Quotes about use (10000 quotes, page 5)

“The road to the Olympics, leads to no city, no country. It goes far beyond New York or Moscow, ancient Greece or Nazi Germany. The road to the Olympics leads — in the end — to the best within us.”

Jesse Owens (1913–1980) American track and field athlete

As quoted in People In America : "Jesse Owens" by Barbara Dash http://web.archive.org/web/20071219045105/http://voanews.com/specialenglish/archive/2002-06/a-2002-06-07-2-1.cfm on VOA (7 June 2002)

Country

“Almost anything that consoles us is a fake.”

Iris Murdoch book The Sovereignty of Good

The Sovereignty of Good (1970) p. 59.

“Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything - anger, anxiety, or possessions - we cannot be free.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation

Happy , Peaceful , Freedom , Heart

“Between the fear that something would happen and the hope that still it wouldn't, there is much more space than one thinks. On that narrow, hard, bare and dark space a lot of us spend their lives.”

Ivo Andrič (1892–1975) novelist, short story writer

Fear , Hope , Thinking

“The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

love , Relationship , Good Night , Good Morning

“Children don't read to find their identity, to free themselves from guilt, to quench the thirst for rebellion or to get rid of alienation. They have no use for psychology… They still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff… When a book is boring, they yawn openly. They don't expect their writer to redeem humanity, but leave to adults such childish illusions.”

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

Nobel lecture as quoted in The Observer (17 December 1978) Variant: "They still believe in God, the family, angels, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other obsolete stuff."

God , Children , Books , Family

“While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.”

Dorothea Lange (1895–1965) American photojournalist

“Fear makes idiots out of us all, at some time or other.”

Patricia Briggs (1965) American writer

Source: When Demons Walk

Fear , Time

“If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Depressing , Training

“Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer book The Cost of Discipleship

Source: The Cost of Discipleship

Love , Evil

“I used to think the only way to be truly alive is to confront your mortality.”

Nikki Sixx (1958) American musician

Source: The Heroin Diaries: A Year In The Life Of A Shattered Rock Star

Way , Thinking

“Childhood is the world of miracle and wonder; as if creation rose, bathed in the light, out of the darkness, utterly new and fresh and astonishing. The end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us.”

Eugéne Ionesco (1909–1994) Romanian playwright

World , Light , Childhood

“If I had a soul I sold it
for pretty words
If I had a body I used
it up spurting my essence

Allen Ginsberg warns you
dont follow my path
to extinction”

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet

Soul

“A little Learning is a dang'rous Thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring:
There shallow Draughts intoxicate the Brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.”

Alexander Pope An Essay on Criticism

Source: "An Essay on Criticism", (1709)

Spring , Drink , Learning

“It is more pleasant and useful to go through the 'experience of the revolution' than to write about it.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

“The use of method as the criterion of science abolishes theoretical relevance. As a consequence, all propositions concerning facts will be promoted to the dignity of science, regardless of their relevance, as long as they result from a correct use of method. Since the ocean of facts is infinite, a prodigious expansion of science in the sociological sense becomes possible, giving employment to scientistic technicians and leading to the fantastic accumulation of irrelevant knowledge through huge “research projects” whose most interesting features is the quantifiable expense that has gone into their production.”

Eric Voegelin (1901–1985) American philosopher

Source: The New Science of Politics: An Introduction

Knowledge , Sense , Science

“Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher

“True teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create their
own.”

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) Greek writer

Teachers

“Each of us has been made “a little lower than the angels.” What an incomprehensible compliment! But it’s not only a compliment; it’s also a responsibility, for our special status equalizes us with other people in the eyes of God. The Lord has exalted not only me or some special group; God has exalted everyone. It’s the people of Burkina Faso and Niger and Guyana and Haiti. It’s people who never learned to read and write or who live on fifty cents a day. All human beings have been made a little lower than the angels, and we have a responsibility to treat them accordingly.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Source: Through the Year with Jimmy Carter: 366 Daily Meditations from the 39th President

God , People , Angels , Learning

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”

Thomas Merton book No Man Is an Island

Variant: Art enables us to find ourselves and loose ourselves at the same time.
Source: No Man Is an Island

Art , Time

“If a society permits one portion of its citizenry to be menaced or destroyed, then, very soon, no one in that society is safe. The forces thus released in the people can never be held in check, but run their devouring course, destroying the very foundations which it was imagined they would save.

