Fragment 250 (trans. by Plumptre), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
As quoted in "Ingmar Bergman: Summing Up A Life In Film" http://web.archive.org/web/20110913212122/http://bergmanorama.webs.com/kakutani_nyt83.htm by Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times Magazine (26 June 1983)].
Context: I am very much aware of my own double self... The well-known one is very under control; everything is planned and very secure. The unknown one can be very unpleasant. I think this side is responsible for all the creative work — he is in touch with the child. He is not rational, he is impulsive and extremely emotional. Perhaps it is not even a "he," but a "she."
“The disciples of fear cannot touch me.”
My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)
Context: The brave men of the past endured the instruments of torture. They were stretched upon racks; their feet were crushed in iron boots; they stood upon the shores of exile and gazed with tearful eyes toward home and native land. They were taken from their firesides, from their wives, from their children; they were taken to the public square; they were chained to stakes, and their ashes were scattered by the countless hands of hatred. I am satisfied. The disciples of fear cannot touch me.
“I say: "What’s your name?" … I touch them. I look at them. I have a real exchange …”
The New York Times interview (2017)
Context: I was never that involved in the machine of press and publicity as an actor because I’ve always kind of worked on the margins of my profession … And then when my son was younger and it did get a little bit more intrusive, I tried to come to terms with how I was personally going to handle someone coming up to me on the street and wanting some part of my time. … Now what I do — because this is how I live — when someone approaches me and says, "Can I have your autograph," I say: "No, I’ve retired from that part of the business. I just act now." … I say: "What’s your name?" … I touch them. I look at them. I have a real exchange … I’m not an actor because I want my picture taken. I’m an actor because I want to be part of the human exchange.
1810s, Letter to H. Tompkinson (AKA Samuel Kercheval) (1816)
Context: Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to it and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves were they to rise from the dead.
Notes on the Banner of Peace (24 May 1939)
Context: Where all the treasures of mankind must be saved, there one should find such a symbol that can open the inmost recesses of all hearts. The symbol of the Banner of Peace has been spread so surprisingly far and wide that people are quite sincerely asking whether it is original or an invention of later times. We have witnessed honest wonderment after having proved its ancient origins and spread. At present mankind is beginning to think with horror like troglodytes again, hoping to safeguard their property in underground depositories and caves. But the Banner of Peace just announces the principle. It argues that mankind has to find a way to agree, that its achievements are global and belong to all the nations. The Banner says: noli me tangere — do not touch — do not dare to disturb, to offend the Universal Treasure with a touch of destruction.
Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments [Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen] (1753), as translated by William J. Mitchell (1949)
Context: More often than not, one meets technicians, nimble keyboardists by profession, who … indeed astound us with their prowess without ever touching our sensibilities.... stirring performance depends upon an alert mind which is willing to follow reasonable precepts in order to reveal the content of the compositions.
What comprises good performance? The ability through singing or playing to make the ear conscious of the true content and affect of a composition. Any passage can be so radically changed by modifying its performance that it will be scarcely recognizable.
Adam Bede (1859)
Context: All honour and reverence to the divine beauty of form! Let us cultivate it to the utmost in men, women, and children — in our gardens and in our houses. But let us love that other beauty too, which lies in no secret of proportion, but in the secret of deep human sympathy. Paint us an angel, if you can, with a floating violet robe, and a face paled by the celestial light; paint us yet oftener a Madonna, turning her mild face upward and opening her arms to welcome the divine glory; but do not impose on us any aesthetic rules which shall banish from the region of Art those old women scraping carrots with their work-worn hands, those heavy clowns taking holiday in a dingy pot-house, those rounded backs and stupid weather-beaten faces that have bent over the spade and done the rough work of the world — those homes with their tin pans, their brown pitchers, their rough curs, and their clusters of onions. In this world there are so many of these common coarse people, who have no picturesque sentimental wretchedness! It is so needful we should remember their existence, else we may happen to leave them quite out of our religion and philosophy and frame lofty theories which only fit a world of extremes. Therefore, let Art always remind us of them; therefore let us always have men ready to give the loving pains of a life to the faithful representing of commonplace things — men who see beauty in these commonplace things, and delight in showing how kindly the light of heaven falls on them. There are few prophets in the world; few sublimely beautiful women; few heroes. I can't afford to give all my love and reverence to such rarities: I want a great deal of those feelings for my every-day fellow-men, especially for the few in the foreground of the great multitude, whose faces I know, whose hands I touch for whom I have to make way with kindly courtesy.
Commencement Address for the Berklee College of Music, at Hynes Convention Center, Boston, Massachusetts (8 May 1999) https://www.berklee.edu/commencement/past
Context: Music has given me over 40 years of extraordinary experiences. I can't say that life's pains or more tragic episodes have been diminished because of it. But it's allowed me so many moments of companionship when I've been lonely and a sublime means of communication when I wanted to touch people. It's been both my doorway of perception and the house that I live in.
