Quotes about tell

page 10

...eu já estava na vigésima parte do livro, triste, quando senti que o livro podia ser escrito. Percebi que só seria capaz de escrevê-lo se o fizesse como se contasse. Não passando para a escrita o chamado discurso oral, porque isso é impossível, mas introduzindo na escrita um me-canismo de aparente prolixidade, aparente desor-ganização do discurso. Digo aparente porque sei o trabalho que me deu fazer de conta que era tudo assim.
Interview in Idéias, no. 107 (15 October 1988), trans. Margaret Jull Costa.

First attributed to Roosevelt on the internet in recent years, there is no evidence he ever said this, as noted in "Teddy Roosevelt on Conservatives vs. Liberals", by Dan Evon at snopes.com (3 June 2016) http://www.snopes.com/teddy-roosevelt-anger-a-liberal-quote and at Teddy Roosevelt once said, “To anger a conservative, lie to him. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth.” (14 June 2016) https://www.truthorfiction.com/teddy-roosevelt-anger-conservative-lie-quote
Misattributed

2016, Memorial Service for Fallen Dallas Police Officers (July 2016)

Scene XVI, The Hesperian Sphere
Festus (1839)

Radio show assertions, reported in "Rush Limbaugh: Here’s way to stop 100% of lies in society" at American Grand Jury (19 January 2011) http://americangrandjury.org/rush-limbaugh-heres-way-to-stop-100-of-lies-in-society

Letter to Judge Lance Ito, requesting clemency for Charles Keating (January 18 1992), as quoted by Christopher Hitchens in The Missionary Position http://books.google.com/books?id=PTgJIjK67rEC&pg=PA11&dq=%22I+think+it+is+very+beautiful+for+the+poor+to+accept+their+lot%22, (Verso, 1995), page 67
1990s

Republican National Convention http://65.126.3.86/reagan/html/reagan08_17_92.shtml (17 August 1992); (statement modeled after Lloyd Bentsen's jibe at Dan Quayle during debate in 1988)
Post-presidency (1989–2004)

Independent on Sunday obituary http://web.archive.org/web/20100522031727/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/bob-monkhouse-jokewriter-to-the-stars-and-the-longreigning-king-of-primetime-comedy-dies-at-75-578058.html

1460a.19
Poetics
Variant: It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

Hush Don't Say Anything to God (1999)
Context: Didn't I tell you
not to be satisfied with the veil of this world?
I am the master illusionist,
it is me, who is the welcoming banner at the gate of your contentment.

New York Times interview (1985)
Context: I don't try to tell the dancers exactly what a dance means before they do it. I can correct it and tell them what they have done after they have done it, and what it means to me. But I don't say, "Be fearful here," "Be angry here," because I think that is intrusion.

"How to Love God" (12 September 1954) http://www.avatarmeherbaba.org/erics/lovegod.html <!-- Also in The Path of Love (1986) -->
General sources
Context: When a person tells others “Be good”, he conveys to his hearers the feeling that he is good and they are not. When he says “Be brave, honest and pure”, he conveys to his hearers the feeling that the speaker himself is all that, while they are cowards, dishonest and unclean.
To love God in the most practical way is to love our fellow beings. If we feel for others in the same way as we feel for our own dear ones, we love God.
If, instead of seeing faults in others we look within ourselves we are loving God.

2016, DNC Address (July 2016)
Context: That’s what Hillary Clinton understands — this fighter, this stateswoman, this mother and grandmother, this public servant, this patriot — that’s the America she’s fighting for.
And that is why I have confidence, as I leave this stage tonight, that the Democratic Party is in good hands. My time in this office, it hasn’t fixed everything. As much as we’ve done, there’s still so much I want to do. But for all the tough lessons I’ve had to learn, for all the places where I’ve fallen short — I’ve told Hillary, and I’ll tell you, what’s picked me back up every single time: It’s been you. The American people.

J'accuse! (1898)
Context: A court martial, under orders, has just dared to acquit a certain Esterhazy, a supreme insult to all truth and justice. And now the image of France is sullied by this filth, and history shall record that it was under your presidency that this crime against society was committed.
As they have dared, so shall I dare. Dare to tell the truth, as I have pledged to tell it, in full, since the normal channels of justice have failed to do so. My duty is to speak out; I do not wish to be an accomplice in this travesty. My nights would otherwise be haunted by the spectre of the innocent man, far away, suffering the most horrible of tortures for a crime he did not commit.

1980s, Second term of office (1985–1989), Farewell Address (1989)
Context: The lesson of all this was, of course, that because we're a great nation, our challenges seem complex. It will always be this way. But as long as we remember our first principles and believe in ourselves, the future will always be ours. And something else we learned: Once you begin a great movement, there's no telling where it will end. We meant to change a nation, and instead, we changed a world.

Japan, The Ambiguous, and Myself (1994)
Context: Under that title Kawabata talked about a unique kind of mysticism which is found not only in Japanese thought but also more widely Oriental thought. By 'unique' I mean here a tendency towards Zen Buddhism. Even as a twentieth-century writer Kawabata depicts his state of mind in terms of the poems written by medieval Zen monks. Most of these poems are concerned with the linguistic impossibility of telling truth. According to such poems words are confined within their closed shells. The readers can not expect that words will ever come out of these poems and get through to us. One can never understand or feel sympathetic towards these Zen poems except by giving oneself up and willingly penetrating into the closed shells of those words.

