Quotes about weight
page 2

“There's a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”

Stephen Jay Gould book The Panda's Thumb

"Wide hats and narrow minds" https://books.google.com/books?id=-lWtVSZoqWkC&pg=PA776 New Scientist 8 March 1979, p. 777. Reprinted in The Panda's Thumb, p. 151 https://books.google.com/books?id=z0XY7Rg_lOwC&pg=PA151. Source: The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History

People

“Hey anyone who thinks a non-military–grade rappelling cable can support the weight of two grown men and a miniature donkey deserves to fall off a cliff.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: Uncommon Criminals

Men, Support, Thinking

“For too long, and despite what people told me, I had fallen for what the culture said about beauty, youth, features, heights, weights, hair textures, upper arms.”

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

People, Youth, Beauty

“… her queen danced like a flame in the wind, and the mercurial king like the weight at the center of the earth…”

Megan Whalen Turner The King of Attolia

Source: The King of Attolia

Dance

“Words have weight.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“I will not eat cakes or cookies or food. I will be thin, thin, pure. I will be pure and empty. Weight dropping off. Ninety-nine… ninety-five… ninety-two… ninety. Just one more to eighty-nine. Where does it go? Where in the universe does it go?”

Francesca Lia Block book Echo

Source: Echo

Food, Universe

“Lula's borderline too much of a good thing in lots of ways. It isn't exactly that Lula is fat; it's more that she's too short for her weight and her clothes are too small for the volume of flesh she carries.”

Janet Evanovich Plum Lucky

Source: Plum Lucky

Way, Clothes

“There are times in your life when, despite the steel weight of your memories and the sadness that seems to lie at your feet like a shadow, you suddenly and strangely feel perfectly okay.”

Kevin Brockmeier book The View from the Seventh Layer

Source: The View from the Seventh Layer

Life, Lie, Sadness, Feeling

“So long as an opinion is strongly rooted in the feelings, it gains rather than loses in stability by having a preponderating weight of argument against it.”

John Stuart Mill The Subjection of Women

Source: The Subjection of Women

Feeling

“It’s the final word in camouflage. Forget chucking weights around. Peeta should have gone into his private session with the Gamemakers and painted himself into a tree. Or a boulder. Or a muddy bank full of weeds.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Tree, Painting, Forgetting

“I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them--with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself.”

Eudora Welty book One Writer's Beginnings

One Writer's Beginnings(1984)
Context: It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass. Yet regardless of where they came from, I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them -- with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself.

Love, Books, Time

“No rest without love,
no sleep without dreams of love-
be mad or chill obsessed with angels or machines,
the final wish is love
-cannot be bitter, cannot deny,
cannot withhold if denied: the weight is too heavy”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Source: Howl and Other Poems

Love, Dreams, Angels, Sleep

“An untold story has a weight that can submerge you, sure as a sunken ship at the bottom of the ocean.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: Stay

“Arguments from authority carry little weight – authorities have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.”

Carl Sagan book The Demon-Haunted World

Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Way, Science, Past, Future

“A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one’s life. There is an urge to say, ‘I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Art of Travel

Life, Beauty

“You can keep it a secret…. But secrets have their own weight, and it can be a very heavy one.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Secret

“Laughing at the universe liberated my life. I escape its weight by laughing. I refuse any intellectual translations of this laughter, since my slavery would commrnce from that point on.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: Guilty

Life, Laughter, Universe

“Paris is a place in which we can forget ourselves, reinvent, expunge the dead weight of our past.”

Michael Simkins (1956) British actor

Source: Detour de France: An Englishman in Search of a Continental Education

Past, Dead, Forgetting

“Smoking cures weight problems, eventually.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Problem

“This boy thinks I am not of his species, that I am some other kind of creature, one that can be crushed under the weight of a phone book.

The pain is not great, but the symbolism is disagreeable.”

