Explaining the origins http://www.roger-zelazny.com/repository/absmag.html of his last book, A Night in the Lonesome October in an interview (Absolute Magnitude Autumn/Winter 1994)
Quotes about tell
page 64
Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/battle-los-angeles-2011 of Battle: Los Angeles (9 March 2011)
Reviews, Half-star reviews
"Happy Birthday Princess Ysabella!" (3 December 2009) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c37ht17IVOg
TomPeters.com - Abu Dhabi, World Strategy Summit, Main Program, November 17, 2015
Translated from a video reported in all Bolivia's major written press. A video of the speech can be found here: http://www.ahorabolivia.com/2009/04/08/debate-%C2%BFsos-masista-o-fascista/
2010s, 2015, Speech on (20 July 2015)
That's how you got 72.
Victory Begins at Home (20 January 2004)
"By lying to Allah, I suppose."
"The Tale of the Rose and the Nightingale (and What Came of It)", Arabesques (1988), ed. Susan Schwartz. Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Endangered Species (1989)
Fiction
Source: Covel, Michael W., Trend Following: How Great Traders Make Millions in Up or Down Markets, FT Press (2007), pages 172-173, ISBN 0-13-613718-0
Press conference in New York, as quoted in CommingSoon (June 2007) http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=21257
2007
As quoted in Yorkshire Post (22 November 1976)
1970s
“Evolution tells us where we came from, not where we can go.”
Source: Why Evolution is True (2009), p. 231
Song lyrics, Aerial (2005), A Sea of Honey (Disc 1)
Wherever I Lay My Hat, co-written with Barrett Strong and Norman Whitfield.
Song lyrics, That Stubborn Kinda Fellow (1962)
Interview with Steve Alten http://www.screenwritersutopia.com/article/d14867f2 (March 11th, 2004)
Are You There Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea (2008)
The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947)
2011-01-04
O'Reilly Debates Atheist Group President Over Religions Are 'Scams' Billboard
The O'Reilly Factor
Fox News
Television
http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/oreilly/transcript/o039reilly-debates-atheist-group-president-over-religions-are-039scams039-billboard
interviewed regarding American Atheists' Huntsville, Alabama "You Know They're All Scams" billboard
As quoted in Barbarians at the Gate : The Fall of RJR Nabisco (1989), by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar
I know what I have to do.
As quoted in Denise Worrell (1989), Icons: Intimate Portraits.
p, 125
Geometrical Lectures (1735)
Ode interview (2009)
And then we went in...
Explaining the origin of the Joe Pesci skits in an interview on Mancow's Morning Madhouse
Unsourced
2000s, The Central Idea (2006)
Source: The Time Axis (1949), Ch. 1 : Encounter In Rio
Source: Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900, Cézanne, - a Memoir with Conversations, (1897 - 1906), p. 150, in: 'What he told me – I. The motif'
Source: Jesus Before Christianity: The Gospel of Liberation (1976), p. 33.
Context: Miracles are very often thought of, both by those who believe in them and by those who do not, as events, or purported events, that contradict the laws of nature and that therefore cannot be explained by science or reason. But this is not at all what the Bible means by a miracle, as any Biblical scholar will tell you. “The laws of nature” is a modern scientific concept. The Bible knows nothing about nature, let alone the laws of nature.
Source: Way Station (1963), Ch. 18
Context: Hank Fisher would tell how he'd tried to break into the house and couldn't and there'd be others who would try to break into the house and there'd be hell to pay.
Enoch sweated, thinking of it.
All the years of keeping out of people's way, all the years of being unobtrusive would be for nothing then. This strange house upon a lonely ridge would become a mystery for the world, and a challenge and a target for all the crackpots of the world.
Page 168.
"Anti-Copyright: Why Improvisation and Noise Run Against the Idea of Intellectual Property" (October 2008)
2010s, Democratic National Convention speech (2012)
Context: Barack's grandmother started out as a secretary at a community bank, and she moved quickly up the ranks, but like so many women, she hit a glass ceiling. And for years, men no more qualified than she was – men she had actually trained – were promoted up the ladder ahead of her, earning more and more money while Barack's family continued to scrape by. But day after day, she kept on waking up at dawn to catch the bus... arriving at work before anyone else... giving her best without complaint or regret. And she would often tell Barack, "So long as you kids do well, Bar, that's all that really matters."
“When people keep telling you that you can't do a thing, you kind of like to try it.”
As quoted in "Nation: Madam Candidate" in TIME magazine (7 February 1964) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,870656-2,00.html
Misattributed
Context: I am running against no one. I'd like to be President. I think my experience and my record are greater than any other candidate or any other of the unannounced candidates. It's a real challenge, and that's one of the paramount things. When people keep telling you that you can't do a thing, you kind of like to try it.