Pupils at Sais (1799)
Context: What has passed with him since then he does not disclose to us. He tells us that we ourselves, led on by him and our own desire, will discover what has passed with him. Many of us have withdrawn from him. They returned to their parents, and learned trades. Some have been sent out by him, we know not whither; he selected them. Of these, some have been but a short time there, others longer. One was still a child; scarcely was he come, when our Teacher was for passing him any more instruction. This child had large dark eyes with azure ground, his skin shone like lilies, and his locks like light little clouds when it is growing evening. His voice pierced through all our hearts; willingly would we have given him our flowers, stones, pens, all we had. He smiled with an infinite earnestness; and we had a strange delight beside him. One day he will come again, said our Teacher, and then our lessons end. — Along with him he sent one, for whom we had often been sorry. Always sad he looked; he had been long years here; nothing would succeed with him; when we sought crystals or flowers, he seldom found. He saw dimly at a distance; to lay down variegated rows skilfully he had no power. He was so apt to break everything. Yet none had such eagerness, such pleasure in hearing and listening. At last, — it was before that Child came into our circle, — he all at once grew cheerful and expert. One day he had gone out sad; he did not return, and the night came on. We were very anxious for him; suddenly, as the morning dawned, we heard his voice in a neighbouring grove. He was singing a high, joyful song; we were all surprised; the Teacher looked to the East, such a look as I shall never see in him again. The singer soon came forth to us, and brought, with unspeakable blessedness on his face, a simple-looking little stone, of singular shape. The Teacher took it in his hand, and kissed him long; then looked at us with wet eyes, and laid this little stone on an empty space, which lay in the midst of other stones, just where, like radii, many rows of them met together.

Letter to John Jay (15 August 1786) http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/documents/constitution/1784/jay2.html
1780s
Context: If you tell the Legislatures they have violated the treaty of peace and invaded the prerogatives of the confederacy they will laugh in your face. What then is to be done? Things cannot go on in the same train forever. It is much to be feared, as you observe, that the better kind of people being disgusted with the circumstances will have their minds prepared for any revolution whatever. We are apt to run from one extreme into another. To anticipate & prevent disasterous contingencies would be the part of wisdom & patriotism.
What astonishing changes a few years are capable of producing! I am told that even respectable characters speak of a monarchical form of government without horror. From thinking proceeds speaking, thence to acting is often but a single step. But how irrevocable & tremendous! What a triumph for the advocates of despotism to find that we are incapable of governing ourselves, and that systems founded on the basis of equal liberty are merely ideal & falacious! Would to God that wise measures may be taken in time to avert the consequences we have but too much reason to apprehend.
Retired as I am from the world, I frankly acknowledge I cannot feel myself an unconcerned spectator. Yet having happily assisted in bringing the ship into port & having been fairly discharged; it is not my business to embark again on a sea of troubles. Nor could it be expected that my sentiments and opinions would have much weight on the minds of my Countrymen — they have been neglected, tho' given as a last legacy in the most solemn manner. I had then perhaps some claims to public attention. I consider myself as having none at present.

Black Elk Speaks (1961)
Context: They told me I had been sick twelve days, lying like dead all the while, and that Whirlwind Chaser, who was Standing Bear's uncle and a medicine man, had brought me back to life. I knew it was the Grandfathers in the Flaming Rainbow Tepee who had cured me; but I felt afraid to say so. My father gave Whirlwind Chaser the best horse he had for making me well, and many people came to look at me, and there was much talk about the great power of Whirlwind Chaser who had made me well all at once when I was almost the same as dead.
Everybody was glad that I was living; but as I lay there thinking about the wonderful place where I had been and all that I had seen, I was very sad; for it seemed to me that everybody ought to know about it, but I was afraid to tell, because I knew that nobody would believe me, little as I was, for I was only nine years old. Also, as I lay there thinking of my vision, I could see it all again and feel the meaning with a part of me like a strange power glowing in my body; but when the part of me that talks would try to make words for the meaning, it would be like fog and get away from me.
I am sure now that I was then too young to understand it all, and that I only felt it. It was the pictures I remembered and the words that went with them; for nothing I have ever seen with my eyes was so clear and bright as what my vision showed me; and no words that I have ever heard with my ears were like the words I heard. I did not have to remember these things; they have remembered themselves all these years. It was as I grew older that the meanings came clearer and clearer out of the pictures and the words; and even now I know that more was shown to me than I can tell.

Playboy interview (May 1995)
Context: It took most of my life to realize that men are not tyrants or egomaniacs. I had an epiphany in a shopping mall recently that put it all in perspective. I was having a piece of pizza and I saw all these teenage boys running around in the mall. They were wild. I looked at them and saw this desperation. When I was their age I hated those kinds of boys because they were so obnoxious. They are so involved in their status, gaining it, afraid of losing it. I'm glad I don't have to be that age again. So they sat down near me and they didn't notice me. I didn't exist on their radar map. I was thinking, This is great. I was watching. They were full of energy and life. And I suddenly realized, My God, the reason they are so loud, the reason they are so uncontrolled, the reason I hated them at that age is that they bond with each other against women. It was the first time they were able to be away from the control of a woman — their mothers. They were on their own and for this period they're very dangerous. Women have to watch out when they go to fraternity parties, because the men are all trying to up their status among one another and there is all this testosterone. And then some girl will snag them. And that's it. It's over for them. They get married and they're under the control of their wives forever. You hear these women all the time, on, like, Ricki Lake, saying, "You know, I have two children, but actually I have three children" about the husband, and it's true: The husband becomes a child again. Even when men are doing their share, taking out the garbage, doing the mopping, whatever, women are still running the household. They are in control and the men become subordinate again. So that's what the feminists are so worried about? Men who are subordinated by their mothers and then by their wives? Men are looking for maternal solace in women, and that's the nature of heterosexuality. Now you tell me, who really has all the power?

