Quotes about weight

A collection of quotes on the topic of weight, likeness, use, doing.

Quotes about weight

“Great stones they lay upon his chest until he plead aye or nay. They say he give them but two words. "More weight," he says. And died.”

Arthur Miller The Crucible

Source: The Crucible

“Humankind does not submit passively to the power of nature. It takes control over this power. This process is not an internal or subjective one. It takes place objectively in practice, once women cease to be viewed as mere sexual beings, once we look beyond their biological functions and become conscious of their weight as an active social force. What's more, woman's consciousness of herself is not only a product of her sexuality. It reflects her position as determined by the economic structure of society, which in turn expresses the level reached by humankind in technological development and the relations between classes.

The importance of dialectical materialism lies in going beyond the inherent limits of biology, rejecting simplistic theories about our being slaves to the nature of our species, and, instead, placing facts in their social and economic context.”

Thomas Sankara (1949–1987) President of Upper Volta

Source: Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle

Women, Nature

“Equal weights at equal distances are in equilibrium and equal weights at unequal distances are not in equilibrium but incline towards the weight which is at the greater distance.”

Archimedes book On the Equilibrium of Planes

Book 1, Postulate 1.
On the Equilibrium of Planes

“Force without wisdom falls of its own weight.”

Horace book Odes

Book III, ode iv, line 65
Odes (c. 23 BC and 13 BC)

Wisdom

“The Christian, however, must bear the burden of a brother. He must suffer and endure the brother. It is only when he is a burden that another person is really a brother and not merely an object to be manipulated. The burden of men was so heavy for God Himself that He had to endure the Cross. God verily bore the burden of men in the body of Jesus Christ. But He bore them as a mother carries her child, as a shepherd enfolds the lost lamb that has been found. God took men upon Himself and they weighted Him to the ground, but God remained with them and they with God. In bearing with men God maintained fellowship with them. It was the law of Christ that was fulfilled in the Cross. And Christians must share in this law.”

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

Source: Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community

Men, God, Law, Suffering

“The weight of the world is love.
Under the burden of solitude,
under the burden of dissatisfaction
the weight, the weight we carry is love.”

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet

Love, World, Solitude

“If I had to tell you how humans made their way to Earth, it would go like this: In the beginning, there was nothing at all but the moon and the sun. And the moon wanted to come out during the day, but there was something so much brighter that seemed to fill up all those hours. The moon grew hungry, thinner and thinner, until she was just a slice of herself, and her tips were as sharp as a knife. By accident, because that is the way most things happen, she poked a hole in the night and out spilled a million stars, like a fountain of tears.

Horrified, the moon tried to swallow them up. And sometimes this worked, because she got fatter and rounder.. But mostly it didn't, because there were just so many. The stars kept coming, until they made the sky so bright that the sun got jealous. He invited the stars to his side of the world, where it was always bright. What he didn't tell them, though, was that in the daytime, they'd never be seen. So the stupid ones leaped from the sky to the ground, and they froze under the weight of their own foolishness.

The moon did her best. She carved each of these blocks of sorrow into a man or a woman. She spent the rest of her time watching out so that her other stars wouldn't fall. She spent the rest of her time holding onto whatever scraps she had left.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Stupidity, World, Way, Star

“I blame science! I blame technology! Domin! Myself! All of us! We, we are at fault! For the sake of our megalomania, for the sake of somebody's profits, for the sake of progress, I don't know, for the sake of some tremendous something we have murdered humanity! So now you can crash under the weight of all your greatness! No Genghis Khan has ever erected such an enormous tomb from human bones!”

Karel Čapek R.U.R.

R.U.R. (1920)

Science

“Has he gained weight?" He smiles a pathetic smile, seeing his reflection, sweaty and "almost dead," projected there on the glass of a dismantled display case full of mannequins.”

José Baroja book Un hijo de perra y otros cuentos

Smile, Dead

“You may have killed God beneath the weight of all that you have said; but don't imagine that, with all that you are saying, you will make a man that will live longer than he.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Source: The Archaeology of Knowledge & The Discourse on Language

God, Imagination

“He stood up straight and looked the world squarely in the fields and hills. To add weight to his words he stuck the rabbit bone in his hair. He spread his arm out wide. "I will go mad!" he annouced.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Omnibus

World, Madness

“Arguments for preservation based on the beauty of wilderness are sometimes treated as if they were of little weight because they are "merely aesthetic". That is a mistake. We go to great lengths to preserve the artistic treasures of earlier human civilisations. It is difficult to imagine any economic gain that we would be prepared to accept as adequate compensation for, for instance, the destruction of the paintings in the Louvre. How should we compare the aesthetic value of wilderness with that of the paintings in the Louvre? Here, perhaps, judgment does become inescapably subjective; so I shall report my own experiences. I have looked at the paintings in the Louvre, and in many of the other great galleries of Europe and the United States. I think I have a reasonable sense of appreciation of the fine arts; yet I have not had, in any museum, experiences that have filled my aesthetic senses in the way that they are filled when I walk in a natural setting and pause to survey the view from a rocky peak overlooking a forested valley, or by a stream tumbling over moss-covered boulders set amongst tall tree-ferns, growing in the shade of the forest canopy, I do not think I am alone in this; for many people, wilderness is the source of the greatest feelings of aesthetic appreciation, rising to an almost mystical intensity.”

