Quotes about use
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“It’s sad to think what the state of rock and roll will be twenty years from now. It just seems like when rock and roll is dead the whole world’s gonna explode. It’s already so rehashed and so plagariazed that it’s barely alive now. It’s disgusting. I mean, kids don’t even really care about rock and roll as much as they used to, as the other generations have. It’s already turned into nothing but a fashion statement and an identity for kids to use as a tool for them to fuck and have a social life. And at that point I really can’t see music being of any importance to a teenager, really.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

to Michael Azerrad in an interview from 1992 or 1993, in Kurt Cobain: About a Son
Interviews (1989-1994), Video

Dead, Music, Thinking, World

“I need to have something besides a husband and children to devote myself to! I don't want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I've never met.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Ik moet iets hebben naast man en kinderen waar ik me aan wijden kan! O ja, ik wil niet zoals de meeste mensen voor niets geleefd hebben. Ik wil van nut of plezier zijn voor de mensen, die om mij heen leven en die mij toch niet kennen.
5 April 1944
The Diary of a Young Girl (1942 - 1944)

Children, People

“I made a metamorphose, I'm a new person today, because I used to strongly and honestly, honestly! I feel like I can represent my generation so much because I honestly did not care whether I lived or died. But now I can not die, with people thinking I'm a rapist or a criminal, I can not leave until this shit is straight, you know I'm not suicidal. I can't go until ya'll really know what time it is. And then after that, BOOM!, It's all over and we can see how this shit fall, but that's how it is, and the reason being is because if I can't live free, if I can't live with the same respect as the next man, I don't wanna be here, because god has cursed me to see what life should be like, If God wanted me to be this person and be happy here, he wouldn't let me feel so oppressed, he wouldn't let me feel so trampled on, you know what I'm saying, he wouldn't let me think the things I think. So I feel I'm doing Gods work, you know what I'm saying just because I don't have nothing to pass around for people to put money in a bucket don't mean I ain't doing God's work.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

1990s, Ed Gordon interview (1994)

Money, God, Suicide, Time

“Words are life. Words are light. Words are power. Words are energy. Words are truth. Words can enliven and words can also kill. Words can give hope, or plunge us into despair. People use words to build peace, and use words to make war. Words can create walls between cultures, religions, and nations. And words can also build bridges. The existence of an individual, a family, a community, a country, and our planet is being led to good or to evil through the power of the words we speak. The words we speak are responsible for everything that happens in this world. We, therefore, must be responsible for the words we speak. On behalf of future generations, I hope that each of us will do all we can to speak only bright, light-filled words, so that one day, our descendants will be born into a world filled with light. There is no time to lose. Starting at this very moment, I hope all of us will take a close look at the words we have been using and make constant efforts to fill them with brightness.”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14108295.alexis_karpouzos

Despair, Family, Peace, Religion

“Inside the united and indivisible universal Wholeness, every thought and action we make concerning the part, creates the reaction of the whole towards us. In short, whatever we are doing and in whichever way we are doing it, has a multiple effect on us, from every “corner” of the universal unity. The meaning of universal, indivisible unity creates a new social and ecological awareness, since the social and the nature are structural parts of the whole and every action we take against it, results in a reaction of the whole cosmic creation against us.”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/14108295.alexis_karpouzos

Nature, Universe, Way, Making love

“We must preserve the sense of unity and the sense of diversity and multiplicity. We must recognize that the One and the Many are the same thing viewed from different angles. The One is the Many. The One is manifested only in and through the Many. It has no separate existence apart from the Many. Equally the Many are the One. Even during their temporary separation, they are always part of the One, and always united with the One. Every one of us is always part of the One, and can unite with the One at any time we choose”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/14108295.alexis_karpouzos?page=2

Sense, Time, Parting

“It is not so much our friends' help that helps us, as the confidence of their help.”