In response to the question, "How do you approach your roles?" from Inside the Actors Studio (2007) http://uk.youtube.com/user/pfeifferpfan2
Context: I always look at it as — it's like a treasure map, and each little detail in it, you sort of look at it for information and it points you in the right direction, to tell you where you need to go. You start out with a few choices, obviously — I need to learn the clarinet or I need to learn the cello, or I need to learn how to stay underwater without panicking — but it is like painting in a way, that at a certain point, the painting begins to tell you what to do. And with acting, it's the same — with acting in film, anyway — at a certain point then, what you've already put on screen begins to dictate to you where you need to go, and then it just starts to create itself in a way. And what I try to do is find a strand of myself, as different as I might feel the character is from me, and as removed as it is, I always try to find that one part of me. And then you kind of build on to that, because it's a way to keep you connected. And you never want to lose that connection. There's always some sort of parallel that's going on in my own life, and so you can use it to, you know, bring closure, perhaps, to certain things that you haven't. A healing, a reconnection. And I believe in that. I believe in that.
“Masters, I have to tell a tale of woe,
A tale of folly and of wasted life”
Introductory verse.
The Earthly Paradise (1868-70)
Context: Masters, I have to tell a tale of woe,
A tale of folly and of wasted life,
Hope against hope, the bitter dregs of strife,
Ending, where all things end, in death at last.
Revolution (2014)
Context: For me, it’s standard. I don’t feel irresponsible for telling kids not to vote; I feel like I deserve a Blue Peter badge for not telling them to riot. For not telling them that they are entitled to destroy the cathedrals of tyranny erected to mock them in the heart of their community. That they should rise up and destroy the system that imprisons them, ignores them, condemns and maligns them. By any means necessary.' I might also note that I think it unlikely that people aren’t voting because I told them not to; it is more likely that they’re not voting because they are subject to the same conditions that led me not to vote.
"Forgiveness" (7 July 2007)
Context: Now do we have to forgive and forget? No! In fact sometimes it's important to remember, so that you can prevent something like that from happening again, or know that it's not ok with you, even with that person or anyone else.
But forgiving — why not? Do it so that you can be free. And I guarantee you, you will be free of this thing. And even if you don't tell this person you've forgiven them, because sometimes you can't, it's amazing what will happen in your life, what will happen with that person, what will happen with you and other people, if you have a forgiving spirit and let it go.
Letter to John Adams (27 November 1775)
Context: I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature; and that power, whether vested in many or a few, is ever grasping, and, like the grave, cries, “Give, give!” The great fish swallow up the small; and he who is most strenuous for the rights of the people, when vested with power, is as eager after the prerogatives of government. You tell me of degrees of perfection to which human nature is capable of arriving, and I believe it, but at the same time lament that our admiration should arise from the scarcity of the instances.
“Similarly, if an editorial writer for the New York Times were to start, say, telling the truth”
Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994, Interview by Adam Jones, 1990
Context: Boards of Directors have to make certain kinds of decisions, and those decisions are pretty narrowly constrained. They have to be committed to increasing profit share and market share. That means they're going to be forced to try to limit wages, to limit quality, to use advertising in a way that sells goods even if the product is lousy. Who tells them to do this? Nobody. But if they stopped doing it, they'd be out of business. Similarly, if an editorial writer for the New York Times were to start, say, telling the truth about the Panama invasion -- which is almost inconceivable, because to become an editorial writer you'd already have gone through a filtering process which would weed out the non-conformists -- well, the first thing that would happen is you'd start getting a lot of angry phone calls from investors, owners, and other sectors of power. That would probably suffice. If it didn't, you'd simply see the stock start falling. And if they continued with it systematically, the New York Times would be replaced by some other organ. After all, what is the New York Times? It's just a corporation. If investors and advertisers don't want to support it, and the government doesn't want to give it the special privileges and advantages that make it a "newspaper of record," it's out of business.
As quoted in Journal officiel de la République française (28 January 1958); said when Algeria was still a part of Metropolitan France before it attained independence.
Context: We must tell the Algerians that it is not the case that they need France, but that France needs them. They are not a burden, and if they are for now, they will on the contrary be a dynamic part as well as the young blood of the French nation into which we will have integrated them. I claim that in the Muslim religion there is nothing, in the moral point of view, that would be incompatible with making a believing or practicing Muslim a full French citizen. Very much on the contrary, its basic principles are the same as for Christianity, which is the basis of Western civilization. On the other hand, I do not believe that there exists an Algerian race, any more than there exists a French race … I conclude: let us offer to Algerian Muslims entrance and integration in a dynamic France. Instead of telling them as we do now: "you are very expensive, you are a burden", let us tell them: "we need you, you are the youth of the nation."
“I am bound to tell what I am told, but not in every case to believe it.”
Book 7, Ch. 152.
The Histories
Amir Khurd, Siyar-ul-Awliya, New Delhi, 1985, pp. 111-12. Quoted in S.R.Goel, The Calcutta Quran Petition (1999) ISBN 9788185990583
Advocacy Before the Supreme Court: Suggestions for Effective Case Presentations, 37 A.B.A Journal 801 (1951)
“All that was left was the sweetness of that feeling, and the injunction to tell them stories.”
Source: His Dark Materials, The Amber Spyglass (2000), Ch. 32 : Morning
Context: One of the ghosts — an old woman — beckoned, urging her to come close.
Then she spoke, and Mary heard her say:
"Tell them stories. They need the truth. You must tell them true stories, and everything will be well, just tell them stories."