I only hope that it embraces you with the same lusty life force that it graciously offered me.
“Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire.”
In Our Youth Our Hearts Were Touched With Fire (1884)
Context: We know that, if the armies of our war did anything worth remembering, the credit belongs not mainly to the individuals who did it, but to average human nature. We also know very well that we cannot live in associations with the past alone, and we admit that, if we would be worthy of the past, we must find new fields for action or thought, and make for ourselves new careers.
But, nevertheless, the generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience. Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing. While we are permitted to scorn nothing but indifference, and do not pretend to undervalue the worldly rewards of ambition, we have seen with our own eyes, beyond and above the gold fields, the snowy heights of honor, and it is for us to bear the report to those who come after us.
Lord George Bentinck: A Political Biography (1852), Chapter X http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20007/20007-h/20007-h.htm#link2HCH0010. Variations of the bolded portion of this quote have been incorrectly challenged as misattributions based on the seemingly anachronistic reference to communism (which was not yet an important political force at the time), the negative language toward Jews, and the use of such variations by antisemitic agitators who failed to provide an accurate citation to the work in which it appears. See Paul F. Boller, John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, and Misleading Attributions (1990).
1850s
Context: But existing society has chosen to persecute this race which should furnish its choice allies, and what have been the consequences?
They may be traced in the last outbreak of the destructive principle in Europe. An insurrection takes place against tradition and aristocracy, against religion and property. Destruction of the Semitic principle, extirpation of the Jewish religion, whether in the Mosaic or in the Christian form, the natural equality of man and the abrogation of property, are proclaimed by the secret societies who form provisional governments, and men of Jewish race are found at the head of every one of them. The people of God co-operate with atheists; the most skilful accumulators of property ally themselves with communists; the peculiar and chosen race touch the hand of all the scum and low castes of Europe! And all this because they wish to destroy that ungrateful Christendom which owes to them even its name, and whose tyranny they can no longer endure.
Isha Insights Magazine, Spring Edition 2009
Sourced from newspapers and magazines
Context: Constantly all around us, one substance is being made into another. This transition and this transformation is happening all the time. If you make mud into food, that's called agriculture. If you make food into a human being, this is called digestion. If you make a human being into mud again, we call this cremation. If you transform the physical into the non-physical, that's called consecration. Why the need to transform the physical into non-physical? Because that's your longing. When you say ‘I want to walk the spiritual path’ what you're saying is, ‘I want to touch something which is non-physical.'–Sadhguru, Mahima Consecration, USA, Nov 7, 2008
Source: The Flame is Green (1971), Ch. 9 : Oh, The Steep Roofs of Paris
Context: The devils stroll the earth again and infect with the red sickness. They must, at all cost to themselves, destroy the growing tendrils before such can touch the other side. For, whenever one least growing creeper touches across the interval, that means the extinction of a devil. It is a thing to be tested. Notice it that whenever there is the special shrilling, when there is the wild flinging out of catchwords to catch you in, when there are the weird exceptions and inclusions, when there are specious arguments and the murderous defamations, when all the volubility of the voltairians and the cuteness of the queers has been assembled to confound you, then one green growth has almost reached across to the other side, one devil is in danger of extinction. Oh, they will defend against that!
Lesson 1, Don't Sweat the Small Stuff
Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff…and it’s all Small Stuff (1997)
Context: Often we allow ourselves to get all worked up about things that, upon closer examination, aren't really that big a deal. We focus on little problems and blow them out of proportion. … Whether we had to wait in line, listen to unfair criticism, or do the lion's share of the work, it pays enormous dividends if we learn not to worry about little things. So many people spend so much of their life energy "sweating the small stuff" that they completely lose touch with the magic and beauty of life.
Interview The Lantern (5 April 2001) Replying to two priests who, after a performance of his routines of "The Creation of The World" and "The Hands of Good and Evil", asked if he was religious.
Ch 2
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), Fiat Homo
Context: When Brother Francis had removed the last tray, he touched the papers reverently: only a handful of folded documents here, and yet a treasure; for they had escaped the angry flames of the Simplification, wherein even sacred writings had curled, blackened, and withered into smoke while ignorant mobs howled and hailed it a triumph. He handled the papers as one might handle holy things, shielding them from the wind with his habit, for all were brittle and cracked from age. There was a sheaf of rough sketches and diagrams. There were hand-scribbled notes, two large folded papers, and a small book entitled Memo.
“With your face comes laughter
And with your touch
And with your touch comes joy.”