Dave Eggers book What Is the What

Source: What Is the What

Pain, Books, Boy, Thinking

“Time constricts and flattens, you know. It's not evenly weighted. Certain moments linger in the mind and others disappear.”

Christina Baker Kline (1964) American writer

Source: Orphan Train

Time

“What is the sound of one hand clapping? What is the weight of a single grain of sand? The answer is equal to my interest in the message you are about to leave so make it short. -- Mitch Hertzog's voice mail message.”

Meg Cabot book Boy Meets Girl

Source: Boy Meets Girl

“Schuyler put a gentle hand on Abbadon's feathered extensions, feeling the majestic power underneath their silky weight. She had been frightened once, to see him in this light, but now that she saw his terrifying face, she found it beautiful.”

Melissa de la Cruz book Misguided Angel

Source: Misguided Angel

Beauty, Feeling, Light

“I prefer sinners and madmen, who can learn, who can change, who can teach-or people like myself, if I may say so, who are not afraid to eat a lobster alone as they take on their shoulders the monumental weight of thirty years”

James Baldwin book Just Above My Head

Source: Just Above My Head

People, Learning, Change

“I'm tired of carrying around the weight of the world. I'm just going to lay it down now. It's my time to die, and it's your time to live. Don't mess it up.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

World, Time

“Listen. Slide the weight from your shoulders and move forward. You are afraid you might forget, but you never will. You will forgive and remember.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

Forgiveness, Forgetting

“She did not know if her gift came from the lord of light or of darkness, and now, finally finding that she didn't care which, she wad overcome with almost indescribable relief, as if a huge weight, long carried, had slipped from her shoulders.”

Stephen King book Carrie

Source: Carrie

Light

“Grief can be a burden, but also an anchor. You get used to the weight, how it holds you in place.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

For Mother

“The human head is of the same approximate size and weight as a roaster chicken. I have never before had occasion to make the comparison, for never before today have I seen a head in a roasting pan.”

Mary Roach book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Source: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

“And see the peaceful trees extend
their myriad leaves in leisured dance—
they bear the weight of sky and cloud
upon the fountain of their veins.”

Kathleen Raine (1908–2003) poet, critic, translator

Peace, Tree, Dance

“All you could do was take on as much weight as you can bear. And if you're lucky, there's someone close enough by to shoulder the rest.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

“The past can be a terrible weight bound to you by an unbreakable chain. You can drag it with you, forever looking over your shoulder at what holds you back. Or you can let it go and move forward. It’s your choice.”

Raymond E. Feist book Shards of a Broken Crown

Source: Shards of a Broken Crown

Past

“The hurt is not enough: I long for weight and strength. To feel the earth as rough to all my length”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Source: Complete Poems Of Robert Frost, 1949

Feeling, Hurt

“Food cannot cause you to put on weight, unless youit can.”

Rhonda Byrne book The Secret

Source: The Secret

Food

“She could become a spinster, like Emily Dickinson, writing poems full of dashes and brilliance, and never gaining weight.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Marriage Plot

Source: The Marriage Plot

“So shall the world go on,
To good malignant, to bad men benign,
Under her own weight groaning.”

John Milton book Paradise Lost

Source: Paradise Lost

Men, World

“A six-inch blade. I smiled. Did he buy it? It was actually just shy of four—but very nicely weighted—and as Aunt Bernice noted, a little exaggeration was always expected when describing weapons, victories, and body parts.”

Mary E. Pearson book The Kiss of Deception

Source: The Kiss of Deception

Smile, Victory, Parting

“And in some of the houses, people were getting old and sick and were dying, leaving others to grieve. It was happening all the time, unnoticed, and it was the thing that really mattered. What really mattered in life, what gave it weight, was death.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book Middlesex

Source: Middlesex

Life, Death, People, Time

“Tired, tired with nothing, tired with everything, tired with the world’s weight he had never chosen to bear.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

World

“She didn't love him and he didn't love her; she was like an addiction, and what they were doing had a darkness to it, a weight.”

