Quotes about use
page 11

“To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.”

Thomas Paine book The American Crisis

The Crisis No. V
Source: 1770s, The American Crisis (1776–1783)

Dead

“But instinct is something which transcends knowledge. We have, undoubtedly, certain finer fibers that enable us to perceive truths when logical deduction, or any other willful effort of the brain, is futile.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

Source: My Inventions (1919)
Context: He declared that it could not be done and did me the honor of delivering a lecture on the subject, at the conclusion he remarked, "Mr. Tesla may accomplish great things, but he certainly will never do this. It would be equivalent to converting a steadily pulling force, like that of gravity into a rotary effort. It is a perpetual motion scheme, an impossible idea." But instinct is something which transcends knowledge. We have, undoubtedly, certain finer fibers that enable us to perceive truths when logical deduction, or any other willful effort of the brain, is futile.

Truth, Knowledge, Effort

“We cannot take a step toward the heavens. God crosses the universe and comes to us.”

Simone Weil book Waiting for God

Source: Waiting for God

God, Universe

“She was what we used to call a suicide blonde-- dyed by her own hand.”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

Suicide

“We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter's evening. Some of us let these great dreams die, but others nourish and protect them; nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light which comes always to those who sincerely hope that their dreams will come true.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

As quoted by Thomas A. Bruno in Take your dreams and Run (South Plainfield: Bridge, 1984), p. 2-3. Source: Dr. Preston Williams (2002): By the Way - A Snapshot Diagnosis of the Inner-City Dilemma, p. 38-39. Xulun Press, Fairfax, Virginia http://books.google.de/books?id=Xn9jxqatFecC&pg=PA38&lpg=PA38&dq=woodrow+wilson+We+Grow+Great+By+Dreams%27&source=bl&ots=TtioQ-yO0-&sig=qHWPj4-8g3hSjcV-qJTbzNg6nuI&hl=de&sa=X&ei=1QZ0U4DBOaf80QWSqYDQAw&ved=0CHYQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=woodrow%20wilson%20We%20Grow%20Great%20By%20Dreams'&f=false <br class="br">1880s

Men, Dreams, Hope, Spring

“He had reached that moment in life, different for each one of us, when a man abandonds himself to his demon or to his genius, following a mysterious law which bids him either to destroy or outdo himself.”

Marguerite Yourcenar book Memoirs of Hadrian

Source: Memoirs of Hadrian

Life, Law

“Why so much grief for me? No man will hurl me down to Death, against my fate. And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it, neither brave man nor coward, I tell you - it’s born with us the day that we are born.”

Homér Iliad

Source: The Iliad

Death, Fate

“Art does not reproduce what we see. It makes us see.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Section I

(de) Kunst gibt nicht das Sichtbare wieder, sondern macht sichtbar.
1916 - 1920, Creative Credo (1920)
Variant: Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.

Art

“You'd think, 'What if I make a mistake today, I'll regret it'. I don’t believe in regret, I feel everything leads us to where we are and we have to just jump forward, mean well, commit and just see what happens.”

Angelina Jolie (1975) American actress, film director, and screenwriter

Feeling, Thinking

“Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and show the whole world that a Freeman, contending for liberty on his own ground, is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

General Orders, Headquarters, New York (2 July 1776)
1770s

World, Animals

“Behind every trial and sorrow that He makes us shoulder, God has a reason.”

Khaled Hosseini book A Thousand Splendid Suns

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

God

“… Dreams come to tell us something about our lives that we are missing.”

James Redfield book The Celestine Prophecy

Source: The Celestine Prophecy

Dreams

“None of us can help the things life has done to us. They’re done before you realize it, and once they’re done they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and what you’d like to be, and you’ve lost your true self forever.”

Eugene O'Neill Long Day's Journey into Night

Page 63 (Act 2, Scene 1)
Long Day's Journey into Night (1955)
Source: Long Day's Journey Into Night
Context: But I suppose life has made him like that, and he can't help it. None of us can help the things life has done to us. They're done before you realize it, and once they're done they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and what you'd like to be, and you've lost your true self forever.

Life, Help

“We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

"Earth, Fire and Water" from The Celtic Twilight (1893)
Source: The Celtic Twilight: Faerie and Folklore

Life, Water

“Come, dear, [Gwendolen rises] we have already missed five, if not six, trains. To miss any more might expose us to comment on the platform.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

Training

“It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him”

John Piper (1946) American writer

Variant: He is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.
Source: Don't Waste Your Life

God

“A single day is enough to make us a little larger or, another time, a little smaller.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Time

“As for omens, there is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return. With us time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to circle round one centre of pain.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Source: De Profundis and Other Writings

Pain, Mood, Suffering, Time

“You were trying to tell me something and I was trying to tell you something else. We didn't trust each other and that was reason enough to make each of us right.”

Elliot Perlman (1964) Australian writer

Source: The Reasons I Won't Be Coming

“I can't help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray and Selected Stories

People, Help

“Never give us what we really want. Cut the dream into pieces and scatter them like ashes. Dole out the empty promises. Package our aspirations and sell them to us, cheaply made enough to fall apart.”