That was all, and then she was gone. It was one of those moments when we suddenly recall a dream that we’ve unaccountably forgotten, and back in a flood comes all the emotion we felt in our sleep. It was the dream she’d tried to describe to Atal, the night picture; but as Mary tried to find it again, it dissolved and drifted apart, just as these presences did in the open air. The dream was gone.
All that was left was the sweetness of that feeling, and the injunction to tell them stories.
“And I'm never gonna tell you everything I gotta tell you
But I know I've got to give it a try.”
Making Love out of Nothing at All (1983)
Context: I know just how to fake it
And I know just how to scheme
I know just when to face the truth
And then I know just when to dream.
And I know just where to touch you
And I know just what to prove
I know when to pull you closer
And I know when to let you loose.
And I know the night is fading
And I know the time's gonna fly
And I'm never gonna tell you everything I gotta tell you
But I know I've got to give it a try.
And I know the roads to riches
And I know the ways to fame
I know all the rules and then I know how to break'em
And then I always know the name of the game
But I don't know how to leave you
And I'll never let you fall
And I don't know how you do it
Making love out of nothing at all.
As paraphrased and quoted in "The Scoreboard: Big Day For Two Pirates; Stargell Started Streak Against Roberts; Clemente's Friend Retrieves Ball; Longest Drive In Wrigley Field" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=z3wqAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Tk8EAAAAIBAJ&pg=6610%2C2693224 by Les Biederman, in The Pittsburgh Press (Monday, June 6, 1966), p. 36.
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1966</big>
Context: [Clemente] goes back to the ball he hit in Wrigley Field, Chicago. He rates this one No. 1 for distance, perhaps 600 feet. Clemente, himself, paced off the distance from the centerfield wall to the scoreboard right above and when he was shown the spot where the ball landed, he knew this was No. 1. "I hit one off Sam Jones one night over the left-center fence at Candlestick Park and that was a good one," he said. "And two I remember off Sandy Koufax. One over the right field fence at the Coliseum, the other here at Forbes Field. This one hit a transformer on the left-field light tower on the way up and it stopped. No telling how far it might have gone. And you remember I came within a few inches of putting one on the right field roof here.".
“Jesus was an anarchist savior. That's what the Gospels tell us.”
The Educational enterprise in the Light of the Gospel (13 November 1988) http://www.davidtinapple.com/illich/1988_Educational.html.
Context: Jesus was an anarchist savior. That's what the Gospels tell us.
Just before He started out on His public life, Jesus went to the desert. He fasted, and after 40 days he was hungry. At this point the diabolos, appeared to tempt Him. First he asked Him to turn stone into bread, then to prove himself in a magic flight, and finally the devil, diabolos, "divider," offered Him power. Listen carefully to the words of this last of the three temptations: (Luke 4,6:) "I give you all power and glory, because I have received them and I give them to those whom I choose. Adore me and the power will be yours." It is astonishing what the devil says: I have all power, it has been given to me, and I am the one to hand it on — submit, and it is yours. Jesus of course does not submit, and sends the devilcumpower to Hell. Not for a moment, however, does Jesus contradict the devil. He does not question that the devil holds all power, nor that this power has been given to him, nor that he, the devil, gives it to whom he pleases. This is a point which is easily overlooked. By his silence Jesus recognizes power that is established as "devil" and defines Himself as The Powerless. He who cannot accept this view on power cannot look at establishments through the spectacle of the Gospel. This is what clergy and churches often have difficulty doing. They are so strongly motivated by the image of church as a "helping institution" that they are constantly motivated to hold power, share in it or, at least, influence it.
Lies: And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them (2003)
Context: If you listen to a lot of conservatives, they'll tell you that the difference between them and us is that conservatives love America and liberals hate America.... They don't get it. We love America just as much as they do. But in a different way. You see, they love America like a 4-year-old loves his mommy. Liberals love America like grown-ups. To a 4-year-old, everything Mommy does is wonderful and anyone who criticizes Mommy is bad. Grown-up love means actually understanding what you love, taking the good with the bad and helping your loved one grow. Love takes attention and work and is the best thing in the world.
That's why we liberals want America to do the right thing. We know America is the hope of the world, and we love it and want it to do well.
Review of Magnolia (1999), in review for Great Movies (27 November 2008) http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-magnolia-1999
Reviews, Four star reviews
Context: Magnolia is a film of sadness and loss, of lifelong bitterness, of children harmed and adults destroying themselves. As the narrator tells us near the end, "We may be through with the past, but the past is never through with us." In this wreckage of lifetimes, there are two figures, a policeman and a nurse, who do what they can to offer help, hope and love. … The central theme is cruelty to children, and its lasting effect. This is closely linked to a loathing or fear of behaving as we are told, or think, that we should. … As an act of filmmaking, it draws us in and doesn't let go. It begins deceptively, with a little documentary about amazing coincidences (including the scuba diver scooped by a fire-fighting plane and dumped on a forest fire) … coincidences and strange events do happen, and they are as real as everything else. If you could stand back far enough, in fact, everything would be revealed as a coincidence. What we call "coincidences" are limited to the ones we happen to notice. … In one beautiful sequence, Anderson cuts between most of the major characters all simultaneously singing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNmKghTvj0E Aimee Mann's "It's Not Going to Stop." A directorial flourish? You know what? I think it's a coincidence. Unlike many other "hypertext movies" with interlinking plots, Magnolia seems to be using the device in a deeper, more philosophical way. Anderson sees these people joined at a level below any possible knowledge, down where fate and destiny lie. They have been joined by their actions and their choices.
