Quotes about turning (6191 quotes, page 44)

“My recollection of meeting him [ Jackson Pollock ] outside of this one incident, was at a show that John Graham did at the MacMillin Gallery [1942]. He invited someone called Jackson Pollock and myself, and, I believe, de Kooning. There were three unknown Americans put into that show and it turned out we were the three and it was through that source, my trying to track down the other unknown American who was painting abstractly at that point, as though I knew them all in New York City.... and I promptly went up to Pollock's studio and that's when I say I met Pollock for the first time.... And then, you see, after I saw Pollock, met him, saw the work, I said, "I understand the third painter is de Kooning," and he said he didn't know de Kooning and I said, "Well, I do and I'll take you over and introduce you."”

Lee Krasner (1908–1984) American artist

So I brought Pollock up to de Kooning's studio. De Kooning was in a loft at that time because he was something, and that is how Pollock met De Kooning.
n.p.
Oral history interview with Lee Krasner, 1964 Nov. 2 - 1968 Apr. 11

Understanding , Time , Painting

“When Hannibal's eyes were sated with the picture of all that valour, he saw next a marvellous sight—the sea suddenly flung upon the land with the mass of the rising deep, and no encircling shores, and the fields inundated by the invading waters. For, where Nereus rolls forth from his blue caverns and churns up the waters of Neptune from the bottom, the sea rushes forward in flood, and Ocean, opening his hidden springs, rushes on with furious waves. Then the water, as if stirred to the depths by the fierce trident, strives to cover the land with the swollen sea. But soon the water turns and glides back with ebbing tide; and then the ships, robbed of the sea, are stranded, and the sailors, lying on their benches, await the waters' return. It is the Moon that stirs this realm of wandering Cymothoe and troubles the deep; the Moon, driving her chariot through the sky, draws the sea this way and that, and Tethys follows with ebb and flow.”
Postquam oculos varia implevit virtutis imago, mira dehinc cernit: surgentis mole profundi injectum terris subitum mare nullaque circa litora et infuso stagnantis aequore campos. nam qua caeruleis Nereus evoluitur antris atque imo freta contorquet Neptunia fundo, proruptum exundat pelagus, caecosque relaxans Oceanus fontis torrentibus ingruit undis. tum uada, ceu saevo penitus permota tridenti, luctantur terris tumefactum imponere pontum. mox remeat gurges tractoque relabitur aestu, ac ratis erepto campis deserta profundo, et fusi transtris expectant aequora nautae. Cymothoes ea regna vagae pelagique labores Luna mouet, Luna, immissis per caerula bigis, fertque refertque fretum, sequiturque reciproca Tethys.

Silius Italicus Punica

Postquam oculos varia implevit virtutis imago,
mira dehinc cernit: surgentis mole profundi
injectum terris subitum mare nullaque circa
litora et infuso stagnantis aequore campos.
nam qua caeruleis Nereus evoluitur antris
atque imo freta contorquet Neptunia fundo,
proruptum exundat pelagus, caecosque relaxans
Oceanus fontis torrentibus ingruit undis.
tum uada, ceu saevo penitus permota tridenti,
luctantur terris tumefactum imponere pontum.
mox remeat gurges tractoque relabitur aestu,
ac ratis erepto campis deserta profundo,
et fusi transtris expectant aequora nautae.
Cymothoes ea regna vagae pelagique labores
Luna mouet, Luna, immissis per caerula bigis,
fertque refertque fretum, sequiturque reciproca Tethys.
Book III, lines 45–60
Punica

Way , Spring , Lying , Water

“There are places we all come from — deep-rooty-common places — that make us who they are. And we disdain them or treat them lightly at our peril. We turn our backs on them at the risk of self-contempt. There is a sense in which we need to go home again — and can go home again. Not to recover home, no. But to sanctify memory.”

Robert Fulghum book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (1986)

Home , Sense , Memory

“What language did these Macedones speak? The name itself is Greek in root and in ethnic termination. It probably means highlanders, and it is comparable to Greek tribal names such as `Orestai' and `Oreitai', meaning 'mountain-men'. A reputedly earlier variant, `Maketai', has the same root, which means `high', as in the Greek adjective makednos or the noun mekos. The genealogy of eponymous ancestors which Hesiod recorded […] has a bearing on the question of Greek speech. First, Hesiod made Macedon a brother of Magnes; as we know from inscriptions that the Magnetes spoke the Aeolic dialect of the Greek language, we have a predisposition to suppose that the Macedones spoke the Aeolic dialect. Secondly, Hesiod made Macedon and Magnes first cousins of Hellen's three sons - Dorus, Xouthus, and Aeolus-who were the founders of three dialects of Greek speech, namely Doric, Ionic, and Aeolic. Hesiod would not have recorded this relationship, unless he had believed, probably in the seventh century, that the Macedones were a Greek speaking people. The next evidence comes from Persia. At the turn of the sixth century the Persians described the tribute-paying peoples of their province in Europe, and one of them was the `yauna takabara', which meant `Greeks wearing the hat'. There were Greeks in Greek city-states here and there in the province, but they were of various origins and not distinguished by a common hat. However, the Macedonians wore a distinctive hat, the kausia. We conclude that the Persians believed the Macedonians to be speakers of Greek. Finally, in the latter part of the fifth century a Greek historian, Hellanicus, visited Macedonia and modified Hesiod's genealogy by making Macedon not a cousin, but a son of Aeolus, thus bringing Macedon and his descendants firmly into the Aeolic branch of the Greek-speaking family. Hesiod, Persia, and Hellanicus had no motive for making a false statement about the language of the Macedonians, who were then an obscure and not a powerful people. Their independent testimonies should be accepted as conclusive.”

N. G. L. Hammond (1907–2001) British classical scholar

"The Macedonian State" p.12-13)

Men , People , Family , Mountain

“One type of medical research involves ascertaining whether certain pathological conditions in humans can be alleviated or cured by certain drugs. Animals are used as "models" upon which to test these treatments. To do this it is necessary for the animal subject to have the condition in question, and in order to bring this about healthy animals are made sick. … It turns out, however, that the conditions artificially induced have little in common with the naturally occurring diseases in animals (when these exist) and much less in common with the diseases in man.”

Deborah Mayo American philosopher

Source: Against a Scientific Justification of Animal Experiments, pp. 343-344

Disease , Question , Nature , Animals

“And I decided that if motherhood turned a "young American beauty" into that unhappy woman, then motherhood wasn't for me, either. That youthful, emotional decision (ill-formed and made for the wrong reasons) kept me from too much early sexual experimentation, and probably turned me into a bit of a tease. I'd "neck" but only go so far, because... well, I because I was going to be a writer, "free and unhampered."”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

At the very least. I wasn't going to get pregnant in my teens.
Source: The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto (1981), p. 44

Youth , Beauty , Decision

“Thus we see remarkable indications of God's returning favor to Israel: in driving them out of other countries by great persecutions, in opening up Palestine to receive them, in inviting them thither by special providences in their favor in the way of benevolent enterprises for their improvement and assistance, and also in this significant movement which is the beginning of the turning away of Israel's blindness. And how evidently it is all of God!”

Charles Taze Russell (1852–1916) Founder of the Bible Student Movement

Source: Milennial Dawn, Vol. III: Thy Kingdom Come (1891), p. 286.