But we are unbelievably ignorant concerning what goes on in our country--to say nothing of what goes on in the rest of the world--and appear to have become too timid to question what we are told. Our failure to trust one another deeply enough to be able to talk to one another has become so great that people with these questions in their hearts do not speak them; our opulence is so pervasive that people who are afraid to lose whatever they think they have persuade themselves of the truth of a lie, and help disseminate it; and God help the innocent here, that man or womn who simply wants to love, and be loved. Unless this would-be lover is able to replace his or her backbone with a steel rod, he or she is doomed. This is no place for love. I know that I am now expected to make a bow in the direction of those millions of unremarked, happy marriages all over America, but I am unable honestly to do so because I find nothing whatever in our moral and social climate--and I am now thinking particularly of the state of our children--to bear witness to their existence. I suspect that when we refer to these happy and so marvelously invisible people, we are simply being nostalgic concerning the happy, simple, God-fearing life which we imagine ourselves once to have lived. In any case, wherever love is found, it unfailingly makes itself felt in the individual, the personal authority of the individual. Judged by this standard, we are a loveless nation. The best that can be said is that some of us are struggling. And what we are struggling against is that death in the heart which leads not only to the shedding of blood, but which reduces human beings to corpses while they live.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Source: nothing personal

Love , Life , Death , God

“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

Deep , Life , Life , Waiting

“When I don't have red, I use blue.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Pablo Picasso (1953); quoted in: Kilkenny (2004), Doomsday Marauders, p. 83.
1950s

“You, why are you so afraid of war and slaughter? Even if all the rest of us drop and die around you, grappling for the ships, you’d run no risk of death: you lack the heart to last it out in combat—coward!”

Homér Iliad

Source: The Iliad

Death , War , Heart

“My Carmen," I said (I used to call her that sometimes) "we shall leave this raw sore town as soon as you get out of bed."
"… Because, really," I continued, "there is no point in staying here."
"There is no point in staying anywhere," said Lolita.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita

Source: Lolita

“Take a factory, a railway, a ship on the high seas, said Engels: is it not clear that not one of these complex technical establishments, based on the use of machinery and the systematic co-operation of many people, could function without a certain amount of subordination and, consequently, without a certain amount of authority or power?”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Source: State and Revolution

People , Sea

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Books , Reading

“And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built in to the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.”

Terry Pratchett book Unseen Academicals

Source: Unseen Academicals

Pain , World , Nature , Learning

“It's the questions we can't answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he'll look for his own answers.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear (2011)

Question , Thinking

“What we need is not truths that serve us but a truth we may serve.”

Jacques Maritain (1882–1973) French philosopher

Source: Degrees of Knowledge (1932, Notre Dame Translation), p. 4.

Truth

“God has given us two hands--one to receive with and the other to give with. We are not cisterns made for hoarding; we are channels made for sharing.”

Billy Graham (1918–2018) American Christian evangelist

God

“There was purification in punishment. Not 'Forgive us our sins,' but 'Smite us for our iniquities' should be the prayer of a man to a most just God.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

God , Forgiveness

“It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have - otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.”

Chinua Achebe (1930–2013) Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic

History , Memory

“It is through living that we discover ourselves, at the same time as we discover the world around us.”

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) French photographer

Source: Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century

World , Time

“I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.”

Umberto Eco book Foucault's Pendulum

Source: Foucault's Pendulum

Father's Day , For Father , Wisdom , Dependency

“From the idea that the self is not given to us, I think there is only one practical consequence: we have to create ourselves as a work of art.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Art , Idea , Thinking

“What is important is not what happens to us, but how we respond to what happens to us.”

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …

“In his life Christ is an example showing
us how to live in his death he is a sacrifice satisfying our sins in his resurrection a conqueror in his ascension a king in his intercession a high priest.”

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

Life , Death , Christ

“The power of imagination makes us infinite.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

1 September 1875, page 226
John of the Mountains, 1938
Context: How infinitely superior to our physical senses are those of the mind! The spiritual eye sees not only rivers of water but of air. It sees the crystals of the rock in rapid sympathetic motion, giving enthusiastic obedience to the sun's rays, then sinking back to rest in the night. The whole world is in motion to the center. So also sounds. We hear only woodpeckers and squirrels and the rush of turbulent streams. But imagination gives us the sweet music of tiniest insect wings, enables us to hear, all round the world, the vibration of every needle, the waving of every bole and branch, the sound of stars in circulation like particles in the blood. The Sierra canyons are full of avalanche debris — we hear them boom again, for we read past sounds from present conditions. Again we hear the earthquake rock-falls. Imagination is usually regarded as a synonym for the unreal. Yet is true imagination healthful and real, no more likely to mislead than the coarser senses. Indeed, the power of imagination makes us infinite.

