ISBN 9788185990354

Dependency