"Ra Is A Busy God"
Many Worlds Are Born Tonight (1998)
Context: Even the leaves laugh
'cause they have what I have
Reach from the best tree
So he can see me
And with your face
With your face comes laughter
And with your touch
And with your touch comes joy.
1880s, Speech Nominating John Sherman for President (1880)
Context: Nothing touches my heart more quickly than a tribute of honor to a great and noble character; but as I sat in my seat and witnessed this demonstration, this assemblage seemed to me a human ocean in tempest. I have seen the sea lashed into fury and tossed into spray, and its grandeur moves the soul of the dullest man; but I remember that it is not the billows, but the calm level of the sea, from which all heights and depths are measured. When the storm has passed and the hour of calm settles on the ocean, when the sunlight bathes its peaceful surface, then the astronomer and surveyor take the level from which they measure all terrestrial heights and depths.
“Copyright law as it is, it's just completely out of touch with human behaviour.”
" 'Intellectual disobedience' and the future of copyright: Nina Paley interviewed at Foo (2012) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcJqxIyFv4s#t=4m25s" <!-- Retrieved 27 February 2013 -->
Context: In ten years I think the [copyright] laws are going to be worse and I also think they are going to be less relevant. I mean, already the difference between the laws and people's behaviour, It's like they're different planets. I'm not hopeful for the laws changing. A lot of other people are, so maybe we will have meaningful copyright reform. I doubt it. I don't think it matters. I think the tools are available for people to create and share culture and they're going to do that and they might be doing it illegaly and at a certain point it's going to be more than the system can handle. I will say that if the power structure as it exists wants to continue they're going to have to reform because it's not sustainable. Copyright law as it is, it's just completely out of touch with human behaviour.
Horvendile, in Ch. 13 : What a Boy Thought
The Way of Ecben (1929)
Context: My immortality has sharp restrictions. For it is at a price that I pass down the years, as yet, in eternal union with the witch-woman whose magic stays — as yet — more strong than the magic of time. The price is that I only of her lovers many not ever hope to win Ettare. This merely is permitted me: that I may touch the hand of Etarre in the moment I lay that hand in the hand of her last lover. I give, who may not ever take... So do I purchase an eternally unfed desire against which time — as yet — remains powerless.
"The Silent Shepherds" (1958)
Context: Science and mathematics
Run parallel to reality, they symbolize it, they squint at it,
They never touch it: consider what an explosion
Would rock the bones of men into little white fragments and unsky the world
If any mind for a moment touch truth.
"Where the streets have no name"
Lyrics, The Joshua Tree (1987)
Context: I want to run, I want to hide, I want to tear down the walls that hold me inside. I want to reach out and touch the plains, Where the streets have no names
"Under the Harvest Moon" (1916)
Context: Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.
R. Buckminster Fuller on Education (University of Massachusetts Press, 1979), p. 130
1970s
Context: Up to the Twentieth Century, reality was everything humans could touch, smell, see, and hear. Since the initial publication of the chart of the electromagnetic spectrum, humans have learned that what they can touch, smell, see, and hear is less than one-millionth of reality. Ninety-nine percent of all that is going to affect our tomorrows is being developed by humans using instruments and working in ranges of reality that are nonhumanly sensible.
“A breath that fleets beyond this iron world
And touches him who made it.”
Harold, Act iii, Scene 2
Source: The Moral Judgment of the Child (1932), Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism <!-- p. 186 -->
Context: The relations between parents and children are certainly not only those of constraint. There is spontaneous mutual affection, which from the first prompts the child to acts of generosity and even of self-sacrifice, to very touching demonstrations which are in no way prescribed. And here no doubt is the starting point for that morality of good which we shall see developing alongside of the morality of right or duty, and which in some persons completely replaces it.
"They are hostile nations" http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=177292
Selected Poems 1965-1975 (1976)
My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)
Context: And thereupon the Lord gave Satan the power to destroy the property and children of Job. In a little while these high contracting parties met again; and the Lord seemed somewhat elated with his success, and called again the attention of Satan to the sinlessness of Job. Satan then told him to touch his body and he would curse him. And thereupon power was given to Satan over the body of Job, and he covered his body with boils. Yet in all this, Job did not sin with his lips. This book seems to have been written to show the excellence of patience, and to prove that at last God will reward all who will bear the afflictions of heaven with fortitude and without complaint. The sons and daughters of Job had been slain, and then the Lord, in order to reward Job, gave him other children, other sons and other daughters—not the same ones he had lost; but others. And this, according to the writer, made ample amends. Is that the idea we now have of love? If I have a child, no matter how deformed that child may be, and if it dies, nobody can make the loss to me good by bringing a more beautiful child. I want the one I loved and the one I lost.
Account of 8 October 1918.