Peter Singer book Practical Ethics

Source: Practical Ethics

People, Beauty, Art, Way

“In one of the sinking spells [due to Cholera] which was thought to be the last, my father rushed into the room. I still see his pallid face as he tried to cheer me in tones belying his assurance. "Perhaps," I said, "I may get well if you will let me study engineering." "You will go to the best technical institution in the world," he solemnly replied, and I knew that he meant it. A heavy weight was lifted from my mind.… I came to life like Lazarus to the utter amazement of everybody.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

My Inventions (1919)

Life, World, Study

“I think Terrell will catch hell at the sound of the bell.
He's going around saying that he's a championship-fighter,
but when he meets me he fall 20 pound lighter.
He thinks that he's the real heavy weight champ
but when he meets me, he'll just be a tramp
Now I'm not sayin' just to be funny, but I'm fightin' Ernie because he needs the money.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

About Ernie Terrell before their February 1967 boxing match, - ( YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVZYo2MYmfg Source: https://books.google.ca/books?id=6ClZDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA120&lpg=PA120&dq=I+think+Terrell+will+catch+hell+at+the+sound+of+the+bell&source=bl&ots=2atsVuDXae&sig=ACfU3U0qSka952BOrSsGqAg13ji8vvdxPw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiK1sa854jvAhWY_J4KHe0xAf0Q6AEwEnoECAQQAw#v=onepage&q=I%20think%20Terrell%20will%20catch%20hell%20at%20the%20sound%20of%20the%20bell&f=false Ali: The Official Portrait of "The Greatest" of All Time

Money, Hell, Thinking

“You'll never make me stay
So take your weight off of me.
I know your every move
So won't you just let me be.
I've been here times before
But I was too blind to see
That you seduce every man.
This time you won't seduce me.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Dirty Diana
Bad (1987)

Time

“No need to repeat the blasphemous comments which everyone who had known Gran'pa Comstock made on that last sentence. But it is worth pointing out that the chunk of granite on which it was inscribed weighed close on five tons and was quite certainly put there with the intention, though not the conscious intention, of making sure that Gran'pa Comstock shouldn't get up from underneath it. If you want to know what a dead man's relatives really think of him, a good rough test is the weight of his tombstone.”

George Orwell book Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Source: Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), Ch. 3

Thinking, Dead

“He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being.”

Jean Paul Sartre book The Age of Reason

L'âge de raison (The Age of Reason) (1945)

Death, Fools, Way, Game

“Hold every moment sacred. Give each clarity and meaning, each the weight of thine awareness, each its true and due fulfillment.”

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

Source: The Beloved Returns (1939), Ch. 7
Context: Hold fast the time! Guard it, watch over it, every hour, every minute! Unregarded it slips away, like a lizard, smooth, slippery, faithless, a pixy wife. Hold every moment sacred. Give each clarity and meaning, each the weight of thine awareness, each its true and due fulfillment.

“I hardly sustain myself beneath the weight of white men's blood that I have shed.”

Sitting Bull (1831–1890) Hunkpapa Lakota medicine man and holy man

Recorded by the Jesuit priest Pierre-Jean De Smet after a council with Sitting Bull on June 19, 1868. Published in Utley, Robert M. The Lance and the Shield. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1993. p. 79-80.
Context: I hardly sustain myself beneath the weight of white men's blood that I have shed. The whites provoked the war; their injustices, their indignities to our families, the cruel, unheard of and wholly unprovoked massacre at Fort Lyon … shook all the veins which bind and support me. I rose, tomahawk in hand, and I have done all the hurt to the whites that I could.

Men

“Celebrate my escape, sold the Glock, bought some weight. Laid back, I got some money to make. Motherfucker!”

The Notorious B.I.G. (1972–1997) American rapper

"Runnin'"
Song lyrics

Money, Making love

“There is a Point where one cannot handle the building weight of one's Troubles
and
like a Stick that snaps.
We are all human, not robots.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

“Studies have shown that an ant can carry one hundred times its own weight, but there is no known limit to the lifting power of the average tiny eighty-year-old Spanish peasant grandmother.”

Terry Pratchett book Reaper Man

Source: Reaper Man

Study, Time

“I don't know about your true form, but the weight of your ego sure is pushing the crust of the earth toward the breaking point.”

Jim Butcher book Grave Peril

Source: Grave Peril

“Each sex has a relation to madness. Every desire has a relation to madness. But it would seem that one desire has been taken as wisdom, moderation, truth, leaving to the other sex the weight of a madness that cannot be acknowledged or accommodated.”

Luce Irigaray (1930) feminist, philosopher, linguist, psychoanalyst, sociologist and cultural theorist

Wisdom, Truth, Sex, Madness

“He learned to communicate with birds and discovered their conversation was fantastically boring. It was all to do with windspeed, wingspans, power-to-weight ratios and a fair bit about berries.”

Douglas Adams book So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Source: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Communication, Bird, Learning

“It's good to do uncomfortable things. It's weight training for life.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

Life, Training

“More Weight
-Giles Corey”

Arthur Miller The Crucible

Source: The Crucible

“Sometimes I can feel my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), p. 113

Feeling

“Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.”

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

Source: You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

Freedom, Personality

“The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are. Imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn’t have the weight of gender expectations.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie We Should All Be Feminists

Source: https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_we_should_all_be_feminists#t-1300116 We should all be feminists

Imagination, Problem

“If words had weight, a single sentence from Death would have anchored a ship.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Death

“Knowledge is a great gift, and the thirst to seek it even greater. Use what you know… Head and heart… You are not made to give greater weight to one than the other.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Valley of Silence

Knowledge, Heart

“Trials are medicines which our gracious and wise Physician prescribes because we need them; and he proportions the frequency and weight of them to what the case requires. Let us trust his skill and thank him for his prescription.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

“But what's worth more than gold?"