2011, Tucson Memorial Address (January 2011)
Context: Scripture tells us that there is evil in the world, and that terrible things happen for reasons that defy human understanding. In the words of Job, "when I looked for light, then came darkness." Bad things happen, and we must guard against simple explanations in the aftermath.

Vol. I, Ch. 13: Of the King who did according to his will, and magnified himself above every God, and honored Mahuzzims, and regarded not the desire of women
Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John (1733)
Context: Hitherto the principles of the Encratites had been rejected by the Churches; but now being refined by the Monks, and imposed not upon all men, but only upon those who would voluntarily undertake a monastic life, they began to be admired, and to overflow first the Greek Church, and then the Latin also, like a torrent. Eusebius tells us, that Constantine the great had those men in the highest veneration, who dedicated themselves wholly to the divine philosophy; and that he almost venerated the most holy company of Virgins perpetually devoted to God; being certain that the God to whom he had consecrated himself did dwell in their minds. In his time and that of his sons, this profession of a single life was propagated in Egypt by Antony, and in Syria by Hilarion; and spread so fast, that soon after the time of Julian the Apostate a third part of the Egyptians were got into the deserts of Egypt. They lived first singly in cells, then associated into cœnobia or convents; and at length came into towns, and filled the Churches with Bishops, Presbyters and Deacons. Athanasius in his younger days poured water upon the hands of his master Antony; and finding the Monks faithful to him, made many of them Bishops and Presbyters in Egypt: and these Bishops erected new Monasteries, out of which they chose Presbyters of their own cities, and sent Bishops to others. The like was done in Syria, the superstition being quickly propagated thither out of Egypt by Hilarion a disciple of Antony. Spiridion and Epiphanius of Cyprus, James of Nisibis, Cyril of Jerusalem, Eustathius of Sebastia in Armenia, Eusebius of Emisa, Titus of Bostra, Basilius of Ancyra, Acacius of Cæsarea in Palestine, Elpidius of Laodicea, Melitius and Flavian of Antioch, Theodorus of Tyre, Protogenes of Carrhæ, Acacius of Berrhæa, Theodotus of Hierapolis, Eusebius of Chalcedon, Amphilochius of Iconium, Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory Nyssen, and John Chrysostom of Constantinople, were both Bishops and Monks in the fourth century. Eustathius, Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory Nyssen, Basil, &c. had Monasteries of Clergymen in their cities, out of which Bishops were sent to other cities; who in like manner erected Monasteries there, till the Churches were supplied with Bishops out of these Monasteries.... Not long after even the Emperors commanded the Churches to choose Clergymen out of the Monasteries by this Law.

"And so it ends" quoted in V. Sackville-West : A Critical Biography (1974) by Michael Stevens, p. 91
Context: Darling, I thought of nothing mean;
I thought of killing straight and clean.
You're safe; that's gone, that wild caprice,
But tell me once before I cease,
Which does your Church esteem the kinder role,
To kill the body or destroy the soul?

2016, Howard University commencement address (May 2016)
Context: Racism persists. Inequality persists. Don’t worry — I’m going to get to that. But I wanted to start, Class of 2016, by opening your eyes to the moment that you are in. If you had to choose one moment in history in which you could be born, and you didn’t know ahead of time who you were going to be — what nationality, what gender, what race, whether you’d be rich or poor, gay or straight, what faith you'd be born into — you wouldn’t choose 100 years ago. You wouldn’t choose the fifties, or the sixties, or the seventies. You’d choose right now. If you had to choose a time to be, in the words of Lorraine Hansberry, “young, gifted, and black” in America, you would choose right now.
I tell you all this because it's important to note progress. Because to deny how far we’ve come would do a disservice to the cause of justice, to the legions of foot soldiers; to not only the incredibly accomplished individuals who have already been mentioned, but your mothers and your dads, and grandparents and great grandparents, who marched and toiled and suffered and overcame to make this day possible. I tell you this not to lull you into complacency, but to spur you into action — because there’s still so much more work to do, so many more miles to travel. And America needs you to gladly, happily take up that work.

On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense (1873)
Context: Man has an invincible inclination to allow himself to be deceived and is, as it were, enchanted with happiness when the rhapsodist tells him epic fables as if they were true, or when the actor in the theater acts more royally than any real king. So long as it is able to deceive without injuring, that master of deception, the intellect, is free; it is released from its former slavery and celebrates its Saturnalia. It is never more luxuriant, richer, prouder, more clever and more daring.

On working in peace negotiations, as quoted in "Nobel Peace Prize winner wants jobs for the young" in International Herald Tribune (11 October 2008)
Context: You have to be rather straightforward with your clients. You can't tell the parties only nice things. This is not an entertainment show; it's not reality television either.

Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book Two, Part I: Hard Times

Context: The fact that so many books still name the Beatles "the greatest or most significant or most influential" rock band ever only tells you how far rock music still is from becoming a serious art. Jazz critics have long recognized that the greatest jazz musicians of all times are Duke Ellington and John Coltrane, who were not the most famous or richest or best sellers of their times, let alone of all times. Classical critics rank the highly controversial Beethoven over classical musicians who were highly popular in courts around Europe. Rock critics are still blinded by commercial success: the Beatles sold more than anyone else (not true, by the way), therefore they must have been the greatest. Jazz critics grow up listening to a lot of jazz music of the past, classical critics grow up listening to a lot of classical music of the past. Rock critics are often totally ignorant of the rock music of the past, they barely know the best sellers. No wonder they will think that the Beatles did anything worth of being saved.

2016, DNC Address (July 2016)
Context: A lot has happened over the years. And while this nation has been tested by war, and it's been tested by recession and all manner of challenges — I stand before you again tonight, after almost two terms as your president, to tell you I am more optimistic about the future of America than ever before.
How could I not be — after all that we’ve achieved together? After the worst recession in 80 years, we fought our way back.

Source: A Room of One's Own (1929), Ch. 1, p. 4
Context: When a subject is highly controversial — and any question about sex is that — one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one's audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker.

Blood and Guts in High School (1978)
Context: For 2.000 years, you've had the nerve to tell women who we are. We use your words; we eat your food. Every way we get money has to be a crime. We are plagiarists, liars and criminals.

Source: The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), IV
Context: Oh, everyone laughs in my face now, and assures me that one cannot dream of such details as I am telling now, that I only dreamed or felt one sensation that arose in my heart in delirium and made up the details myself when I woke up. And when I told them that perhaps it really was so, my God, how they shouted with laughter in my face, and what mirth I caused! Oh, yes, of course I was overcome by the mere sensation of my dream, and that was all that was preserved in my cruelly wounded heart; but the actual forms and images of my dream, that is, the very ones I really saw at the very time of my dream, were filled with such harmony, were so lovely and enchanting and were so actual, that on awakening I was, of course, incapable of clothing them in our poor language, so that they were bound to become blurred in my mind; and so perhaps I really was forced afterwards to make up the details, and so of course to distort them in my passionate desire to convey some at least of them as quickly as I could. But on the other hand, how can I help believing that it was all true? It was perhaps a thousand times brighter, happier and more joyful than I describe it. Granted that I dreamed it, yet it must have been real. You know, I will tell you a secret: perhaps it was not a dream at all!

Franny and Zooey (1961), Zooey (1957)
Context: I don't care where an actor acts. It can be in summer stock, it can be over a radio, it can be over television, it can be in a goddam Broadway theatre, complete with the most fashionable, most well-fed, most sunburned-looking audience you can imagine. But I'll tell you a terrible secret — Are you listening to me? There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. That includes your Professor Tupper, buddy. And all his goddam cousins by the dozens. There isn't anyone anywhere that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know — listen to me, now — don't you know who that Fat Lady really is?... Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.

Black Elk Speaks (1961)
Context: They told me I had been sick twelve days, lying like dead all the while, and that Whirlwind Chaser, who was Standing Bear's uncle and a medicine man, had brought me back to life. I knew it was the Grandfathers in the Flaming Rainbow Tepee who had cured me; but I felt afraid to say so. My father gave Whirlwind Chaser the best horse he had for making me well, and many people came to look at me, and there was much talk about the great power of Whirlwind Chaser who had made me well all at once when I was almost the same as dead.
Everybody was glad that I was living; but as I lay there thinking about the wonderful place where I had been and all that I had seen, I was very sad; for it seemed to me that everybody ought to know about it, but I was afraid to tell, because I knew that nobody would believe me, little as I was, for I was only nine years old. Also, as I lay there thinking of my vision, I could see it all again and feel the meaning with a part of me like a strange power glowing in my body; but when the part of me that talks would try to make words for the meaning, it would be like fog and get away from me.
I am sure now that I was then too young to understand it all, and that I only felt it. It was the pictures I remembered and the words that went with them; for nothing I have ever seen with my eyes was so clear and bright as what my vision showed me; and no words that I have ever heard with my ears were like the words I heard. I did not have to remember these things; they have remembered themselves all these years. It was as I grew older that the meanings came clearer and clearer out of the pictures and the words; and even now I know that more was shown to me than I can tell.

The character "Luka" in The Lower Depths (1902) English translation by Laurence Irving (1912)
Context: Some one has to be kind, girl — some one has to pity people! Christ pitied everybody — and he said to us: "Go and do likewise!" I tell you — if you pity a man when he most needs it, good comes of it. Why — I used to be a watchman on the estate of an engineer near Tomsk — all right — the house was right in the middle of a forest — lonely place — winter came — and I remained all by myself. Well — one night I heard a noise — thieves creeping in! I took my gun — I went out. I looked and saw two of them opening a window — and so busy that they didn't even see me. I yell: "Hey there — get out of here!" And they turn on me with their axes — I warn them to stand back, or I'd shoot — and as I speak, I keep on covering them with my gun, first on the one, then the other — they go down on their knees, as if to implore me for mercy. And by that time I was furious — because of those axes, you see — and so I say to them: "I was chasing you, you scoundrels — and you didn't go. Now you go and break off some stout branches!" — and they did so — and I say: "Now — one of you lie down and let the other one flog him!" So they obey me and flog each other — and then they began to implore me again. "Grandfather," they say, "for God's sake give us some bread! We're hungry!" There's thieves for you, my dear! [Laughs. ] And with an ax, too! Yes — honest peasants, both of them! And I say to them, "You should have asked for bread straight away!" And they say: "We got tired of asking — you beg and beg — and nobody gives you a crumb — it hurts!" So they stayed with me all that winter — one of them, Stepan, would take my gun and go shooting in the forest — and the other, Yakoff, was ill most of the time — he coughed a lot... and so the three of us together looked after the house... then spring came... "Good-bye, grandfather," they said — and they went away — back home to Russia... escaped convicts — from a Siberian prison camp... honest peasants! If I hadn't felt sorry for them — they might have killed me — or maybe worse — and then there would have been a trial and prison and afterwards Siberia — what's the sense of it? Prison teaches no good — and Siberia doesn't either — but another human being can... yes, a human being can teach another one kindness — very simply!