Diary of Alvin York
Context: There were over thirty of them in continuous action, and all I could do was touch the Germans off just as fast as I could. I was sharpshooting. I don't think I missed a shot. It was no time to miss.
In order to sight me or to swing their machine guns on me, the Germans had to show their heads above the trench, and every time I saw a head I just touched it off. All the time I kept yelling at them to come down. I didn't want to kill any more than I had to. But it was they or I. And I was giving them the best I had.
Suddenly a German officer and five men jumped out of the trench and charged me with fixed bayonets. I changed to the old automatic and just touched them off too. I touched off the sixth man first, then the fifth, then the fourth, then the third and so on. I wanted them to keep coming.
I didn't want the rear ones to see me touching off the front ones. I was afraid they would drop down and pump a volley into me. — and I got hold of the German major, and he told me if I wouldn't kill any more of them he would make them quit firing. So I told him all right, if he would do it now. So he blew a little whistle, and they quit shooting and come down and gave up.
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870), Note I : Hâjî Abdû, The Man
Context: I am an individual … a circle touching and intersecting my neighbours at certain points, but nowhere corresponding, nowhere blending. Physically I am not identical in all points with other men. Morally I differ from them: in nothing do the approaches of knowledge, my five organs of sense (with their Shelleyan "interpenetration"), exactly resemble those of any other being. Ergo, the effect of the world, of life, of natural objects, will not in my case be the same as with the beings most resembling me. Thus I claim the right of creating or modifying for my own and private use, the system which most imports me; and if the reasonable leave be refused to me, I take it without leave.
But my individuality, however all-sufficient for myself, is an infinitesimal point, an atom subject in all things to the Law of Storms called Life. I feel, I know that Fate is. But I cannot know what is or what is not fated to befall me. Therefore in the pursuit of perfection as an individual lies my highest, and indeed my only duty, the "I" being duly blended with the "We." I object to be a "self-less man," which to me denotes an inverted moral sense. I am bound to take careful thought concerning the consequences of every word and deed. When, however, the Future has become the Past, it would be the merest vanity for me to grieve or to repent over that which was decreed by universal Law.
Letters and Papers from Prison (1967; 1997), The Friend
Context: When the spirit touches
man's heart and brow
with thoughts that are lofty, bold, serene,
so that with clear eyes he will face the world
as a free man may;
when the spirit gives birth to action
by which alone we stand or fall;
when from the sane and resolute action
rises the workd that gives a a man's life
content and meaning — then would that many,
lonely and actively working,
know of the spirit that grasps and befriends him...
"Rockweeds" in The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 21 (March 1868), p. 269.
Context: The heart of God through his creation stirs,
We thrill to feel it, trembling as the flowers
That die to live again, — his messengers,
To keep faith firm in these sad souls of ours.The waves of Time may devastate our lives,
The frosts of age may check our failing breath,
They shall not touch the spirit that survives
Triumphant over doubt and pain and death.
Changing Consciousness (1991)
Context: For both the rich and the poor, life is dominated by an ever growing current of problems, most of which seem to have no real and lasting solution. Clearly we have not touched the deeper causes of our troubles. It is the main point of this book that the ultimate source of all these problems is in thought itself, the very thing of which our civilization is most proud, and therefore the one thing that is "hidden" because of our failure seriously to engage with its actual working in our own individual lives and in the life of society.
The Paris Review interview (2010)
Context: The need for romance is constant, and again, it’s pooh-poohed by intellectuals. As a result they’re going to stunt their kids. You can’t kill a dream. Social obligation has to come from living with some sense of style, high adventure, and romance. It’s like my friend Mr. Electrico. … he was a real man. That was his real name. Circuses and carnivals were always passing through Illinois during my childhood and I was in love with their mystery. One autumn weekend in 1932, when I was twelve years old, the Dill Brothers Combined Shows came to town. One of the performers was Mr. Electrico. He sat in an electric chair. A stagehand pulled a switch and he was charged with fifty thousand volts of pure electricity. Lightning flashed in his eyes and his hair stood on end. … Mr. Electrico was a beautiful man, see, because he knew that he had a little weird kid there who was twelve years old and wanted lots of things. We walked along the shore of Lake Michigan and he treated me like a grown-up. I talked my big philosophies and he talked his little ones. Then we went out and sat on the dunes near the lake and all of a sudden he leaned over and said, I’m glad you’re back in my life. I said, What do you mean? I don’t know you. He said, You were my best friend outside of Paris in 1918. You were wounded in the Ardennes and you died in my arms there. I’m glad you’re back in the world. You have a different face, a different name, but the soul shining out of your face is the same as my friend. Welcome back.