"Practically everything. You, for example. Gold is heavy. Your weight in gold is not very much gold at all. Aren't you worth more than that?”

Terry Pratchett book Making Money

Source: Making Money

“Life is heavier than the weight of all things.”

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

Life

“The weight of this sad time we must obey,
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.”

William Shakespeare King Lear

Source: King Lear

Sadness, Feeling, Time

“A wretched soul, bruised with adversity,
We bid be quiet when we hear it cry;
But were we burdened with light weight of pain,
As much or more we should ourselves complain.”

William Shakespeare The Comedy of Errors

Source: The Comedy of Errors

Pain, Soul, Light, Cry

“I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight.”

Malcolm X book The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Source: The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Source: The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), p. 22

People

“I keep having the same experience and keep resisting it every time. I do not want to believe it although it is palpable: the great majority of people lack an intellectual conscience. Indeed, it has often seemed to me as if anyone calling for an intellectual conscience were as lonely in the most densely populated cities as if he were in a desert. Everybody looks at you with strange eyes and goes right on handling his scales, calling this good and that evil. Nobody even blushes when you intimate that their weights are underweight; nor do people feel outraged; they merely laugh at your doubts. I mean: the great majority of people does not consider it contemptible to believe this or that and to live accordingly, without first having given themselves an account of the final and most certain reasons pro and con, and without even troubling themselves about such reasons afterward: the most gifted men and the noblest women still belong to this "great majority." But what is goodheartedness, refinement, or genius to me, when the person who has these virtues tolerates slack feelings in his faith and judgments and when he does not account the desire for certainty as his inmost craving and deepest distress--as that which separates the higher human beings from the lower.”

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

Sec. 2
The Gay Science (1882)

Women, Men, People, Faith

“Some forms of Kantianism put great weight on “what we can imagine” holding that this can be a source of insight into necessary connections. Thus various of Kant’s arguments about space and time depend on the purported fact that it is impossible for us to imagine certain things: we can know, Kant claims, a priori that space has only three dimensions because we cannot imagine it as having more than three dimensions. History in the form of non-Euclidean geometry and modern physics has put paid to that particular line of argument, but in general we should beware of depending too much on “What we can imagine?,” especially in politics. As Nietzsche puts it somewhere, sometimes the fact that you can’t imagine a situation in which things are very different from the way they are now is not an especially good argument for the claim that they must be as they now are, but, rather, represents a failure of your powers about which you should feel mildly apologetic.”

Raymond Geuss book Philosophy and Real Politics

Source: Philosophy and Real Politics (2008), pp. 48-49.

Way, Feeling, Imagination, History

“If there are females in your group, they will have plenty of hard and necessary work to do. Everyone will have to pull their own weight, but the hunting and fighting is almost always going to be up to the men. When lives are on the line, people will drop the etiquette of equality and make that decision again and again because it makes the most sense.”

Jack Donovan (1974) American activist, editor and writer

Pg 9
The Way of Men (2012)

Men, People, Decision, Sense

“How came the king by a power which the people are afraid to trust, and always obliged to check? Such a power could not be the gift of a wise people, neither can any power, which needs checking, be from God; yet the provision, which the constitution makes, supposes such a power to exist. But the provision is unequal to the task; the means either cannot or will not accomplish the end, and the whole affair is a felo de se; for as the greater weight will always carry up the less, and as all the wheels of a machine are put in motion by one, it only remains to know which power in the constitution has the most weight, for that will govern; and though the others, or a part of them, may clog, or, as the phrase is, check the rapidity of its motion, yet so long as they cannot stop it, their endeavors will be ineffectual; the first moving power will at last have its way, and what it wants in speed is supplied by time.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1770s, Common Sense (1776)

God, People, Way, Time

“I definitely had an eating disorder. What was really frustrating for me was that everyone thought I was anorexic, and I wasn't. I was really depressed and self-loathing. For me, it wasn't about being thin, it was about getting rid of the bait attached to my body. A lot of it came from the self-loathing that came from being raped at the point of developing my voluptuousness. I just thought that if you had a body and if you had anything on you that would be grabbed, it would be grabbed. So I did purposely get rid of it…I mean, my plan is to gain enough weight that I can really be considered voluptuous, and do my 'First Taste' video. And I am preparing myself for what is going to happen. Because soon they will be saying that I'm fat. And it will hurt me.”

Fiona Apple (1977) singer-songwriter, musician

Rolling Stone, "The Caged Bird Sings" January [1998]

Hurt

“There are some mixt bodies, from which it has not been yet made appear, that any degree of fire can separate either salt, or sulphur, or mercury, much less all the three. The most obvious instance of this truth is gold, which is a body so fixed, and wherein the elementary ingredients (if it have any) are so firmly united to each other, that we find not in the operations, wherein gold is exposed to the fire, how violent soever, that it does discernably so much as lose of its fixedness or weight, so far is it from being dissipated into those principles, whereof one at least is acknowledged to be fugitive enough.”

