Quotes about surroundings
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“I wish to confound all these people, to create a work of art of a supernatural realism and of a spiritualist naturalism. I wish to prove… that nothing is explained in the mysteries which surround us.”

Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848–1907) French novelist and art critic

People, Art, Nature

“If you want to be surrounded by Souls, become identified with your Soul.
It takes one to know one!”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

Soul

“It was good to be here with Jem and Cecily an Charlotte, to be surrounded by their affection, but without her there would always be something missing, a Tessa-shaped part chiseled out of his heart that he could never get back.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Heart, Parting

“Like it or not, we either add to the darkness of indifference and out-and-out evil which surrounds us or we light a candle to see by.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Light, Evil, Indifference

“Why should we think upon things that are lovely Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Love, Life, Soul, Thinking

“The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.”

B.F. Skinner (1904–1990) American behaviorist

Contingencies of Reinforcement: A Theoretical Analysis (1969).
Source: Contingencies Of Reinforcement: A Theoretical Analysis

Men, Question, Thinking

“Rose and Dimitri moved almost as one entity, like a matched pair of wolfes or lions, both wary and deadly as they studied their surroundings, taking no detail or person for granted.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Adrian's Lost Chapter

Study, Wolf, Personality

“It is true that I miss intelligent companionship, but there are so few with whom I can share the things that mean so much to me that I have learned to contain myself. It is enough that I am surrounded with beauty…”

Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild

Source: Into the Wild

Beauty, Intelligence, Learning

“We live in a pretty apathetic age, yet we’re surrounded by an enormous amount of information about other people. If you feel like it, you can easily gather that information about them. Having said that, we still hardly know anything about people.”

Haruki Murakami book Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

People, Age, Feeling

“But his dreams were as gigantic as his surroundings were small.”

Thomas Hardy book Jude the Obscure

Source: Jude the Obscure

Dreams

“I was born inside the movie of my life. The visuals were before me, the audio surrounded me, the plot unfolded inevitably but not necessarily. I don't remember how I got into the movie, but it continues to entertain me.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Source: Life Itself

Life

“It is not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers without understanding the hidden agendas of the message and the myths that surround it”

John Pilger (1939) Australian journalist

Source: John Pilger, 'Hidden Agendas', 1998

Understanding

“A halo surrounded the grim reaper nun, Sister Maria. (By the way-I like this human idea of the grim reaper. I like the scythe. It amuses me.)”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Way, Idea, Sister

“Then he left her there, standing alone, surrounded by word ghosts; things she could have said.”

Kristin Hannah (1960) American writer

Source: Firefly Lane

“Most people think that shadows follow, precede or surround beings or objects. The truth is that they also surround words, ideas, desires, deeds, impulses and memories.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

People, Truth, Idea, Thinking

“In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends imprisoned by an enchanter in paper and leathern boxes.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Box

“Fragile creatures of a small blue planet, surrounded by light years of silent space.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Written on the Body

Light

“The values of the world we inhabit and the people we surround ourselves with have a profound effect on who we are.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: Outliers: The Story of Success

People, World

“What are friends for? They are the ultimate reflection of yourself. Always surround yourself with people who inspire you and return the favor by giving them the best of you.”

Jenny McCarthy (1972) American model, comedian, actress, author, activist, and game show host

Source: Love, Lust & Faking It: The Naked Truth About Sex, Lies, and True Romance

People

“It felt good to be surrounded by books, by all this solid knowledge, by these objects that could be ripped page by page but couldn't be torn if the pages all held together.”

David Levithan book Wide Awake

Source: Wide Awake

Books, Knowledge

“Some things take so long
But how do I explain
When not too many people
Can see we're all the same
And because of all their tears
Your eyes can't hope to see
The beauty that surrounds them
Now, isn't it a pity”

George Harrison (1943–2001) British musician, former member of the Beatles

People, Beauty, Hope, Tear

“I will accept the rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966)

“I will no longer wound myself with the thoughts and questions that have surrounded me like thorns: that is a penance You do not ask of me.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Source: The Sign of Jonas

Question

“My parents kept things real. I had no idea they were famous. In fact, it didn’t hit me until one day when I was riding in the car with my father in Ann Arbor, Michigan—I was maybe 8 and could barely see above the dashboard—and we stopped at a crosswalk. Suddenly we were surrounded by people who recognized my dad and were really thrilled to see him. I remember looking at this man I thought I knew so well and thinking, “Who are you?””

Mark Harmon (1951) actor from the United States

TV Insider interview (2017)

People, Cars, Idea, Thinking

“Buddhas bear the same relation to sentient beings as water does to ice. Ice, like stone or brick, cannot flow. But when it melts it flows freely in conformity with its surroundings. So long as one remains in a state of delusion he is like ice. Upon realization he becomes as exquisitely free as water. And remember, there is no ice which does not return to water. So you will understand there is no difference between ordinary beings and Buddhas except for one thing - delusion. When it is dissolved they are identical.”

Bassui Tokushō (1327–1387) Japanese monk

Source: Letter to the abbess of Shinryu-ji https://sites.google.com/site/esabsnichtenglisch/bassui-tokusho-the-letters

Understanding, Water

“I have been fortunate enough to lead.... an uneventful life. Only on very rare occasions have I ever left Bologna, my native city, and the surrounding province of Emilia. Only twice, for instance, have I been abroad... Besides, I speak only my native language, as you see, and read only Italian periodicals... When I was in my early twenties, my highest ambition was to go abroad study art in Paris.... the material difficulties involved were too great, and I was obliged to remain in Italy. Later I had too many responsibilities, with my teaching and my family [his sisters he lived with] and never managed to go abroad.”

Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964) Italian painter

Source: 1945 - 1964, Interview, 1960, p. 106

Life, Family, Art, Sister

“I am a weary heart surrounded by life's frothy ocean.</ref”

Jibanananda Das (1899–1954) Bengali poet, writer, novelist and essayist

Life, Heart

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

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

Star, Mathematics, Problem, Light

“For an hour Rosamond paced up and down the deck reveling in the breezy motion of the boat, the delicious sense of freedom which possessed her, the atmosphere of romance which surrounded her. Tempest lounged beside her, watching her beautiful face, listening to her happy voice, and enjoying her innocent companionship with the relish of a man eager for novelty and skillful in the art of playing on that delicate instrument, a woman's heart.”