Now why did he say that? Explain that to me, why? Maybe he had a dead son, maybe he had no sons, maybe he was lonely, maybe he was an ironical jokester. Who knows? It could be that he saw the intensity with which I live. Every once in a while at a book signing I see young boys and girls who are so full of fire that it shines out of their face and you pay more attention to that. Maybe that’s what attracted him.
When I left the carnival that day I stood by the carousel and I watched the horses running around and around to the music of “Beautiful Ohio,” and I cried. Tears streamed down my cheeks. I knew something important had happened to me that day because of Mr. Electrico. I felt changed. He gave me importance, immortality, a mystical gift. My life was turned around completely. It makes me cold all over to think about it, but I went home and within days I started to write. I’ve never stopped.
Seventy-seven years ago, and I’ve remembered it perfectly. I went back and saw him that night. He sat in the chair with his sword, they pulled the switch, and his hair stood up. He reached out with his sword and touched everyone in the front row, boys and girls, men and women, with the electricity that sizzled from the sword. When he came to me, he touched me on the brow, and on the nose, and on the chin, and he said to me, in a whisper, “Live forever.” And I decided to.
Statement at the .
Context: Despite the fact that as an art, music cannot compromise its principles, and politics, on the other hand, is the art of compromise, when politics transcends the limits of the present existence and ascents to the higher sphere of the possible, it can be joined there by music. Music is the art of the imaginary par excellence, an art free of all limits imposed by words, an art that touches the depth of human existence, and art of sounds that crosses all borders. As such, music can take the feelings and imagination of Israelis and Palestinians to new unimaginable spheres.
Defiant Helen Thomas defends remarks that led to exit
Niraj Warikoo
Free Press
2010-12-02
http://www.freep.com/article/20101202/NEWS02/101202052/Defiant-Helen-Thomas-defends-remarks-that-led-to-exit
2010-12-02
And he pressed the silver spoon against the blade. Will, holding the knife, felt only the slightest resistance as the tip of the spoon's handle fell to the table, cut clean off.
"The other edge," the old man went on, "is more subtle still. With it you can cut an opening out of this world altogether. Try it now. Do as I say — you are the bearer. You have to know. No one can teach you but me, and I have not much time left. Stand up and listen."
Source: His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife (1997), Ch. 8 : The Tower of the Angels
Biomedical Ethics and Jewish Law http://www.myjewishlearning.com/ideas_belief/bioethics/Bioethics_Euthanasia_TO/Bioethics_EuthanMedi_Rosner.htm, published by KTAV http://www.ktav.com/
Context: One who is in a dying condition is regarded as a living person in all respects. It is not permitted to bind his jaws, to stop up the organs of the lower extremities, or to place metallic or cooling vessels upon his navel in order to prevent swelling. He is not to be rubbed or washed, nor is sand or salt to be put upon him until he expires. He who touches him is guilty of shedding blood. To what may he be compared? To a flickering flame, which is extinguished as soon as one touches it. Whoever closes the eyes of the dying while the soul is about to depart is shedding blood. One should wait a while; perhaps he is only in a swoon.
Song lyrics, American Pie (1971), American Pie
Context: A long long time ago
I can still remember how that music used to make me smile
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance
And maybe they'd be happy for a while.
But February made me shiver
With every paper I'd deliver
Bad news on the doorstep
I couldn't take one more step
I can't remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride
But something touched me deep inside
The Day the Music Died.
OSCON 2002
Context: Here's a story: There was a documentary filmmaker who was making a documentary film about education in America. And he's shooting across this classroom with lots of people, kids, who are completely distracted at the television in the back of the classroom. When they get back to the editing room, they realize that on the television, you can barely make out the show for two seconds; it's "The Simpsons," Homer Simpson on the screen. So they call up Matt Groening, who was a friend of the documentary filmmaker, and say, you know, Is this going to be a problem? It's only a couple seconds. Matt says, No, no, no, it's not going to be a problem, call so and so. So they called so and so, and so and so said call so and so.
Eventually, the so and so turns out to be the lawyers, so when they got to the lawyers, they said, Is this going to be a problem? It's a documentary film. It's about education. It's a couple seconds. The so and so said 25,000 bucks. 25,000 bucks?! It's a couple seconds! What do you mean 25,000 bucks? The so and so said, I don't give a goddamn what it is for. $25,000 bucks or change your movie. Now you look at this and you say this is insane. It's insane. And if it is only Hollywood that has to deal with this, OK, that's fine. Let them be insane. The problem is their insane rules are now being applied to the whole world. This insanity of control is expanding as everything you do touches copyrights.
“I think it's absolutely touch-and-go whether we're going to make it.”
From 1980s onwards, Only Integrity is Going to Count (1983)
Context: I think it's absolutely touch-and-go whether we're going to make it. But the point is, for me to tell you that you have an option is not to be optimistic... Time and again, of course I am running into millions who don't know we have the option, because it's invisible, and I feel I have tremendous responsibility. So when people ask me to come and talk to them, I do my best to let them know they do have the option. Of course they're pessimistic, not knowing that.