Scott Westerfeld book So Yesterday

Source: So Yesterday

Dreams

“Sandry: "There has to be something we can do."
Lark: "We're mages. We do what we can, but some problems are too big to fix."
Sandry: "Then I wish I weren't a mage. What good is magic, if you can't use it to help people.”

Tamora Pierce book Daja's Book

Source: Daja's Book

People, Problem, Help

“We talk so abstractly about poetry because all of us are usually bad poets.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

“I don't know the rules of grammar. If you're trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language.”

David Ogilvy (1911–1999) Advertising executive

People

“Whenever we cannot love in the old, human way… God can give us the perfect way.”

Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) Dutch resistance hero and writer

Source: The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom

Love, God, Way, Perfection

“It's an awful truth that suffering can deepen us, give a greater lustre to our colours, a richer resonance to our words.”

Anne Rice book The Queen of the Damned

Source: The Queen of the Damned

Truth, Suffering

“We should add that it is a privilege to be the recipient of a sulk: it means the other person respects and trusts us enough to think we should understand their unspoken hurt. It is one of the odder gifts of love. Eventually”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Course of Love

Love, Understanding, Thinking, Hurt

“People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”

Alice Walker book The Color Purple

Source: The Color Purple

God, People, World, Fools

“Do you know, sire, I think that if we live to tell our grandchildren about this war, they will accuse us of making it up.'
-Marielle”

Tamora Pierce The Realms of the Gods

Source: The Realms of the Gods

War, Thinking

“On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

February 28, 1840
Journals (1838-1859)

Life, Death, Fate, World

“At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Thinking, Light, Time, Personality

“You'll get through this. It won't be painless. It won't be quick. But God will use this mess for good. In the meantime don't be foolish or naïve. But don't despair either. With God's help you will get through this.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

Source: You'll Get Through This: Hope and Help for Your Turbulent Times

God, Help, Despair

“Well, God give them wisdom that have it; and those that are fools, let them use their talents.”

William Shakespeare Twelfth Night

Source: Twelfth Night

Wisdom, God, Fools

“Well, what we know
Is not what they tell us
We're not ignorant, I mean it,
And they just cannot touch us
Through the powers of the Most-High
We keep on surfacin'
Thru the powers of the Most-High
We keep on survivin'.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

“The gods are strange. It is not our vices only they make instruments to scourge us. They bring us to ruin through what in us is good, gentle, humane, loving.”

Oscar Wilde book De Profundis

Source: De Profundis

Love, God

“The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

“I remember I used to half believe and wholly play with fairies when I was a child. What heaven can be more real than to retain the spirit-world of childhood, tempered and balanced by knowledge and common-sense…”

Beatrix Potter (1866–1943) English children's writer and illustrator

Journal entry (1896-11-17), from the National Trust collection.
Source: The Complete Tales

World, Knowledge, Sense, Childhood

“The struggle of life is one of our greatest blessings. It makes us patient, sensitive, and Godlike. It teaches us that although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Life, World, Suffering

“It's very hard to stop doing things you're used to doing. You almost have to dismantle yourself and scatter it all around and then put a blindfold on and put it back together so that you avoid old habits.”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

“One day all of us will die but - and this is the important thing - we are not dead yet.”

Terry Pratchett book I Shall Wear Midnight

Source: I Shall Wear Midnight

Dead

“Why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world--to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

World, Courage, Evil

“Teaching at best beckons us to morality, but it is not in itself efficacious. Teaching is like a mirror. It can show you if your face is dirty, but it the mirror will not wash your face.”

Ravi Zacharias (1946) Indian philosopher

2000s
Source: [Jesus Among Other Gods: The Absolute Claims of the Christian Message, 2002, 9780849943270, 90]

“To hell with the truth! As the history of the world proves, the truth has no bearing on anything. It's irrelevant and immaterial, as the lawyers say. The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober.”

Eugene O'Neill The Iceman Cometh

Source: The Iceman Cometh

Life, Truth, Lie, World

“For we did makeup. But we didn't forgive each other. And we didn't take steps. And it got to be too late and we saw that each of us had invested too much in being in the right and we walked away and it was a relief.”

Alice Munro book The Love of a Good Woman

Source: The Love of a Good Woman

Forgiveness

“When I was about twelve I used to think I must be a genius, but nobody's noticed. If there is such a thing as a genius, I am one, and if there isn't I don't care.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Thinking

“Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: On Love

Love, Understanding

“We are what we imagine. Our very existence consists in our imagination of ourselves. Our best destiny is to imagine, at least, completely, who and what, and that we are. The greatest tragedy that can befall us is to go unimagined.”

N. Scott Momaday (1934) American author

Imagination

“Let us not be too particular. It is better to have old second-hand diamonds than none at all.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“The most loving parents and relatives commit murder with smiles on their faces. They force us to destroy the person we really are: a subtle kind of murder.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

For Parents, Love, Smile, Parent

“In dark ages people are best guided by religion, as in a pitch-black night a blind man is the best guide; he knows the roads and paths better than a man who can see. When daylight comes, however, it is foolish to use blind, old men as guides.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

Men, People, Age, Religion

“It's him," I said. "Typhon."
I was seriously hoping Chiron would say something good, like 'No, that's our huge friend Leroy! He's going to help us!”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Hope, Help

“We often get caught up in our own reactions and forget the vulnerability of the person in front of us.”