Inspirational , Motivational , Wise , Deep

“God does not begin by asking us about our ability, but only about our availability, and if we then prove our dependability, he will increase our capability.”

Neal A. Maxwell (1926–2004) Mormon leader

Variant: God does not begin by asking our ability, but more of our availability. When we prove our dependability, He will in crease our capability.

God , Dependency

“I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.”

Alan Turing Computing Machinery and Intelligence

Source: Computing Machinery and Intelligence (1950), p. 442.
Source: Computing machinery and intelligence

Education , Thinking

“Every day He humbles Himself just as He did when from from His heavenly throne into the Virgin's womb; every day He comes to us and lets us see Him in lowliness, when He descends from the bosom of the Father into the hands of the priest at the altar.”

Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) Catholic saint and founder of the Franciscan Order

“An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves. We cannot, unless we have become bourgeois pacifists or opportunists, forget that we are living in a class society from which there is no way out, nor can there be, save through the class struggle. In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed. Not only the modern standing army, but even the modern militia - and even in the most democratic bourgeois republics, Switzerland, for instance - represent the bourgeoisie armed against the proletariat. That is such an elementary truth that it is hardly necessary to dwell upon it. Suffice it to point to the use of troops against strikers in all capitalist countries.
A bourgeoisie armed against the proletariat is one of the biggest fundamental and cardinal facts of modern capitalist society. And in face of this fact, revolutionary Social-Democrats are urged to “demand” “disarmament”! That is tantamount of complete abandonment of the class-struggle point of view, to renunciation of all thought of revolution. Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Source: The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution

Truth , World , Way , Learning

“Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?”

William Shakespeare book Romeo and Juliet

Source: Romeo and Juliet

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

Beauty , Peaceful , Beauty , Housing

“Never use the word “cheap”. Today everybody can look chic in inexpensive clothes (the rich buy them too). There is good clothing design on every level today. You can be the chicest thing in the world in a T-shirt and jeans — it’s up to you.”

Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019) German fashion designer

World , Clothes

“First, we must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. It is impossible even to begin the act of loving one's enemies without prior acceptance of the necessity, over and over again, of forgiving those who inflict evil and injury upon us. It is also necessary to realize that the forgiving act must always be initiated by the person who has been wronged, the victim of some great hurt, the recipient of some tortuous injustice, the absorber of some terrible act of oppression.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1950s, Loving Your Enemies (Christmas 1957)
Context: First, we must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. It is impossible even to begin the act of loving one's enemies without prior acceptance of the necessity, over and over again, of forgiving those who inflict evil and injury upon us. It is also necessary to realize that the forgiving act must always be initiated by the person who has been wronged, the victim of some great hurt, the recipient of some tortuous injustice, the absorber of some terrible act of oppression. The wrongdoer may request forgiveness. He may come to himself, and, like the prodigal son, move up with some dusty road, his heart palpitating with the desire for forgiveness. But only the injured neighbor, the loving father back home can really pour out the warm waters of forgiveness.

Love , Forgiveness , Evil , Hurt

“Each of us has heaven and hell in him…”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Hell

“I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about it's use. It is hitting below the intellect.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Funny

“The one person who will never leave us, whom we will never lose, is ourself. Learning to love our female selves is where our search for love must begin.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: Communion: The Female Search for Love

For women , Love , Search , Learning

“We're all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.”

Tennessee Williams Orpheus Descending

Val ( Act 2, Scene 1 http://books.google.com/books?id=oOhF2S_tsIoC&q=%22We're+all+of+us+sentenced+to+solitary+confinement+inside+our+own+skins+for+life%22&pg=PA33#v=onepage)
Orpheus Descending (1957)

Life

“Sympathy, Love, Fortune… We all have these qualities but still tend to not use them!”