Source: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), p. 112
The Living Reminder: Service and Prayer in Memory of Jesus Christ (1977)
Context: When we walk in the Lord's presence, everything we see, hear, touch, or taste reminds us of Him. This is what is meant by a prayerful life. It is not a life in which we say many prayers but a life in which nothing, absolutely nothing, is done, said, or understood independently of Him who is the origin and purpose of our existence.
The Environmental Revolution: Speeches on Conservation, 1962–77 (1978)
Context: It is frequently more rewarding merely to ask pertinent questions. It may get someone to go and look for an answer. If you get a silly answer, which can easily happen, you can return to the charge with even more telling effect. Whatever happens, don't give up and don't despair. Results may not be immediately apparent, but you may have touched a receptive chord without knowing it. Even the most unsympathetic and unenlightened politician, industrialist or bureaucrat begins to take notice when a lot of people write about the same subject.
Visions
Context: At that time I also had, for a short while, the strength to bear it. But all too soon I lost external sight of the shape of that beautiful man, and I saw him disappear to nothing, so quickly melting away and fusing together that I could not see or observe him outside of me, nor discern him within me. It was to me at that moment as if we were one without distinction. All of this was external, in sight, in taste, in touch, just as people may taste and see and touch receiving the external sacrament, just as a beloved may receive her lover in the full pleasure of seeing and hearing, with the one becoming one with the other. After this I remained in a state of oneness with my Beloved so that I melted into him and ceased to be myself. And I was transformed and absorbed in the spirit, and I had a vision about the following hours.
“And the talking leads to touching
And the touching leads to sex
And then there is no mystery left”
"Portions for Foxes"
Song lyrics, More Adventurous (2004)
Context: There's blood in my mouth
Cause I've been biting my tongue all week
I keep on talking trash
But I never say anything
And the talking leads to touching
And the touching leads to sex
And then there is no mystery left
We the People interview (1996)
Context: Traditionally the gaze was conceived as a way of fingering, of touching. The old Greeks spoke about looking as a way of sending out my psychopodia, my soul's limbs, to touch your face and establish a relationship between the two of us. This relationship was called vision. Then, after Galileo, the idea developed that the eyes are receptors into which light brings something from the outside, keeping you separate from me even when I look at you. People began to conceive of their eyes as some kind of camera obscura. In our age people conceive of their eyes and actually use them as if they were part of a machinery. They speak about interface. Anybody who says to me, "I want to have an interface with you," I say, "please go somewhere else, to a toilet or wherever you want, to a mirror." Anybody who says, "I want to communicate with you," I say, "Can't you talk? Can't you speak? Can't you recognize that there's a deep otherness between me and you, so deep that it would be offensive for me to be programmed in the same way you are."
As quoted by Tobias Dantzig, Number: The Language of Science (1930)
“And reaching up my hand to try,
I screamed to feel it touch the sky.”
"Renascence" (1912), st. 3 Renascence and Other Poems (1917)
Context: But, sure, the sky is big, I said;
Miles and miles above my head;
So here upon my back I'll lie
And look my fill into the sky.
And so I looked, and, after all,
The sky was not so very tall.
The sky, I said, must somewhere stop,
And — sure enough! — I see the top!
The sky, I thought, is not so grand;
I 'most could touch it with my hand!
And reaching up my hand to try,
I screamed to feel it touch the sky.
Book III, Ch. IV, pp. 150-152.
Physics
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), II : The Starting-Point
Context: Knowledge is employed in the service of the necessity of life and primarily in the service of the instinct of personal preservation. The necessity and this instinct have created in man the organs of knowledge and given them such capacity as they possess. Man sees, hears, touches, tastes and smells that which it is necessary for him to see, hear, touch, taste and smell in order to preserve his life. The decay or loss of any of these senses increases the risks with which his life is environed, and if it increases them less in the state of society in which we are actually living, the reason is that some see, hear, touch, taste and smell for others. A blind man, by himself and without a guide, could not live long. Society is an additional sense; it is the true common sense.
Thirty Years That Shook Physics : The Story of Quantum Theory (1966), p. 64
Context: It is well known that theoretical physicists cannot handle experimental equipment; it breaks whenever they touch it. Pauli was such a good theoretical physicist that something usually broke in the lab whenever he merely stepped across the threshold. A mysterious event that did not seem at first to be connected with Pauli's presence once occurred in Professor J. Franck's laboratory in Göttingen. Early one afternoon, without apparent cause, a complicated apparatus for the study of atomic phenomena collapsed. Franck wrote humorously about this to Pauli at his Zürich address and, after some delay, received an answer in an envelope with a Danish stamp. Pauli wrote that he had gone to visit Bohr and at the time of the mishap in Franck's laboratory his train was stopped for a few minutes at the Göttingen railroad station. You may believe this anecdote or not, but there are many other observations concerning the reality of the Pauli Effect!