Robert Boyle book The Sceptical Chymist

Part I
The Sceptical Chymist (1661)

Truth, Appearance

“In between these four whitewashed walls, on this tiled floor, notice the broken corners, how some tiles have been worn smooth, how many feet have passed this way, and look how interesting this trail of ants is, travelling along the joins as if they were valleys, while up above, projected against the white sky of the ceiling and the sun of the lamp, tall towers are moving, they are men, as the ants well know, having, for generations, experienced the weight of their feet and the long, hot spout of water that falls from a kind of pendulous external intestine, ants all over the world have been drowned or crushed by these, but it seems they will escape this fate now, for the men are occupied with other things. […]
Let's take this ant, or, rather, let's not, because that would involve picking it up, let us merely consider it, because it is one of the larger ones and because it raises its head like a dog, it's walking along very close to the wall, together with its fellow ants it will have time to complete its long journey ten times over between the ants' nest and whatever it is that it finds so interesting, curious or perhaps merely nourishing in this secret room […]. One of the men has fallen to the ground, he's on the same level as the ants now, we don't know if he can see them, but they see him, and he will fall so often that, in the end, they will know by heart his face, the color of his hair and eyes, the shape of his ear, the dark arc of his eyebrow, the faint shadow at the corner of his mouth, and later, back in the ants' nest, they will weave long stories for the enlightenment of future generations, because it is useful for the young to know what happens out there in the world. The man fell and the others dragged him to his feet again, shouting at him, asking two different questions at the same time, how could he possibly answer them even if he wanted to, which is not the case, because the man who fell and was dragged to his feet will die without saying a word. Only moans will issue from his mouth, and in the silence of his soul only deep sighs, and even when his teeth are broken and he has to spit them out, which will prompt the other two men to hit him again for soiling state property, even then the sound will be of spitting and nothing more, that unconscious reflex of the lips, and then the dribble of saliva thickened with blood that falls to the floor, thus stimulating the taste buds of the ants, who telegraph from one to the other news of this singularly red manna fallen from such a white heaven.
The man fell again. It's the same one, said the ants, the same ear shape, the same arc of eyebrow, the same shadow at the corner of the mouth, there's no mistaking him, why is it that it is always the same man who falls, why doesn't he defend himself, fight back. […] The ants are surprised, but only fleetingly. After all, they have their own duties, their own timetables to keep, it is quite enough that they raise their heads like dogs and fix their feeble vision on the fallen man to check that he is the same one and not some new variant in the story. The larger ant walked along the remaining stretch of wall, slipped under the door, and some time will pass before it reappears to find everything changed, well, that's just a manner of speaking, there are still three men there, but the two who do not fall never stop moving, it must be some kind of game, there's no other explanation […]. [T]hey grab him by the shoulders and propel him willy-nilly in the direction of the wall, so that sometimes he hits his back, sometimes his head, or else his poor bruised face smashes into the whitewash and leaves on it a trace of blood, not a lot, just whatever spurts forth from his mouth and right eyebrow. And if they leave him there, he, not his blood, slides down the wall and he ends up kneeling on the ground, beside the little trail of ants, who are startled by the sudden fall from on high of that great mass, which doesn't, in the end, even graze them. And when he stays there for some time, one ant attaches itself to his clothing, wanting to take a closer look, the fool, it will be the first ant to die, because the next blow falls on precisely that spot, the ant doesn't feel the second blow, but the man does.”

José Saramago book Raised from the Ground

Source: Raised from the Ground (1980), pp. 172–174

Men, Fate, Secret, World

“The one thing that's clear is that new ideas won't emerge without the jettisoning of much of our accustomed categories of thought—which have become mostly sheer dead weight, if not intrinsic parts of the very apparatus of hopelessness—and formulating new ones. This is why I spent so much of this book talking about the market, but also about the false choice between state and market that so monopolized political ideology for the last centuries that it made it difficult to argue about anything else.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Twelve, "1971–The Beginning…", p. 384

Books, Idea, Parting, Falseness

“Weight, force and casual impulse, together with resistance, are the four external powers in which all the visible actions of mortals have their being and their end.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

“I can look back... at two distinct periods of opinion whose foundations I have successively come to distrust—a period before 1919 or so, when the weight of classic authority unduly influenced me, and another period from 1919 to about 1925, when I placed too high a value on the elements of revolt, florid colour, and emotional extravagance or intensity.”

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

Letter to August Derleth (1929), quoted in "H.P. Lovecraft, a Life" by S.T. Joshi, p. 307
Non-Fiction, Letters, to August Derleth

Success

“The chemistry of living organisms is organized around carbon, which accounts for more than half the dry weight of cells.”

Albert L. Lehninger (1917–1986) American biochemist

Principles of Biochemistry, Ch. 1 : The Foundations of Biochemistry

“We should still expect to discover many unknown simple bodies; for example, those similar to aluminum and silicon, elements with atomic weights of 65 to 75.”

Dmitri Mendeleev (1834–1907) Russian chemist and inventor

An Outline of the System of the Elements

“Slavery is wrong in its effect upon white people and free labor; it is the only thing that threatens the Union. It makes what Senator Seward has been much abused for calling an 'irrepressible conflict'. When they get ready to settle it, we hope they will let us know. Public opinion settles every question here, any policy to be permanent must have public opinion at the bottom, something in accordance with the philosophy of the human mind as it is. The property basis will have its weight. The love of property and a consciousness of right or wrong have conflicting places in our organization, which often make a man's course seem crooks, his conduct a riddle.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Speech at Hartford (1860)

Love, People, Hope, Question

“There are, in every country, some magnificent charities established by individuals. It is, however, but little that any individual can do, when the whole extent of the misery to be relieved is considered. He may satisfy his conscience, but not his heart. He may give all that he has, and that all will relieve but little. It is only by organizing civilization upon such principles as to act like a system of pulleys, that the whole weight of misery can be removed.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1790s, Agrarian Justice (1797)