Epicurus (-341–-269 BC) ancient Greek philosopher

Confidence, Help, Deep, Friendship

“If education is truly the key. Then let's all of us become socialists and struggle to make it free to all, instead of making it expensive daily.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Education

“The majority of the people do not seem to agree upon one single law that can be used with less effort in attracting the ideal life partner to us.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Life, Law, People, Effort

“To believe in predestination is to deprive us of our free will. No freedom, but we are all slaves to our actions.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Freedom

“Music is so important to us. We hear music from the moment we are born, often via lullabies, and through many of the most important occasions in our lives, from graduations to weddings to funerals. There is something about music that seems to bring us closer to each other and help us come together as a community.
Humans are wired for music. Researchers recently discovered that we have a dedicated part of our brain for processing music, supporting the theory that it has a special, important function in our lives.
Listening to music and singing together has been shown in several studies to directly impact neuro-chemicals in the brain, many of which play a role in closeness and connection. Now new research suggests that playing music or singing together may be particularly potent in bringing about social closeness through the release of endorphins.
Through singing, drumming, and dancing—all resulted in participants having higher pain thresholds (a proxy measure for increased endorphin release in the brain) in comparison to listening to music alone. In addition, the performance of music resulted in greater positive emotion, suggesting one pathway through which people feel closer to one another when playing music together is through endorphin release.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Pain, People, Music, Feeling

“His rage passes description - the sort of rage that is only seen when rich folk that have more than they can enjoy suddenly lose something that they have long had but have never before used or wanted.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien book The Hobbit

Source: The Hobbit

Rage

“He who robs us of our dreams robs us of our life.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando

Life, Dreams

“Our heart always transcends us.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Heart

“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”

Lewis Carroll book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Source: Alice in Wonderland

Motivational, Success, Deep, Inspirational

“Something we were withholding made us weak, until we found it was ourselves.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

“What Jesus invites us to imitate is his own desire, the spirit that directs him toward the goal on which his intention is fixed: to resemble God the Father as much as possible.”

René Girard (1923–2015) French historian, literary critic, and philosopher of social science

Source: I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

God

“Learn to get in touch with silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences; all events are blessings given to us to learn from.”

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926–2004) American psychiatrist

As quoted in " Elisabeth Kübler-Ross: Messenger of Love https://books.google.com/books?id=3esDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA2&lpg=PA2&dq=%22Yoga+Journal%22+Kronisch&source=bl&ots=B895e3lzeI&sig=7V4uALc6CTiPrF02-cV8AAzsgbw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjM1enasPLSAhWs6oMKHbpyAbQQ6AEIJjAA#v=onepage&q=%22Elisabeth%20Kubler-Ross%22&f=false" by Lennie Kronisch in Yoga Journal, Issue 11, November-December 1976, pp. 18-20 Context: Learn to get in touch with silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences; all events are blessings given to us to learn from. There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace. You will find that deep place of silence right in your room, your garden or even your bathtub.

Life, Silence, Learning

“For it falls out
That what we have we prize not to the worth
Whiles we enjoy it, but being lacked and lost,
Why, then we rack the value, then we find
The virtue that possession would not show us
While it was ours.”

William Shakespeare book Much Ado About Nothing

Source: Much Ado About Nothing

“…we receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us; whereas the very reverse is required by every dictate of common sense.”

Michael Faraday book Experimental researches in chemistry and physics

Source: Experimental researches in chemistry and physics

Sense

“How we need another soul to cling to, another body to keep us warm. To rest and trust; to give your soul in confidence: I need this, I need someone to pour myself into.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Variant: How we need that security. How we need another soul to cling to, another body to keep us warm. To rest and trust; to give your soul in confidence: I need this. I need someone to pour myself into.
Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Soul, Confidence

“When the Gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.”

Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband

Source: An Ideal Husband

God

“We should not only use all the brains we have but all that we can borrow.”

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

Speech to the National Press Club http://books.google.com/books?id=8gLmAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA439 (20 March 1914) 1910s Variant: I not only use all the brains I have, but all I can borrow Context: I not only use all the brains I have, but all I can borrow, and I have borrowed a lot since I read it to you first.

“Sometimes there aren't words. The silence between us is flung wide as an ocean. But I manage to reach across it, to wrap my arms around him.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Silence

“That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is. Most people love you for who you pretend to be. To keep their love, you keep pretending - performing. You get to love your pretence. It's true, we're locked in an image, an act - and the sad thing is, people get so used to their image, they grow attached to their masks. They love their chains. They forget all about who they really are. And if you try to remind them, they hate you for it, they feel like you're trying to steal their most precious possession.”