More Worlds Than One: The Creed of the Philosopher and the Hope of the Christian (1856), "Religious Difficulties", p. 152-153
Context: Amid the destructive convulsions of the physical world, even pious minds may have for an instant questioned the superintending providence of God. In the midst of famine, or pestilence, or war, they may have stood horror- struck at the scene. In the triumphs of fraud, oppression, and injustice, over honesty, and liberty, and law. Faith may have wavered, and Hope despaired; but in no condition, either of the physical or the moral world, does the mind question the POWER of its Maker. The omnipotence of the Creator, and the exertion of it in every corner of space, — His care over the falling sparrow, and His guidance of the gigantic planet, are the earliest of our acquired truths, and the very first that observation and experience confirm. When Reason gives wisdom to our perceptions, omnipotence is the grand truth which they inculcate. Whatever the eye sees, or the ear hears, or the fingers touch, — every motion of our body, every function it performs, every structure in its fabric, impresses on the mind, and fixes in the heart the conviction, that the Creator is all-powerful as well as all-wise. Omnipotence, in short, is the only attribute of God which is universally appreciated, which skepticism never unsettles, and which we believe as firmly when under the influence of our corrupt passions, as when we are looking devoutly to heaven. All the other attributes of God are inferences. His omnipresence, His omniscience, His justice, mercy, and truth, are the deductions of reason, and, however true and demonstrable, they exercise little influence over the mind; but the attribute of omnipotence predominates over them all, and no mind responsive to its power will ever be disturbed by the ideas which it suggests of infinity of time, infinity of space, and infinity of life.
Antic Hay (1923)
Context: There are quiet places also in the mind', he said meditatively. 'But we build bandstands and factories on them. Deliberately — to put a stop to the quietness. … All the thoughts, all the preoccupations in my head — round and round, continually What's it for? What's it all for? To put an end to the quiet, to break it up and disperse it, to pretend at any cost that it isn't there. Ah, but it is; it is there, in spite of everything, at the back of everything. Lying awake at night — not restlessly, but serenely, waiting for sleep — the quiet re-establishes itself, piece by piece; all the broken bits … we've been so busily dispersing all day long. It re-establishes itself, an inward quiet, like the outward quiet of grass and trees. It fills one, it grows — a crystal quiet, a growing, expanding crystal. It grows, it becomes more perfect; it is beautiful and terrifying … For one's alone in the crystal, and there's no support from the outside, there is nothing external and important, nothing external and trivial to pull oneself up by or stand on … There is nothing to laugh at or feel enthusiast about. But the quiet grows and grows. Beautifully and unbearably. And at last you are conscious of something approaching; it is almost a faint sound of footsteps. Something inexpressively lovely and wonderful advances through the crystal, nearer, nearer. And, oh, inexpressively terrifying. For if it were to touch you, if it were to seize you and engulf you, you'd die; all the regular, habitual daily part of you would die … one would have to begin living arduously in the quiet, arduously in some strange, unheard of manner.
Source: The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), IV
Context: They showed me their trees, and I could not understand the intense love with which they looked at them; it was as though they were talking with creatures like themselves. And perhaps I shall not be mistaken if I say that they conversed with them. Yes, they had found their language, and I am convinced that the trees understood them. They looked at all Nature like that — at the animals who lived in peace with them and did not attack them, but loved them, conquered by their love. They pointed to the stars and told me something about them which I could not understand, but I am convinced that they were somehow in touch with the stars, not only in thought, but by some living channel.
The Gendered Atom: Reflections on the Sexual Psychology of Science (1999)
Context: Here, at the birth of modern science, is a fundamental insight. Our knowledge of nature Out There begins with knowledge of ourselves In Here. Until we have freed our minds and emotions of the hidden presuppositions that stand between us and the world, we can never be certain we are in touch with reality.
Afterword: The Idols of the Bedchamber
“I'm not trying to preach or convert, just explore interesting ideas and touch some hearts.”
On his use of ideas of Meher Baba in his writings, in response to a comment at "Happy Birthday Meher Baba!" (25 February 2014) http://www.jmdematteis.com/2014/02/happy-birthday-meher-baba.html
J.M. DeMatteis's CREATION POINT (2009 – present)
Context: I'm glad the work doesn't come across as heavy-handed. I'm not trying to preach or convert, just explore interesting ideas and touch some hearts.
“THE ODIUM
Did you know,
that lack of touch
sometimes hurts more
than a strike?”