God , Way , Country

“I like to say I'm more conservative than Goldwater. He just wanted to turn the clock back to when there was no income tax. I want to turn the clock back to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other.”

Pete Seeger (1919–2014) American folk singer

" The Old Left http://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/22/magazine/sunday-january-22-1995-the-old-left.html?n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/People/S/Seeger,%20Pete", New York Times Magazine, 22 January 1995, sect. 6 p. 13

People

“She never had public favor; it was a bit like the Hillary Clinton thing. She did all the right things for her country, but she wasn't ultimately revered. So she had a conversation with her confidant-adviser. She asked him, when have they ever looked up to or idolized a woman? Only one, he told her, the Virgin Mary. So she said, Then I will become like the Virgin Mary, and she did. She created a facade for herself; she stopped having lovers; she became like a virgin. She became sexless, and painted her face in a white alabaster way, and turned herself into an icon that was untouchable and sexless, and then she had everybody's respect.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Madonna Interview : Aperture Magazine (Summer 1999), Aperture http://allaboutmadonna.com/madonna-library/madonna-interview-aperture-magazine-summer-1999,
About Queen of England, Elizabeth I.

Way , Confidence , Lovers , Painting

“You gotta understand that people attach me and Jim Steinman. But you really have to attach Todd Rundgren to that. … you really have to credit Todd Rundgren for the initial mark. Yes, Steinman had things in his head. And, yes, I had some things in my head; I had how “All Revved Up with No Place to Go” should sound in my head. Jim had how “You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night)” should sound in his head. But pulling things out of your head and accomplishing them, and somebody else trying to accomplish them, is a remarkable feat. … So not taking anything away from Jim, ‘cause Jim is an absolute genius and one of the smartest people that I’ve ever known, and I consider him one of my best friends. But, y’know, sometimes, people just… they pigeonhole things, and they go, “Jim Steinman and Meat Loaf.” And my thing is, no, stop it! Because the Bat Out of Hell records are this: it’s a big wheel, and everybody is a spoke in that wheel… and, at different times as that wheel’s turning, different people have more input than others. It’s, like, as a wheel turns, the bottom spokes take more than the top spokes…but, pretty soon, those are gonna be the bottom spokes, and their import is more. And, so, that’s how that goes with the Bat Out of Hell records… and that’s exactly Bat Out of Hell III.”

Meat Loaf (1947) American musician, singer, songwriter, record producer and actor

On credit for the Bat out of Hell albums.
A chat with Meat Loaf (2006)

People , Hell , Understanding , Time

“I guess I should warn you, if I turn out to be particularly clear, you've probably misunderstood what I said.”

Alan Greenspan (1926) 13th Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the United States

1988 speech, as quoted in The New York Times, October 28, 2005.
Sometimes misquoted as: "If I have made myself clear, I've misspoken."
1980s

“I myself cried when I got angry, then became unable to explain why I was angry in the first place. Later I would discover this was endemic among female human beings. Anger is supposed to be "unfeminine" so we suppress it -until it overflows. I could see that not speaking up made my mother feel worse. This was my first hint of the truism that depression is anger turned inward; thus women are twice as likely to be depressed. My mother paid a high price for caring so much, yet being able to do so little about it. In this way, she led me toward am activist place where she herself could never go.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

My Life on The Road

Women , Way , Feeling , Anger

“Two seemingly incompatible conceptions can each represent an aspect of the truth … They may serve in turn to represent the facts without ever entering into direct conflict.”

Louis de Broglie (1892–1987) French physicist

Dialectica, Vol. 2, No. 3/4 (1948), p. 326.

Truth

“Learning is all that mass of facts, and of judgments on the facts, and of conclusions drawn therefrom; wisdom is the extracted essence of the whole, that which the Soul has gathered out of all these experiences, and it is, as you are aware, its work in Devachan to turn these experiences into wisdom.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

p. 55

Wisdom , Soul , Learning

“Very clever, all those boys are, very clever boys. I think they should turn professional. They tell me now they've learned to put on make-up. Soon they're going to use it on the stage!”

Frankie Howerd (1917–1992) British actor

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A744914

Boy , Thinking , Learning

“[on reacting to racism] I don't wanna be the better person. I don't wanna rise above it. I do wanna sink down to their level. I am not gonna turn the other cheek. "I'mma gonna show you what cheek I'mma turn, OK!"”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Tours and CDs, Revolution Tour

Personality

“We were not made great as a country by indulging in or even exalting our worst impulses, turning against ourselves, glorifying in the things that divide us, and calling fake things true and true things fake. And we did not become the beacon of freedom in the darkest corners of the world by flouting our institutions and failing to understand just how hard-won and vulnerable they are.”

Jeff Flake (1962) American politician

Speech in the U.S. Senate (2017)

World , Understanding , Freedom , Country

“Like most philosophers, Kant worked to shore up the conventional beliefs of his time. Schopenhauer did the opposite. Accepting the arguments of Hume and Kant that the world is unknowable, he concluded that both the world and the individual subject that imagines it knows it are maya, dreamlike constructions with no basis in reality. … Schopenhauer accepted the sceptical side of Kant's philosophy and turned it against him. Kant demonstrated that we are trapped in the world of phenomena and cannot know things in themselves. Schopenhauer went one step further and observed that we ourselves belong in the world of appearances. Unlike Kant, Schopenhauer was ready to follow his thoughts wherever they led. Kant argued that unless we accept that we are autonomous, freely choosing selves we cannot make sense of our moral experience. Schopenhauer responded that our actual experience is not of freely choosing the way we live but of being driven along by our bodily needs - by fear, hunger and, above all, sex.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Deception: Schopenhauer's Crux (p. 42-3)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

Hunger , World , Fear , Sex

“So here I am.
On the road again.
There I am,
Up on the stage.
And here I go,
Playin' the star again.
There I go,
Turn the page.”

Bob Seger (1945) American singer-songwriter

Turn the Page.
Song lyrics, Back in '72 (1973)

Star

“From the time they turned one they were tossed from the balconies of the kitchens, first with life preserves so they would lose their fear of the water, and then without life preservers so they would lose their respect for death.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Living to Tell the Tale

Living to Tell the Tale (2002)

Life , Death , Fear , Water

“And Kathleen Willey also spoke about Linda Tripp, a Clinton-basher who seems to be at every ugly turn in this controversy. Tripp was outside the Oval Office when Willey emerged from her encounter with the President. Just how is it that Linda Tripp is so often conveniently involved in the President’s troubles? For some clues let’s bring in The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, who has profiled the controversial Miss Tripp in this week’s issue. You write that co-workers often viewed her as an inveterate busybody. Has she always been a snoop and a gossip with a particular interest in other people’s romantic lives?”

Bryant Gumbel (1948) American sportscaster

On Public Eye, March 17, 1998. Real Video http://www.mediaresearch.org/rm/projects/99/Gumbel9/segment1.ram

People

“It takes courage to choose hope over fear. As I look around the world, I’m starting to see people and nations turning inward, against the idea of a connected world and a global community. The path forward is to bring people together, not push them apart. I hear fearful voices calling for building walls and distancing people they label as ‘others’. I hear them calling for blocking free expression, for slowing immigration, for reducing trade, and in some cases even for cutting access to the internet.”