Louisa May Alcott A Long Fatal Love Chase

A Long Fatal Love Chase (1866)

Beauty, Art, Sense, Freedom

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

Robert J. Gordon (1940) American economist

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

Books, Behavior, Business, Study

“It was not the kind of surroundings in which any one with free will — if such a man existed — would have chosen to await death.”

Graham Greene book The Honorary Consul

The Honorary Consul (1973)

Death

“There is nothing supernatural about the process of self-organization to states of higher entropy; it is a general property of systems, regardless of their materials and origin. It does not violate the Second Law of thermodynamics since the decrease in entropy within an open system is always offset by the increase of entropy in its surroundings.”

Ervin László (1932) Hungarian musician and philosopher

Source: Introduction to Systems Philosophy (1972), p. 44.

Law

“The State is at the centre and the society surrounds it. Disturbances of society go in a broad spectrum from more disturbance of the serenity of life to jeopardy of the State. The acts become graver (and graver) as we journey from the peripheral of the largest circle towards the centre. In this journey we travel first through public tranquility, then through public order and lastly to the security of the State.”

Mohammad Hidayatullah (1905–1992) 11th Chief Justice of India

In one of his judgements.
Full Court Reference in Memory of The Late Justice M. Hidayatullah

Life, Travel

“One might almost say that the plant is the framework, the foundation of the animal, and that to form the animal it sufficed to cover this foundation with a system of organs fitted to establish relations consists forms with the world outside. It follows of the succession substance of the animal form two quite distinct classes. One class in a continual into its own assimilation molecules that the functions and of excretion; through these functions the animal incessantly transsurrounding bodies, later to reject these molecules when they have become heterogeneous to it. Through this first class of functions the animal exists only within itself; through the other class it exists outside; it is an inhabitant of the world, and not, like the plant, of the place which saw its birth. The animal feels and perceives its surroundings, reflects its sensations, moves of its own will under their influence, and, as a rule, can communicate by its voice its desires and its fears, its pleasures or its pains. I call organic life the sum of the functions of the former class, for all organised creatures, plants or animals, possess them to a more or less marked degree, and organised structure is the sole condition necessary to their exercise. The combined functions of the second class form the ' animal' life named because it is the exclusive attribute of the animal kingdom.”

Marie François Xavier Bichat (1771–1802) French anatomist and physiologist

Original: (fr) On dirait que le végétal est l'ébauche, le canevas de l'animal, et que, pour former ce dernier, il n'a fallu que revêtir ce canevas d'un appareil d'organes extérieurs, propres à établir des relations. Il résulte de là que les fonctions de l'animal forment deux classes très-distinctes. Les unes se composent d'une succession habituelle d'assimilation et d'excrétion ; par elles il transforme sans cesse en sa propre substance les molécules des corps voisins, et rejette ensuite ces molécules, lorsqu'elles lui sont devenues hétérogènes. Il ne vit qu'en lui, par cette classe de fonctions ; par l'autre il existe hors de lui : il est l'habitant du monde, et non, comme le végétal, du lieu qui le vit naître. Il sent et aperçoit ce qui l'entoure, réfléchit ses sensations, se meut volontairement d'après leur influenc, et le plus souvent peut communiquer par la voix, ses désirs et ses craintes, ses plaisirs ou ses peines. J'appelle vie organique l'ensemble des fonctions de la première classe, parce que tous les êtres organisés, végétaux ou animaux, en jouissent à un degré plus ou moins marqué, et que la texture organique est la seule condition nécessaire à son exercice. Les fonctions réunies de la seconde classe forment la vie animale, ainsi nommée, parce qu'elle est l'attribut exclusif du règne animal. Recherches Physiologiques sur la Vie et la Mort (1800) Translation: [Russell, E. S., Form and Function: A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology, 1916, London, 28,

https://archive.org/details/formfunctioncont00russ/page/n5/mode/2up]

Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Xavier Bichat / Quotes

Animals, Birth, World, Pain

“When I was a small child and adults asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always beamed and said, ‘A vegetarian’. And that’s exactly what I became. Despite growing up with parents who lived on meals of meat and two veg, eating animals never made sense to me. … I grew up surrounded by dogs and cats and couldn’t understand why we protected these animals, played with them, encouraged them to sleep in our beds, and called them ‘pets’ while labelling other equally interesting, cuddly, and sentient animals ‘dinner’.”

Sadie Frost (1965) English actress and producer

“Sadie Frost opens up about how vegetarianism changed her life”, in Marie Claire (19 May 2017) http://www.marieclaire.co.uk/life/food-drink/sadie-frost-vegetarian-507329#RikeLQmB184kEcJP.99.

Dogs, Cats, Understanding, Parent

“When the Nobel award was announced I saw it as a personal triumph, an achievement for me and my collaborators -- a recognition for a very remarkable discovery, for reaching the goal I had pursued for 7 years. But when I sat in that crowded hall and I saw the sea of western faces surrounding me, and I, the only Indian, in my turban and closed coat, it dawned on me that I was really representing my people and my country. I felt truly humble when I received the Prize from King Gustav; it was a moment of great emotion but I could restrain myself.”

C. V. Raman (1888–1970) Indian physicist

On the occasion of the Noble Prize award presented to him in 1930 by King Gustova in Stokholm Raman observed Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman:A Legend of Modern Indian Science, 22 November 2013, Official Government of India's website Vigyan Prasar http://www.vigyanprasar.gov.in/scientists/cvraman/raman1.htm,

People, Personality, Sea, Country

“Anjali: Oh, wow. I am tripping out that I actually get to work here! Being constantly surrounded by books! Bringing ideas, poems, and manifestoes to the world! How can you stand it?!
Jezanna: That reminds me, Lois. The lube shipment just came in.”