Among the things (2012), Page 134, the whole piece
Urvashi Butalia, Other Side Of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India
On how he turns toward art to communicate on his behalf in “Giving a Voice to the Voiceless: Malaquias Montoya, Renowned Artist” https://thebottomline.as.ucsb.edu/2014/01/giving-a-voice-to-the-voiceless-malaquias-montoya-renowned-artist in The Bottom Line (2014 Jan 29)
On what she hopes The Girl Who Smiled Beads accomplishes in “A moment on ‘Oprah’ made her a human rights symbol. She wants to be more than that.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/a-moment-on-oprah-made-her-a-human-rights-symbol-she-wants-to-be-more-than-that/2018/04/18/f394dd0c-3d98-11e8-a7d1-e4efec6389f0_story.html in The Washington Post (2018 Apr 19)
On staying with Colombia as his subject matter in “Interview: Fernando Botero” http://www.timeoutshanghai.com/features/Art-Art_Features/34176/Interview-Fernando-Botero.html in TimeOut Shanghai (2016 Feb 25)
On land holding the ghosts of trauma in “Mouths Full of Earth: An Interview with Kapka Kassabova” https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/09/12/mouths-full-of-earth-an-interview-with-kapka-kassabova/ in The Paris Review (2017 Sep 12)
The Recasting of Some Basic Psychoanalytic Ideas
The Denial of Death (1973)
On writers overestimating the difference that their writings make in “An interview with Viet Thanh Nguyen” https://www.asymptotejournal.com/interview/an-interview-with-viet-thanh-nguyen/ in Asymptote Magazine
Source: The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), Ch. 14: Doctor Moreau Explains
Source: Abaddon's Gate (2013), Chapter 11 (p. 121)
That writers do not always mean the same thing when treating of miracles is perfectly clear; because what may appear a miracle to the unlearned is to the better instructed only an effect produced by some unknown law hitherto unobserved. So that the idea of miracle is in some respect dependent upon the opinion of man. Much of this confusion has arisen from the definition of Miracle given in Hume's celebrated Essay, namely, that it is the "violation of a law of nature." Now a miracle is not necessarily a violation of any law of nature, and it involves no physical absurdity. As Brown well observes, "the laws of nature surely are not violated when a new antecedent is followed by a new consequent ; they are violated only when the antecedent, being exactly the same, a different consequent is the result;" so that a miracle has nothing in its nature inconsistent with our belief of the uniformity of nature. All that we see in a miracle is an effect which is new to our observation, and whose cause is concealed. The cause may be beyond the sphere of our observation, and would be thus beyond the familiar sphere of nature; but this does not make the event a violation of any law of nature. The limits of man's observation lie within very narrow boundaries, and it would be arrogance to suppose that the reach of man's power is to form the limits of the natural world. The universe offers daily proof of the existence of power of which we know nothing, but whose mighty agency nevertheless manifestly appears in the most familiar works of creation. And shall we deny the existence of this mighty energy simply because it manifests itself in delegated and feeble subordination to God's omnipotence?
"Passages from the life of a philosopher", Appendix: Miracle. Note (A)
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864)
On how writers like her are protected by the younger generation since the 2011 revolution in Egypt in “Nawal El Saadawi: ‘Do you feel you are liberated? I feel I am not’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/11/nawal-el-saadawi-interview-do-you-feel-you-are-liberated-not in The Guardian (2015 Oct 11)
Pity the tortoise, the katydid, the wild-bird, and the ox. Poor, undeveloped, untaught creatures! Into their dim and lowly lives strays of sunshine little enough, though the fell hand of man be never against them. They are our fellow-mortals. They came out of the same mysterious womb of the past, are passing through the same dream, and are destined to the same melancholy end, as we ourselves. Let us be kind and merciful to them.
"Conclusion", pp. 327–328
The Universal Kinship (1906), The Ethical Kinship
Speech in Glasgow (1 July 1977), quoted in The Times (2 July 1977), p. 1
1970s
Source: The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), Ch. 17: A Catastrophe
“Every time I touch a wound, an army of influential people turns against me.”
In a speech to businessmen in Rio de Janeiro, on 20 May 2019. Brazil's Bolsonaro says political class is an impediment https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-politics/brazils-bolsonaro-says-political-class-is-an-impediment-idUSKCN1SQ1VA. Reuters (20 May 2019).
The Source and Value of the "Mysteries" (1888)
Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee Statement on the Historic Hearing on H.R. 40 - a Bill to Establish a Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans (19 June 2019)
Source: The Birth and Death of Meaning: An Interdisciplinary Perspective on the Problem of Man (1962), p. 27
Malabar Manual, Page 142 https://archive.org/details/MalabarLogan/page/n154
Malabar Manual (1887)