And all leads to the remarkable, famous, sequence near the film's end when it rains frogs. Yes. Countless frogs, still alive, all over Los Angeles, falling from the sky. That this device has sometimes been joked about puzzles me. I find it a way to elevate the whole story into a larger realm of inexplicable but real behavior. We need something beyond the human to add another dimension. Frogs have rained from the sky eight times this century, but never mind the facts. Attend instead to Exodus 8:2, which is cited on a placard in the film: "And if thou refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite your whole territory with frogs." Let who go? In this case, I believe, it refers not to people, but to fears, shames, sins.
Magnolia is one of those rare films that works in two entirely different ways. In one sense, it tells absorbing stories, filled with detail, told with precision and not a little humor. On another sense, it is a parable. The message of the parable, as with all good parables, is expressed not in words but in emotions. After we have felt the pain of these people, and felt the love of the policeman and the nurse, we have been taught something intangible, but necessary to know.
"On the Conservation of Force" (1862), p. 278
Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects (1881)
Context: Every great deed of which history tells us, every mighty passion which art can represent, every picture of manners, of civic arrangements, of the culture of peoples of distant lands or of remote times, seizes and interests us, even if there is no exact scientific connection among them. We continually find points of contact and comparison in our own conceptions and feelings; we get to know the hidden capacities and desires of the mind, which in the ordinary peaceful course of civilised life remain unawakened.
It is not to be denied that, in the natural sciences, this kind of interest is wanting. Each individual fact, taken by itself, can indeed arouse our curiosity or our astonishment, or be useful to us in its practical applications. But intellectual satisfaction we obtain only from a connection of the whole, just from its conformity with law.
Preface (Scribner edition, 1872) <!-- New York, Scribner pp xxv - xxvi -->
Chips from a German Workshop (1866)
Context: How can a missionary in such circumstances meet the surprise and questions of his pupils, unless he may point to that seed, and tell them what Christianity was meant to be; unless he may show that. like all other religions, Christianity, too, has had its history; that the Christianity of the nineteenth century is not the Christianity of the Middle Ages, that the Christianity of the MiddIe Ages was not that of the early Councils, that the Christianity of the early Councils was not that of the Apostles, and "that what has been said by Christ, that alone was weII said?"
1920s, The Democracy of Sports (1924)
Context: A special consideration suggests the value of a development of national interest in recreation and sports. There is no better common denominator of a people. In the case of a people which represents many nations, cultures and races, as does our own, a unification of interests and ideals in recreations is bound to wield a telling influence for solidarity of the entire population. No more truly democratic force can be set off against the tendency to class and caste than the democracy of individual parts and prowess in sport.
Huffington Post (10 November 2011) "Professor Rights Group Condemns CU-Boulder Firings Of Ward Churchill, Phil Mitchell In New Report" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/09/ward-churchill-phil-mitch_n_1084465.html by Matt Ferner
Context: I retract nothing. What I said has been validated beyond my wildest expectations, to tell you the truth, so let's just say that I rest my case. A lot of people were outraged by my remark, of course, but … the people upset were the fucking Eichmanns. Look in the mirror and own it, guys. You identified yourselves by frothing at the mouth for being called by your right name.
“Any story worth telling relates to real life in some meaningful way.”
"Caprica Producer Jane Espenson Redefines Racism in the BSG Universe" at AMCtv.com (April 2009) http://blogs.amctv.com/scifi-scanner/2009/04/jane-espenson-interview.php
Context: Any story worth telling relates to real life in some meaningful way. Scifi allows you to tell meaningful stories without seeming too preachy — it adds a metaphorical layer between the story and the real world. Scifi is dismissed as ungrounded fluff, but it's actually the opposite.
1950's, On Being a Graphic Artist', 1953
Context: It is human nature to want to exchange ideas, and I believe that, at bottom, every artist wants no more than to tell the world what he has to say. I have sometimes heard painters say that they paint 'for themselves': but I think they would soon have painted their fill if they lived on a desert island. The primary purpose of all art forms, whether it's music, literature, or the visual arts, is to say something to the outside world; in other words, to make a personal thought, a striking idea, an inner emotion perceptible to other people’s senses in such a way that there is no uncertainty about the maker's intentions.
My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)
Context: This gentlemen hated to contribute a cent to the support of a “materialistic demon.” When I saw that statement I will tell you what I did. I knew the man’s conscience must be writhing in his bosom to think that he had contributed a dollar toward my support, toward the support of a “materialistic demon.” I wrote him a letter and I said: “My Dear Sir: In order to relieve your conscience of the crime of having contributed to the support of an unbeliever in ghosts, I hereby enclose the amount you paid to attend my lecture.” I then gave him a little good advice. I advised him to be charitable, to be kind, and regretted exceedingly that any man could listen to one of my talks for an hour and a half and not go away satisfied that all men had the same right to think. This man denied having received the money, but it was traced to him through a blot on the envelope.