Kim Edwards book The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Source: The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Love

“We all have our sorrows, and although the exact delinaments, weight and dimensions of grief are different for everyone, the color of grief is common to us all.
I know, he said, because he was human, and therefore, in a way, he did.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

Color, Way

“Thoughts - even fears - were airy things, formless until you made them solid with your voice and once given that weight, they could crush you.”

Kristin Hannah (1960) American writer

Source: Firefly Lane

Fear

“Words have weight, something once said cannot be unsaid. Meaning is like a stone dropped into a pool; the ripples will spread and you cannot know what back they wash against.”

Philippa Gregory book The Constant Princess

Source: The Constant Princess

“Still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled — to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

"The Ponds"
House of Light (1990)

Life, World

“I think, when men tell women to lose weight, it's a diversion from their own lack of size in certain areas.”

Candace Bushnell book Sex and the City

Source: Sex and the City

Women, Men, Thinking

“A metaphorical weight lifted from his allegorical chest and Artemis Fowl felt himself again.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

“Once her love had been publicized, it would gain weight, become a burden.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Love

“That will be her undoing," gasped Artemis, already suffering under the weight of the flak jacket. "Artemis Fowl will never be."
"I thought you were Artemis Fowl the Second?" said Holly.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Last Guardian

Suffering

“It was truly amazing, Clary thought, how much teenage boys were able to eat without ever gaining weight or making themselves sick.
-pg.68”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Boy

“Sometimes you build up these walls, you build and you build and you build up these walls and you think they’re so strong, but then someone can come along and tip them over with only his fingers, or the weight of his breath.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: Wild Roses

Thinking, Strong

“They encouraged you to put some of your weight in their hands and soon as you felt how light and lovely it was, they studied your scars and tribulations…”

Toni Morrison book Beloved

Source: Beloved

Love, Study, Light

“I'm smiled out, talked out, quipped out, socialized so far from any being, I need the weight of mortal silences to get realized back into myself.”

John Ciardi (1916–1986) American poet, professor, translator

Source: This Strangest Everything

Smile, Silence

“I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language.”

Italo Calvino (1923–1985) Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels

People

“Each child’s story is worthy of telling. There shouldn’t be a sliding scale of death. The weight of it is crushing.”

Anderson Cooper (1967) journalist and author

Source: Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival

Death

“Every word I say has chains round its ankles; every thought I think is weighted with heavy weights.”

Jean Rhys book Good Morning, Midnight

Source: Good Morning, Midnight

Thinking

“I need words that mean more than they mean, words not just with height and width, but depth and weight and, and other dimensions that I cannot even name.”

Lois McMaster Bujold The Curse of Chalion

Source: The Curse of Chalion

“Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

“Think of the magic of the foot, comparatively small, upon which your whole weight rests. It's a miracle and the dance is a celebration of that miracle.”

Martha Graham (1894–1991) American dancer and choreographer

Thinking, Dance

“We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

“Such is the cost of immortality. No person is whole. No person is free. Over time, some have determined that the only way to live is to die. In death, a man or a woman is free of the weight of the past [and the future].”

Alan Lightman book Einstein's Dreams

Source: Einstein's Dreams

Death, Way, Time, Past

“Sometimes desire is air, sometimes desire is liquid. And every now and then, when everything else is air and liquid, desire solidifies, and the body is the magnet that draws its weight.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

Drawing

“If God had wanted me to lose weight he would have made sure there was creamed spinach for dessert.”

Janet Evanovich book Ten Big Ones

Source: Ten Big Ones

God

“Silence fell between them, as tangible as the dark tree shadows that fell across their laps and that now seemed to rest upon them as heavily as though they possessed a measurable weight of their own.”

Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time

Source: A Wrinkle in Time

Tree, Silence

“The more clearly we express it that the whole weight of our future victories will lie on our enemies, the more, in my opinion, will it tend to shorten the war. We have covered a considerable distance towards peace. The Entente no longer has any possibility of beating us economically. Do they think they can beat us militarily, now that our position in the West has become better that it ever was? If the statesmen of the Entente wanted understanding, they ought to have taken advantage of the situation now, when the Reich Chancellor has offered them the hand of understanding. They are playing a wanton game with their misguided peoples. Let the example of Russia be a warning to them. Russia, which offered us the hand of understanding, could have obtained a good peace of understanding if she had not risked this peace through the arrogance of Trotsky. May this struggle bring us victory, but may it also bring the benefits of this victory for Germany's future.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

1910s, Speech in the Reichstag, 18 March 1918

War, People, Lie, Peace

“Me this unchartered freedom tires;
I feel the weight of chance-desires:
My hopes no more must change their name,
I long for a repose that ever is the same.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Stanza 5. Ode to Duty http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww271.html (1805)

Hope, Feeling, Freedom, Change

“Our representative government now is perhaps more representative than it has ever been before in history. It is not necessarily representative per capita, but it most surely is ad valorem. If you like philosophical problems. Here is one for you: should each human being’s vote register alike, as the lawbooks pretend and as some say the founders of our nation desired? Or should a vote be weighted according to the wisdom, the power, and the influence—that is, the money—of the voter?”

Frederik Pohl book The Space Merchants

Source: The Space Merchants (1953), Chapter 2 (p. 15)

Wisdom, Money, History, Problem

“I stood in front of a hundred and one critics at a critic's convention and a critic asked me, "Miss Cho, isn't it true that your management asked you to lose weight to play the part of yourself in your own TV show?" Gail [the producer] grabbed the mike from me and said, "There is no truth in that whatsoever."”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

I...was so...hungry.
From Her Tours and CDs, I'm The One That I Want Tour

Truth, Parting

“Turning finally to the question raised, to be precise, it appears that [Hillary] Clinton received a slight majority of the vote. The apparent decisive victory [of Donald Trump] has to do with curious features of American politics: among other factors, the Electoral College residue of the founding of the country as an alliance of separate states; the winner-take-all system in each state; the arrangement of congressional districts (sometimes by gerrymandering) to provide greater weight to rural votes (in past elections, and probably this one too, Democrats have had a comfortable margin of victory in the popular vote for the House, but hold a minority of seats); the very high rate of abstention (usually close to half in presidential elections, this one included). Of some significance for the future is the fact that in the age 18-25 range, Clinton won handily, and Sanders had an even higher level of support. How much this matters depends on what kind of future humanity will face.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

First published in Truthout http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/38360-trump-in-the-white-house-an-interview-with-noam-chomsky on 14 November 2016. Then published in the book Optimism over Despair in 2017, pages 121-122 (ISBN 9780241981979). Quotes 2010s, 2016

Age, Question, Support, Decision

“Action is the pointer which shows the balance. We must not touch the pointer but the weight.”

Simone Weil book Gravity and Grace

L’action est l’aiguille indicatrice de la balance. Il ne faut pas toucher à l’aiguille, mais aux poids.
La pesanteur et la grâce (1948), p. 57
Source: Gravity and Grace (1947), p. 97

“There is nothing an addict likes more, or that serves as better pretext for continuing his present way of life, than to place the weight of responsibility for his situation somewhere other than on his own decisions.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

Addicted to Addicts http://www.city-journal.org/html/9_1_sndgs01.html (Winter 1999). City Journal (1998 - 2008)

Life, Way, Decision

“Then there was this extra on the set who runs up to me and says, "Oh, I know you! I know who you is, I seen you before. You that comedienne, Margaret Cho! I saw you at the Comedy Store. You was wearin' a kimono and you was bowin'." "No, that's the other one." "Oh, right! Now I remember. I just didn't recognize you because you've put on a little weight since your show." And it didn't piss me off that she said that, but it was that she said, "You put on a lot of *gestures* weight!" so I'll know exactly where I put it. And it pissed me off, so I just sort of talked about it to everybody for the whole day. The next day I come into work and the assistant producer comes over to me and says, "Uh, you know that lady from the other day? Well, don't worry. We took care of her."”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