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

Love, Hate, People, Sadness

“The love that follows us sometime is our trouble, which still we thank as love.”

William Shakespeare Macbeth

Source: Macbeth

Love

“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Letter to Oskar Pollak http://www.languagehat.com/archives/001062.php (27 January 1904) Variant translations: If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skulls, then why do we read it? Good God, we also would be happy if we had no books and such books that make us happy we could, if need be, write ourselves. What we must have are those books that come on us like ill fortune, like the death of one we love better than ourselves, like suicide. A book must be an ice axe to break the sea frozen inside us. What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to the woods, far from any human presence, like a suicide. A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us. A book should be an ice-axe to break the frozen sea within us. A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul. A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us. Variant: A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us. Context: I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?... we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.

Books, Sea

“I begin to long for some little language such as lovers use, broken words, inarticulate words, like the shuffling of feet on pavement.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Source: The Waves

Lovers

“Only the Jew knew that by an able and persistent use of propaganda heaven itself can be presented to the people as if it were hell and, vice versa, the most miserable kind of life can be presented as if it were paradise. The Jew knew this and acted accordingly. But the German, or rather his Government, did not have the slightest suspicion of it. During the War the heaviest of penalties had to be paid for that ignorance.”

Adolf Hitler book Mein Kampf

Chapter 10
Source: Mein Kampf

Life, War, People, Penalty

“We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors have taken over the Ship (1998)

Love

“What we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, For all that we love deeply becomes a part of us.”

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

Goodbye, Love, Parting

“I used to work at McDonald's making minimum wage. You know what that means when someone pays you minimum wage? You know what your boss was trying to say? "Hey if I could pay you less, I would, but it's against the law.”

Chris Rock (1965) American comedian, actor, screenwriter, television producer, film producer, and director

Law

“Well, heaven forgive him! and forgive us all!
Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall:
Some run from brakes of ice, and answer none:
And some condemned for a fault alone.”

William Shakespeare Measure for Measure

Source: Measure for Measure

Forgiveness

“Let the inner god that is in each one of us speak. The temple is your body, and the priest is your heart: it is from here that every awareness must begin.”

Alejandro Jodorowsky (1929) Filmmaker and comics writer

God, Heart

“The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

“For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning

World

“One of these days some simple soul will pick up the book of God, read it, and believe it. Then the rest of us will be embarrassed.”

Leonard Ravenhill (1907–1994) British writer

God, Books, Soul, Reading

“From the errors of other nations, let us learn wisdom”

Thomas Paine book Common Sense

Source: Common Sense

Wisdom, Error, Learning

“Libertarianism holds that the only proper role of violence is to defend person and property against violence, that any use of violence that goes beyond such just defense is itself aggressive, unjust, and criminal”

Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995) American economist of the Austrian School, libertarian political theorist, and historian

Personality

“They stick you with those names, those labels -- ‘rebel’ or whatever; whatever they like to use. Because they need a label; they need a name. They need something to put the price tag on the back of.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

“Dr. Franklin says "it is the eyes of others and not our own eyes which ruin us. If all the world were blind except myself I should not care for fine clothes or furniture.”

P.T. Barnum (1810–1891) American showman and businessman

Source: The Art of Money Getting; Or, Golden Rules for Making Money

World, Clothes

“It ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love.”

Raymond Carver book What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Variant: and it ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love.
Source: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Love, Feeling

“Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.”

John Von Neumann (1903–1957) Hungarian-American mathematician and polymath

Reply, according to Dr. Felix T. Smith of Stanford Research Institute, to a physicist friend who had said "I'm afraid I don't understand the method of characteristics," as quoted in The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics (1979) by Gary Zukav, Bantam Books, p. 208, footnote.

Mathematics, Understanding

“When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Motivational, For Team, love, Deep

“We adore perfection because we can't have it; it would disgust us if we had it. Perfect is inhuman, because human is imperfect.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 249
Original: Adoramos a perfeição, porque não a podemos ter; repugná-la-íamos, se a tivéssemos. O perfeito é o desumano, porque o humano é imperfeito.
Source: The Book of Disquiet

Perfection

“The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

Silence

“Getting rid of a delusion makes us wiser than getting hold of a truth.”