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

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

Love

“I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

Quoted allegedly "From da Vinci`s Notes" in Jon Wynne-Tyson: The Extended Circle. A Dictionary of Humane Thought. Centaur Press 1985, p. 65 books.google http://books.google.de/books?id=1mMbAQAAIAAJ&q=murder.
Actually the quote is not authentic but made up from a novel by Dmitri Merejkowski (w:Dmitry Merezhkovsky) entitled "The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci" (La Résurrecton de Dieux 1901), translated from Russian into English by Herbert Trench. G.P. Putnam's Sons New York and London, The Knickerbocker Press. There, in Book (i.e. chapter) VI, entitled The Diary of Giovanni Boltraffio, one finds the following:
The master [Leonardo da Vinci] permits harm to no living creatures, not even to plants. Zoroastro http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommaso_Masini tells me that from an early age he has abjured meat, and says that the time shall come when all men such as he will be content with a vegetable diet, and will think on the murder of animals as now they think on the murder of men ( p. 226 books.google http://books.google.de/books?id=g_pa0OaYX64C&pg=PA226).
However, despite the quote's false attribution, da Vinci was in fact a vegetarian.
Misattributed

Men , Age , Time , Animals

“Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

As quoted in The Mammoth Book of Zingers, Quips, and One-Liners (2004) edited by Geoff Tibballs, p. 299
General sources

Cute , People , Thinking , Funny

“Every increased possession loads us with new weariness.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

“Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, “Wow what a ride!”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Variant: Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!
Source: The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

Life

“We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies. If he only shows in his work that he has searched, and re-searched, for the way to put over lies, he would never accomplish anything.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Source: 1920s, "Picasso Speaks" (1923), p. 315.

Truth , Lie , Art , Way

“Love all, trust a few,
Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy
Rather in power than use; and keep thy friend
Under thy own life's key: be check'd for silence,
But never tax'd for speech.”

William Shakespeare All's Well That Ends Well

Source: All's Well That Ends Well

Love , Life , Silence

“Just erotic. Nothing kinky. It's the difference between using a feather and using a chicken.”

Terry Pratchett book Eric

Source: Eric

“While we do our good works let us not forget that the real solution lies in a world in which charity will have become unnecessary.”

Chinua Achebe book Anthills of the Savannah

Source: Anthills of the Savannah

World , Forgetting

“Whatever opens us is not as important as what it opens.”

Mark Nepo (1951) American writer

“Markets are useful instruments for organizing productive activity. But unless we want to let the market rewrite the norms that govern social institutions, we need a public debate about the moral limits of markets.”

Michael J. Sandel book Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

Source: Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

“Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Life , Question

“The meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering but in the development of the soul.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn book Cancer Ward

Source: Cancer Ward

Soul , Thinking

“The person who reads too much and uses his brain too little will fall into lazy habits of thinking..”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Thinking , Reading , Personality

“If we could look into each other’s hearts and understand the unique challenges each of us faces, I think we would treat each other much more gently, with more love, patience, tolerance, and care.”

Marvin J. Ashton (1915–1994) Apostle of the LDS Church

Love , Understanding , Thinking , Heart

“Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty if only we have the eyes to see them.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

Beauty , Nature , Painting

“God always punishes us for what we can't imagine.”

Stephen King book Duma Key

Source: Duma Key

God , Imagination

“Remember always that you have not only the right to be an individual; you have an obligation to be one. You cannot make any useful contribution in life unless you do this.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Life

“Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us do them beautifully.”

Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker

Ziglar has often used this saying, but it originates with Phillips Brooks, as quoted in ‪Primary Education‬ (1916) by Elizabeth Peabody.
Misattributed

Love

“Reading gives us some place to go when we have to stay where we are.”

Mason Cooley (1927–2002) American academic

Variant: Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.

Reading

“I guess that's part of growing up, too--saying goodbye to the things you used to love.”

Jenny Han book Always and Forever, Lara Jean

Source: Always and Forever, Lara Jean

Goodbye , Love , Parting

“It is when we are trapped in incessant streams of compulsive thinking that the universe really disintegrates for us, and we lose the ability to sense the interconnectedness of all that exists.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

Thinking , Sense , Universe

“We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.”

Denis Diderot book Rameau's Nephew

Rameau's Nephew (1762)

Truth , Lie

“By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

The Critic as Artist (1891), Part I
Context: There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not.
Context: Puritans cannot destroy a beautiful thing, yet, by means of their extraordinary prurience, they can almost taint beauty for a moment. It is chiefly, I regret to say, through journalism that such people find expression. I regret it because there is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
Context: It is chiefly, I regret to say, through journalism that such people find expression. I regret it because there is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not.

Communication

“Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune.”

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

“Aphrodite makes us understand why women have drowned their babies.”

P. C. Cast book Untamed

Source: Untamed

Women , Understanding , Baby

“Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Variant: Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless and add what is specifically your own
Source: Bruce Lee — Wisdom for the Way

“All the cunning of the devil is exercised in trying to tear us away from the word.”