Alison Bechdel book Dykes to Watch Out For

#252, "The Trouble with Sidney" (1996), collected in Hot, Throbbing DTWOF (1997).
Dykes to Watch Out For

Books, World, Idea

“I never believed, as many Marxists professed to do, that normative principles were irrelevant to the socialist movement, that, since the movement was of oppressed people fighting for their own liberation, there was no room or need for specifically moral inspiration in it. I thought no such thing partly for the plain reason that I observed enormous selfless dedication among the active communists who surrounded me in my childhood, and partly for the more sophisticated reason that the self-interest of any oppressed producer would tell him to stay at home, rather than to risk his neck in a revolution whose success or failure would be anyhow unaffected by his participation in it. Revolutionary workers and, a fortiori, bourgeois fellow-travellers without a particular material interest in socialism, must perforce be morally inspired.”

Gerald Cohen (1941–2009) Canadian philosopher

G. A. Cohen, Self-ownership, Freedom, and Equality https://books.google.com/books?id=oeUQjOLNY-wC&pg=PA3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 3

People, Travel, Home, Failure

“What matters is that religion should sway our motives, sustain our principles, surround and bathe our spirits like a secret atmosphere as we go about our work…Religion, as we are all agreed, is not merely an affair of Christians in churches; it is an affair of Christians in politics, in diplomacy, in trade, in industry, in school, in sport. I think the popular judgment has accepted that as axiomatic.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the annual assembly of the Congregational Union, London (12 May 1931), published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), pp. 80-81.
1931

Secret, School, Religion, Motivation

“(DVD introduction) Well, welcome to your very own DVD of me, DVB, and ‘Mind Control’. If you weren’t expecting me and thought you were buying Reginald Perrin, then press eject now before you begin vomiting. Otherwise, please, please ensure that you are sitting in an extreme level of comfort, preferably in pre-worn slippers and, I trust, with your extended family around you. If you have seen the film ‘Signs’ and would like to wear the pointy tin foil hats now would be a good time to put them on you can’t be too careful. Well, pphhh, goodness me, er, it’s been a meteoric rise over these last years. The money and sex are exhausting and I have you the viewer to thank. Thanks. We’ve put together some of the pieces from the specials and series in glistening digital format, each pixel hand picked and gently polished and brought to you in wide-sound, surround-screen enjoyment. I hope you enjoy watching them as much as I’ll enjoy the royalties from this, which is enormously. If you don’t like it and HMV won’t take it back because you’ve got sticky all over it then the disc makes an excellent beer coaster or wheels for a space truck or can be immense fun just putting it on your finger and [waggling it], like that. But I hope you do like it. When I first started developing these techniques I had no idea that they were going to prove at all popular and for all my nancing about and staring I’m actually really excited to have a DVD out and can’t wait to go and find it in Discount Books & Puzzles next to the Dizzie Gillespie CD box sets and disappointing erotica. I hope you like it and if you do, please go and buy another one.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Mind Control (1999–2000) or Inside Your Mind on DVD

Money, Books, Family, Hope

“Responsible human beings must be concerned about our surroundings and what we will pass on to future generations. However, to use climate change as an excuse not to develop our God-given resources makes little sense.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

"CARSON: Expanding our energy resources serves peace" http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/mar/25/carson-energys-role-in-the-path-to-peace/, The Washington Times (March 25, 2014)

God, Sense, Change, Future

“I was surrounded by dance, music and religious chants, so it was that kind of a mood. Our family was very culturally-minded, especially my grandmother. She was also quite the disciplinarian. She made sure I practiced daily for hours.”

Vyjayanthimala (1936) Indian actress, politician & dancer

In "There's no slowing down for Vyjayanthimala".

Family, Music, Mood, Dance

“He will always see the most beauty whose affections are the warmest and most exercised, whose imagination is the most powerful, and who has most accustomed himself to attend to the objects by which he is surrounded.”

Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey (1773–1850) British politician

Review of Archibald Alison's Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste, in the Edinburgh Review (May 1811)

Beauty, Exercises, Imagination

“Muhammad ibn Tughlaq “led forth his army to ravage Hindostan. He laid the country waste from Kanauj to Dalmau [on the Ganges, in the Rai Baréli District, Oudh], and every person that fell into his hands he slew. Many of the inhabitants fled and took refuge in the jungles, but the Sultan had the jungles surrounded, and every individual that was captured was killed.””

Muhammad bin Tughluq (1290–1351) Turkic Sultan of Delhi

Vincent Arthur Smith, The Oxford History of India: From the Earliest Times to the End of 1911 (Clarendon Press, 1920), 241-2. as quoted in Spencer, Robert (2018). The history of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS.

Personality, Country

“Lamarck, after having first studied botany with success, had then turned his attention to conchology, and soon became aware that in the newer (or tertiary) strata of the earth's crust there were a multitude of fossil species of shells… He also observed that other shells were so nearly allied to living forms, that it was difficult not to suspect that they had been connected by a common bond of descent. He therefore proposed that the element of time should enter into the definition of a species, and that it should run thus: 'A species consists of individuals all resembling each other, and reproducing their like by generation, so long as the surrounding conditions do not undergo changes sufficient to cause their habits, characters, and forms to vary. He came at last to the conclusion, that none of the animals and plants now existing were primordial creations, but were all derived from pre-existing forms, which, after they may have gone on for indefinite ages reproducing their like, had, at length, by the influence of alterations in climate and in the animate world, been made to vary gradually, and adapt themselves to new circumstances, some of them deviating, in the course of ages, so far from their original type as to have claims to be regarded as new species.”

Charles Lyell (1797–1875) British lawyer and geologist

Source: The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863), Ch.20, p. 389-390

Age, World, Study, Change

“Use art, be creative. No more war. No more children dying. A pawn that does not move in chess upsets the game. I know there is love in the world still and that is what I wish to surround myself with. Sacrifice your time and energy into something positive instead of the negative and you will see that change around you.”