Mark Zuckerberg (1984) American internet entrepreneur

Quoted: Mark Zuckerberg takes a swipe at Donald Trump telling people to 'choose hope over fear http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/7071854/Mark-Zuckerberg-takes-a-swipe-at-Donald-Trump-telling-people-to-choose-hope-over-fear.html, The Sun, 13 April 2016
Source: Zuckerberg's speech during Facebook's F8 developers event on 12 April 2016, developers.facebook.com https://developers.facebook.com/videos/f8-2016/keynote/

People , World , Fear , Hope

“Prior to all overturns of XX century, without an exception, Russian opposition has accused authorities in "transferring funds to abroad". And in all cases in turned out to be void propaganda — from 1914-1917 to 1991. And money were transferred later, after the revolution, under brands of "people's power" and "won democracy". The only real way of plundering through "transfer of funds" is change of political system, which would transform into zeroing of all governmental promissory notes. As soon as Russia will become "Other Russia", all the property will turn out to be transferred, "nobody's". And people will be informed, that "previous power has eaten all".”

Gleb Pavlovsky (1951) Russian political scientist

Money , People , Way , Democracy

“I didn’t really expect to make any money. If I could make enough to cover the rent and buy some food that would be fine. As it turns out, it turned out to be quite valuable in the end.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007)

Money , Food

“Hamm: Look at the ocean!(Clov gets down, takes a few steps towards window left, goes back for ladder, carries it over and sets it down under window left, gets up on it, turns the telescope on the without, looks at length. He starts, lowers the telescope, examines it, turns it again on the without.)Clov: Never seen anything like that!Hamm (anxious): What? A sail? A fin? Smoke?Clov (looking): The light is sunk. Hamm (relieved): Pah! We all knew that. Clov (looking): There was a bit left. Hamm: The base. Clov (looking): Yes. Hamm: And now? Clov (looking): All gone. Hamm: No gulls? Clov (looking): Gulls! Hamm: And the horizon? Nothing on the horizon? Clov (lowering the telescope, turning towards Hamm, exasperated): What in God's name could there be on the horizon? (Pause.) Hamm: The waves, how are the waves? Clov: The waves? (He turns the telescope on the waves.) Lead. Hamm: And the sun? Clov (looking): Zero. Hamm: But it should be sinking. Look again. Clov (looking): Damn the sun. Hamm: Is it night already then? Clov (looking): No. Hamm: Then what is it? Clov (looking): Gray. (Lowering the telescope, turning towards Hamm, louder.) Gray! (Pause. Still louder.) GRRAY! (Pause. He gets down, approaches Hamm from behind, whispers in his ear.) Hamm (starting): Gray! Did I hear you say gray? Clov: Light black. From pole to pole.”

Samuel Beckett (1906–1989) Irish novelist, playwright, and poet

An explanation of the universe outside the room of Endgame
Endgame (1957)

God , Light , Sun , Night

“Fiction has two uses. Firstly, it's a gateway drug to reading. The drive to know what happens next, to want to turn the page, the need to keep going, even if it's hard, because someone's in trouble and you have to know how it's all going to end … that's a very real drive. And it forces you to learn new words, to think new thoughts, to keep going. To discover that reading per se is pleasurable. Once you learn that, you're on the road to reading everything. And reading is key. There were noises made briefly, a few years ago, about the idea that we were living in a post-literate world, in which the ability to make sense out of written words was somehow redundant, but those days are gone: words are more important than they ever were: we navigate the world with words, and as the world slips onto the web, we need to follow, to communicate and to comprehend what we are reading. People who cannot understand each other cannot exchange ideas, cannot communicate, and translation programs only go so far.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming (2013)

People , Pleasure , World , Communication

“I might need a good lawyer, could be your funeral, my trial
Well, I cried for you, now it's your turn, you can cry awhile”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Love and Theft (2001), Cry A While

Cry

“Each age is characterized by its own astronomical myriads of new, special-case experiences and problems to be stored in freshly born optimum capacity human brains — which storages in turn may disclose to human minds the presence of heretofore undiscovered, unsuspectedly existent eternal generalized principles.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

1970s, Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975), Moral of the work

Age , Problem

“She was my closest friend. She was the one person, other than my husband, I could turn to in a crisis. There was a lot of resentment when I first came to town. But Patsy was strong-willed and always taking up for me. If it hadn't been for her, I don't think I would have lasted.”

Loretta Lynn (1932) American country-music singer-songwriter

Country Weekly staff writer (2002). "Loretta Lynn" http://www.countryweekly.com/stories/stats/37299 CountryWeekly.com (accessded June 9, 2006)
On Patsy Cline

Thinking , Strong , Personality

“I could not find the way to God;
There were too many flaming suns
For signposts, and the fearful road
Led over wastes where millions
Of tangled comets hissed and burned—
I was bewildered and I turned.”

Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863–1944) British writer and literary critic

Poem The White Moth http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-white-moth/

God , Fear , Way , Sun

“In fact, for the first time in my life, I am worried about the fact that children might be "brainwashed" in schools throughout the country to "tolerate" homosexuality ("tolerate" as in "hail"), which may turn out to be an encouragement to 1. uncritically approve gay marriage, and 2. become gay yourself.”

Piero Scaruffi (1955) Italian writer

Why I voted against "gay" marriage http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/usa08.html#usa1108c

Life , Marriage , Children , School

“I was very thirsty. Laying in the bathtub, looking up at the faucet, I thought of a great idea. So I turned the nozzle on full blast, and put my mouth up to it. It was like drinking from a firehose, but I was too drunk and dehydrated to notice that I was getting completely soaked, or that water was shooting out of my nose.”

Tucker Max (1975) Internet personality; blogger; author

My 21st Birthday http://www.tuckermax.com/archives/entries/date/my_21st_birthday.phtml#612,
The Tucker Max Stories

Idea , Drink , Water

“It lay heavily in her hands, the crystal face gleaming, the golden body exquisitely machined. It was very like a clock, or a compass, for there were hands pointing to places around the dial, but instead of the hours or the points of the compass there were several little pictures, each of them painted with extraordinary precision, as if on ivory with the finest and slenderest sable brush. She turned the dial around to look at them all. There was an anchor; an hourglass surmounted by a skull; a chameleon, a bull, a beehive… Thirty-six altogether, and she couldn't even guess what they meant.”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

Lyra, investigating the alethiometer, in Ch. 4 : The Alethiometer
His Dark Materials, The Golden Compass (1995)

Painting

“What should have occurred after the fall of the Berlin Wall? For almost 50 years, America had sacrificed its wealth and at times the lives of its young, to contain armed communism. Its brave pilots risked their lives by skimming the hills of Western Europe to the great annoyance of German picnickers whose liberty depended, in fact, on such sacrifice. Its submariners left behind comfort, family, and friends, to make full deterrents real. Its men and women in uniform stood at places of peril, willing to risk their lives for our liberty. The West did whatever it had to do to prevent the armed Bolsheviks from achieving tactical or strategic superiority. It sustained its will and its great burden of debt even when its artists, college students, professors, authors and filmmakers, turned against the alleged folly of such efforts. It obsessed on communism and anti-communism; it was haunted by its own and its enemy's bombs, missiles, and nuclear strategies. This was the burden it chose to bear. And then, in a seeming miracle, the fatal weaknesses of tyranny, central planning, and il-liberalism, at a moment of American will, were actualized in the collapse of European communism. Now we could assess and do a real accounting of what we had fought to preserve and to prevent.”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

2010s, Socialism's Legacy (2011)

Women , Men , Family , Communication

“If we turn back to the time when the first compulsory education act was passed, we find that the capitalists of England fought these acts with all their might, but that they soon withdrew their opposition and supported them. For the employers recognised that though the children would know a little more, the amount could be so restricted that the result would only be to make them better wage slaves, knowing no more of freedom than what we have known and experienced of it.”