The God-Seeker (1949), Ch. 41
Sermon on the Plough, 29 January 1548. (G. E. Corrie (ed.), Sermons by Hugh Latimer, sometime Bishop of Worcester, Martyr, 1555 (Cambridge University Press, 1844), pp. 70-1.)
Context: And now I would ask a strange question: who is the most diligentest bishop and prelate in all England that passeth all the rest in doing his office? I can tell for I know him who it is; I know him well. But now I think I see you listening and hearkening that I should name him. There is one that passeth all the other, and is the most diligent prelate and preacher in all England. And will ye know who it is? I will tell you: it is the devil. He is the most diligent preacher of all other; he is never out of his diocese; he is never from his cure; ye shall never find him unoccupied; he is ever in his parish; he keepeth residence at all times; ye shall never find him out of the way, call for him when you will he is ever at home; the diligentest preacher in all the realm; he is ever at his plough; no lording nor loitering can hinder him; he is ever applying his business, ye shall never find him idle, I warrant you. And his office is to hinder religion, to maintain superstition, to set up idolatry, to teach all kind of popery. He is ready as he can be wished for to set forth his plough; to devise as many ways as can be to deface and obscure God's glory... O that our prelates would be as diligent to sow the corn of good doctrine as Satan is to sow cockle and darnel.
Writing about Gregorius Richter, chief pastor of Görlitz, who had condemned his writings (2 April 1624), as quoted in Concerning the Three Principles of the Divine Essence (1910), edited by Paul Deussen, Introduction
Context: I must tell you, sir, that yesterday the pharisaical devil was let loose, cursed me and my little book, and condemned the book to the fire. He charged me with shocking vices; with being a scorner of both Church and Sacraments, and with getting drunk daily on brandy, wine, and beer; all of which is untrue; while he himself is a drunken man.
Savitri (1918-1950), Book One : The Book Of Beginnings
Context: An instant's visitor the godhead shone.
On life's thin border awhile the Vision stood
And bent over earth's pondering forehead curve.
Interpreting a recondite beauty and bliss
In colour's hieroglyphs of mystic sense,
It wrote the lines of a significant myth
Telling of a greatness of spiritual dawns,
A brilliant code penned with the sky for page.
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (2003)
Context: I’d talk to him about the vast carpet of the future unrolling before us, of the certainty that we would encounter alien intelligences some day, of the unimaginable frontiers open to each of us. He’d tell me that deadheading was a strong indicator that one’s personal reservoir of introspection and creativity was dry; and that without struggle, there is no real victory.
This was a good fight, one we could have a thousand times without resolving. I’d get him to concede that Whuffie recaptured the true essence of money: in the old days, if you were broke but respected, you wouldn’t starve; contrariwise, if you were rich and hated, no sum could buy you security and peace. By measuring the thing that money really represented—your personal capital with your friends and neighbors—you more accurately gauged your success.
Interview http://www.locusmag.com/1997/Issues/09/KSRobinson.html in Locus, (September 1997)
Context: Science fiction rarely is about scientists doing real science, in its slowness, its vagueness, the sort of tedious quality of getting out there and digging amongst rocks and then trying to convince people that what you're seeing justifies the conclusions you're making. The whole process of science is wildly under-represented in science fiction because it's not easy to write about. There are many facets of science that are almost exactly opposite of dramatic narrative. It's slow, tedious, inconclusive, it's hard to tell good guys from bad guys — it's everything that a normal hour of Star Trek is not.
The Great Infidels (1881)
Context: I do not believe that the tendency is to make men and women brave and glorious when you tell them that there are certain ideas upon certain subjects that they must never express; that they must go through life with a pretence as a shield; that their neighbors will think much more of them if they will only keep still; and that above all is a God who despises one who honestly expresses what he believes. For my part, I believe men will be nearer honest in business, in politics, grander in art — in everything that is good and grand and beautiful, if they are taught from the cradle to the coffin to tell their honest opinion.
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 422.
Context: The Bible tells me explicitly that Christ was God; and it tells me, as explicitly that Christ was man. It does not go on to state the modus or manner of the union. I stop, therefore, where the Bible stops. I bow before a God-man as my Mediator, but I own as inscrutable the mysteries of His person.
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!
“I'm telling you this 'cause you're one of my friends.
My alphabet starts where your alphabet ends!”
On Beyond Zebra! (1955)
Context: In the places I go there are things that I see
That I never could spell if I stopped with the Z.
I'm telling you this 'cause you're one of my friends.
My alphabet starts where your alphabet ends!