Lorin Morgan-Richards (1975) American poet, cartoonist, and children's writer

Speaking at the Get Shamrocked Irish Festival (19 September 2014).

Love, War, Children, World

“Sadly, it reminds me of World War II, when German fascist forces surrounded our cities, like Leningrad, and shelled population centres and their residents.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

On the Ukrainian army's siege of pro-Russian rebel strongholds in Donetsk and Luhansk, 29 August 2014, http://www.wsj.com/articles/putin-lashes-out-at-ukraine-over-failure-of-talks-1409312151, The Wall Street Journal On Ukraine

War, World

““…Mas‘ud hunted through the country around Bahraich, and whenever he passed by the idol temple of Suraj-kund, he was wont to say that he wanted that piece of ground for a dwelling-place. This Suraj-kund was a sacred shrine of all the unbelievers of India. They had carved an image of the sun in stone on the banks of the tank there. This image they called Balarukh, and through its fame Bahraich had attained its flourishing condition. When there was an eclipse of the sun, the unbelievers would come from east and west to worship it, and every Sunday the heathen of Bahraich and its environs, male and female, used to assemble in thousands to rub their heads under that stone, and do it reverence as an object of peculiar sanctity. Mas‘ud was distressed at this idolatry, and often said that, with God’s will and assistance, he would destroy that mine of unbelief, and set up a chamber for the worship of the Nourisher of the Universe in its place, rooting out unbelief from those parts…
“Meanwhile, the Rai Sahar Deo and Har Deo, with several other chiefs, who had kept their troops in reserve, seeing that the army of Islam was reduced to nothing, unitedly attacked the body-guard of the Prince. The few forces that remained to that loved one of the Lord of the Universe were ranged round him in the garden. The unbelievers, surrounding them in dense numbers, showered arrows upon them. It was then, on Sunday, the 14th of the month Rajab, in the aforesaid year 424 (14th June, 1033) as the time of evening prayer came on, that a chance arrow pierced the main artery in the arm of the Prince of the Faithful…”

Ghazi Saiyyad Salar Masud (1014) semi-legendary Muslim figure from India

Awadh (Uttar Pradesh), Mir‘at-i-Mas‘udi in Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own historians, Vol. II. p. 524-547

Love, God, Faith, Universe

“I cannot give a stronger proof of the perils which I think surrounds us, than to say that I shall feel it my duty to stop the wheels of Government if I can, in a way which can only be justified by an extraordinary crisis…I do not mean to threaten outbreaks—that the starving masses will come and pull down your mansions; but I say that you are drifting on to confusion without rudder or compass. It is my firm belief that within six months we shall have populous districts in the north in a state of social dissolution. You may talk of repressing the people by the military, but what military force would be equal to such an emergency? …I do not believe that the people will break out unless they are absolutely deprived of food; if you are not prepared with a remedy, they will be justified in taking food for themselves and their families…Is it not important for Members for manufacturing districts on both sides to consider what they are about? We are going down to our several residences to face this miserable state of things, and selfishness, and a mere instinctive love of life ought to make us cautious. Others may visit the continent, or take shelter in rural districts, but the peril will ere long reach them even there. Will you, then, do what we require, or will you compel us to do it ourselves? This is the question you must answer.”

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

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1842/jul/08/distress-of-the-country in the House of Commons (8 July 1842) against the Corn Laws. 1840s

Love, Life, People, Family

“Many children who grow up in our cities are surrounded by the artifacts of science but have good reason to see them as belonging to "the others"; in many cases they are perceived as belonging to the social enemy.”

Seymour Papert book Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas

Introduction
Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas (1980)

Children, Science

“The classical worldview was atomistic and individualistic; it viewed objects as separate from their environments and people as separate from each other and from their surroundings. The systems view perceives connections and communications between people, and between people and nature, and emphasizes community and integrity in both the natural and the human world.”

Ervin László (1932) Hungarian musician and philosopher

Source: The systems view of the world (1996), p. 11.

People, World, Communication, Nature

“Gently rising hills block the view into the distance; line the wishes and desires of the children, who enjoy the blissful moments of the present without wanting to know what lies beyond. Bushes in bloom, nourishing herbs, and sweet-smelling flowers surround the quiet clear stream in which the pure blue of the cloudless sky is reflected like the glorious image of God in the souls of the children... There is no stone to be seen here, no withered branch, no fallen leaves. The whole of nature breathes, peace, joy, innocence and life.”

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) Swedish painter

Quote from Friedrich's Diary entry, written Aug. 1803 at Loschwitz; as cited in Religious Symbolism in Caspar David Friedrich, by Colin J. Bailey https://www.escholar.manchester.ac.uk/api/datastream?publicationPid=uk-ac-man-scw:1m2225&datastreamId=POST-PEER-REVIEW-PUBLISHERS-DOCUMENT.PDF, paper; Oct. 1988 - Edinburgh College of Art, pp. 11-12 Friedrich is describing here his first composition of the painting 'Spring', 1803 (a later version he painted in 1808, viewed and described then by Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert) 1794 - 1840

Life, God, Children, Peace

“Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing, where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay everything open?”

Jane Austen book Northanger Abbey

Northanger Abbey (1817)
Works, Northanger Abbey

Country

“The resources would have to come from that absurd wall project. The city was too big to surround effectively. The project could not be justified. It was a tool for transferring the wealth of the state to a few individuals.”

Glen Cook Dreams of Steel

Source: Dreams of Steel (1990), Chapter 29 (p. 332)

Wealth

“I absolutely love Bela Lugosi's Count. One thing that always interesting to bear in mind in the great history of Dracula is that, I think almost without exception the film's release has always been surrounded by controversy. Bela Lugosi's Count Dracula at the time was regarded as essentially a kind of B-movie piece of junk. Whereas now, I think it has real luster and appeal to people. I looked at Bella's Count again because Steve was interested in pursuing a sense of the old Universal films, I thought it was kind of good to do that.”