William Earsman (1884–1965) Australian left-wing activist

The Proletariat and Education: The Necessity for Labor Colleges

Children , Education , Support , Freedom

“With traps and obstacles and hazards confronting us on every hand, only blindness or indifference will fail to turn in all humility, for guidance or for warning, to the study of examples.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo (1870–1938) United States federal judge

"Law and Literature" in Law and Literature and Other Essays and Addresses (1931), p. 9
Other writings

Study , Indifference

“I say this as an opponent of nuclear power, if I had my way, we would close down every nuclear power plant in this country as soon as we could, safely, but the problem is we have low-level waste. And to turn our backs on that problem and ignore that problem and to say that it will go away is wrong. The environmental debate today should be what is the safest way of disposing of low-level radioactive waste, and I would argue strongly that the passage of this legislation and depositing it in a safer location in Texas is the direction that we should go.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Speaking at the House of Representatives on the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact, in 7 October 1997. https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/1997/10/7/house-section/article/h8512-1?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22%5C%22all+that+Texas+and+Maine+and+Vermont+are+asking+for+today%5C%22%22%5D%7D&r=1
1990s

Way , Problem , Country

“There's people who can't spell 'weird' right driving round with thousands in the bank; but I get by, got a lot on my mind; I get by, got allotments on my mind.
Turned Up Clocked On Laid Off, This Leaden Pall”

Nigel Blackwell

1993
Lyrics

People

“As men of inward light are wont
To turn their optics in upon 't.”

Samuel Butler (poet) (1612–1680) poet and satirist

Canto I, line 481
Source: Hudibras, Part III (1678)

Men , Light

“Forgetting when God does it in relation to sin, is the opposite of creating, since to create is to bring forth from nothing and to forget is to take back into nothing. What is hidden from my eyes, that I have never seen; but what is hidden behind my back, that I have seen. The one who loves forgives in this way; he forgives, he forgets, he blots out the sin, in love he turns toward the one he forgives; but when he turns toward him, he of course, cannot see what is lying behind his back.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: 1840s, Works of Love (1847), p. 296

Love , God , Way , Lying

“It is remarkable that this generalization of plane geometry to surface geometry is identical with that generalization of geometry which originated from the analysis of the axiom of parallels. …the construction of non-Euclidean geometries could have been equally well based upon the elimination of other axioms. It was perhaps due to an intuitive feeling for theoretical fruitfulness that the criticism always centered around the axiom of parallels. For in this way the axiomatic basis was created for that extension of geometry in which the metric appears as an independent variable. Once the significance of the metric as the characteristic feature of the plane has been recognized from the viewpoint of Gauss' plane theory, it is easy to point out, conversely, its connection with the axiom of parallels. The property of the straight line as being the shortest connection between two points can be transferred to curved surfaces, and leads to the concept of straightest line; on the surface of the sphere the great circles play the role of the shortest line of connection… analogous to that of the straight line on the plane. Yet while the great circles as "straight lines" share the most important property with those of the plane, they are distinct from the latter with respect to the axiom of the parallels: all great circles of the sphere intersect and therefore there are no parallels among these "straight lines". …If this idea is carried through, and all axioms are formulated on the understanding that by "straight lines" are meant the great circles of the sphere and by "plane" is meant the surface of the sphere, it turns out that this system of elements satisfies the system of axioms within two dimensions which is nearly identical in all of it statements with the axiomatic system of Euclidean geometry; the only exception is the formulation of the axiom of the parallels.”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

The geometry of the spherical surface can be viewed as the realization of a two-dimensional non-Euclidean geometry: the denial of the axiom of the parallels singles out that generalization of geometry which occurs in the transition from the plane to the curve surface.
The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

Way , Feeling , Idea , Understanding

“But that was only a small part of the reason why I quit. The main reason was the disturbing new player-base. The game got bigger with every new expansion that was released, and as it got bigger, it brought in a vast amount of new players. I noticed that more and more “normal” people who had active and pleasurable social lives were starting to play the game, as the new changes catered to such a crowd. WoW no longer became a sanctuary where I could hide from the evils of the world, because the evils of the world had now followed me there. I saw people bragging online about their sexual experiences with girls… and they used the term “virgin” as an insult to people who were more immersed in the game than them. The insult stung, because it was true. Us virgins did tend to get more immersed in such things, because our real lives were lacking. I couldn’t stand to play WoW knowing that my enemies, the people I hate and envy so much for having sexual lives, were now playing the same game as me. There was no point anymore. My best friend Bradley, betrayed me by leaving me and going to some ginger named William. One day, I will get my revenge. I realized what a terrible mistake I made to turn my back on the world again. The world is brutal, and I need to fight for my place in it. My life was at a crucial turning point, and I couldn’t waste any more precious time.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), Thoughts at 19, Quitting World of Warcraft

Life , Hate , People , Pleasure

“In Clavain’s experience, it was the less comforting possibility that generally turned out to be the case. It was the way the universe worked.”

Alastair Reynolds book Redemption Ark

Source: Redemption Ark (2002), Chapter 23 (p. 413)

Way , Universe

“Everything that seems like a disability with Trump always turns out to be an advantage. If we were in the laboratory, designing the perfect presidential candidate, it’s unlikely we would have produced a tasteless, publicity‐seeking, coarse, billionaire, reality TV star. Ha! Look at how wrong we were. It turns out, that is exactly what we needed.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

2016, In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome! (2016)

Star , Reality , Perfection

“Science has fairly turned us out of our comfortable little anthropomorphic notion of things into the great out-of-doors of the universe. We must and will get used to the chill, yea, to the cosmic chill, if need be. Our religious instincts will be all the hardier for it.”

John Burroughs (1837–1921) American naturalist and essayist

Time and Change, p. 2 (1912)

Universe , Science

“Every friend of freedom… must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

"An Open Letter to Bill Bennett" in The Wall Street Journal (7 September 1989)

Freedom

“Thought the fool is to be pitied, still he is spared watching spurious wisdom turn to ashes in his head.”

Henry S. Haskins (1875–1957)

Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 115

Wisdom , Fools

“With the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, the death of Eric Garner in Staten Island, the ongoing protests throughout the country, and the assassinations of NYPD Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, we are at a crossroads. As a society, we can choose to live our everyday lives, raising our families and going to work, hoping that someone, somewhere, will do something to ease the tension—to smooth over the conflict. We can roll up our car windows, turn up the radio and drive around these problems, or we can choose to have an open and honest discussion about what our relationship is today—what it should be, what it could be, and what it needs to be—if we took more time to better understand one another.”

James Comey (1960) American lawyer and the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

2010s, Hard Truths: Law Enforcement (2015)

Death , Family , Hope , Cars

“It's the time of turning and there's something stirring outside.
It's the time of turning and the old world's falling.
Nothing you can do can stop by the next emerging.
Time of the turning and we'd better learn to say our goodbyes.”