2016, Howard University commencement address (May 2016)
Context: Racism persists. Inequality persists. Don’t worry — I’m going to get to that. But I wanted to start, Class of 2016, by opening your eyes to the moment that you are in. If you had to choose one moment in history in which you could be born, and you didn’t know ahead of time who you were going to be — what nationality, what gender, what race, whether you’d be rich or poor, gay or straight, what faith you'd be born into — you wouldn’t choose 100 years ago. You wouldn’t choose the fifties, or the sixties, or the seventies. You’d choose right now. If you had to choose a time to be, in the words of Lorraine Hansberry, “young, gifted, and black” in America, you would choose right now.
I tell you all this because it's important to note progress. Because to deny how far we’ve come would do a disservice to the cause of justice, to the legions of foot soldiers; to not only the incredibly accomplished individuals who have already been mentioned, but your mothers and your dads, and grandparents and great grandparents, who marched and toiled and suffered and overcame to make this day possible. I tell you this not to lull you into complacency, but to spur you into action — because there’s still so much more work to do, so many more miles to travel. And America needs you to gladly, happily take up that work.

2012
Context: “Assume that in 30 minutes you will stop being president. I will take your place. Prepare me. Teach me how to be president.”
This was the third time I’d put the question to him, in one form or another. The first time, a month earlier in this same cabin, he’d had a lot of trouble getting his mind around the idea that I, not he, was president. He’d started by saying something he knew to be dull and expected but that—he insisted—was nevertheless perfectly true. “Here is what I would tell you,” he’d said. “I would say that your first and principal task is to think about the hopes and dreams the American people invested in you. Everything you are doing has to be viewed through this prism. And I tell you what every president … I actually think every president understands this responsibility. I don’t know George Bush well. I know Bill Clinton better. But I think they both approached the job in that spirit.” Then he added that the world thinks he spends a lot more time worrying about political angles than he actually does.

On Seeing Plays (1990).
Context: It is mankind's discovery of language which more than any other single thing has separated him from the animal creation. Without language, what concept have we of past or future as separated from the immediate present? Without language, how can we tell anyone what we feel, or what we think? It might be said that until he developed language, man had no soul, for without language how could he reach deep inside himself and discover the truths that are hidden there, or find out what emotions he shared, or did not share, with his fellow men and women. But because this greatest gift of all gifts is in daily use, and is smeared, and battered and trivialized by commonplace associations, we too often forget the splendour of which it is capable, and the pleasures that it can give, from the pen of a master.

The portion of "The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom." is often misquoted as: Poetry begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
The Figure a Poem Makes (1939)
Context: It should be of the pleasure of a poem itself to tell how it can. The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same as for love. No one can really hold that the ecstasy should be static and stand still in one place. It begins in delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down, it runs a course of lucky events, and ends in a clarification of life-not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion. It has denouement. It has an outcome that though unforeseen was predestined from the first image of the original mood-and indeed from the very mood. It is but a trick poem and no poem at all if the best of it was thought of first and saved for the last. It finds its own name as it goes and discovers the best waiting for it in some final phrase at once wise and sad-the happy-sad blend of the drinking song.

On joining the Unitarian Universalist Association, in an interview with Reader's Digest (October 2004) http://www.adherents.com/people/pr/Christopher_Reeve.html
Context: It gives me a moral compass. I often refer to Abe Lincoln, who said, "When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. And that is my religion." I think we all have a little voice inside us that will guide us. It may be God, I don't know. But I think that if we shut out all the noise and clutter from our lives and listen to that voice, it will tell us the right thing to do. The Unitarian believes that God is good, and believes that God believes that man is good. Inherently. The Unitarian God is not a God of vengeance. And that is something I can appreciate.

Playboy interview (1973)
Context: I've often thought there ought to be a manual to hand to little kids, telling them what kind of planet they're on, why they don't fall off it, how much time they've probably got here, how to avoid poison ivy, and so on. I tried to write one once. It was called Welcome to Earth. But I got stuck on explaining why we don't fall off the planet. Gravity is just a word. It doesn't explain anything. If I could get past gravity, I'd tell them how we reproduce, how long we've been here, apparently, and a little bit about evolution. I didn't learn until I was in college about all the other cultures, and I should have learned that in the first grade. A first grader should understand that his or her culture isn't a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots of alternatives to our own society. Cultural relativity is defensible and attractive. It's also a source of hope. It means we don't have to continue this way if we don't like it.