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

Exercises , Tear

“Those who truly love us will never knowingly ask us to be other than we are”

Mark Nepo (1951) American writer

Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

Love

“Use your blood to paint. Keep painting until you faint. Keep painting until you die.”

Yoko Ono (1933) Japanese artist, author, and peace activist

Painting

“They have been promising us for a long time — in every culture — that they are going to take us to heaven. They promise heaven because they are making a hell out of this place.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Source: Of Mystics & Mistakes

Hell , Time

“the vase once had an extremely common use. Most probably it was used for cooking-oil. It was made by a designer of those times, when art and life went hand in hand and there was no such thing as a work of art to look at and just any old thing to use. I”

Bruno Munari (1907–1998) Italian artist and designer

Source: Design as Art

Life , Art , Time , Cooking

“And always I have this feeling--which may not be true at all--that I am being used as a messenger.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

Source: Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey

Feeling

“Come sleep with me: We won't make Love, Love will make us.”

Julio Cortázar (1914–1984) Argentinian writer

Relationship , Love , Making love , Sleep

“Everyone struggles against despair, but it always wins in the end. It has to. It's the thing that lets us say goodbye.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book Middlesex

Source: Middlesex

Despair

“To be bitter is to attribute intent and personality to the formless, infinite, unchanging and unchangeable void. We drift on a chartless, resistless sea. Let us sing when we can, and forget the rest..”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Singing , Personality , Sea , Forgetting

“I know that each one of us travels to love alone,
alone to faith and to death.
I know it. I’ve tried it. It doesn’t help.
Let me come with you.”

Yiannis Ritsos (1909–1990) Greek poet

Source: The Moonlight Sonata

Love , Death , Faith , Travel

“I used to think that eighty was a very old age. Now I am ninety. I do not think this any more. As long as you are able to admire and to love, you are young.”

Pablo Casals (1876–1973) Catalan cellist and conductor

Love , Age , Thinking

“Some of us – poets are not exactly poets. We live sometimes – beyond the word.”

Wole Soyinka (1934) Nigerian writer

“I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Christopher Soames, speech at the Reform Club (28 April 1981), reported in Martin S. Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill. Volume Eight: Never Despair: 1945–1965. p. 304
Post-war years (1945–1955)
Variant: I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
Context: [Christopher Soames, Churchill's future son-in-law, remembered] Churchill showing him around Chartwell Farm [around 1946]. When they came to the piggery Churchill scratched one of the pigs and said: I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.

Dogs , Cats , Funny

“The fire that warms us can also consume us; it is not the fault of the fire.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

“I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do. They go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

July 1890, page 313
(From Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, Second Series (1844) "Essay VI: Nature": "the trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground.")
John of the Mountains, 1938
Context: It has been said that trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment rooted in the ground. But they never seem so to me. I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do. They go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!

Travel , Tree , Sun

“There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.”

Bjarne Stroustrup book The C++ Programming Language

Bjarne Stroustrup's FAQ: Did you really say that?, 2007-11-15 http://www.stroustrup.com/bs_faq.html#really-say-that,
Source: The C++ Programming Language

People

“Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

Heartbreaking , Missing You , Goodbye , For Father

“Forgiving is not forgetting; its actually remembering--remembering and not using your right to hit back. Its a second chance for a new beginning. And the remembering part is particularly important. Especially if you dont want to repeat what happened.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

Forgiveness , Chance , Parting , Forgetting

“Do not be concerned with the faults of other persons. Do not see others' faults with a hateful mind. There is an old saying that if you stop seeing others' faults, then naturally seniors and venerated and juniors are revered. Do not imitate others' faults; just cultivate virtue. Buddha prohibited unwholesome actions, but did not tell us to hate those who practice unwholesome actions.”

Dogen (1200–1253) Japanese Zen buddhist teacher

Hate , Nature , Personality

“People are crazy and times are strange… I used to care but things have changed”

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

Song lyrics, The Essential Bob Dylan (2000), Things Have Changed (recorded 1999)
Variant: I used to care, but things have changed.
Context: People are crazy and times are strange
I'm locked in tight, I'm out of range,
I used to care, but things have changed.

People , Change , Time

“Love is not a habit, a commitment, or a debt. It isn't what romantic songs tell us it is - love simply is.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Love

“Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them.”

George Eliot book Adam Bede

Source: Adam Bede (1859)

Sad , Depressing , Hurtful , Dead

Quotes about use page 5

Quotes about use
page 5