Peter Gabriel (1950) English singer-songwriter, record producer and humanitarian

The Time of the Turning
Song lyrics, OVO (2000)

World , Learning , Time

“Impressionism was the name given to a certain form of observation when Monet, not content with using his eyes to see what things were or what they looked like as everybody had done before him, turned his attention to noting what took place on his own retina”

John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) American painter

as an oculist would test his own vision
In K.C. Charteris John Sargent http://books.google.co.in/books?id=oInqAAAAMAAJ, C. Scribener's Sons, p.123

“Each time we love,
We turn a nearer and a broader mark
To that keen archer, Sorrow, and he strikes.”

Alexander Smith (1829–1867) Scottish poet and essayist

"A Boy’s Dream".
City Poems (1857)

Love , Time

“The pro-feminist male is a wretched, guilt-ridden creature who must at every turn make certain he is not impeding the progress of women in any way. He willingly accepts guild for crime against women he never committed, perpetuated by men he has never met. He must question… admiration he might have for traditional role models- for fear that he is perpetuating cultures of honor or patriarchy that could somehow result in the oppression of or violence against women. He must be careful to include women in every activity, even if he would prefer not to… He is encouraged to work with women to support their interests with little or no regard for how those interests might have a negative impact of men… The only "freedom" that feminism offers men is the freedom to do exactly what women want men to do.”

Jack Donovan (1974) American activist, editor and writer

"Mother May I" Masculinity
A Sky Without Eagles (2014)

Women , Men , Fear , Way

“Capitalism is hard to reason with, but it vividly understands the fist of the working-class, and the Bolsheviks’ unforgettable honorary deed — no matter how the future may turn out, is that they for the first time in world history have shown the tormenters of humanity, an example of power that truly acts, not just talks. The fist in the face, that is the only argument capitalism understands, and Bolshevism has used the fist, hard, very hard but certainly justified.”

Ture Nerman (1886–1969) Swedish socialist

Folkets Dagblad - Politiken (5 May 1919)
Sourced quotes

World , History , Understanding , Time

“A wrong turn doesn't end the journey. If you feel lost, just look at your map and get back on the road. The map will always lead you in the right direction.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 78

Feeling

“To a person uninstructed in natural history, his country or sea-side stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

"On the Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences" (1854) p. 29 http://books.google.com/books?id=FJZWAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA29
1850s

Art , History , Nature , Personality

“On the 7th azar I went to see and shoot on the tank of Pushkar, which is one of the established praying-places of the Hindus, with regard to the perfection of which they give (excellent) accounts that are incredible to any intelligence, and which is situated at a distance of three kos from Ajmir. For two or three days I shot waterfowl on that tank, and returned to Ajmir. Old and new temples which, in the language of the infidels, they call Deohara are to be seen around this tank. Among them Rana Shankar, who is the uncle of the rebel Amar, and in my kingdom is among the high nobles, had built a Deohara of great magnificence, on which 100,000 rupees had been spent. I went to see that temple. I found a form cut out of black stone, which from the neck above was in the shape of a pig's head, and the rest of the body was like that of a man. The worthless religion of the Hindus is this, that once on a time for some particular object the Supreme Ruler thought it necessary to show himself in this shape; on this account they hold it dear and worship it. I ordered them to break that hideous form and throw it into the tank. After looking at this building there appeared a white dome on the top of a hill, to which men were coming from all quarters. When I asked about this they said that a Jogi lived there, and when the simpletons come to see him he places in their hands a handful of flour, which they put into their mouths and imitate the cry of an animal which these fools have at some time injured, in order that by this act their sins may be blotted out. I ordered them to break down that place and turn the Jogi out of it, as well as to destroy the form of an idol there was in the dome”

Jahangir (1569–1627) 4th Mughal Emperor

Ajmer, Pushkar (Rajasthan) , Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, translated into English by Alexander Rogers, first published 1909-1914, New Delhi Reprint, 1978, Vol. I, pp. 254-55.

Men , Religion , Fools , Intelligence

“this third period (as it may be termed) of my mental progress, which now went hand in hand with hers, my opinions gained equally in breadth and depth, I understood more things, and those which I had understood before, I now understood more thoroughly. I had now completely turned back from what there had been of excess in my reaction against Benthamism. I had, at the height of that reaction, certainly become much more indulgent to the common opinions of society and the world, and more willing to be content with seconding the superficial improvement which had begun to take place in those common opinions, than became one whose convictions on so many points, differed fundamentally from them. I was much more inclined, than I can now approve, to put in abeyance the more decidedly heretical part of my opinions, which I now look upon as almost the only ones, the assertion of which tends in any way to regenerate society.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/230/mode/1up p. 230

World , Parting , Way

“I turn over a new leaf every day," I said. "But the blots show through.”

Keith Waterhouse book Billy Liar

Billy Liar, ch. 11

“O son of Adam, when you see that your Lord, the Glorified, bestows His Favors on you while you disobey Him, you should fear Him (take warning that His Wrath may not turn those very blessings into misfortunes).”

Ali book Nahj al-Balagha

Nahj al-Balagha

Fear

“If we are a great national institution, if we care about the legacy left to us by those who have served before us, if we care about the legacy we leave to those who, in turn will protect and secure Australia, then it is up to us to make a difference. If you’re not up to it, find something else to do with your life. There is no place for you amongst this band of brothers and sisters.”

David Morrison (1956) Australian army general

Message regarding unacceptable behaviour (2013)

Life , Sister

“When I had a big band in the late 1960s, though, Warne and I were working quite a lot together. Warne would be turning time around, and dealing with cross-the-bar structures, and starting phrases in odd places—his intuition was really far out! He was one of the greatest players ever.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

As quoted in Lee Konitz: Conversations on the Improviser's Art https://books.google.com/books?id=pc4CsgVHLw0C&pg=PA65&dq=%22When+I+had+a+big+band+in+the+late+1960s,+though%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBoQ6AEwAGoVChMIhfLixv_OxwIVBTU-Ch1hfAOh#v=onepage&q=%22When%20I%20had%20a%20big%20band%20in%20the%20late%201960s%2C%20though%22&f=false

Time

“The few men who do a hand's turn around the house expect gratitude and recognition, so sure are they that, though it is their dirt, it is not their job.”

Germaine Greer (1939) Australian feminist author

Housework (pg. 141)
The Whole Woman (1999)

Men , Housing , Gratitude

“Even in my childhood my sympathy for the heroes in the fairy tales was always keenest at the moment when they waved their hands in farewell and turned their faces at last towards the magical adventures that stalked about impatiently awaiting their advent in the strange countries where their havens lay.”

Elizabeth Bisland Whetmore (1861–1929) American writer and journalist

Seven Stages: A Flying Trip Around the World http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/bisland/stages/stages.html

Childhood , Country

“When we were growing up, the 45 single was the heart of rock-and-roll and in many regards still is. It's the hardest thing to pull off. The surest sign that a band is growing stale and running out of creative ideas is when it turns to prog. And I well remember the 1970s when prog almost destroyed rock music. It's the mold growing on a congealed band on its last legs. Indeed, it still lurks among us in new, insidious forms like indie. The few times U2 has attempted prog, we've tempered it with good songwriting.”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

Music , Idea , Time , Heart

“The world goes on as before, and it turns out that nobody else seems to to notice the unbearable lightness of being.”