Letter to Rev. C. B. Tayler ( 8 July 1853) in Ch. 6 : Undergraduate Life At Cambridge October 1850 to January 1854 — ÆT. 19-22, p. 189
The Life of James Clerk Maxwell (1882)
Context: I maintain that all the evil influences that I can trace have been internal and not external, you know what I mean—that I have the capacity of being more wicked than any example that man could set me, and that if I escape, it is only by God's grace helping me to get rid of myself, partially in science, more completely in society, — but not perfectly except by committing myself to God as the instrument of His will, not doubtfully, but in the certain hope that that Will will be plain enough at the proper time. Nevertheless, you see things from the outside directly, and I only by reflexion, so I hope that you will not tell me you have little fault to find with me, without finding that little and communicating it.
“It is of another minister I am to tell, but only to those who know that light when they see it.”
Source: The Little Minister (1891), Ch. 1 : The Love-Light
Context: "They didna speak, but they just gave one another a look, and I saw the love-light in their een." No more is remembered of these two, no being now living ever saw them, but the poetry that was in the soul of a battered weaver makes them human to us for ever.
It is of another minister I am to tell, but only to those who know that light when they see it. I am not bidding good-bye to many readers, for though it is true that some men, of whom Lord Rintoul was one, live to an old age without knowing love, few of us can have met them, and of women so incomplete I never heard.
“I tell you, I have never opened anyone’s file ever.”
2014, "GhoshanaPatra with Narendra Modi", 2014
Context: I think this is a very dirty question [asked about Robert Vadra]. On one hand, no one is above the law. Suppose there is an allegation against Narendra Modi, and suppose tomorrow Narendra Modi becomes the Prime Minister, then should the case against him be initiated or not; just because I became the Prime Minister everything be closed. It cannot be like that, right? I am not above anyone. But I am talking about myself here, not the person you asked about, don’t mix it up, I am sure you won’t play the news trader gimmick. I have 14 years to experience of running a government. I tell you, I have never opened anyone’s file ever. It is my opinion that I got involved in all that then I would just have gotten more lost in it and would have been unable to do any good work. This is my personal opinion, I am not telling this as a government policy. I have separated myself from all this in 14 years and gave support only to new positive initiatives. I am not even aware of them, they are old things and must be in progress, the government knows it’s work. We come in for five years, if we start lugging this garbage [e. g., old corruption cases] around then when will we [have time to] do some good work[? ] So it is my opinion that my energies not be wasted in garbage. My energies should be directed towards good constructive work. Five years is very little time, if we get caught elsewhere then how will we do any good for the country. Rest [of] the law [e. g., the judiciary] should take its own course.
The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 77
Variant: Accuse not thyself overmuch, deeming that thy tribulation and thy woe is all thy fault...
“It's hard to admit but it's easy to tell
That evil is alive and well.”
"Evil Is Alive And Well"
Seeing Things (2008)
Context: When midnight's done, and the day won't start,
And all I ever gave you was a broken heart,
It's hard to admit but it's easy to tell
That evil is alive and well.
Hansard http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmhansrd/cm080121/debtext/80121-0012.htm, 21 Jan 2008, House of Commons: Column 1261-1263.
Context: To see how the post of a permanent President of the European Council could evolve is not difficult even for the humblest student of politics, and it is, of course, rumoured that one Tony Blair may be interested in the job. Now, if that makes us uncomfortable on these benches, just imagine how it is viewed in Downing Street! I must warn Ministers opposite that having tangled with Tony Blair across this Dispatch Box on literally hundreds of occasions, I know his mind almost as well as they do. I can tell them that when he goes off to a major political conference of a centre-right party and simultaneously refers to himself as a socialist, he is on manoeuvres, and is busily building coalitions as only he can. We can all picture the scene at a European Council sometime next year. Picture the face of our poor Prime Minister as the name of "Blair" is nominated by one President and Prime Minister after another: the look of utter gloom on his face at the nauseating, glutinous praise oozing from every Head of Government, the rapid revelation of a majority view, agreed behind closed doors when he, as usual, was excluded. Never would he regret more no longer being in possession of a veto: the famous dropped jaw almost hitting the table, as he realises there is no option but to join in. And then the awful moment when the motorcade of the President of Europe sweeps into Downing Street. With gritted teeth and bitten nails: the Prime Minister emerging from his door with a smile of intolerable anguish; the choking sensation as the words, "Mr President", are forced from his mouth. And then, once in the Cabinet room, the melodrama of, "When will you hand over to me?" all over again.
“Stranger, tell the people of Lacedaemon
That we who lie here obeyed their commands.”
Book 7, Ch. 228.
The Histories
Heathcliff (Ch. XIV).
Wuthering Heights (1847)
Context: Should there be danger of such an event — should he be the cause of adding a single more trouble to her existence — why, I think I shall be justified in going to extremes! I wish you had sincerity enough to tell me whether Catherine would suffer greatly from his loss. The fear that she would restrains me: and there you see the distinction between our feelings. Had he been in my place, and I in his, though I hated him with a hatred that turned my life to gall, I never would have raised a hand against him. You may look incredulous, if you please! I never would have banished him from her society, as long as she desired his. The moment her regard ceased, I would have torn his heart out and drank his blood! But till then, if you don't believe me, you don't know me — till then, I would have died by inches before I touched a single hair of his head!