Ludwig Börne (1786–1837) German writer

Variant: Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth.

Truth

“These are the intensities that one cannot live with, that he has to outgrow if he wants to survive. But who can help grieving for them? If the blood vessels could hold them, how much better to keep those early loves with us?”

Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) American playwright

Source: Collected Stories

Love, Help

“I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there ’s a pair of us—don’t tell!
They ’d banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!”

Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

“We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us.”

Rabindranath Tagore Stray Birds

75
Source: Stray Birds (1916)

World, Reading

“A lie is more comfortable than doubt, more useful than love, more lasting than truth.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

[The Autumn of the Patriarch, 2006 [1976], HarperCollins, 978-0-06-088286-0, 254] translated from El Ontoño del Patriarica (1975) by Gregory Rabassa

Love, Truth, Lie

“Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Meistens belehrt uns erst der Verlust über den Wert der Dinge.
Source: Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life

Sad, Loss

“It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn't use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like "What about lunch?”

A.A. Milne book Winnie-the-Pooh

Source: Winnie-the-Pooh

For Friend

“Our riches, being in our brains, die with us… Unless of course someone chops off our head, in which case, we won't need them anyway.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Austrian Romantic composer

“Beauty has no obvious use; nor is there any clear cultural necessity for it. Yet civilization could not do without it.”

Sigmund Freud book Civilization and Its Discontents

Source: 1920s, Civilization and Its Discontents (1929), Ch. 2, as translated by James Strachey, p.62

Beauty

“The universe does not behave according to our pre-conceived ideas. It continues to surprise us.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

Idea, Universe

“Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality.”

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) Greek writer

Reality, Change

“Violence is a disease, a disease that corrupts all who use it regardless of the cause.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

Disease

“What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Success, Motivational, Deep, Hope

“Whoever drinks beer, he is quick to sleep; whoever sleeps long, does not sin; whoever does not sin, enters Heaven! Thus, let us drink beer!”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Widely attributed to Luther, but actually is an example given in 1658 book Ἑρμηνεια logica https://books.google.com/books?id=2MxlAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA228| of faulty logic. In Latin: Si vero termini in sorite sunt causae subordinatae per accidens, sorites non valet; ut ia hoc, Qui bene bibit, bene dormit; qui bene dormit, non peccat; qui non peccat, est beatus; ergo: qui bene bibit est beatus. Vitium est, quod bene bibere sit causa per accidens somni. Translated via Fauxtations https://fauxtations.wordpress.com/2016/08/21/drinking-and-not-sinning/: If, however, the conclusions in the sorite are subordinate by accident, the sorites is not valid; as in this one, He who sleeps well, drinks well; he who sleeps well, does not sin; he who does not sin, is blessed; therefore, he who drinks well is blessed. The problem is that to drink well is a cause of sleep only by accident. Disputed

Drink, Beer, Sleep

“Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is an act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets, and cannons, all of which are highly authoritarian means. And the victorious party must maintain its rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionaries. Would the Paris Commune have lasted more than a day if it had not used the authority of the armed people against the bourgeoisie? Cannot we, on the contrary, blame it for having made too little use of that authority? Therefore, one of two things: either that anti-authoritarians don’t know what they are talking about, in which case they are creating nothing but confusion. Or they do know, and in that case they are betraying the cause of the proletariat. In either case they serve only reaction.8 This”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

Source: On Authority, see https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm

People, Communication, Victory, Parting

“One of the consequences of such notions as ‘entitlements’ is that people who have contributed nothing to society feel that society owes them something, apparently just for being nice enough to grace us with their presence.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

People, Feeling

“There is no point in using the word 'impossible' to describe something that has clearly happened.”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“I've got a stele we can use. Who wants to do me?"
"A regrettable choice of words," muttered Magnus.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

“Each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others.”

Etty Hillesum (1914–1943) Jewish diarist

Thinking

“Any form of art is a form of power; it has impact, it can affect change – it can not only move us, it makes us move.”