Lewis H. Lapham (1935) American journalist

Source: Money And Class In America (1989), Chapter 7, Descent Into The Mirror, p. 181

World , Light

“You know, I'm just gonna take your microphone, and stick in the microwave, and turn it on.”

Tré Cool (1972) Drummer, punk rock musician

Idiot Club video

“Pat Buchanan likes to say we're in a culture war. The Civil War was a culture war, and brothers killed brothers. I wonder if they avoided dinner conversation about politics. What if this culture war turned into a real war? I'd look back on that dinner and wish that I'd ordered a side of argument.”

Ze Frank (1972) American online performance artist

http://www.zefrank.com/wiki/index.php/the_show:_06-08-06
"The Show" (www.zefrank.com/theshow/)

War

“By the end of the decade it had become obvious that perhaps the one constant of our variegated and strung-out peer groups was a pervasive sense of self-consciousness that sent us in grouchy packs to ugly festivals just to be together and dig ourselves and each other, as if all of this meant something greater than that we were kids who liked rock 'n' roll and came out to have a good time, as if our very styles and trappings and drugs and jargon could be in themselves political statements for any longer than about fifteen stoned seconds, even a threat to the Mother Country! So we loved and loved and doted on ourselves and our reflections in each other even as the whole thing got out of hand and turned into mud and disaster areas and downs and death.”

Lester Bangs (1948–1982) American music critic and journalist

"James Taylor Marked for Death" (1971), p. 66
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (1988)

Love , Death , Sense , Time

“Teller’s irascible behavior forced him out of the mainstream but not out of the lab, thanks to Oppenheimer who didn’t think we should be without geniuses, even those whose enormous egos caused serious friction. As bright and innovative as Teller was, his overall performance during the war left a lot to be desired. He was not content to be part of a team effort (like yours truly) and preferred to work off to the side on new and different and sometime pretty far-out ideas (like yours truly). This caused considerable resentment. After all there was a war going on and most people thought future nuclear weapon concepts should be worked on sometime in the future, after we had finished our primary assignment. Edward’s behavior was like a colonel on a planning staff during a military campaign who tells his commanding general that he’d like to plan for the next war. That would be the end of the colonel, who would be demoted and shipped off to some base in the Aleutian Islands.
[5]Oppenheimer, however, realized that guys like Teller, despite their shortcomings, were necessary to have around; one never knows when a guy like that can be worth his weight in gold, which to the best of my recollection never happened with Teller. So an arrangement was worked out where Teller and a handful of like-minded theoretical physicists, willing to put up with his domineering ways, formed a small group dedicated to doing what they pleased, realizing their efforts stood precious little chance of impacting on the project.
[5]The one idea dearest to Teller’s heart was the H-bomb. He and a couple of his cronies applied themselves to devising various schemes on designing such a weapon. All of them turned out to be impractical and most of them unworkable. Which never slowed him down in the slightest for reasons we’ll never know nor will he. I’ve known Edward for a very long time and although I’ve never known him well, one thing about him became clear to me from the very beginning: he was a creature possessed. By what? Again, who knows? Many, if not most, who have read about his life and what he has done, plus those who have known him directly and observed him close at hand and at great length, would say by Satan (which has been said all over the world about me). I wouldn’t go along with that and although I have seen Teller give some of the most impassioned statements morally defending his positions, some of which I have found deeply moving and thoroughly convincing, I would not say that the God I’ve been told exists has had a tight hold on him. If Edward has been possessed by anyone it’s been himself. I’d say the same for myself, and I’ve given you some reasons why, but hardly all of them. I don’t know all of them and would be ashamed to tell you if I did.”

Samuel T. Cohen (1921–2010) American physicist

F*** You! Mr. President: Confessions of the Father of the Neutron Bomb (2006)

Life , God , War , People

“They are all one, the mothers of us all, like the money you spent. Imagine the vanish of weight if the advice of your mother never existed. They tell us things, unless we have no mothers and either way things turn out such that nothing you've ever heard is ever any help.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Adverbs (2006), Not Particularly

Money , Way , Imagination , Help

“[W]hen Apple wanted the name "iPhone" and it was owned by Cisco, Steve Jobs just took it, and his legal team executed so he could keep it. It turned out that doing this was surprisingly inexpensive. And, as the Apple Watch showcased, the Apple Phone likely would not have sold anywhere near as well as the iPhone.”

Rob Enderle (1954) American financial analyst

Yahoo and How You Know You Have a Bad Legal Team http://itbusinessedge.com/blogs/unfiltered-opinion/yahoo-and-how-you-know-you-have-a-bad-legal-team.html in IT Business Edge (5 October 2016)

“A good heart will help you to a bonny face, my lad", I continued, "if you were a regular black, and a bad one will turn the bonniest into something worse than ugly.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Nelly Dean (Ch. VII).
Wuthering Heights (1847)

Help , Heart

“An irresistible cycle seemed to operate, repeating patterns of the ancient world where civil strife and war brought disaster… I surmised that patterned and predictable changes were in turn rooted in the very nature of civilization—the ineluctable breaker of custom and eroder of moral codes, and itself a product and expression of rapid technological and social change.”

William H. McNeill (1917–2016) Canadian historian

The Pursuit of Truth: A Historian's Memoir (2005)

War , World , Nature , Change

“While we are thus desirous of the economic welfare of other countries in part because of its relation to world peace, we ought to remember that our own Government owes a great duty to the American people in this direction. It is for this reason in part that I have insisted upon a policy of constructive economy in the national administration. If we can make the circumstances of the people easy, if we can relieve them of the burden of heavy taxation, we shall have contributed to that contentment and peace of mind which will go far to render them immune from any envious inclination toward other countries. If the people prosper in their business, they will be the less likely to resort to the irritating methods of competition in foreign trade out of which arise mutual misunderstandings and animosities. They will not be driven to the employment of sharp practices in order to support and maintain their own position. Being amply supplied with their own resources, they will not be so inclined to turn covetous eyes toward the resources of other nations.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Ways to Peace (1926)

People , World , Peace , Business

“Death is an angel with two faces:
To us he turns
A face of terror, blighting all things fair;
The other burns
With glory of the stars, and love is there.”

Theodore Chickering Williams (1855–1915) American hymnwriter

A Thanatopsis, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Love , Death , Angels , Star

“[I]f you want to reason about faith, and offer a reasoned (and reason-responsive) defense of faith as an extra category of belief worthy of special consideration, I'm eager to [participate]. I certainly grant the existence of the phenomenon of faith; what I want to see is a reasoned ground for taking faith as a way of getting to the truth, and not, say, just as a way people comfort themselves and each other (a worthy function that I do take seriously). But you must not expect me to go along with your defense of faith as a path to truth if at any point you appeal to the very dispensation you are supposedly trying to justify. Before you appeal to faith when reason has you backed into a corner, think about whether you really want to abandon reason when reason is on your side. You are sightseeing with a loved one in a foreign land, and your loved one is brutally murdered in front of your eyes. At the trial it turns out that in this land friends of the accused may be called as witnesses for the defense, testifying about their faith in his innocence. You watch the parade of his moist-eyed friends, obviously sincere, proudly proclaiming their undying faith in the innocence of the man you saw commit the terrible deed. The judge listens intently and respectfully, obviously more moved by this outpouring than by all the evidence presented by the prosecution. Is this not a nightmare? Would you be willing to live in such a land? Or would you be willing to be operated on by a surgeon you tells you that whenever a little voice in him tells him to disregard his medical training, he listens to the little voice? I know it passes in polite company to let people have it both ways, and under most circumstances I wholeheartedly cooperate with this benign agreement. But we're seriously trying to get at the truth here, and if you think that this common but unspoken understanding about faith is anything better than socially useful obfuscation to avoid mutual embarrassment and loss of face, you have either seen much more deeply into the issue that any philosopher ever has (for none has ever come up with a good defense of this) or you are kidding yourself.”