Sharon Salzberg (1952) American writer

Source: The Force of Kindness: Change Your Life with Love & Compassion

Personality, Forgetting

“Life is a series of experiences, each of which makes us bigger, even though it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and griefs which we endure help us in our marching onward.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Life, World, Learning, Help

“Love has nothing to do with someone else. It is all about you. It is a way of being. It essentially means you have brought sweetness into your emotion. If a loved one travels to another country, would you still be able to love them? You would. If a loved one passed away, would you still be able to love them? You would. Even if a loved one is not physically with you anymore, you are still capable of being loving. So, what is love then? It is just your own quality. You are only using the other person as a key to open up what is already within you.”

Sadhguru book Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Love, Way, Travel, Personality

“We do not handle suffering. Suffering handles us.”

Richard Rohr (1943) American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest

Source: Adam's Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation

Suffering

“Is not life a hundred times too short for us— to bore ourselves?”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Beyond Good and Evil

Ist das Leben nicht hundert Mal zu kurz, sich in ihm— zu langweilen?
Beyond Good and Evil, Chapter VII, 227

Life, Time

“Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

As quoted in The Cat Lover's Book of Fascinating Facts : A Felicitous Look at Felines‎ (1997) by Ed Lucaire

Cats, Nature

“Why am I as I am? To understand that of any person, his whole life, from
Birth must be reviewed. All of our experiences fuse into our personality. Everything that ever happened to us is an ingredient.”

Malcolm X book The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Source: The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Life, Birth, Understanding, Personality

“It is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.”

Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) Dutch resistance hero and writer

Love, World, Forgiveness

“If God has shown us bad times ahead, it's enough for me that He knows about them. That's why He sometimes shows us things, you know - to tell us that this too is in His hands.”

Corrie ten Boom book The Hiding Place

Source: The Hiding Place

God, Time

“From love arises hatred of those things which are contrary to what we love, or which oppose and thwart us in those things that we delight in.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

Love

“Not only do we live among the stars, the stars live within us.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

Source: Death by Black Hole - And Other Cosmic Quandaries

Star

“Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.”

Jean-Luc Godard (1930) French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic

Cited in: Paul Bowden, Telling It Like It Is https://books.google.nl/books?id=w8_p1eGVj8gC&pg=PA182&lpg=PA182&dq=%22Art+attracts+us+only+by+what+it+reveals+of+our+most+secret+self%22+%22jean+luc+godard%22&source=bl&ots=2zIpIhvB_1&sig=uImQSWu8ATehPk0hAhfck-ZowJc&hl=nl&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjwydLuqp_LAhVhDJoKHdrjACcQ6AEIUjAG#v=onepage&q=%22Art%20attracts%20us%20only%20by%20what%20it%20reveals%20of%20our%20most%20secret%20self%22%20%22jean%20luc%20godard%22&f=false, 2011, p. 182 <br class="br">Source: "What Is Cinema?" Les Amis du Cinéma (Paris, October 1, 1952).

Secret, Art

“The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Life, Education

“God gives us life, but the world's landlord is the devil….”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón (1964) Spanish writer

Life, God, World

“Shaunee was digging in her purse like she'd misplaced a tube of one of MAC's seasonal lipsticks that you buy and fall in love with AND THEN THEY DISCONTINUE IT BECAUSE THEY REALLY HATE US AND WANT US TO BE CRAZY.”

P. C. Cast book Destined

Source: Destined

Love, Hate, Season

“Life will undertake to separate us, and we must each set off in search of our own path, our own destiny or our own way of facing death.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra

Life, Death, Way, Search

“Change is neither good nor bad, but knowledge is always useful.”

Christopher Paolini book Inheritance

Source: Inheritance (2011)

Knowledge, Change

“Women, as some witty Frenchman once put it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces and always prevent us from carrying them out.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings

Women

“Nothing is lost that we do not first see as lost. Visions born of fear give birth to our failing.
Visions born of hope give birth to our success.
What is possible lives within us, and it only remains for us to discover it.”

Terry Brooks (1944) American writer

Fear, Hope, Birth, Success

“We are not what happened to us,
we are what we wish to become.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

“See now the power of truth; the same experiment which at first glance seemed to show one thing, when more carefully examined, assures us of the contrary.”

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer

Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Sciences (1638); Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche, intorno à due nuove scienze, as translated by Henry Crew and Alfonso de Salvio (1914)
Other quotes
Source: Discorsi E Dimostrazioni Matematiche: Intorno a Due Nuoue Scienze, Attenenti Alla Mecanica & I Movimenti Locali

Truth

“… you have to use your failures as stepping stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair. In the end it’s all a question of balance.”

Rohinton Mistry A Fine Balance

Source: A Fine Balance

Hope, Failure, Question, Success

“I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Love, Life