Oh my God! What did you do?! Suddenly I felt like I was running around like this tyrant, all drunk with power- "Nobody can call me fat on this set!"
From Her Tours and CDs, Drunk With Power CD

God

“When one deals with the Murthe, the unthinkable becomes the ordinary, and Zanzel's repute carries no more weight than last year's mouse-dropping - if that much.”

Jack Vance (1916–2013) American mystery and speculative fiction writer

"The Murthe", chapter 2
Quotations and text from the Dying Earth novels, Rhialto the Marvellous (1984)

“John Philoponus (c. 490-570) of Alexandria… refuted Aristotle's theory that the velocities of falling bodies in a given medium are proportional to their weight, making the observation that "if one lets fall simultaneously from the same height two bodies differing greatly in weight, one will find that the ratio of the times of their motion does not correspond to the ratios of their weights, but the difference in time is a very small one." …He also criticized Aristotle's antiperistasis theory of projectile motion, which states that the air displaced by the object flows back to push it from behind. Instead Philoponus concluded that "some incorporeal kinetic power is imparted by the thrower to the object thrown" and that "if an arrow or a stone is projected by force in a void, the same will happen much more easily, nothing being necessary except the thrower."”

John Freely (1926–2017) American physicist

This is the famous "impetus theory," which was revived in medieval Islam and again in fourteenth century Europe, giving rise to the beginning of modern dynamics.
Source: Before Galileo, The Birth of Modern Science in Medieval Europe (2012), p. 8

Time

“Fascism recognizes the real needs which gave rise to socialism and trade unionism, giving them due weight in the guild or corporative system in which divergent interests are coordinated and harmonized in the unity of the State.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

“The Doctrine of Fascism” (1935 version), Firenze: Vallecchi Editore, p. 15
1930s

“The bosom-weight, your stubborn gift,
That no philosophy can lift.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Presentiments.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Cradle the weight of your life
You can survive what lies before you.”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

Seasons Change
Anastacia (2004)

Life

“The last book, the one on the bottom, was a copy of the 1,500-page Gray’s Anatomy. The weight was all wrong in her hands. She opened the cover, revealing a space hollowed out with surgical precision.”

Lis Wiehl (1961) American legal scholar

Source: Heart of Ice A Triple Threat Novel with April Henry (Thomas Nelson), p. 130

Books

“Voting for politicians who tell you what you want to hear has all but destroyed civilization, giving in to outrage in the hope of avoiding trouble has all but destroyed freedom, and looking for the easy road to success in bodybuilding has all but destroyed the actually great potential value of weight training.”

Arthur Jones (inventor) (1926–2007) American inventor

The New High Intensity Training (2004)

Hope, Freedom, Success, Training

“The house kept its own time, like the old-fashioned grandfather clock in the living room. People who happened by raised the weights, and as long as the weights were wound, the clock continued ticking away. But with people gone and the weights unattended, whole chunks of time were left to collect in deposits of faded life on the floor.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 32, An Unlucky Bend in the Road

Life, People, Fashion, Time

“There are buildings which will hold a few, but which will break down under the weight of a crowd. The ice of the river may be strong enough to bear a man, but would break through under the weight of an elephant. The ice under us in this country is very thin, and is made very weak by the warm fogs of prejudice… Our policy should be to unite with the great mass of the American people in all their activities, and resolve to fall or flourish with our common country. We cannot afford to draw the color-line in politics, trade, education, manners, religion, fashion, or civilization. Especially we cannot afford to draw the color-line in politics. No folly could be greater. A party acting on that basis would be not merely a misfortune, but a dire calamity to our people.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Speech http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-nations-problem/