Heart, Country

“If then we would indeed be “filled with wisdom and spiritual understanding;” if we would “walk worthy of the Lord unto all well pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God;” here let us fix our eyes! “Laying aside every weight, and the sin that does so easily beset us; let us run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Here best we may learn the infinite importance of Christianity. How little it can deserve to be treated in that slight and superficial way, in which it is in these days regarded by the bulk of nominal Christians, who are apt to think it may be enough, and almost equally pleasing to God, to be religious in any way, and upon any system. What exquisite folly it must be to risk the soul on such a venture, in direct contradiction to the dictates of reason, and the express declaration of the word of God! “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?”
LOOKING UNTO JESUS!
Here we shall best learn the duty and reasonableness of an absolute and unconditional surrender of soul and body to the will and service of God.—“We are not our own; for we are bought with a price,” and must “therefore” make it our grand concern to “glorify God with our bodies and our spirits, which are God’s.” Should we be base enough, even if we could do it with safety, to make any reserves in our returns of service to that gracious Saviour, who “gave up himself for us?” If we have formerly talked of compounding by the performance of some commands for the breach of others; can we now bear the mention of a composition of duties, or of retaining to ourselves the right of practising little sins! The very suggestion of such an idea fills us with indignation and shame, if our hearts be not dead to every sense of gratitude.
LOOKING UNTO JESUS!
Here we find displayed, in the most lively colours, the guilt of sin, and how hateful it must be to the perfect holiness of that Being, “who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity.” When we see that, rather than sin should go unpunished, “God spared not his own Son,” but “was pleased[99], to bruise him and put him to grief” for our sakes; how vainly must impenitent sinners flatter themselves with the hope of escaping the vengeance of Heaven, and buoy themselves up with I know not what desperate dreams of the Divine benignity!
Here too we may anticipate the dreadful sufferings of that state, “where shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth;” when rather than that we should undergo them, “the Son of God” himself, who “thought it no robbery to be equal with God,” consented to take upon him our degraded nature with all its weaknesses and infirmities; to be “a man of sorrows,” “to hide not his face from shame and spitting,” “to be wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities,” and at length to endure the sharpness of death, “even the death of the Cross,” that he might “deliver us from the wrath to come,” and open the kingdom of Heaven to all believers.
LOOKING UNTO JESUS!
Here best we may learn to grow in the love of God! The certainty of his pity and love towards repenting sinners, thus irrefragably demonstrated, chases away the sense of tormenting fear, and best lays the ground in us of a reciprocal affection. And while we steadily contemplate this wonderful transaction, and consider in its several relations the amazing truth, that “God spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all;” if our minds be not utterly dead to every impulse of sensibility, the emotions of admiration, of preference, of hope, and trust, and joy, cannot but spring up within us, chastened with reverential fear, and softened and quickened by overflowing gratitude. Here we shall become animated by an abiding disposition to endeavour to please our great Benefactor; and by a humble persuasion, that the weakest endeavours of this nature will not be despised by a Being, who has already proved himself so kindly affected towards us. Here we cannot fail to imbibe an earnest desire of possessing his favour, and a conviction, founded on his own declarations thus unquestionably confirmed, that the desire shall not be disappointed. Whenever we are conscious that we have offended this gracious Being, a single thought of the great work of Redemption will be enough to fill us with compunction. We shall feel a deep concern, grief mingled with indignant shame, for having conducted ourselves so unworthily towards one who to us has been infinite in kindness: we shall not rest till we have reason to hope that he is reconciled to us; and we shall watch over our hearts and conduct in future with a renewed jealousy, [Pg 243] lest we should again offend him. To those who are ever so little acquainted with the nature of the human mind, it were superfluous to remark, that the affections and tempers which have been enumerated, are the infallible marks and the constituent properties of Love. Let him then who would abound and grow in this Christian principle, be much conversant with the great doctrines of the Gospel.
It is obvious, that the attentive and frequent consideration of these great doctrines, must have a still more direct tendency to produce and cherish in our minds the principle of the love of Christ.”

William Wilberforce (1759–1833) English politician

Source: Real Christianity (1797), p. 240-243.

Love, Death, Wisdom, God

“I look at an ant and see myself: a native South African, endowed with a strength much greater than my size, so I might cope with the weight of racism that crushes my spirit.”

Miriam Makeba (1932–2008) South African singer and civil rights activist

As quoted in Nkrumah, Gamal (1–7 November 2001)
Al-Ahram Weekly interview (2001)

“One whose intentions and thoughts are cultivated will disregard wealth and nobility. One whose greatest concern is for the Way and righteousness will take lightly kings and dukes. It is simply that when one examines oneself on the inside, external goods carry little weight. A saying goes, "The gentleman makes things his servants. The petty man is servant to things."”

Xun Zi (-313–-238 BC) Ancient Chinese philosopher

Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy (2001), p. 263 A similar phrase to the saying is found in the 3rd millennium BCE Sumerian text Instructions of Shuruppak by Šuruppak: "You should not serve things; things should serve you." http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section5/tr561.htm "Cultivating oneself"

Way, Wealth

“This is essentially a people's contest. On the side of the Union it is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men; to lift artificial weights from all shoulders; to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all; to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life. Yielding to partial and temporary departures, from necessity, this is the leading object of the Government for whose existence we contend.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Fourth of July Address to Congress (1861)

Life, Men, People, World

“In regard to the Germans and foreigners, I esteem them no better than other people, nor any worse. It is not my nature, when I see a people borne down by the weight of their shackles-the oppression of tyranny-to make their life more bitter by heaping upon them greater burdens; but rather would I do all in my power to raise the yoke, than to add anything that would tend to crush them.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Speech to Germans at Cincinnati, Ohio (1861), Commercial version