Ossie Davis (1917–2005) American actor, director, poet, playwright, writer, and social activist

Art, Change

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”

C.G. Jung book Memories, Dreams, Reflections

ii. America: The Pueblo Indians http://books.google.com/books?id=w6vUgN16x6EC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Jung+Memories+Dreams+and+Reflections&hl=en&sa=X&ei=LLxKUcD0NfSo4APh0oDABg&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false (Extract from an unpublished ms) (Random House Digital, 2011). Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1963) Context: We always require an outside point to stand on, in order to apply the lever of criticism. This is especially so in psychology, where by the nature of the material we are much more subjectively involved than in any other science. How, for example, can we become conscious of national peculiarities if we have never had the opportunity to regard our own nation from outside? Regarding it from outside means regarding it from the standpoint of another nation. To do so, we must acquire sufficient knowledge of the foreign collective psyche, and in the course of this process of assimilation we encounter all those incompatibilities which constitute the national bias and the national peculiarity. Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. I understand England only when I see where I, as a Swiss, do not ﬁt in. I understand Europe, our greatest problem, only when I see where I as a European do not ﬁt into the world. Through my acquaintance with many Americans, and my trips to and in America, I have obtained an enormous amount of insight into the European character; it has always seemed to me that there can be nothing more useful for a European than some time or another to look out at Europe from the top of a skyscraper. When I contemplated for the ﬁrst time the European spectacle from the Sahara, surrounded by a civilization which has more or less the same relationship to ours as Roman antiquity has to modem times, I became aware of how completely, even in America, I was still caught up and imprisoned in the cultural consciousness of the white man. The desire then grew in me to carry the historical comparisons still farther by descending to a still lower cultural level. On my next trip to the United States I went with a group of American friends to visit the Indians of New Mexico, the city-building Pueblos...

Deep, Happy, Motivational, Relationship

“The point is not what we expect from life, but rather what life expects from us.”

Viktor E. Frankl (1905–1997) Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor

Life

“Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.”

Les Brown (1945) American politician

Variant: Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living out fears.

Success, Inspirational, Deep, Happy

“Life and death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost. Each of us should strive to awaken. Awaken! Take heed, do not squander your life.”

Dogen (1200–1253) Japanese Zen buddhist teacher

Life, Death, Time

“We all play chess with Fate as partner. He makes a move, we make a move. He tries to checkmate us in three moves, we try to prevent it. We know we can't win, but we're driven to give him a good fight.”

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991) Polish-born Jewish-American author

Source: The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer

Fate, Fight

“I believe tears are holy, because they show us that the ice of our heart is melting.”

Barbara De Angelis (1951) American psychologist

Tear, Heart

“Let us forget with generosity those who cannot love us”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Love, Forgetting

“Imagination does not become great until human beings, given the courage and the strength, use it to create.”

Maria Montessori (1870–1952) Italian pedagogue, philosopher and physician

Imagination, Courage

“… and that visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

“Let your tears roll tonight, but tomorrow you will start the battle again. What defeats us, always, is just our own sorrow.”

Amin Maalouf (1949) Francophone Lebanese writer based in France

Source: The First Century After Beatrice

Tear

“I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone's heart. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark.”

Raymond Carver (1938–1988) American short story author and poet

Heart

“Our parents, our children, our spouses, and our friends will continue to press every button we have, until we realize what it is that we don't want to know about ourselves, yet. They will point us to our freedom every time.”

Byron Katie (1942) American spiritual writer

Source: Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life

Children, Parent, Freedom, Time

“People don't read any more. It's a sad state of affairs. Reading's the only thing that allows you to use your imagination. When you watch films it's someone else's vision, isn't it?"

[Interview in, 15 October 2005]”

Lemmy Kilmister (1945–2015) British singer-songwriter

People, Sadness, Imagination, Reading

“Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous - to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.”

Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate

Source: Death in Venice and Other Tales

Beauty, Birth, Solitude

“when we gaze in unbounded admiration on that ineffable mercy of His, which with unwearied patience endures countless sins which are every moment being committed under His very eyes, or the call with which from no antecedent merits of ours, but by the free grace of His pity He receives us;”

John Cassian (360–435) Christian monk and theologian

Source: Conferences of John Cassian

Patience

“All of us invent ourselves. Some of us just have more imagination than others.”