People, Education, Religion, Color

“It would be a mistake to think…that by what we are doing tonight we are giving a vote of confidence or congratulation to homosexuality. Those who suffer from this disability carry a great weight of loneliness, guilt and shame. The crucial question, which we are nearly at the end of answering decisively, is, should we add to those disadvantages the full rigour of the criminal law? By its overwhelming decisions, the House has given a fairly clear answer, and I hope that the Bill will now make rapid progress towards the Statute Book. It will be an important and civilising Measure.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1967/jul/03/clause-8-restrictions-on-prosecution in the House of Commons in favour of the Bill decriminalising homosexuality (3 July 1967). 1960s

Books, Law, Hope, Confidence

“A high-nutrient diet will reduce your desire for high-calorie, low-nutrient foods. Within weeks, your taste buds will change, and you'll lose interest in the unhealthy foods you once thought you could never live without. You'll feel more satisfied eating fewer calories than you were eating before. The result is lasting health and permanent weight loss.”

Joel Fuhrman (1953) Family Physician and author

Introduction
The End of Dieting (2014)

Health, Food, Feeling, Change

“Now that the once omnipotent Liberal party has so declined, it is hard to realise how formidable it was in 1911—especially in Scotland. Its dogmas were so completely taken for granted that their presentation partook less of argument than of a tribal incantation. Mr. Gladstone had given it an aura of earnest morality, so that its platforms were also pulpits and its harangues had the weight of sermons. Its members seemed to assume that their opponents must be lacking either in morals or mind. The Tories were the "stupid" party; Liberals alone understood and sympathised with the poor; a working man who was not a Liberal was inaccessible to reason, or morally corrupt, or intimidated by laird or employer. I remember a lady summing up the attitude thus: Tories may think they are better born, but Liberals know that they are born better.”

John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician

Memory Hold-The-Door (1940)

Stupidity, Thinking

“But, good God, what is this when compared with that deep and true music of the wise, whereby the proportions of natural things are investigated, the harmonical concord and the qualities of the whole world are revealed, by which also connected things are bound together, peace established between conflicting elements, and whereby each star is perpetually suspended in its appointed place by its weight and strength, and by the harmony of its lucent spirit”

Robert Fludd (1574–1637) British mathematician and astrologer

Robert Fludd, cited in: Waite (1887, p. 291)

God, World, Peace, Music

“Before a science can develop principles, it must possess concepts. Before a law of gravitation could be formulated, it was necessary to have the notions of “acceleration” and “weight.””

Herbert A. Simon book Administrative Behavior

Source: 1940s-1950s, Administrative Behavior, 1947, p. 43.

Law, Science

“There is another and very important ground for standardization and that is the desirability of having parts interchangeable. Standards of exchange have long been in general use, and these have, most usually, been fixed with a view to convenient use rather than on a scientific basis. The units of weight and measure are examples of this form of standard. They may not even be the most logical, or most convenient, but once established they can, in general, be changed only by slow degrees, if at all.”

Dexter S. Kimball (1865–1952) American engineer

Source: Principles of industrial organization, 1913, p. 42

Change, Parting

“In this I saw matter of mirth and matter of moaning: matter of mirth: for our Lord, our Maker, is so near to us, and in us, and we in Him, by sureness of keeping through His great goodness; matter of moaning: for our ghostly eye is so blind and we be so borne down by weight of our mortal flesh and darkness of sin, that we may not see our Lord God clearly in His fair Blissful Cheer. No; and because of this dimness scarsely we can believe and trust His great love and our sureness of keeping. And therefore it is that I say we may never stint of moaning nor of weeping. This "weeping" meaneth not all in pouring out of tears by our bodily eye, but also hath more ghostly understanding. For the kindly desire of our soul is so great and so unmeasurable, that if there were given us for our solace and for our comfort all the noble things that ever God made in heaven and in earth, and we saw not the fair Blissful Cheer of Himself, yet we should not stint of moaning nor ghostly weeping, that is to say, of painful longing, till when we see verily the fair Blissful Cheer of our Maker. And if we were in all the pain that heart can think and tongue may tell, if we might in that time see His fair Blissful Cheer, all this pain should not aggrieve us.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 72