Life, People, Nature

“And if you should say that the shells were carried by the waves, being empty and dead, I say that where the dead went they were not far removed from the living; for in these mountains living ones are found, which are recognisable by the shells being in pairs; and they are in a layer where there are no dead ones; and a little higher up they are found, where they were thrown by the waves, all the dead ones with their shells separated, near to where the rivers fell into the sea, to a great depth; like the Arno which fell from the Gonfolina near to Monte Lupo, where it left a deposit of gravel which may still be seen, and which has agglomerated; and of stones of various districts, natures, and colours and hardness, making one single conglomerate. And a little beyond the sandstone conglomerate a tufa has been formed, where it turned towards Castel Florentino; farther on, the mud was deposited in which the shells lived, and which rose in layers according to the levels at which the turbid Arno flowed into that sea. And from time to time the bottom of the sea was raised, depositing these shells in layers, as may be seen in the cutting at Colle Gonzoli, laid open by the Arno which is wearing away the base of it; in which cutting the said layers of shells are very plainly to be seen in clay of a bluish colour, and various marine objects are found there. And if the earth of our hemisphere is indeed raised by so much higher than it used to be, it must have become by so much lighter by the waters which it lost through the rift between Gibraltar and Ceuta; and all the more the higher it rose, because the weight of the waters which were thus lost would be added to the earth in the other hemisphere. And if the shells had been carried by the muddy deluge they would have been mixed up, and separated from each other amidst the mud, and not in regular steps and layers — as we see them now in our time.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XVI Physical Geography

Mountain, Nature, Water, Time

“The American people will say a prayer for Boston tonight. And Michelle and I send our deepest thoughts and prayers to the families of the victims in the wake of this senseless loss…We still do not know who did this or why. And people shouldn’t jump to conclusions before we have all the facts. But make no mistake - we will get to the bottom of this. And we will find out who did this; we'll find out why they did this. Any responsible individuals, any responsible groups will feel the full weight of justice.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

President Obama Speaks on the Explosions in Boston (15 April 2013) http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/04/15/president-obama-speaks-explosions-boston 2013

People, Family, Justice, Feeling

“My wife is on a new diet. Coconuts and bananas. She hasn't lost weight, but can she climb a tree.”

Henny Youngman (1906–1998) American comedian

"The Haunted Smile: The Story of Jewish Comedians in America" (2001)

Tree

“A lot of sophistication has been developed about the utilization of machines for complex purposes, and it doesn't make sense not to use it if you can think of a good question to ask. Playing chess is about the dumbest question you can ask. But, if you want, maybe can make money that way, or something. In fact, what's going on with the chess is about as interesting as the fact that a front-end loader can lift more than an Olympics champion, weight lifter, or something. Probably so, but, you know, these are just not serious questions.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Talk titled "Language & Mind", 1997.
Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999

Money, Way, Question, Thinking

“In some ways, though, the securing of civil rights, voting rights, the eradication of legalized discrimination -- the very significance of these victories may have obscured a second goal of the March. For the men and women who gathered 50 years ago were not there in search of some abstract ideal. They were there seeking jobs as well as justice, not just the absence of oppression but the presence of economic opportunity. For what does it profit a man, Dr. King would ask, to sit at an integrated lunch counter if he can’t afford the meal? This idea -- that one’s liberty is linked to one’s livelihood; that the pursuit of happiness requires the dignity of work, the skills to find work, decent pay, some measure of material security -- this idea was not new. Lincoln himself understood the Declaration of Independence in such terms -- as a promise that in due time, “the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance.””

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2013, "Let Freedom Ring" Ceremony (August 2013)

Women, Men, Happiness, Justice

“The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight; that he shall not be a mere passenger, but shall do his share in the work that each generation of us finds ready to hand; and, furthermore, that in doing his work he shall show, not only the capacity for sturdy self-help, but also self-respecting regard for the rights of others.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Speech at New York (11 November 1902)
1900s

Help

“Every little thing counts in a crisis and we want our weight felt and our voice heard in quarters which are for the avoidance of world conflict.”

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister of India

Jawaharlal Nehru's Speeches 1949 - 1953 (1954), p. 144

World

“There's a tiredness of abstract intelligence, and it's the most horrible of tirednesses. It doesn't weight on you like the tiredness of the body, nor does it worry you like the tiredness of knowledge and emotion. It's a weightiness of the conscience of the world, an inability of the soul to breathe.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 69
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Há um cansaço da inteligência abstracta, e é o mais horroroso dos cansaços. Não pesa como o cansaço do corpo, nem inquieta como o cansaço do conhecimento e da emoção. É um peso da consciência do mundo, um não poder respirar da alma.

World, Soul, Intelligence, Knowledge

“Is it for the cultivated man, the man of broad and general views, to throw himself without reserve and with all his weight, into what, for aught he yet knows, may be only a cross-current and eddy, instead of the main stream of truth?”

William Greenough Thayer Shedd (1820–1894) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 349.

Truth

“For example, throughout the long contest, extending over several decades, on the free [silver] coinage question, the existence of this motto on the coins was a constant source of jest and ridicule; and this was unavoidable. Everyone must remember the innumerable cartoons and articles based on phrases like 'In God we trust for the other eight cents'; 'In God we trust for the short weight'; 'In god we trust for the thirty-seven cents we do not pay'; and so forth and so forth. Surely I am well within bounds when I say that a use of the phrase which invites constant levity of this type is most undesirable.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, "In God we Trust" letter (1907)

God, Question

“Quite a heavy weight, a name too quickly famous.”