2013, Remarks on Economic Mobility (December 2013)
Context: If you still don’t like Obamacare -- and I know you don’t even though it’s built on market-based ideas of choice and competition in the private sector, then you should explain how, exactly, you’d cut costs, and cover more people, and make insurance more secure. You owe it to the American people to tell us what you are for, not just what you’re against. That way we can have a vigorous and meaningful debate. That’s what the American people deserve. That’s what the times demand. It’s not enough anymore to just say we should just get our government out of the way and let the unfettered market take care of it -- for our experience tells us that’s just not true.

The Lord of Misrule
The Lord of Misrule and Other Poems (1915)
Context: He died and He went down to hell!
You know not what you mean.
Our rafters were of green fir. Also our beds were green.
But out of the mouth of a fool, a fool, before the darkness fall,
We tell you He is risen again,
The Lord of Life is risen again,
The boughs put forth their tender buds, and
Love is Lord of all!

Fiction, The Other Gods (1921)
Context: Atop the tallest of earth's peaks dwell the gods of earth, and suffer not man to tell that he hath looked upon them. Lesser peaks they once inhabited; but ever the men from the plains would scale the slopes of rock and snow, driving the gods to higher and higher mountains till now only the last remains. When they left their old peaks they took with them all signs of themselves, save once, it is said, when they left a carven image on the face of the mountain which they called Ngranek. … They are grown stern, and where once they suffered men to displace them, they now forbid men to come; or coming, to depart. It is well for men that they know not of Kadath in the cold waste; else they would seek injudiciously to scale it.

One day when they were away, I went up to the cellar door. And I pushed it and walked through and saw strange, wonderful things, things I had never seen before, like... trees. Grass. Flowers. The sun... that was nice... the sun..
EMO² (1985)

As quoted in "Kieślowski's Many Colours" by Patrick Abrahamsson, in Oxford University Student newspaper (2 June 1995)
Context: I don't make biographical films … None of the films is about me. Not a single one. None. I have my life and I'll simply never tell anyone what part of me is in my films. I won't ever tell anyone about that, because I don't consider that to be anyone else's business but mine. Nobody will guess where and how and in what way I fill them with my own pains. And that's an intimate aspect of my work that I keep to myself. … I won't even tell my wife — ever.

Source: 1930s, In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays (1935), Ch. 1: In Praise of Idleness

as quoted by James Anthony Froude, Life and Letters of Erasmus: Lectures Delivered at Oxford 1893-4 http://books.google.com/books?id=5tB4L4J9hlYC (1899)
The Praise of Folly (1511)

Source: Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle (1960), p. 110
Context: My example concerns a young woman patient who, in spite of efforts made on both sides, proved to be psychologically inaccessible. The difficulty lay in the fact that she always knew better about everything. Her excellent education had provided her with a weapon ideally suited to this purpose, namely a highly polished Cartesian rationalism with an impeccably "geometrical" idea of reality. After several fruitless attempts to sweeten her rationalism with a somewhat more human understanding, I had to confine myself to the hope that something unexpected and irrational would turn up, something that burst the intellectual retort into which she had sealed herself. Well, I was sitting opposite of her one day, with my back to the window, listening to her flow of rhetoric. She had an impressive dream the night before, in which someone had given her a golden scarab-a costly piece of jewellery. While she was still telling me this dream, I heard something behind me gently tapping on the window. I turned round and saw that it was a fairly large flying insect that was knocking against the window from outside in the obvious effort to get into the dark room. This seemed to me very strange. I opened the window and immediately and caught the insect in the air as it flew in. It was a scarabaeid beetle, or common rose-chafer, whose gold-green color most nearly resembles that of a golden scarab. I handed the beetle to my patient with the words "Here is your scarab." This broke the ice of her intellectual resistance. The treatment could now be continued with satisfactory results.

The Natural State: In the Words of U.G. Krishnamurti http://the-natural-state.blogspot.com (2005) compiled by Peter Maverick, p. 141
Context: A guru is one who tells you to throw away all the crutches that we have been made to believe are essential for our survival. He would ask you to walk, and he would say that if you fall, you will arise and walk.

Source: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), p. 95

Under Fire (1916), Ch. 24 - The Dawn
Context: I tell them that fraternity is a dream, an obscure and uncertain sentiment; that while it is unnatural for a man to hate one whom he does not know, it is equally unnatural to love him. You can build nothing on fraternity. Nor on liberty, either; it is too relative a thing in a society where all the elements subdivide each other by force.
But equality is always the same. Liberty and fraternity are words while equality is a fact. Equality should be the great human formula — social equality, for while individuals have varying values, each must have an equal share in the social life; and that is only just, because the life of one human being is equal to the life of another. That formula is of prodigious importance. The principle of the equal rights of every living being and the sacred will of the majority is infallible and must be invincible; all progress will be brought about by it, all, with a force truly divine. It will bring first the smooth bed-rock of all progress — the settling of quarrels by that justice which is exactly the same thing as the general advantage.

Lecture notes of 1858, quoted in The Life and Letters of Faraday (1870) by Bence Jones, Vol. 2, p. 404
Context: Bacon in his instruction tells us that the scientific student ought not to be as the ant, who gathers merely, nor as the spider who spins from her own bowels, but rather as the bee who both gathers and produces. All this is true of the teaching afforded by any part of physical science. Electricity is often called wonderful, beautiful; but it is so only in common with the other forces of nature. The beauty of electricity or of any other force is not that the power is mysterious, and unexpected, touching every sense at unawares in turn, but that it is under law, and that the taught intellect can even now govern it largely. The human mind is placed above, and not beneath it, and it is in such a point of view that the mental education afforded by science is rendered super-eminent in dignity, in practical application and utility; for by enabling the mind to apply the natural power through law, it conveys the gifts of God to man.