Love, God, Pain, Soul

“In general, most animals are exclusively breast-fed until they have tripled their birth weight, which in human infants occurs around the age of one year. In no mammalian species, except for the human (and the domestic cat), is milk consumption continued after the weaning period. Calves thrive on cow milk. Cow milk is for calves.”

Frank Oski (1932–1996) American pediatrician

Source: Don't Drink Your Milk! (1983), p. 4

Age, Cats, Birth, Animals

“Yes, let the Angel blow!
A peal from the parted heaven,
The first of seven!—
The warning, not yet the sign, of woe!
That men arise
And look about them with wakened eyes,
Behold on their garments the dust and slime,
Refrain, forbear,
Accept the weight of a nobler care
And take reproach from the fallen time!”

Bayard Taylor (1825–1878) United States poet, novelist and travel writer

"Gabriel" in The Century : A Popular Quarterly, Volume 18 (1874), p. 617.

Men, Angels, Time, Parting

“Evidently Proclus does not advocate here simply a superstition, but science; for notwithstanding that it is occult, and unknown to our scholars, who deny its possibilities, magic is still a science. It is firmly and solely based on the mysterious affinities existing between organic and inorganic bodies, the visible productions of the four kingdoms, and the invisible powers of the universe. That which science calls gravitation, the ancients and the mediaeval hermetists called magnetism, attraction, affinity. It is the universal law, which is understood by Plato and explained in Timaeus as the attraction of lesser bodies to larger ones, and of similar bodies to similar, the latter exhibiting a magnetic power rather than following the law of gravitation. The anti-Aristotelean formula that gravity causes all bodies to descend with equal rapidity, without reference to their weight, the difference being caused by some other unknown agency, would seem to point a great deal more forcibly to magnetism than to gravitation, the former attracting rather in virtue of the substance than of the weight. A thorough familiarity with the occult faculties of everything existing in nature, visible as well as invisible; their mutual relations, attractions, and repulsions; the cause of these, traced to the spiritual principle which pervades and animates all things; the ability to furnish the best conditions for this principle to manifest itself, in other words a profound and exhaustive knowledge of natural law — this was and is the basis of magic.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume I, Chapter VII

Law, Nature, Knowledge, Universe

“Consequently, limestone when taken out of the kiln… though its bulk remains the same as before, it is found to have lost about a third of its weight owing to the boiling out of the water. Therefore, its pores being thus opened and its texture rendered loose, it readily mixes with sand, and hence the two materials cohere as they dry, unite with the rubble, and make a solid structure.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter V, Sec. 3

Water

“There will always be differences in people, but they won't be weighted down by myths”

Richard R. Wright Jr. (1878–1967)