1950s, Checkers speech (1952)
Context: p>That's what we have and that's what we owe. It isn't very much but Pat and I have the satisfaction that every dime that we've got is honestly ours. I should say this — that Pat doesn't have a mink coat. But she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat. And I always tell her that she'd look good in anything.One other thing I probably should tell you because if we don't they'll probably be saying this about me too, we did get something — a gift — after the election. A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would like to have a dog. And, believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was. It was a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate that he'd sent all the way from Texas. Black and white spotted. And our little girl — Tricia, the 6-year old — named it Checkers. And you know, the kids, like all kids, love the dog and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we're gonna keep it.</p
Speech at Harvard Law School (16 February 1999) http://www.nra.org/Speech.aspx?id=6029
Context: Telling us what to think has evolved into telling us what to say, so telling us what to do can't be far behind.
Before you claim to be a champion of free thought, tell me: Why did political correctness originate on America's campuses? And why do you continue to tolerate it? Why do you, who're supposed to debate ideas, surrender to their suppression?
Let's be honest. Who here thinks your professors can say what they really believe?
It scares me to death and should scare you too, that the superstition of political correctness rules the halls of reason.
You are the best and the brightest. You, here in the fertile cradle of American academia, here in the castle of learning on the Charles River, you are the cream. But I submit that you, and your counterparts across the land, are the most socially conformed and politically silenced generation since Concord Bridge. And as long as you validate that... and abide it... you are — by your grandfathers' standards — cowards.
Interview on CBS News Sunday Morning (30 November 2006)
Context: Here's a chance, I think, for us to kind of remind ourselves, of those things we all commonly enjoy and love and share, try to get back together. You know, singing out for a more peaceful world today, I think, can only do good. … I do believe that … a lot of Muslims have yet to learn, you know, the incredible great history and contribution of Islamic civilization — and its become very, if you like, in some way puritanical — that puritanical approach will become narrower and narrower and even become more fragmented. Its that vast middle ground where people actually live, you know, that we have to reclaim; and in that area, everybody should be able to live together. And I don't think that God sent us prophets and books to fight about these books and these prophets. But they were telling us, actually, how to live together. If we ignore those teachings — whichever faith you belong, you profess, then I think we'll be finding ourselves in an even deeper mess.
Herodotus, The Histories 9.45, edited by A. D. Godley,
Context: Men of Athens... In truth I would not tell it to you if I did not care so much for all Hellas; I myself am by ancient descent a Greek, and I would not willingly see Hellas change her freedom for slavery. I tell you, then, that Mardonius and his army cannot get omens to his liking from the sacrifices. Otherwise you would have fought long before this. Now, however, it is his purpose to pay no heed to the sacrifices, and to attack at the first glimmer of dawn, for he fears, as I surmise, that your numbers will become still greater. Therefore, I urge you to prepare, and if (as may be) Mardonius should delay and not attack, wait patiently where you are; for he has but a few days' provisions left. If, however, this war ends as you wish, then must you take thought how to save me too from slavery, who have done so desperate a deed as this for the sake of Hellas in my desire to declare to you Mardonius' intent so that the barbarians may not attack you suddenly before you yet expect them. I who speak am Alexander the Macedonian.
“The chances are telling the truth is what got him there”
Nationally syndicated column number 31, A Few Shots of Scopolamin (15 July 1923), after meeting Robert E. House, who had proposed the use of scopolamine as a truth serum, in The Use of Scopolamine in Criminology (1922).
Weekly columns
Context: See they conducted experiments on convicts... I don't know on what grounds they reason a man in jail is a bigger liar than one out of jail... The chances are telling the truth is what got him there... It would be a big aid to humanity, but it will never be, for already the politicians are up in arms against it... It would wreck the very foundation on which our political government is run... If you ever injected truth into politics you'd have no politics … Even the ministers are denouncing it now … Humanity is not yet ready for either real truth or real harmony.
"Hymn in the Vale of Chamouni" (1802)
Context: Solemnly seemest like a vapoury cloud
To rise before me — Rise, oh, ever rise;
Rise like a cloud of incense from the earth!
Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven,
Great hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.
James M. McPherson. Drawn with the Sword : Reflections on the American Civil War] (1996), Princeton University: Oxford University Press. pp. 91–92
1990s
Context: Rioters were mostly Irish Catholic immigrants and their children. They mainly attacked the members of New York's small black population. For a year, Democratic leaders had been telling their Irish-American constituents that the wicked Black Republicans were waging the war to free the slaves who would come north and take away the jobs of Irish workers. The use of black stevedores as scabs in a recent strike by Irish dockworkers made this charge seem plausible. The prospect of being drafted to fight to free the slaves made the Irish even more receptive to demogogic rhetoric.
Foreword
My Turn (1989)
Context: Although there is a certain dignity in silence, which I find appealing, I have decided that for me, for our children, and for the historical record, I want to tell my side of the story. So much was said about me — about astrology, and my relationship with Raisa Gorbachev, and whether I got Donald Regan fired, and what went on between me and my children, especially Patti. Ironically, I felt I could start rebuilding our private life only by going public on these and other topics — to have my say and then to move on.