Richard Roxburgh (1962) Australian actor

An Iinterview With Dracula and His Brides http://www.ign.com/articles/2004/05/05/an-interview-with-dracula-and-his-brides (May 5, 2004)

Love, People, History, Thinking

“Do the identifications with fictions, the inner, tidal motions of pathos and libido which the novel, the film, the painting, the symphony unleash within us somehow immunize us against the humbler, less formed, but actual claims of suffering and of need in our surroundings? Does the cry in the tragic play muffle, even blot out, the cry in the street?”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Source: Real Presences (1989), III: Presences, Ch. 1 (p. 144).

Suffering, Painting, Cry

“The artist lives only day by day, and is the recipient of the things that surround him; he transposes sensations from outside, according to what the fate reserves him, but transforms them relentlessly and tenaciously, in a manner determined by him alone.”

Odilon Redon (1840–1916) French painter

in Confidences of an artist (1894) published posthumously in Paris in 1922 as part of the book of memoirs To himself; as quoted by Paul Westheim in Confessions of Artists - Letters, Memoirs and Observations of Contemporary Artists, Propyläen Publishing House, Berlin, 1925: p. 82

Fate

“The sun was a molten coin burning a circle in the low-hanging overcast, surrounded by a fairy-ring of moisture.”

Stephen King book It

It (1986)

Sun

“In thinking about the costs of this war, and thinking about renewing it, we have to reconsider what it has done to America. It has turned the U. S. military into a force at ease with abuse of captives and civilians, occupying a Muslim nation. Some of this is surely due to the sheer hell of fighting an enemy you cannot see, surrounded by people you do not understand or trust, and being killed randomly in urban or desert insurgency conditions where friend and foe are close to indistinguishable, and where your buddies are killed on a regular basis by faceless cowards. You can certainly understand how soldiers grow completely numb in the face of abuse in those circumstances. Every "hajji" can seem like the enemy after a while. It requires men and women of almost saintly capabilities to keep their moral bearings among terrorists who massacre scores of innocents as a religious duty, among people whose differences are impossible for young troops to figure out in split-seconds. In such conditions, and as a consequences of grotesque under-manning, the breakdown in ethical discipline is no big surprise. But that doesn't make it any the less of a big deal.”

Andrew Sullivan (1963) Journalist, writer, blogger

"Re-Thinking The War II" http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/05/rethinking_the__5.html, The Daily Dish (8 May 2007)

Women, Men, War, People

“Grief like anything else – like a stone – is content only; God gives us the form, that serenity, purity and self-possession with which to surround and live grief.”

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

Hymn

God

“I was twenty-one when I first went to New York, and I was so fascinated by the architecture and glad that something like that existed and that I was able to have this visual experience that I thought to myself, this is where I want to live. To me, New York had a direct link with sculpture – that must have been it. Although at twenty-one I wasn't a sculptress yet, I was just starting my studies and I didn't even know what I wanted to do... New York is a city of incredible stability and solidity. And then the height of the buildings – that impressed me, like the people who always seemed a bit happier than the Germans in the street. When I came back to Germany it seemed to me that it wasn't particularly nice, my visual surroundings – it was all so dreary. And modernism hardly features at all in Germany. Okay, there was Bauhaus and there was this and that, but modernism is practically non-existent in architecture.”

Isa Genzken (1948) German sculptor

2001 - 2010, Isa Genzken in conversation with Wolfgang Tillmans' (2003)

People, Study

“Lately I've been lookin' through the windows of my soul
And I can see there's not much left to hold
Just an empty space surrounded by the pieces of
A badly broken heart that's forgotten how to love.”

Toby Keith (1961) American country music singer and actor

A Woman's Touch, written with Wayne Perry.
Song lyrics, Blue Moon (1996)

Love, Soul, Heart

“[Most legislation] will have the effect of surrounding the industry which it touches with precautions and investigations, inspections and regulations, in which it will be slowly enveloped and stifled.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Statement to the Associated Chambers of Commerce (March 1891)
1890s

“The great genius does not let his work be determined by the concrete finite conditions that surround him, whilst it is from these that the work of the statesman takes its direction and its termination. … It is the genius in reality and not the other who is the creator of history, for it is only the genius who is outside and unconditioned by history.”

Otto Weininger book Sex and Character

Source: Sex and Character (1903), p. 139.

History, Reality

“A pure elastic fluid is one the constituent particles of which are all alike, or in no way distinguishable. Steam, or aqueous vapour, hydrogenous gas, oxygenous gas… and several others are of this kind. …Whatever …may be the shape or figure of the solid atom abstractedly, when surrounded by such an atmosphere it must be globular; but as all the globules in any small given volume are subject to the same pressure, they must be equal in bulk, and will therefore be arranged in horizontal strata, like a pile of shot.”

John Dalton book A New System of Chemical Philosophy

Source: A New System of Chemical Philosophy (1808), Ch. II. On the Constitution of Bodies, Sect. 1. On the Constitution of Pure Elastic Fluids

Way

“Many nights I stood on the bridge — and in the middle alone — lost — a defenseless prey to the surrounding swarming darkness — crushed by the mountainous black impenetrability of the skyscrapers — here and there lights resembling suspended falls of astral bodies or fantastic splendors of remote rites — shaken by the underground tumult of the trains in perpetual motion, like blood in the arteries—at times, ringing as alarm in a tempest, the shrill sulphurous voice of the trolley wires — now and then strange moanings of appeal from tugboats, guessed more than seen, through the infernal recesses below — I felt deeply moved, as if on the threshold of a new religion or in the presence of a new DIVINITY.”

Joseph Stella (1877–1946) American artist

Source: "The Brooklyn Bridge (A page of my life)," 1929, p. 88; Cited in: Beth Venn, Adam D. Weinberg. Frames of Reference: Looking at American Art, 1900-1950 : Works from the Whitney Museum of American Art. University of California Press, 1999. p. 123

Religion, Mountain, Light, Time

“A boy is born in hard time Mississippi,
Surrounded by four walls that ain't so pretty,
His parents give him love and affection,
To keep him strong, moving in the right direction,
Living just enough, just enough for the city.”

