Quotes about subject
page 5

“Descartes spent far too much time in bed subject to the persistent hallucination that he was thinking. You are not free from a similar disorder.”

Flann O'Brien book The Dalkey Archive

"The Dalkey archive" (1964)
Source: The Dalkey Archive

Thinking, Time

“Sometimes I would open my eyes when we were kissing, I would watch him and I could see it. I could actually see LOVE - not words, not an emotion, not an abstract concept or a subjective state of mind, but a living, breathing thing.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: How to Kill a Rock Star

Love, Kiss

“Bob Dole revealed he is one of the test subjects for Viagra. He said on Larry King, 'I wish I had bought stock in it.' Only a Republican would think the best part of Viagra is the fact that you could make money off of it.”

Jay Leno (1950) American comedian, actor, writer, producer, voice actor and television host

Money, Thinking, Parting

“On the subject of love at first sight, I’m with the Beatles: I believe that it happens all the time.”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 11/22/63

Love, Time

“Rem tene, verba sequentur: grasp the subject, and the words will follow. This, I believe, is the opposite of what happens with poetry, which is more a case of verba tene, res sequenter: grasp the words, and the subject will follow.”

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist

Source: Postscript to the Name of the Rose

“A man can only lead when others accept him as their leader, and he has only as much authority as his subjects give to him. All of the brilliant ideas in the world cannot save your kingdom if no one will listen to them.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Well of Ascension

World, Idea

“And woman is the same as horses: two wills act in opposition inside her. With one will she wants to subject herself utterly. With the other she wants to bolt, and pitch her rider to perdition.”

D.H. Lawrence book Women in Love

Source: Women in Love

Horse

“Before this trip and all that she'd learned about the three of them, she would have gotten angry or changed the subject. Anything to obscure the pain she felt. Now she knew better. You carried your pain with you in life. There was no outrunning it.”

Kristin Hannah (1960) American writer

Source: Winter Garden

Life, Pain, Learning, Change

“A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Variant: A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.

Change

“Yossarian decided to change the subject. "Now you're changing the subject." he pointed out diplomatically. "I'll bet I can name two things to be miserable about for every one you can name to be thankful for.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Source: Catch-22

Change

“[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point. Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.”

Alan Bennett book The Uncommon Reader

Source: The Uncommon Reader

Reading

“Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Letter to John Hamilton Reynolds (February 3, 1818)
Letters (1817–1820)

Soul

“I am my own muse. I am the subject I know best. The subject I want to better.”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

“He well knew his mind's natural tendency to be endlessly on a thousand subjects at once, to flit from this to that and to the next thing to no particular purpose--indeed, he called it his "butterfly mind.”

Eric Metaxas (1963) American journalist

Source: Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery

Nature

“Nothing that surrounds us is object, all is subject.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

“If he'd learned one thing while he'd been away, it was that loneliness is the most taboo subject in the world. Forget sex or politics or religion. Or even failure. Loneliness is what clears out a room.”

Douglas Coupland book Miss Wyoming

Source: Miss Wyoming

World, Religion, Sex, Failure

“I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best.”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

Quoted from: Antonio Rodríguez, "Una pintora extraordinaria," Así (17 March 1945)
1925 - 1945
Variant: I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.

Painting

“Truth is neither ojectivity nor the balanced view; truth is a selfless subjectivity.”

Knut Hamsun book Hunger

Source: Hunger

Truth

“because if you can’t kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

“And although one broken heart doesn't make me an expert in the subject, I believe you need both things - time and an emotional replacement - to fully mend one.”

Emily Giffin (1972) American writer

Source: Love the One You're With

Time, Heart

“A good speech is like a woman's skirt: short enough to hold your attention, long enough to cover the subject”

Jonathan Tropper (1970) American writer

Source: This is Where I Leave You

“The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

11 April 1942.
Disputed, Hitler's Table Talks (1941-1944) (published 1953)

History

“Other people’s tragedies should not be the subject of idle conversation.”

Kate DiCamillo book Because of Winn-Dixie

Source: Because of Winn-Dixie

People

“All human plans [are] subject to ruthless revision by Nature, or Fate, or whatever one preferred to call the powers behind the Universe.”

Arthur C. Clarke book 2010: Odyssey Two

Source: 2010: Odyssey Two

Fate, Nature, Universe

“The real marriage of true minds is for any two people to possess a sense of humor or irony pitched in exactly the same key, so that their joint glances on any subject cross like interarching searchlights.”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

Source: A Backward Glance

Marriage, People, Sense

“Truth has been relegated to subjectivity; beauty has been subjugated to the beholder; and as millions are idiotized night after night, a global commune has been constructed with the arts enjoying a totalitarian rule.”