Voltaire Henriade

C'est un poids bien pesant qu'un nom trop tôt fameux.
La Henriade, chant troisième, l.41 (1722)
Citas

“I bumped into a woman I hadn't seen for nearly three years. The first thing she said to me? "You've lost a lot of weight since the last time I saw you!"
"Well," I said, slightly nonplussed, "the last time you saw me I'd just had a baby."
What I felt like saying was, "I've produced my third child and my sixth novel since I last saw you. Aren't either of those things more important, more interesting, than my size?" But no — my waist looked smaller! Forget the kid and the book: finally, something to celebrate!”

Joanne K. Rowling (1965) British novelist, author of the Harry Potter series

"For Girls Only, Probably..." at her website in "Section: Extra Stuff" http://www.jkrowling.com/textonly/en/extrastuff_view.cfm?id=22. 2000s

Books, Time, Baby, Forgetting

“My brain's dead weight, I'm tryin' to get my head straight, but I can't figure out which Spice Girl I want to impregnate.”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"My Name Is" (Track 2).
1990s, The Slim Shady LP (1999)

Girl, Dead

“Change is hard –- in our own lives, and in the lives of nations. And change is even harder when we carry the heavy weight of history on our shoulders. But today we are making these changes because it is the right thing to do. Today, America chooses to cut loose the shackles of the past so as to reach for a better future –- for the Cuban people, for the American people, for our entire hemisphere, and for the world.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Statement on Cuban policy (December 2014)

People, World, History, Change

“I want to explain my environment to those who don't come any closer to it than the records they buy or the images they see on television. People want the truth. Even if they can't handle it, they want it. I let you know that I survived nine bullets not to sell records, but because it's the truth. Every time I sit down for an interview, I'm asked, "Well, 50, how did it feel to get shot nine times?" But those stories don't hold the weight, the pain, or the hope of my experience. It just can't. This is my mindset and these are the things that go on. This is why I say the rhymes that I say. This is what happened when I was trying to get rich before I died in Southside Queens.”

50 Cent (1975) American rapper, actor, businessman, investor and television producer

Extract of From Pieces to Weight: Once Upon a Time in Southside Queens http://aalbc.com/reviews/50_cent_interview.htm. Song lyrics, From Pieces to Weight: Once Upon a Time in Southside Queens (2005)

Pain, People, Truth, Hope

“What happens in the story of Adam and Eve is that when people become self-conscious, they get thrown out of Paradise and then they're in history. And history is a place where there's pain in child birth, and where you're dominated by your mate, and where you have to toil like mad like no other animal because you're aware of your future. You have to work, and sacrifice the joys of the present for the future, constantly, and you know that you're going to die. And you have all that weight on you. How could anything be more true than that? Unless you're naive beyond comprehension. There's something that's echoed about your life in that representation. We're such strange creatures, because we don't really fit into being in some sense, and that's what's expressed in the notion of The Fall.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdrLQ7DpiWs "Biblical Series II: Genesis 1: Chaos & Order"

Life, Pain, People, History

“God created everything by number, weight and measure.”
Numero pondere et mensura Deus omnia condidit.

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

As quoted in Symmetry in Plants (1998) by Roger V. Jean and Denis Barabé, p. xxxvii, a translation of a Latin phrase he wrote in a student's notebook, elsewhere given as Numero pondere et mensura Deus omnia condidit. This is similar to Latin statements by Thomas Aquinas, and even more ancient statements of the Greek philosopher Pythagoras. See also Wisdom of Solomon 11:20 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bible_(King_James)/Wisdom_of_Solomon#Chapter_11

God

“My sweet, I do not mean to upset you in writing this, but I want to tell you that within us, as within the nature of every person's soul there is an emptiness and we constantly seek to find that and those in order to escape from being alone. This always has been so, and always the weight of loneliness is with us, and for this reason we think of this thing or that so as not to be left alone.”

Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) Armenian-American painter

Source: 1930 - 1941, from 'Arshile Gorky, – Goats on the roof' (2009), p. 132: in a letter to his sister Vartush Mooradian, after Mai 1938

Soul, Nature, Thinking, Personality

“I have given notice. I am going away to-morrow evening, I with my tremendous memory. Whatever may happen, whatever tragedies may be reserved for me in the future, my thought will not be graver or more important when I shall have lived my life with all its weight.
But my whole body is one pain. I cannot stand on my legs any more. I stagger. I fall back on my bed. My eyes close and fill with smarting tears. I want to be crucified on the wall, but I cannot. My body becomes heavier and heavier and filled with sharper pain. My flesh is enraged against me.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

The Inferno (1917), Ch. XVII

Life, Pain, Tear, Memory

“Consider your honour, as a gentleman, of more weight than an oath.”

Solón (-638–-558 BC) Athenian legislator

Diogenes Laërtius (trans. C. D. Yonge) The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (1853), "Solon", sect. 12, p. 29.

“There are advantages to being the chairman. One of my favorite perks was picking out an issue and doing what I called a "deep dive." It's spotting a challenge where you think you can make a difference— one that looks like it would be fun— and then throwing the weight of your position behind it. Some might justifiably call it "meddling." I've often done this— just about everywhere in the company.”

Jack Welch (1935) American executive: General Electric CEO

Source: Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001), Ch. 14.

Thinking

“That loyalty to the country comes ahead of all other loyalties. And this is an absolute loyalty, since one cannot weight it in terms of what one receives.”