Stevie Wonder (1950) American musician

Living For The City
Song lyrics, Innervisions (1973)

Love, Boy, Parent, Strong

“And in this, that philosophy begins in wonder [Plato, Theaetetus 155d], lies the, so to speak, non-bourgeois character of philosophy; for to feel astonishment and wonder is something non-bourgeois (if we can be allowed, for a moment, to use this all-too-easy terminology). For what does it mean to become bourgeois in the intellectual sense? More than anything else, it means that someone takes one's immediate surroundings (the world determined by the immediate purposes of life) so "tightly" and "densely," as if bearing an ultimate value, that the things of experience no longer become transparent. The greater, deeper, more real, and (at first) invisible world of essences is no longer even suspected to exist; the "wonder" is no longer there, it has no place to come from; the human being can no longer feel wonder. The commonplace mind, rendered deaf-mute, finds everything self-explanatory. But what really is self-explanatory? Is it self-explanatory, then, that we exist? Is it self-explanatory that there is such a thing as "seeing"? These are questions that someone who is locked into the daily world cannot ask; and that is so because such a person has not succeeded, as anyone whose senses (like a deaf person) are simply not functioning — has not managed even for once to forget the immediate needs of life, whereas the one who experiences wonder is one who, astounded by the deeper aspect of the world, cannot hear the immediate demands of life — if even for a moment, that moment when he gazes on the astounding vision of the world.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), The Philosophical Act, pp. 101–102

Life, World, Feeling, Question

“Pearl Harbor is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how on December 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle. Its centerpiece is 40 minutes of redundant special effects, surrounded by a love story of stunning banality. The film has been directed without grace, vision, or originality, and although you may walk out quoting lines of dialog, it will not be because you admire them.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/pearl-harbor-2001 of Pearl Harbor (25 May 2001) Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

Love, Quotes

“I think there is a predisposition among Christians that Hollywood is anti-Jesus or anti-Christianity. I was warned I'd have to fight to maintain the freedom to express my beliefs. It's an unfair stereotype, and so far that's been the farthest from the truth. While everyone I work with may not share my beliefs, I have been surrounded by nothing but support.”

Clay Aiken (1978) singer-songwriter, actor, record producer

—Clay Aiken - Today's Christian Magazine On Christianity Source: Today's Christian, November/December 2005 http://www.christianitytoday.com/tc/2005/006/7.19.html retrieved April 16, 2006

Truth, Support, Thinking, Freedom

“From the paramecium to the human race, all life forms are meticulously organized, sophisticated aggregates of evolving microbial life. Far from leaving microorganisms behind on an evolutionary "ladder," we are both surrounded by them and composed of them. Having survived in an unbroken line from the beginnings of life, all organisms today are equally evolved.”

Lynn Margulis (1938–2011) American evolutionary biologist

Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Evolution from Our Microbial Ancestors (1986)

Life

“Pick out any trait you want in your child… By surrounding this child with sunshine from the sky and your own heart, by giving the closest communion with nature, by feeding this child well-balanced, nutritious food, by giving it all that is implied in healthful environmental influences, and by doing all in love, you can thus cultivate in the child and fix there for all its life all of these traits.”

Luther Burbank (1849–1926) American botanist, horticulturist and pioneer in agricultural science

p, 125
The Training of the Human Plant (1907)

Love, Life, Health, Food

“The chief marched out to meet his enemy, and fought for three days with the Musulmans. On the fourth he fled, and sought to get back into the city; but the Musulmans reached the gate before the fugitives, overpowered them, and disarmed them. A dreadful slaughter ensued, the women were dishonoured, and the property seized. When Bahira saw this destruction, he fled with some trusty followers to the tops of the mountains. Mahmud sent a force in pursuit, which overtook and surrounded the party, and put all the chiefs to the sword. Bahira saw that no hope was left, so he drew a dagger and killed himself. Mahmud remained in Bhdtia until he had settled its affairs, and drawn up rules for its governance. He then returned towards Ghazna, having appointed a representative at Bhatia to instruct the people who had become Muhammadans.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

About the conquest of Bhatia. Ibn Asir:Kamilu-T Tawarikh, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. p. 248 Also quoted (in part) in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.
Quotes from The History of India as told by its own Historians

Women, People, Hope, Mountain

“Happy the man with a book-length grievance — and rare. Each of these books contains one possible magazine article surrounded by more padding than an offensive lineman: every little indignity that ever happened to them, and every two-bit feud, magnified to a Horrible Example to justify a larger printing.”

Wilfrid Sheed (1930–2011) English-American novelist and essayist

"Unnecessary Roughness" (1971), p. 150
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)

Books, Happiness

“Some may wish to argue that Hayek was simply born with a sort of natural pessimism or cynicism, and that this generated his long standing belief in the inherent limitations that humans face when they try to intervene in social phenomena. Perhaps. But it is also possible that this view was the product of his having come of age during the final collapse of an already broken-down empire, of having experienced the multiple forms of disaster that surrounded postwar Vienna and enveloped interwar central Europe, and of having witnessed the failures of various high-minded social experiments to achieve anything like what their exponents had promised. In bearing witness to so much tragedy Hayek was again very much a part of the larger Austrian tradition. His famed ‘‘epistemic pessimism’’ may well have been another result of that larger experience.”

Bruce Caldwell (economist) (1952) economic historian

"Hayek and the Austrian tradition", in Edward Feser(ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Hayek (2006)

Age, Failure, Nature, Parting

“In the consumer economy taste is not the criterion in the marketing of expensive soft drinks, usability is not the primary criterion in the marketing of home and office appliances. We are surrounded with objects of desire, not objects of use.”

Donald A. Norman book The Design of Everyday Things

Source: The Design of Everyday Things (1988, 2002), Ch. 7, p. 216.