Ravi Zacharias (1946) Indian philosopher

1990s
Source: [Can Man Live Without God, 1994, 9780849939433, 12]

Truth, Beauty, Art, Communication

Thomas Harris book Hannibal

Source: Hannibal

“Temeraire said, 'It is very nice how many books there are, indeed. And on so many subjects!”

Naomi Novik book His Majesty's Dragon

Source: His Majesty's Dragon

Books

“In order to be a part of the totalitarian mind-set, it is not necessary to wear a uniform or carry a club or a whip. It is only necessary to wish for your own subjection, and to delight in the subjection of others.”

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

Source: god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

Parting

“Logic presumes a separation of subject from object; therefore logic is not final wisdom. This is Zen. This is my motorcycle maintenance.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Wisdom

“Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Fear

“The most elementary of good manners… at a social gathering one does not bring up the subject of personalities, sad topics or unfortunate facts, religion, or politics.”

Laura Esquivel book Like Water for Chocolate

Source: Like Water for Chocolate

Sadness, Religion, Personality

“Everyone is ignorant, only on different subjects.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

Nationally syndicated column number 90, From Nuts To The Soup (31 August 1924); published in The New York Times http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50A12F83D551B7A93C3AA1783D85F408285F9 <br class="br">Weekly columns <br class="br">Variant: Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.

“I never had to choose my subject- my subject rather chose me.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

“You changed the subject."
"From what?"
"The empty-headed girls who think you're sexy."
"You know."
"Know what?"
"That I only have eyes for you.”

Khaled Hosseini book A Thousand Splendid Suns

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

Girl, Thinking, Change

“The romantics were prompted to seek exotic subjects and to travel to far off places. They failed to realize that, though the transcendental must involve the strange and unfamiliar, not everything strange or unfamiliar is transcendental. The unfriendliness of society to his activity is difficult for the artists to accept. Yet this very hostility can act as a lever for true liberation... Both the sense of community and of security depend on the familiar. Free of them, transcendental experiences become possible.”

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter

Source: after 1970, posthumous, Abstract Expressionism, Creators and Critics', 1990, p. 167

Hostility, Travel, Communication, Sense

“Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry.”

Umberto Eco book The Name of the Rose

William of Baskerville
Source: The Name of the Rose (1980)
Context: Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means...

Books

“Many… have learned that the magnitude of lives is not as to their external displacements, but as to their subjective experiences. The impressionable peasant leads a larger, fuller, more dramatic life than the pachydermatous king.”

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English novelist and poet

Source: Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Life, Learning

“Being a nerd, which is to say going too far and caring too much about a subject, is the best way to make friends I know.”

Sarah Vowell book The Partly Cloudy Patriot

Source: The Partly Cloudy Patriot (2003)

Way

“I punched to line. "Yes? What?"
"Norville. It's Cormac. If you don't change the subject right now, I'm going to have to go over there and have a word with you.”

Carrie Vaughn (1973) American writer

Source: Kitty and the Midnight Hour

Change

“Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Volume iii, p. 334
Source: Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

“A man who has nothing in particular to recommend him discusses all sorts of subjects at random as though he knew everything.”

Sei Shonagon book The Pillow Book

Source: The Pillow Book
Source: The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon (1002), p. 44

“When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

“Philosophy, art, and science are not the mental objects of an objectified brain but the three aspects under which the brain becomes subject.”

Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) French philosopher

Art, Science

“I surrendered my beliefs
and found myself at the tree of life
injecting my story into the veins of leaves
only to find that stories like forests
are subject to seasons”

Saul Williams (1972) American singer, musician, poet, writer, and actor

Source: , said the shotgun to the head.

Life, Tree, Season

“If our lives are truly "hid with Christ in God," the astounding thing is that this hiddenness is revealed in all that we do and say and write. What we are is going to be visible in our art, no matter how secular (on the surface) the subject may be.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Source: Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

God, Art, Christ

“The human race tends to remember the abuses to which it has been subjected rather than the endearments. What's left of kisses? Wounds, however, leave scars.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

Kiss

“I’ve heard it said: ‘By his home you shall know him’; and we all know that we must pay attention to anyone who reverses the subject and auxiliary verb in his sentence.”

Steven Brust book Issola

Source: Issola

Home

“Having not said anything the first time, it was somehow even more difficult to broach the subject the second time around.”

Douglas Adams book So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Source: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Time

“Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resigns his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Civil Disobedience (1849)
Source: Civil Disobedience and Other Essays
Context: Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.
Context: To speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it. After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule, is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience? — in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.

Men, Thinking

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

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

People, Hope, Thinking

“Class is entirely intangible, and the way it affects things isn't subject to scientific analysis, and it's not supposed to be real but it's pervasive and powerful. See; just like magic.”