Lal Bahadur Shastri (1904–1966) The second Prime Minister of the Republic of India and a leader of the Indian National Congress party

About Patriotism

Loyalty, Country

“For anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful. Hence one must choose a master, God being out of style.”

Albert Camus book The Fall

The Fall (1956)

God

“All thoughtful men must feel that gravest alarm over the growth of lynching in this country and especially over the peculiarly hideous form so often taken by mob violence when colored men are the victims, on which occasion the mob seems to lay most weight, not on the crime, but on the color of the criminal.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, Letter to Winfield T. Durbin (1903)

Men, Color, Feeling, Country

“Suffered from alienation,
carried the weight on my own,
had to be so strong,
so I believed,
and now I know I've succeeded,
in finding the place I conceived.”

Mariah Carey (1970) American singer-songwriter

"Vision of Love", "Mariah Carey", 1990
Lyrics

Strong, Suffering

“One word
Frees us of all the weight and pain of life:
That word is love.”

Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus

Source: Oedipus at Colonus, Line 1616–18

Love, Life, Pain, Wise

“Every day the increasing weight of years admonishes me more and more, that the shade of retirement is as necessary to me as it will be welcome.”

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

1790s, Farewell Address (1796)
Context: Every day the increasing weight of years admonishes me more and more, that the shade of retirement is as necessary to me as it will be welcome. Satisfied, that, if any circumstances have given peculiar value to my services, they were temporary, I have the consolation to believe, that, while choice and prudence invite me to quit the political scene, patriotism does not forbid it.

“Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the world.”

Edwin Markham (1852–1940) American poet

The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems (1899), The Man With the Hoe (1898)
Context: Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes.
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?

Age, World

“There are also animals which are called elks [alces "moose" in Am. Engl.; elk "wapiti"]. The shape of these, and the varied colour of their skins, is much like roes, but in size they surpass them a little and are destitute of horns, and have legs without joints and ligatures; nor do they lie down for the purpose of rest, nor, if they have been thrown down by any accident, can they raise or lift themselves up. Trees serve as beds to them; they lean themselves against them, and thus reclining only slightly, they take their rest; when the huntsmen have discovered from the footsteps of these animals whither they are accustomed to betake themselves, they either undermine all the trees at the roots, or cut into them so far that the upper part of the trees may appear to be left standing. When they have leant upon them, according to their habit, they knock down by their weight the unsupported trees, and fall down themselves along with them.”
Sunt item, quae appellantur alces. Harum est consimilis capris figura et varietas pellium, sed magnitudine paulo antecedunt mutilaeque sunt cornibus et crura sine nodis articulisque habent neque quietis causa procumbunt neque, si quo adflictae casu conciderunt, erigere sese aut sublevare possunt. His sunt arbores pro cubilibus: ad eas se applicant atque ita paulum modo reclinatae quietem capiunt. Quarum ex vestigiis cum est animadversum a venatoribus, quo se recipere consuerint, omnes eo loco aut ab radicibus subruunt aut accidunt arbores, tantum ut summa species earum stantium relinquatur. Huc cum se consuetudine reclinaverunt, infirmas arbores pondere adfligunt atque una ipsae concidunt.

Julius Caesar book Commentarii de Bello Gallico

Book VI
De Bello Gallico

Lie, Tree, Appearance, Animals

“For anyone seeking meaning for his life a figure from Greek mythology comes to mind. It is that of Atlas, bearing with endless perseverance the weight of the heavens on his back.”

Hyman George Rickover (1900–1986) United States admiral

Atlas, resolutely bearing his burden and accepting his responsibility that gives us the example we seek. To seek out and accept responsibility; to persevere; to be committed to excellence; to be creative and courageous; to be unrelenting in the pursuit of intellectual development; to maintain high standards of ethics and morality; and to bring these basic principles of existence to bear through active participation in life — these are some of my ideas on the goals which must be met to achieve meaning and purpose in life.
And finally, the man who knows his purpose in life accepts praise humbly. He knows whatsoever talents we has were given him by the Lord and that these talents must be developed and used. In this way man renders thanks for the Lord's gift — and finds meaning in his life.
Thoughts on Man's Purpose in Life (1974)

Life, Perseverance

“We choose our next world through what we learn in this one. Learn nothing, and the next world is the same as this one, all the same limitations and lead weights to overcome.”

Richard Bach book Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Source: Jonathan Livingston Seagull

World, Learning

“By the time I was fourteen the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Support, Time

“Tyson dropped the two warriors he was about to tie into a knot and jogged after us. He jumped on the centaur's back.
'Dude!' the centaur groaned, almost buckling under Tyson's weight. 'Do the words "low-carb diet" mean anything to you?”

Rick Riordan book The Sea of Monsters

Source: The Sea of Monsters

“For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

Fear, Silence, Waiting

“No insect hangs its nest on threads as frail as those which will sustain the weight of human vanity.”

Edith Wharton book The House of Mirth

Source: "The House of Mirth" http://books.google.com/books?id=plFdLlYHwZ8C&pg=PA69&lpg=PA69&dq=No+insect+hangs+its+nest+on+threads+as+frail+as+those+which+will+sustain+the+weight+of+human+vanity.&source=bl&ots=j0EPPhjIZW&sig=MQMjyNy5yKK97Ok4bGqRWfC3obE&hl=en&ei=T5F0TMqyMIuisAOczpyMBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=No%20insect%20hangs%20its%20nest%20on%20threads%20as%20frail%20as%20those%20which%20will%20sustain%20the%20weight%20of%20human%20vanity.&f=false (1905), ch. X, pg. 69