Home, Drink

“In the depths of our crater lake, everything is silent. The volcano's been extinct for ages. Layer upon layer of solitude, like folds of soft mud. The little bit of light that manages to penetrate to the depths lights up the surroundings like the remains of some faint, distant memory. At these depths there's no sign of life. I don't know how long she looks at me -not at me, maybe, but at the spot where I am. Time's rules don't apply here. Time expands, then contracts, all in tune with the stirrings of the heart.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002), Chapter 23, Kafka Temura

Life, Age, Solitude, Light

““You,” said Purity, “have been long enough out of England to pick up some American brag.”
“But surrounded by Americans as I am,” said Cooper, “my brag is like a farthing in a sack of guineas.””

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 5.

“When I was…. in the surroundings of pictures and things of art… I then had a violent passion for them… And I do not repent it, for even now, far from that land, I am often homesick for the land of pictures. Now for more than five years already, I do not know exactly how long, I'm more or less without employment, wandering here and there… But you will ask what is your definite aim? That aim becomes more definite, will stand out slowly and surely, as the rough draft becomes a sketch and the sketch becomes a picture…. my only anxiety is: how can I be of use in the world, cannot I serve some purpose and be of any good, how can I learn more and study profoundly certain subjects?”

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

In his letter to brother Theo, from Cuesmes, Belgium July 1880; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 133) p. 19 1880s, 1880

World, Art, Study, Learning

“Hypothetical: Shipwrecked and eating a penis- …I'll look for something else. We're surrounded by water. Why are we eating knob?”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Podcast Series 3 Episode 3
On Food

Water

“You shouldn't be trapped in the failures of other people, you know? Some of you are so scared of going out, you go hang out with anybody. But you ought to go out there with God, He listens, and listens 24 hours a day. You keep your television on, you surround yourself with friends, but you're scared of God. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom. Never lose your reverence for Him. God is nothing to be joking about, but perfect love casts out fear.”

Rich Mullins (1955–1997) American christian musician

Plymouth, Michigan http://www.kidbrothers.net/words/concert-transcripts/plymouth-michigan-aug1597.html (August 15, 1997) In Concert

Love, Wisdom, God, People

“In order to have any hope of obtaining the initiative of his workmen the manager must give some special incentive to his men beyond that which is given to the average of the trade. This incentive can be given in several different ways, as, for example, the hope of rapid promotion or advancement; higher wages, either in the form of generous piecework prices or of a premium or bonus of some kind for good and rapid work; shorter hours of labor; better surroundings and working conditions than are ordinarily given, etc., and, above all, this special incentive should be accompanied by that personal consideration for, and friendly contact with, his workmen which comes only from a genuine and kindly interest in the welfare of those under him.”

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915) American mechanical engineer and tennis player

Source: Principles of Scientific Management, 1911, p. 87.

Men, Hope, Way, Personality

“I think the verdict that has been given against me is a proof that I am more than ordinary myself, but that the circumstances and the help that is given is more than ordinary, are more than ordinary, and although I consider myself only as others, yet by the will of God, by his Providence, by the circumstances which have surrounded me for fifteen years, I think that I have been called to do something which at least in the North-West nobody has done yet, and in some way I think that to a certain number of people the verdict against me to day is a proof that maybe I am a prophet, maybe Riel is a prophet. He suffers for it.”

Louis Riel (1844–1885) Canadian politician

Address on sentencing (1885)

God, People, Way, Thinking

“Bangladeshi people, given our nature and surroundings, are courageous. The same can be said for our photographers. We have learned to shoot with minimal equipment, broken and archaic cameras and lens.”

Prito Reza (1984) Photographer

People, Courage, Nature, Learning

“Is it a phenomenological theory? Granted that… phenomenology comes from various shapes and sizes, our fundamental postulate does not make the usual phenomenological commitments. We did not say, for example, that one is surrounded only by his perceptions. In fact, we started this discussion by asserting that there is a sense in which all of us are caught up in our circumstances. Nor do we say that each personal world is an island universe. The words 'personal' and 'private' are certainly not synonyms. I think the tree that falls in the primeval forest makes a bang just like any other tree. Moreover. we might sometimes, although at the moment cannot say how, take an interest in the noise that centuries ago nobody heard and eventually makes something scientifically important out of it.”

George Kelly (psychologist) (1905–1967) American psychologist and therapist

Source: The function of interpretation in psychotherapy. 1959, p. 6-7

World, Thinking, Sense, Tree

“The exercise of rights is ennobled by service and mercy and a heart for the weak. Liberty for all does not mean independence from one another. Our nation relies on men and women who look after a neighbor and surround the lost with love. Americans, at our best, value the life we see in one another and must always remember that even the unwanted have worth. And our country must abandon all the habits of racism because we cannot carry the message of freedom and the baggage of bigotry at the same time.”

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

2000s, 2005, Second Inaugural Address (January 2005)

Love, Life, Women, Men

“Gottfried, like any true dictator, liked to surround himself with bland obliging ciphers.”

Robert Silverberg book The Stochastic Man

Source: The Stochastic Man (1975), Chapter 7 (p. 27)

“As young people, we are surrounded by expectations that may have little to do with who we really are, expectations held by people who are not trying to discern our selfhood but to fit us into slots. In families, schools, workplaces, and religious communities, we are trained away from true self toward images of acceptability; under social pressures … our original shape is deformed beyond recognition; and we ourselves, driven by fear, too often betray true self to gain the approval of others.”

Parker Palmer (1939) American theologian

Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (1999)

People, Fear, School, Family

“Until mid 2002, I was a meat eater. I have always instinctively been opposed to cruelty to animals, as all decent and sensible people are, but didn’t know much about how food animals were raised or processed. I assumed humans had always eaten meat because it was natural for us to, and that food animals were raised on farms where they were fairly oblivious to their surroundings and only moderately inconvenienced until their swift and humane execution. Nothing could be further from the truth. Over 95% of animals raised for food are born, live, and die in horribly painful conditions. … Another misconception I had was about the relative intelligence and awareness of farm animals. Since becoming vegan, I’ve met rescued “food” animals now living natural lives outdoors … Cows, pigs and chickens are as smart, friendly and loving, as dogs and cats, and create friendships with other animals and people in much the same ways. Each has its own personality and its own set of likes and dislikes. If you think you’re an animal advocate because you care about saving dogs and cats in city shelters but still eat meat, think again.”