I often cried during those eight years. There were times when I just didn’t know what to do, or how I would survive. But even so, I wouldn’t trade those experiences for anything. I did things I never dreamed I could do, went places I never imagined I’d go, grew in ways I never thought possible. <!-- In 1988, during the space of a single week, I stood in the Kremlin with the Gorbachevs, had tea in Buckingham Palace with Queen Elizabeth, visited with Mrs. Thatcher at 10 Downing Street, and stopped off at Disney World in Florida with some of my favorite people on earth, the Foster Grandparents. And always, there was the love and support of my husband.
Yes, almost from the day I met him, Ronald Reagan has been the center of my life. I have been criticized for saying that, but it’s true.
"Written While Drunk", trans. William Acker
Anthology of Chinese Literature, Vol. I (1965), p. 184
Fifth poem in his series of poems on drinking wine.
Context: I built my house near where others dwell,
And yet there is no clamour of carriages and horses.
You ask of me "How can this be so?"
"When the heart is far the place of itself is distant."
I pluck chrysanthemums under the eastern hedge,
And gaze afar towards the southern mountains.
The mountain air is fine at evening of the day
And flying birds return together homewards.
Within these things there is a hint of Truth,
But when I start to tell it, I cannot find the words.
"Paperjack" in Dreams Underfoot : The Newford Collection (2003), p. 396
Context: Everybody makes the same mistake. Fortune-telling doesn't reveal the future; it mirrors the present. It resonates against what your subconscious already knows and hauls it up out of the darkness so you can get a good look at it.
“Well then tell me how much of what I earn belongs to you - and why?”
1980s, All It Takes is Guts: A Minority View (1987)
Context: But let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree? Well then tell me how much of what I earn belongs to you - and why?
Marty (1955)
Context: All my brothers and brothers-in-laws tell me what a good-hearted guy I am. You don't get to be good-hearted by accident. You get kicked around long enough, you become a professor of pain.
Marty Pilletti.
“I say you have no right to make terms for my life. I tell you then — No! I will not recant.”
The Heretic (1968)
Context: Who said to me, a foetus in the womb, a puling babe, "You have your life, but on the condition that you thus believe?" No one! Not even God! So gentlemen, I say you have no right to make terms for my life. I tell you then — No! I will not recant.
Sun-being to the court
The Other World (1657)
Context: O just ones, hear me! You cannot condemn this man, monkey or parrot for saying that the moon is the world he comes from. If he is a man, all men are free. Is he then not free to imagine what he wants, even if he does not come from the moon? Can you force him to have only your visions? Impossible! You may make him say that he believes that the moon is not a world, but still he will not believe it. To believe something, one must imagine that it is more probable than not. Unless you show him what is probable or he realizes it himself, he may tell you that he believes and yet he will not believe.
The Last Lecture (2007)
Context: How do you get people to help you? You can’t get there alone. People have to help you and I do believe in karma. I believe in paybacks. You get people to help you by telling the truth; by being earnest. I'll take an earnest person over a hip person every day, because hip is short-term, earnest is long term.
Source: The Historian (2005), Ch. 5
Context: In the Year of Our Lord 1456 Drakula did many terrible and curious things. When he was appointed Lord in Wallachia, he had all the young boys burned who came to his land to learn the language, four hundred of them. He had a large family impaled and many of his people buried naked up to the navel and shot at. Some he had roasted and then flayed.
There was a footnote, too, at the bottom of the first page. The typeface of the note was so fine that I almost missed it. Looking more closely, I realized it was a commentary on the word impaled. Vlad Tepes, it claimed, had learned this form of torture from the Ottomans. Impalement of the sort he practiced involved the penetration of the body with a sharpened wooden stake, usually through the anus or genitals upward, so that the stake sometimes emerged through the mouth and sometimes through the head.
I tried for a minute not to see these words; then I tried for several minutes to forget them, with the book shut.
The thing that most haunted me that day, however, as I closed my notebook and put my coat on to go home, was not my ghostly image of Dracula, or the description of impalement, but the fact that these things had — apparently — actually occurred. If I listened too closely, I thought, I would hear the screams of the boys, of the “large family” dying together. For all his attention to my historical education, my father had neglected to tell me this: history’s terrible moments were real. I understand now, decades later, that he could never have told me. Only history itself can convince you of such a truth. And once you’ve seen that truth — really seen it — you can’t look away.
1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)
Context: I agree with Ralph Ellison when he asked, perhaps rhetorically, why is it that so many of those who would tell us the meaning of Negro, of Negro life, never bothered to learn how varied it really is. That is particularly true of many whites who have elevated condescension to an art form by advancing a monolithic view of blacks in much the same way that the mythic, disgusting image of the lazy, dumb black was advanced by open, rather than disguised, bigots.
World War Z
Context: You wanna know who lost World War Z? Whales. I guess they never really had a chance, not with several million hungry boat people and half the world's navies converted to fishing fleets. [... ] So the next time someone tries to tell you about how the true losses of this war are "our innocence" or "part of our humanity"... Whatever, bro. Tell it to the whales.