Wright Jr. 87 Years Behind the Black Curtain: An Autobiography. 1965

People

“Her point of view about student work was that of a social worker teaching finger-painting to children or the insane.
I was impressed with how common such an attitude was at Benton: the faculty—insofar as they were real Benton faculty, and not just nomadic barbarians—reasoned with the students, “appreciated their point of view”, used Socratic methods on them, made allowances for them, kept looking into the oven to see if they were done; but there was one allowance they never under any circumstances made—that the students might be right about something, and they wrong. Education, to them, was a psychiatric process: the sign under which they conquered had embroidered at the bottom, in small letters, Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?—and half of them gave it its Babu paraphrase of Can you wait upon a lunatic? One expected them to refer to former students as psychonanalysts do: “Oh, she’s an old analysand of mine.” They felt that the mind was a delicate plant which, carefully nurtured, judiciously left alone, must inevitably adopt for itself even the slightest of their own beliefs.
One Benton student, a girl noted for her beadth of reading and absence of coöperation, described things in a queer, exaggerated, plausible way. According to her, a professor at an ordinary school tells you “what’s so”, you admit that it is on examination, and what you really believe or come to believe has “that obscurity which is the privilege of young things”. But at Benton, where education was as democratic as in “that book about America by that French writer—de, de—you know the one I mean”; she meant de Tocqueville; there at Benton they wanted you really to believe everything they did, especially if they hadn’t told you what it was. You gave them the facts, the opinions of authorities, what you hoped was their own opinion; but they replied, “That’s not the point. What do you yourself really believe?” If it wasn’t what your professors believed, you and they could go on searching for your real belief forever—unless you stumbled at last upon that primal scene which is, by definition, at the root of anything….
When she said primal scene there was so much youth and knowledge in her face, so much of our first joy in created things, that I could not think of Benton for thinking of life. I suppose she was right: it is as hard to satisfy our elders’ demands of Independence as of Dependence. Harder: how much more complicated and indefinite a rationalization the first usually is!—and in both cases, it is their demands that must be satisfied, not our own. The faculty of Benton had for their students great expectations, and the students shook, sometimes gave, beneath the weight of them. If the intellectual demands were not so great as they might have been, the emotional demands made up for it. Many a girl, about to deliver to one of her teachers a final report on a year’s not-quite-completed project, had wanted to cry out like a child, “Whip me, whip me, Mother, just don’t be Reasonable!””

Randall Jarrell book Pictures from an Institution

Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Chapter 3, pp. 81–83

Life, Children, Books, Youth

“…Sooltan Mahmood now attacked one of the forts in the Koombulmere district, defended by Beny Ray, the deputy of Rana Koombho of Chittor. In front of the gateway was a large temple which commanded the lower works. This building was strongly fortified, and employed by the enemy as a magazine. Sooltan Mahmood, aware of its importance, determined to take possession of it at all hazards; and having stormed it in person, carried it, but not without heavy loss; after which, the fort fell into his hands, and many Rajpoots were put to death. The temple was now filled with wood, and being set on fire, cold water was thrown on the, stone images, which causing them to break, the pieces were given to the butchers of the camp, in order to be used as weights in selling meat. One large figure in particular, representing a ram, and formed of solid marble, being consumed, the Rajpoots were compelled to eat the calcined parts with pan, in order that it might be said that they were made to eat their gods…”

Firishta (1560–1620) Indian historian

Sultãn Mahmûd Khaljî of Malwa (AD 1435-1469) Kumbhalgadh (Rajasthan)
Tãrîkh-i-Firishta

Death, God, Water, Loss

“Although a poem be not made by counting of syllables upon the fingers, yet "numbers" is the most poetical synonym we have for verse, and "measure" the most significant equivalent for beauty, for goodness, and perhaps even for truth. Those early and profound philosophers, the followers of Pythagoras, saw the essence of all things in number, and it was by weight, measure, and number, as we read in the Bible, that the Creator first brought Nature out of the void.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (1900), p. 251
Other works

Truth, Beauty, Nature, Reading

“Any reform of the Security Council will require an amendment of the Charter of the United Nations under Article 108. Some observers feel that the veto power as practised since 1945 is the Achilles heel of the United Nations and of the contemporary international order. While a majority of United Nations Member States and observer States would agree to amend article 27 (3) of the Charter, this may be blocked by any of the members possessing the power of veto. Abandoning the veto, therefore, will have to envisage a substantial quid pro quo. Workable trade-offs could be enhanced voting weights for the permanent five in the General Assembly in a reformed and more empowered Assembly.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

United Nations General Assembly - Promotion of a democratic and equitable international order http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/IntOrder/A-68-284_en.pdf. 2013

Feeling