Dan Piraro (1958) cartoonist

"Why I’m Vegan", in his official website Bizarro.com http://bizarro.com/why-im-vegan/

Love, Pain, Friendship, People

“The impure men and women who surrounded me (and particularly the men), did not arouse any of my real feelings; while the natural feeling for life possessed by animals set in vibration everything good in me.”

Franz Marc (1880–1916) German painter

from the front of World War 1.
In a letter to his wife, April 1915; as quoted in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 444
1915 - 1916

Life, Women, Men, War

“On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Scarlet Letter

Source: The Scarlet Letter (1850), Chapter II: The Market-Place

Appearance, Clothes

“O! Lover, Enjoyment on the soft body of a lotus is always risky and inconsistent because its route is always surrounded by thorns.”

Manmohan Acharya (1967–2013) Poet, lyricist

Stanza I
Song of the Bumblebee (2008)

Lovers

“Colour is the place where our brain and the universe meet. That's why colour appears so entirely dramatic, to true painters. Look at Sainte-Victoire there [the hill, which Cézanne painted again and again] How it soars, how imperiously it thirsts for the sun!.. For a long time I was quite unable to paint Sainte-Victoire; I had no idea to go about it because, like others who just look at it, I imagined the shadow to be concave, whereas in fact it's convex, it disperses outward from the center. Instead of accumulating, it evaporates, becomes fluid, bluish, participating in the movements of the surrounding air. Just as over there to the right, on the Pilon du Roi, you can see the contrary effect, the brightness gently rocking to and fro, moist and shimmering. That's the sea.... That's one needs to depict. What one needs to know. That's the bath of experience, so to speak…”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Source: Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900, Cézanne, - a Memoir with Conversations, (1897 - 1906), p. 153, in: 'What he told me – I. The motif'

Imagination, Idea, Universe, Appearance

“Many young women of twenty-six in these days could face such an ordeal, I suppose. I have observed a sort of imitative hardness about the products of the higher education of women today which would carry them through anything, perhaps. I am not prepared to say it is a bad thing in the conditions of feminine life prevailing at present. Mabel, however, is not like that. She is as unlike that as she is unlike the simpering misses that used to surround me as a child. She has plenty of brains; she is full of character; her mind and her tastes are cultivated; but it is all mixed up' — Mr Cupples waved his hands in a vague gesture — 'with ideals of refinement and reservation and womanly mystery. I fear she is not a child of the age.”

Edmund Clerihew Bentley book Trent's Last Case

Source: Trent's Last Case (1912), Chapter III: "Breakfast"

Life, Women, Age, Education

“I am concerned about the secrecy surrounding negotiations for trade treaties, which have excluded key stakeholder groups from the process, including labour unions, environmental protection groups, food-safety movements and health professionals.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

U.N. expert says secret trade deals threaten human rights http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/23/trade-rights-idUSL5N0XK54G20150423?feedType=RSS&feedName=everything&virtualBrandChannel=11563. 2015

Health, Food

“Composition, the aim of which is expression, alters itself according to the surface to be covered. If I take a sheet of paper of given dimensions I will jot down a drawing which will have a necessary relation to its format – I would not repeat this drawing on another sheet of different dimensions, for instance on a rectangular sheet.... a drawing must have a power of expansion which can bring to life the space which surrounds it.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

Source: 1905 - 1910, Notes d'un Peintre' (Notes of a Painter) (1908), p. 410

Life, Drawing

“I am a sensitive artist. Nobody understands me because I am so deep. In my work, I make allusions to books that nobody else has read, music that nobody else has heard, and art that nobody else has seen. I can't help it, because I am so much more intelligent and well-rounded than everyone who surrounds me.”

John S. Hall (1960) Poet, author, singer, lawyer

"Sensitive Artist"
Lyrics, Fluting on the Hump (1987)

Books, Art, Music, Intelligence

“Could this be what people were fighting over, the many possessions that surrounded him? These objects with so much value and so little use? He thought how the sweep of a hand or the lick of a flame and they would be broken and burned. Maybe it was the weak and the fragile and the beautiful that made you the craziest and made you fight the hardest.”

Robert Olmstead (1954) American writer

Coal Black Horse (2007)

People, Beauty, Fight

“For decades the basic message has been, "Dump the leadership, because it lives high on the hog while you toil and starve." That’s the sort of sloganeering that might help undermine a communist state. It won’t work in a far-right, ultra-nationalist state. The pomp that surrounds Kim Jong Un is the whole nation’s pomp, as it were. I have urged American officials who ask me about propaganda to encourage a nationalist approach to it, stressing the North’s disgraceful dependence on China, contrasting the North with an internationally respected South that has really put Korea on the map.I’m not sure this will be enough though. The crucial issue, from a nationalist North Korean’s perspective, is likely to be: Which of the two states is more intent on righting the wrongs foreigners have done to us? Which state wants to unify the peninsula, the nation? And the South all too obviously allows the North to play the heroic role of the sole unifying force. Park Geun-hye made efforts to rectify that neglect but it was too little, too late. And now a very different president is in power.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Interview with Joshua Stanton (August 2017)

Effort, Help, Dependency

“The things that we think we want are often substitutes for what we really want, and the pleasures we seek are less than the joy that they distract us from. From the normal vantage point, it certainly seems that only with discipline can we withstand the temptations that surround us: overeating, drugs, video games, mindless internet surfing, and everything else we consume. These things are undeniably destructive to our own lives and beyond; therefore, it would seem, we cannot always trust desire at all. But when we recognize that these are not really what we desire, our goal becomes not to suppress desire but to identify the true want or need, and to fulfill it. That is no trivial task; it is a profound path of self-realization.”

Charles Eisenstein (1967) American writer

The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible http://charleseisenstein.net/project/the-more-beautiful-world-our-hearts-know-is-possible/ The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible. The Vision and Practice of Interbeing (2013)

Pleasure, Game, Thinking, Joy

Quotes about surroundings page 3

Quotes about surroundings
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