Under Fire (1916), Ch. 24 - The Dawn
Context: The paralysis of cold was passing away from the knot of sufferers, though the light no longer made any progress over the great irregular marsh of the lower plain. The desolation proceeded, but not the day.
Then he who spoke sorrowfully, like a bell, said. "It'll be no good telling about it, eh? They wouldn't believe you; not out of malice or through liking to pull your leg, but because they couldn't. When you say to 'em later, if you live to say it, 'We were on a night job and we got shelled and we were very nearly drowned in mud,' they'll say, 'Ah!' And p'raps they'll say. 'You didn't have a very spicy time on the job.' And that's all. No one can know it. Only us."
"No, not even us, not even us!" some one cried.
"That's what I say, too. We shall forget — we're forgetting already, my boy!"
"We've seen too much to remember."
"And everything we've seen was too much. We're not made to hold it all. It takes its damned hook in all directions. We're too little to hold it."
"You're right, we shall forget! Not only the length of the big misery, which can't be calculated, as you say, ever since the beginning, but the marches that turn up the ground and turn it again, lacerating your feet and wearing out your bones under a load that seems to grow bigger in the sky, the exhaustion until you don't know your own name any more, the tramping and the inaction that grind you, the digging jobs that exceed your strength, the endless vigils when you fight against sleep and watch for an enemy who is everywhere in the night, the pillows of dung and lice — we shall forget not only those, but even the foul wounds of shells and machine-guns, the mines, the gas, and the counter-attacks. At those moments you're full of the excitement of reality, and you've some satisfaction. But all that wears off and goes away, you don't know how and you don't know where, and there's only the names left, only the words of it, like in a dispatch."
"That's true what he says," remarks a man, without moving his head in its pillory of mud. When I was on leave, I found I'd already jolly well forgotten what had happened to me before. There were some letters from me that I read over again just as if they were a book I was opening. And yet in spite of that, I've forgotten also all the pain I've had in the war. We're forgetting-machines. Men are things that think a little but chiefly forget. That's what we are."
"Then neither the other side nor us'll remember! So much misery all wasted!"
This point of view added to the abasement of these beings on the shore of the flood, like news of a greater disaster, and humiliated them still more.
"Ah, if one did remember!" cried some one.
"If we remembered," said another, "there wouldn't be any more war."

Introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness (1976)

Early Christian Latin Poets, 2000, Carolinne White, Routledge, London, p. 55. http://books.google.com/books?id=MoI963yzTisC&pg=PA55
Psalmus Contra Partem Donati - Psalm Against the Donatists (c. 393)
Context: All those of you who rejoice in peace, now it is time to judge the truth....
Undoubtedly in days gone by there were holy men as Scripture tells,
For God stated that he left behind seven thousand men in safety,
And there are many priests and kings who are righteous under the law,
There you find so many of the prophets, and many of the people too.
Tell me which of the righteous of that time claimed an altar for himself?
That wicked nation perpetrated a very large number of crimes,
They sacrificed to idols and may prophets were put to death,
Yet not a single one of the righteous withdrew from unity.
The righteous endured the unrighteous while waiting for the winnower:
They all mingled in one temple but were not mingled in their hearts;
They said such things against them yet they had a single altar.

Black Elk Speaks (1961)
Context: Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world. And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being. And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy.

The Pity Of Love http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1670/; in recent years a statement which might have originated as a misquotation of the first lines of this has been attributed to Oscar Wilde: "To give and not expect return, that is what lies at the heart of love." — no occurrence prior to 1999 has yet been located.
The Rose (1893)
Context: A pity beyond all telling
Is hid in the heart of love:
The folk who are buying and selling,
The clouds on their journey above,
The cold wet winds ever blowing,
And the shadowy hazel grove
Where mouse-grey waters are flowing,
Threaten the head that I love.

Upon being asked to offer the young son of a member of Parliament advice, cited in Wilfrid Meynell, Benjamin Disraeli: An Unconventional Biography (1903), p. 83.
Sourced but undated

1910s, Address at Milwaukee, Wisconsin (1912)
Context: I cannot tell you of what infinitesimal importance I regard this incident as compared with the great issues at stake in this campaign, and I ask it not for my sake, not the least in the world, but for the sake of common country, that they make up their minds to speak only the truth, and not use that kind of slander and mendacity which if taken seriously must incite weak and violent natures to crimes of violence. Don't you make any mistake. Don't you pity me. I am all right. I am all right and you cannot escape listening to the speech either.

1850s, Speech at Peoria, Illinois (1854)
Context: When Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery than we are, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the institution exists, and that it is very difficult to get rid of it in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself. If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do as to the existing institution. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia, to their own native land. But a moment's reflection would convince me that whatever of high hope (as I think there is) there may be in this in the long run, its sudden execution is impossible. If they were all landed there in a day, they would all perish in the next ten days; and there are not surplus shipping and surplus money enough to carry them there in many times ten days. What then? Free them all, and keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain that this betters their condition? I think I would not hold one in slavery at any rate, yet the point is not clear enough for me to denounce people upon. What next? Free them, and make them politically and socially our equals. My own feelings will not admit of this, and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of whites will not. Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound judgment is not the sole question, if indeed it is any part of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill founded, cannot be safely disregarded. We cannot then make them equals. It does seem to me that systems of gradual emancipation might be adopted, but for their tardiness in this I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the South.