Jo Walton book Among Others

Source: Among Others

Way

“Anxiety, the next gumption trap, is sort of the opposite of ego. You're so sure you'll do everything wrong you're afraid to do anything at all. Often this, rather than "laziness," is the real reason you find it hard to get started. This gumption trap of anxiety, which results from over-motivation, can lead to all kinds of errors of excessive fussiness. You fix things that don't need fixing, and chase after imaginary ailments. You jump to wild conclusions and build all kinds of errors into the machine because of your own nervousness. These errors, when made, tend to confirm your original underestimation of yourself. This leads to more errors, which lead to more underestimation, in a self-stoking cycle. The best way to break this cycle, I think, is to work out your anxieties on paper. Read every book and magazine you can on the subject. Your anxiety makes this easy and the more you read the more you calm down.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 26
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Books, Way, Error, Motivation

“What we're learning in our schools is not the wisdom of life. We're learning technologies, we're getting information. There's a curious reluctance on the part of faculties to indicate the life values of their subjects.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Life, Wisdom, School, Learning

“Nothing is so loved by tyrants as obedient subjects.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Love

“Some subjects are so serious that one can only joke about them.”

Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) German theoretical physicist

Sometimes attributed to Heisenberg, this was actually a statement made by Niels Bohr, as quoted in The Genius of Science: A Portrait Gallery (2000) by Abraham Pais, p. 24
Some things are so serious that one can only joke about them.
Variant without any citation as to author in Denial is not a river in Egypt (1998) by Sandi Bachom, p. 85
Misattributed

“I will take a serious approach to a subject usually treated lightly, which is a nerdy thing to do.”

Benjamin Nugent (1950) American writer

Source: American Nerd: The Story of My People

“Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.”

Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer

"What is Civilization?" Ladies' Home Journal, LXIII (January, 1946).

Change

“No one writes anything worth writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake of his subject.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Source: The Art of Literature

“Everything you invent is true: you can be sure of that. Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry.”

Julian Barnes book Flaubert's Parrot

Source: Flaubert's Parrot

“You must understand the following: In order to master a field, you must love the subject and feel a profound connection to it. Your interest must transcend the field itself and border on the religious.”

Robert Greene book Mastery

Source: Mastery

Love, Feeling, Understanding

“A teacher who cannot explain any abstract subject to a child does not himself thoroughly understand his subject; if he does not attempt to break down his knowledge to fit the child's mind, he does not understand teaching.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Source: Life Is Worth Living

Understanding, Knowledge, Teachers

“After all, everyone's favorite subject is themselves.”

Neil Strauss book The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists

Source: The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists

“LIVE. If you live, god will live with you. If you refuse to run his risks, he'll retreat to that distant heaven and be merely a subject for philosophical speculation.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

God, Distant

“A discussion should be a genuine attempt to explore a subject rather than a battle between competing egos.”

Edward de Bono (1933) Maltese physician

Source: How To Have A Beautiful Mind

“Whenever you write on a subject that questions the status quo, there are bound to be many who wrestle with the issues”

Ted Dekker (1962) American writer

Source: The Slumber of Christianity: Awakening a Passion for Heaven on Earth

Question

“The Subject has really blue eyes that twinkle when he looks at someone like she's maybe a little bit insane.”

Ally Carter I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Source: I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

“You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged; but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Feeling, Silence

“Cosmology is among the oldest subjects to captivate our species. And it’s no wonder. We’re storytellers, and what could be more grand than the story of creation?”

Brian Greene (1963) American physicist

Source: The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality

“It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Source: Middlemarch

“I did best when I had least truth for my subjects.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

Source: The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose

Truth

“This wasn’t the first time I’d been pulled out of bed for a crucial mission. It was, however, the first time I’d been subjected to such a personal line of questioning.

“Are you a virgin?”

Richelle Mead book The Indigo Spell

Source: The Indigo Spell

Question, Time, Personality

“If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.”

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer

Thinking, Sense

“After all, tragedy didn't discriminate, so everyone was subject to the same whims of fate.”

Jessica Bird book Lover Unbound

Source: Lover Unbound

Fate

“Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

April 18, 1775, p. 258
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol II

Knowledge

“That's one of the central problems of history, isn't it, sir? The question of subjective versus objective interpretation, the fact that we need to know the history of the historian in order to understand the version that is being put in front of us.”

Julian Barnes book The Sense of an Ending

Source: The Sense of an Ending

History, Understanding, Question, Problem

“Give as few orders as possible," his father had told him once long ago. "Once you've given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject.”

Frank Herbert book Dune

Source: Dune

“So please don't think that I am renouncing anything, I am reasonably faithful in my unfaithfulness and though I have changed, I am the same, and what preys on my mind is simply this one question: what am I good for, could I not be of service or use in some way, how can I become more knowledgeable and study some subject or other in depth?”