Daniel Dennett book Darwin's Dangerous Idea

Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995)

Love , People , Truth , Faith

“no evil is
so worse than worst you fall in hate with love —human one mortally immortal i
can turn immense all time's because to why”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

7
95 poems (1958)

Love , Hate , Evil , Time

“The purpose of sketching out these half-dozen areas of risk is not to claim to know how bad they would turn out to be, but simply to point out how little thought the Brexotics have given to them, or to the suspicions and fears they have roused, not just in their own country but across the whole continent. There remains the last and to me the worst suspicion: that they would be quite happy to put their supposedly beloved country through a period of prolonged turmoil and stagnation simply for the exhilaration of being on their own at last.”

Ferdinand Mount (1939) British writer

" Nigels against the World http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n10/ferdinand-mount/nigels-against-the-world", London Review of Books (19 May 2016)

Fear , Country , Happiness

“So I do the test, and we do this scene, and it's the scene at the end where I throw dishes, and so I threw some dishes… and 'Cut!'… And I look around, and there's blood everywhere, because I broke a plate or something, and they're all checking me — 'Oh my God, she cut herself' — and couldn't find any cut, and then I look, and I realise. I see Al's hand is bleeding. And I cut Al Pacino, in my screen test. I think then he liked me. I think that was actually the turning point.”

Michelle Pfeiffer (1958) American actress

On auditioning for Scarface, from Inside the Actors Studio (2007) http://uk.youtube.com/user/pfeifferpfan2

God , Thinking

“I liked my body growing up and I wasn't ashamed of it. I liked boys and didn't feel inhibited by them. Maybe it comes from having brothers and sharing a bathroom. The boys got the wrong impression of me at high school. They mistook forwardness for promiscuity. When they don't get what they want, they turn on you. I went through this period when all the girls thought I was loose and the boys said I was a nymphomaniac. The first boy I ever slept with was my boyfriend and we'd been going out a long time.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Madonna Rocks the Land, Time, 1985-05-27 http://time.com/3724297/madonna-rocks-the-land/,

School , Feeling , Girl , Boy

“It's been real weird. It wasn't how I expected my life to turn out. Especially, mainly pertaining to the show. It never crossed my mind that one day I'm gonna be big and famous and have my own TV show, you know?”

Jack Osbourne (1985) Son of Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne

MTV.com Jack Talks About His Addiction and Recovery

Life

“I met Jack Kennedy in November, 1946 … We went out on a double date and it turned out to be a fair evening for me. I seduced a girl who would have been bored by a diamond as big as the Ritz.”

Norman Mailer book An American Dream

Stephen Rojack, in Ch. 1
An American Dream (1965)

Girl

“I thought his lack of curiosity must be monumental, but I was wrong. It turned out that he had some queer notions about the morality of the whole process, ideas he had gotten from some weirdly aberrant religion in his childhood. I had heard of the cult, as you can hardly avoid it if you know any history. It had said little about ethics, being more interested in arbitrary regulations.”

John Varley book The Barbie Murders

"Picnic on Nearside", in Peter Crowther ed. Tales in Space, p. 286

Religion , History , Idea , Childhood

“Daughter of heaven, fair art thou! the silence of thy face is pleasant! Thou comest forth in loveliness. The stars attend thy blue course in the east. The clouds rejoice in thy presence, O moon! They brighten their dark-brown sides. Who is like thee in heaven, light of the silent night? The stars are ashamed in thy presence. They turn away their sparkling eyes. Whither dost thou retire from thy course, when the darkness of thy countenance grows? Hast thou thy hall, like Ossian? Dwellest thou in the shadow of grief? Have thy sisters fallen from heaven? Are they who rejoiced with thee, at night, no more? Yes! they have fallen, fair light! and thou dost often retire to mourn. But thou thyself shalt fail, one night; and leave thy blue path in heaven. The stars will then lift their heads: they, who were ashamed in thy presence, will rejoice. Thou art now clothed with thy brightness. Look from thy gates in the sky. Burst the cloud, O wind! that the daughter of night may look forth! that the shaggy mountains may brighten, and the ocean roll its white waves in light.”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

"Dar-thula"
The Poems of Ossian

Art , Mountain , Star , Sister

““How can you read such a beautiful book and turn your back on it?”
“Never said it wasn’t a beautiful book. I just don’t believe there’s some man up there in the black who gets off on watching us pound our head on the pavement six times a day.”

Kameron Hurley (1980) American writer

Source: God’s War (2011), Chapter 8 (p. 78).

Books , Beauty , Time , Reading

“But by and by the time came when the Christian Church apostatized and turned away, and began to follow after their own wisdom, and the Prophets and Apostles ceased, so far as the affairs of the Christian Church on the earth were concerned. Revelations, and visions, and the various gifts of the spirit were also taken away, according to their unbelief and apostacy; but in the latter days God intends to again raise up a Christian Church upon the earth. Do not be startled, you who think that God will no more have a Church on the earth, for he has promised that he would again have one, and that he would set up his kingdom, and when he does you may look out for a great many Prophets and inspired men; and if you ever see a Church arise, calling itself a Christian Church, and it has not inspired Apostles like those in ancient times, you may know that it is a spurious church, and that it makes pretensions to something that it does not enjoy. If you ever find a church called a Christian Church that has no men to foretell future events, you may know, at once, that it is not a Christian Church. If you find a Christian Church that has not the ancient gifts, for instance the gift of healing, opening the eyes of the blind, unstopping the ears of the deaf, causing the tongue of the dumb to speak and the lame to walk; if you ever find a people calling themselves a Christian Church and they have not these gifts among them, you may know with a perfect knowledge that they do not agree with the pattern given in the New Testament. The Christian Church is always characterized with inspired men, whose revelations are just as sacred as any contained in the Bible; and, if written and published, just as binding upon the human family. The Christian Church will always lay hands upon the sick in the name of Jesus, in order that the sick may be healed. The Christian Church will always have those among its members who have heavenly visions, the ministration of angels, and the various gifts that are promised according to the Gospel.”

Orson Pratt (1811–1881) Apostle of the LDS Church

Journal of Discourses 18:171-172 (March 26, 1876).
Apostacy

Wisdom , Men , God , People

“Not for one second
will my self hold still, but wanders
anywhere,
everywhere it can turn. Not you,
it is I am absent.”

Denise Levertov (1923–1997) Poet

A Door in the Hive (1989), Flickering Mind

“I was born in the heart of the Great American Food Machine. From childhood on it was expected that I would someday take over and run what has become the world's largest ice cream company—Baskin-Robbins. Year after year I was groomed and prepared for the task, given an opportunity to live the Great American Dream… There is a sweeter and deeper American dream than the one I turned down. It is the dream of a success in which all beings share because it is founded on a reverence for life. A dream of a society at peace with its conscience because it respects and lives in harmony with all life forms. A dream of a people living in accord with the laws of Creation, cherishing and caring for the natural environment, conserving nature instead of destroying it. A dream of a society that is truly healthy, practicing a wise and compassionate stewardship of a balanced ecosystem.”