Often the portion of this passage on "Towering genius..." is quoted without any mention or acknowledgment that Lincoln was speaking of the need to sometimes hold the ambitions of such genius in check, when individuals aim at their own personal aggrandizement rather than the common good.
1830s, The Lyceum Address (1838)
Context: It is to deny, what the history of the world tells us is true, to suppose that men of ambition and talents will not continue to spring up amongst us. And, when they do, they will as naturally seek the gratification of their ruling passion, as others have so done before them. The question then, is, can that gratification be found in supporting and maintaining an edifice that has been erected by others? Most certainly it cannot. Many great and good men sufficiently qualified for any task they should undertake, may ever be found, whose ambition would inspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or a presidential chair; but such belong not to the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle. What! think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon? — Never! Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored. — It sees no distinction in adding story to story, upon the monuments of fame, erected to the memory of others. It denies that it is glory enough to serve under any chief. It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves, or enslaving freemen. Is it unreasonable then to expect, that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time, spring up among us? And when such a one does, it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.

The Critic as Artist (1891), Part II

2018, "You are stealing our future" (December 2018)

On the Gary Soto Literary Museum in Fresno, California in “Jo Ellen Misakian Interviews Author Gary Soto on His New Books, Writing & the Gary Soto Literary Museum” https://cynthialeitichsmith.com/2011/10/jo-ellen-misakian-interviews-author/ (Cynthia Leitich Smith site)

On formulating characters in “An Interview with Amulya Malladi” http://jaggerylit.com/an-interview-with-amulya-malladi/ in Jaggery

On her writing style in “Amulya Malladi: How I Write” https://www.writermag.com/writing-inspiration/author-interviews/amulya-malladi/ in The Writer (2018 May 22)

2018, Speech at the University of Illinoise Speech (2018)

Oui interview (1979)

During a seminar at Milan’s IULM University, speaking of the haters; as quoted in "Escort for Liliana Segre following insults and threats" https://www.corriere.it/english/19_novembre_07/escort-for-liliana-segre-following-insults-and-threats-2c3dea64-015f-11ea-bfaf-9602a8f3f6c1.shtml, Corriere.it (7 November 2019).

2014, Queensland University Address (November 2014)

Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

Glimpses of World History (1949)

Glimpses of World History (1949)

Fidel Castro Reader, pp. 238
Words to Intellectuals (1961)

21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 (2010), p. 210

The Devil's Notebook (1992)

Paul to the corpse of a French man he has just killed, Ch. 9
All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)

Preface to “Histoire de mon temps”, Works (1743), quoted in W. W. Coole (ed.), Thus Spake Germany (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1941), p. 82

On being on Beverly Hills, 90210 when he was 17 in his band Kara's Flowers
Voss, Brandon (2007-05-22), "Adam Levine". Advocate. (986):25.

Tessa Gray, to Clary Fray, pg. 716
The Mortal Instruments, City of Heavenly Fire (2014)

"And tell them what?" Jace said witheringly. "That invisible people are bothering you? Trust me, little girl, the police aren't going to arrest someone they can't see."
Clary and Jace, pg. 44
The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones (2007)

Source: Tropic of Capricorn (1939) New York: Grove Press, 1961, p. 313

Reputedly from the original minutes of the Philadelphia committee of citizens sent to meet with President Jackson (February 1834), according to Andrew Jackson and the Bank of the United States (1928) by Stan V. Henkels as published by his son Stan V. Henkels Jr. - online PDF http://kenhirsch.net/money/AndrewJacksonAndTheBankHenkels.pdf. John Carney at Business Insider https://www.businessinsider.com/sorry-andrew-jackson-probably-never-said-that-den-of-theives-quote-2010-1 has disputed its authenticity alleging Henkels made unreliable claims about historical documents.
A different version of this quote is provided by Henkels in a 1912 copy of Publisher's Weekly https://books.google.com/books?id=IyYzAQAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false (p. 2039).
Disputed

Quoted in Curating our reality: Investigative journalist Abby Martin takes aim at US media hegemony, RT.com https://www.rt.com/news/437721-abby-martin-telesur-sanctions/ (5 September 2018)

Pt. 1, Ch. 2 - p.36
Giovanni's Room (1956)

Source: In a phone call to Richard Nixon about a television clip which showed members of the Tanzanian delegation dancing on the UN floor, after the UN voted to recognize China and expel Taiwan. https://www.nixonlibrary.gov/white-house-tapes/013 Conversation 013-008 of the White House Tapes, 6:30, quoted in * 2019-07-30


The Atlantic note: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/ronald-reagans-racist-conversation-richard-nixon/595102/ and in Ronald Reagan called Africans at UN 'monkeys', tapes reveal https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49177034, 31 July 2019, BBC note: 1970s

Quoted in 'You don't want to go to war with a president' https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/03/anthony-fauci-trump-coronavirus-crisis-118961, 3 March 2020, Politico

On being expected to just write stories about sad Muslims in “Elif Shafak: ‘When women are divided it is the male status quo that benefits’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/feb/05/elif-shafak-turkey-three-daughters-of-eve-interview in The Guardian (2017 Feb 5)

mystic poetry and spirituality

False quote, misattributed to Voltaire by Yuval Noah Hariri in his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Misattributed