Vincent Van Gogh book The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

1880s, 1880, Letter to Theo (Cuesmes, July 1880)
Source: The Letters of Vincent van Gogh
Context: So please don't think that I am renouncing anything, I am reasonably faithful in my unfaithfulness and though I have changed, I am the same, and what preys on my mind is simply this one question: what am I good for, could I not be of service or use in some way, how can I become more knowledgeable and study some subject or other in depth? That is what keeps preying on my mind, you see, and then one feels imprisoned by poverty, barred from taking part in this or that project and all sorts of necessities are out of one's reach. As a result one cannot rid oneself of melancholy, one feels emptiness where there might have been friendship and sublime and genuine affection, and one feels dreadful disappointment gnawing at one's spiritual energy, fate seems to stand in the way of affection or one feels a wave of disgust welling up inside. And then one says “How long, my God!”

Unfaithfulness, Faith, Way, Question

“as imperfect human beings, any of us, all of us, are subject at some time or another to make mistakes!”

Brenda Jackson (1953) American writer

Source: Perfect Timing

Time

“Excuse me? You're a lady?"
"I bought a title on the Internet. I own one square inch of Scotland. And you're changing the subject.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Ghost Town

Change

“If a man knows precisely what he can do to you or what epithet he can hurl against you in order to make you lose your temper, your equilibrium, then he can always keep you under subjection.”

Howard Thurman book Jesus and the Disinherited

Source: Jesus and the Disinherited

“Books--oh! no. I am sure we never read the same, or not with the same
feelings."

"I am sorry you think so; but if that be the case, there can at least be
no want of subject. We may compare our different opinions.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Books, Feeling, Thinking, Reading

“If you truly love film, I think the healthiest thing to do is not read books on the subject. I prefer the glossy film magazines with their big colour photos and gossip columns, or the National Enquirer.”

Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director

Such vulgarity is healthy and safe.
Herzog on Herzog (2002)

Love, Books, Photo, Thinking

“The subject says "I see first lots of things which dance — then everything becomes gradually connected."”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

Source: The Lords and the New Creatures: Poems (1969), The Lords: Notes on Vision

Dance

“Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore everybody not greatly in fault themselves to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest.”

Jane Austen book Mansfield Park

Source: Mansfield Park

“I'll not have my grandson subjected to the humiliation of his reading becoming public. We have to cope with this disgrace discreetly -- Grandma Ruth”

Brandon Mull (1974) American fiction writer

Source: Grip of the Shadow Plague

Reading, Grandma

“Art and life are subjective. Not everybody's gonna dig what I dig, but I reserve the right to dig it.”

Whoopi Goldberg (1955) American actress

Life, Art

“It just makes me wonder what subject you blame for talking to me every night.'
I'm still settling on an answer for that one. Probably Chemistry.
Jesus Christ. I can't believe I just wrote that.”

Megan McCafferty (1973) American novelist

Source: Sloppy Firsts

Christ, Night

“Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

“It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Scarlet Letter

Source: The Scarlet Letter (1850), Chapter XXIV: Conclusion
Context: It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in its utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent for the food of his affections and spiritual life upon another; each leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his object.

Love

“Writers do not find subjects; subjects find them.”

Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973) Irish writer

“My affections and wishes are unchanged; but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Silence

“We are all subject to the fates. But we must all act as if we are not,” said the witch, “or die of despair.”

Philip Pullman book Northern Lights

Source: His Dark Materials, The Golden Compass (1995), Ch. 18 : Fog and Ice

Fate, Despair

“Love, our subject:
we've trained it like ivy to our walls.”

Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) American poet, essayist and feminist

Love, Training

“No one can become really educated without having pursued some study in which he took no interest- for it is a part of education to learn to interest ourselves in subjects for which we have no aptitude.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Source: Quoted in Herbert Howarth, Notes on Some Figures behind T. S. Eliot (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1964), p. 89

Education, Study, Learning, Parting

“Pain is truth; all else is subject to doubt.”

J.M. Coetzee book Waiting for the Barbarians

Source: Waiting for the Barbarians

Pain, Truth

“An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject, and how to avoid them.”

Werner Heisenberg book The Part and The Whole

Ein Fachmann ist ein Mann, der einige der gröbsten Fehler kennt, die man in dem betreffenden Fach machen kann, und der sie deshalb zu vermeiden versteht.
Der Teil und das Ganze. Gespräche im Umkreis der Atomphysik (1969); also in "Kein Chaos, aus dem nicht wieder Ordnung würde", Die Zeit No. 34 (22 August 1969); as translated in Physics and Beyond : Encounters and Conversation (1971)