John Robbins book Diet for a New America

Introduction
Diet for a New America (1987)

Life , People , World , Peace

“The days of the frontal attack are over. Modern infantry weapons are too deadly, and frontal assault is only for mediocre commanders. Good commanders do not turn in heavy losses.”

Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) U.S. Army general of the army, field marshal of the Army of the Philippines

Source: Reminiscences (1964), p. 198

Loss

“With a tongue like a razor he will kiss
the mother, the child,
and we three will color the stars black
in memory of his mother
who kept him chained to the food tree
or turned him on and off like a water faucet
and made women through all these hazy years
the enemy with a heart of lies.”

Anne Sexton book The Book of Folly

"The Wifebeater"
The Book of Folly (1972)

Women , Food , Color , Star

“An Alma girl! oh shame, deep shame,
To Brahma's race and Brahma's name!
Unmarked, unpitied, she turned aside,
For a moment her bursting tears to hide.
None thought of the Bayadere, till the fire
Blazed redly and fiercely the funeral pyre,
Then like a thought she darted by,
And sprang on the burning pile to die!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Bayadere from The London Literary Gazette (30th August, 6th and 13th September 1823)
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Girl , Tear

“People who try to create a musical revolution do not have a chance, but those who turn their back to music can sometimes find it.”

Pierre Schaeffer (1910–1995) French musicologist

Electronic Musician magazine, December 1986
Interviews

People , Music , Chance

“Muhammad bin Tughlaq became notorious for enslaving captives, and his reputation in this regard spread far and wide… Ibn Battuta’s eye-witness account of the Sultan’s arranging marriages of enslaved girls with Muslims on a large scale on the two Ids confirms the statement of Al Umri. “First of all,” writes he, “daughters of Kafir (Hindu) Rajas captured during the course of the year, come, sing and dance. Thereafter they are bestowed upon Amirs and important foreigners. After this the daughters of other Kafirs dance and sing… the Sultan gives them to his brothers, relatives sons of Maliks etc. On the sixth day male and female slaves are married.” It was a general practice for Hindu girls of good families to learn the art of dancing. It was a sort of religious rite. They used to dance during weddings, festivals and Pujas at home and in temples. This art was turned ravenous under their Muslim captors or buyers.”

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

Masalik-ul-Absar, E and D, III, p. 580. Ibn Battuta, p. 63, Hindi version by S.A.A. Rizvi in Tughlaq Kalin Bharat, Part I, Aligarh, p. 189. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 7

Marriage , Family , Art , Home

“If you don’t say ‘yes’ to the world, it will say ‘no’ to you; if you reject the world you will be rejected because you have brought it upon yourself. Linking with the world is the best way of living in it. If you could not relate to the Universe it will turn against you.”

Elia M. Ramollah (1973) founder and leader of the El Yasin Community

360 Doctrines and Comprehensive Theories, Union of Civilizations

World , Way , Universe

“Well, it's the only picture I ever wanted to own ['Three Bathers' of Cézanne ]. It's a Cézanne and the joy of my life. I saw it about a year ago in an exhibition and I was stunned by it. I didn’t sleep for two or three nights trying to decide whether to... To me it is marvelous. Monumental... It's not perfect, it’s a sketch. But then I don't like absolute perfection. I believe one should make a struggle towards something one can't do rather than do the thing that comes easily. Perhaps another reason is why I fell for it is that the type of woman he portrays is the same kind as I like. Each of the figures I could turn in into a piece of sculpture, very simple. Not young girls but that wide, broad, mature woman. Matronly.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

1955 - 1970

Life , Girl , Sleep , Joy

“A grand old Neptune in the prow,
Gray-hair'd, and white with touch of time,
Yet strong as in his middle prime;
A grizzled king, I see him now,
With beard as blown by wind of seas,
And wild and white as white sea-storm,
Stand up, turn suddenly, look back
Along the low boat's wrinkled track,
Then fold his mantle round a form
Broad-built as any Hercules,
And so sit silently.”

Joaquin Miller (1837–1913) American judge

III, p. 22.
The Ship in the Desert (1875)

Strong , Time , Sea

“Of the two classes of people, I hardly know which is to be regarded with most distaste, the vulgar aping the genteel, or the genteel constantly sneering at and endeavouring to distinguish themselves from the vulgar. … True worth does not exult in the faults and deficiencies of others; as true refinement turns away from grossness and deformity, instead of being tempted to indulge in an unmanly triumph over it. … Real power, real excellence, does not seek for a foil in inferiority; nor fear contamination from coming in contact with that which is coarse and homely.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On Vulgarity and Affectation"
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

People , Fear , Home

“With me, everything turns into mathematics.
More closely translated as: but in my opinion, all things in nature occur mathematically.”
Mais apud me omnia fiunt Mathematicè in Natura

René Descartes (1596–1650) French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist

""Mais"" is French for ""but"" and the ""but in my opinion"" comes from the context of the original conversation. apud me omnia fiunt Mathematicè in Natura is in latin.
Sometimes the Latin version is incorrectly quoted as Omnia apud me mathematica fiunt.
Sources: Correspondence with Mersenne http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Page%3aDescartes_-_%C5%92uvres,_%C3%A9d._Adam_et_Tannery,_III.djvu/48 note for line 7 (1640), page 36, Die Wiener Zeit http://books.google.com/books?id=9Xh3fVZLCycC&pg=PA532&lpg=PA532&dq=%22Omnia+apud+me+mathematica+fiunt%22+original+zitat&source=bl&ots=CgQOrveRiM&sig=WFHwIK20r5vRZ66FwCaxo857LCU&hl=de&sa=X&ei=_Wf2UcHlJYbfsgaf1IHABg#v=onepage&q=%22Omnia%20apud%20me%20mathematica%20fiunt%22%20original%20zitat&f=false page 532 (2008); StackExchange Math Q/A Where did Descartes write... http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/454599/where-did-descartes-write-with-me-everything-turns-into-mathematics?noredirect=1#comment978229_454599

Mathematics , Nature

“There is no remedy, but you must either turn or burn.”

Joseph Alleine (1634–1668) Pastor, author

Source: An Alarm to the Unconverted aka A Sure Guide to Heaven (first published 1671), P. 65.

“Though acts of reception and of understanding are in some measure fictions of ordered intuition, myths of reason, this truth does not justify the denial of intentional conduct. It is as absurd to discard as mendacious, as anarchically opaque, the bearing of contextual probability and suggestion, as it is to invest in such probability any blind trust. The negations of post-structuralism and of certain varieties of deconstruction are precisely as dogmatic, as political as were the positivist equations of archival historicism. The "emptiness of meaning" postulate is no less a priori, no less a case of despotic reductionism than were, say, the axioms of economic and psycho-sociological causality in regard to the generation of meaning in literature and the arts in turn-of-the-century pragmatism and scientism.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Source: Real Presences (1989), III: Presences, Ch. 3 (pp. 174-175).

Truth , Art , Literature , Understanding

Quotes about turning page 44

Quotes about turning
page 44