Cher (1946) American singer and actress

Imagination

“All around us lies what we neither understand nor use. Our capacities, our instincts for this our present sphere are but half developed.”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

"Good Sense" in a dialogue between Free Hope, Old Church, Good Sense, and Self -Poise. p. 127.
Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 (1844)
Context: All around us lies what we neither understand nor use. Our capacities, our instincts for this our present sphere are but half developed. Let us confine ourselves to that till the lesson be learned; let us be completely natural; before we trouble ourselves with the supernatural. I never see any of these things but I long to get away and lie under a green tree and let the wind blow on me. There is marvel and charm enough in that for me.

Understanding

“A tree has roots in the soil yet reaches to the sky. It tells us that in order to aspire we need to be grounded and that no matter how high we go it is from our roots that we draw sustenance. It is a reminder to all of us who have had success that we cannot forget where we came from. It signifies that no matter how powerful we become in government or how many awards we receive, our power and strength and our ability to reach our goals depend on the people, those whose work remain unseen, who are the soil out of which we grow, the shoulders on which we stand”

Wangari Maathai (1940–2011) Kenyan environmental and political activist

People, Tree, Success, Drawing

“There is no refuge from memory and remorse in this world. The spirits of our foolish deeds haunt us, with or without repentance.”

Gilbert Parker (1862–1932) Canadian novelist and British politician

World, Memory

“Love would never leave us alone”

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

Love

“We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and along these fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Though this statement and a few other variants of it have been widely attributed to Herman Melville, it is actually a paraphrase of one found in a sermon of Henry Melvill, "Partaking in Other Men's Sins", St. Margaret's Church, Lothbury, England (12 June 1855), printed in Golden Lectures (1855) :
: There is not one of you whose actions do not operate on the actions of others—operate, we mean, in the way of example. He would be insignificant who could only destroy his own soul; but you are all, alas! of importance enough to help also to destroy the souls of others. ...Ye cannot live for yourselves; a thousand fibres connect you with your fellow-men, and along those fibres, as along sympathetic threads, run your actions as causes, and return to you as effects.
Misattributed

Men

“Don't use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

People

“How many times have people used a pen or paintbrush because they couldn’t pull the trigger?”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

People, Time

“Children are human beings to whom respect is due, superior to us by reason of their innocence and of the greater possibilities of their future.”

Maria Montessori (1870–1952) Italian pedagogue, philosopher and physician

Children, Future

“The tragedy of life is not death but what we let die inside of us while we live.”

Norman Cousins (1915–1990) American journalist

Life, Death

“The great are only great because we are on our knees. Let us rise”

Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) French politician, mutualist philosopher, economist, and socialist

“Who can know from the word goodbye what kind of parting is in store for us.”

Arundhati Roy book The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Source: The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Parting

“I am often asked why men don’t get as worked up as they might about women—particularly poor women—having to use their bodies as prostitutes. Because most men unconsciously experience themselves as prostitutes every day—the miner, the firefighter, the construction worker, the logger, the soldier, the meatpacker—these men are prostitutes in the direct sense: they sacrifice their bodies for money and for their families.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 233.

Women, Men, Money, Family

“First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.
If some people have in the past argued about the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless.
Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million… despite all this, the Americans are once again trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.
So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors.
Third, if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

1990s, Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders (1998)

War, People, Past, Fight

“You almost create this infinite universe for the character that you’re playing and then you’re compromising it into the story that you’re doing. Whatever character you’re playing, you kind of explore endlessly more than what’s on the page. You use that exploration to do the performance that’s in the film, but hopefully, people will see all that work and preparation in those little glimpses of scenes and moments. Oh, there’s something there. There’s so much more happening with this character.”

Bill Skarsgård (1990) Swedish actor

Bill Skarsgard on ‘IT’ and Tapping into His Fears to Create a Terrifying New Pennywise http://collider.com/bill-skarsgard-pennywise-it-movie-interview/#images (July 28, 2017)

People, Universe