Quotes about well
page 14

Vincent Van Gogh photo

“It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote of Vincent's letter to Theo, from Amsterdam, 3 April 1878; a cited in The Letters of Vincent van Gogh to his Brother, 1872-1886 (1927) Constable & Co
Variant: Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.
As quoted in Wisdom for the Soul : Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing (2006) by Larry Chang, p. 483
1870s
Context: If only we try to live sincerely, it will go well with us, even though we are certain to experience real sorrow, and great disappointments, and also will probably commit great faults and do wrong things, but it certainly is true, that it is better to be high-spirited, even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all too prudent. It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love, is well done.

Henry Ford photo
John Adams photo

“There are two tyrants in human life who domineer in all nations, in Indians and Negroes, in Tartars and Arabs, in Hindoos and Chinese, in Greeks and Romans, in Britons and Gauls, as well as in our simple, youthful, and beloved United States of America. These two tyrants are fashion and party.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

They are sometimes at variance, and I know not whether their mutual hostility is not the only security of human happiness. But they are forever struggling for an alliance with each other; and, when they are united, truth, reason, honor, justice, gratitude, and humanity itself in combination are no match for the coalition. Upon the maturest reflection of a long experience, I am much inclined to believe that fashion is the worst of all tyrants, because he is the original source, cause, preserver, and supporter of all others.
Letter to Samuel B. Malcolm (6 August 1812), Quincy. http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/2127#Adams_1431-10_87
1810s

Cleveland Amory photo
Emil M. Cioran photo

“What I know at sixty, I knew as well at twenty. Forty years of a long, a superfluous, labor of verification.”

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born

Cate Blanchett photo
Sören Kierkegaard photo
Etty Hillesum photo
Jack Kornfield photo

“In the end
these things matter most:
How well did you love?
How fully did you live?
How deeply did you let go?”

Jack Kornfield (1945) American writer

Source: Buddha's Little Instruction Book

Madison Grant photo
Tom Petty photo

“Well some say life
Will beat you down,
And break your heart,
Steal your crown.So it started out
For God-knows-where.
I guess I'll know
When I get there.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Learning to Fly
Lyrics, Into The Great Wide Open (1991)

Vincent Van Gogh photo
Arthur Ashe photo
Sofia Rotaru photo

“Replying to Anatolii Kirillovich and Ilya Savelievich to their jokes about Aurica Rotaru during one of the rehearsals in Krasnodar [Russia] ('93):
- One more time, one can't here Aurica!
- Well, she is echoing in Moldavian…
- She is not echoing in Moldavian. I'll show you, khokhols!! Just sing, Aurica.
- Well, I am not singing in the beginning…”

Sofia Rotaru (1947) Ukrainain soviet and Ukrainian musician, singer, songwriter, actress, author of Moldavian origin

I'm telling you: sing.
Source: Sofia Rotaru's sister, also singer, back-stage vocal in 1993
Source: a Russian term used to describe a style of man's haircut that features a lock of hair sprouting from the top or the front of an otherwise closely shaven head. The word is also commonly used mostly by Russians as a derogatory name for Ukrainians, as it was a common haircut of Ukrainian Cossacks. [Sofia Rotaru is Ukrainian national, although of Moldavian origin considering herself also Russian]

André Maurois photo
Ghalib photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.”

Brahma http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=l&p=c&a=p&ID=20567&c=323, st. 1.
Composed in July 1856 this poem is derived from a major passage of the Bhagavad Gita, one of the most popular of Hindu scriptures, and portions of it were likely a paraphrase of an existing translation. Though titled "Brahma" its expressions are actually more indicative of the Hindu concept "Brahman"
1860s, May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)
Variant: If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.

Elizabeth I of England photo
Piet Mondrian photo
T.S. Eliot photo

“This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his contemporaneity.”

Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)
Context: The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his contemporaneity.

Austin Aries photo
Gottfried Feder photo

“Usury and racketeering, as well as ruthless enrichment at the cost and harm of the people, will be punished with death.”

Gottfried Feder (1883–1941) German economist and politician

Source: The German State on a National and Socialist Foundation (1923), p. 54

Sergei Diaghilev photo
Jerry Goldsmith photo
Antonin Scalia photo

“If one assumes, however, that the PGA TOUR has some legal obligation to play classic, Platonic golf—and if one assumes the correctness of all the other wrong turns the Court has made to get to this point—then we Justices must confront what is indeed an awesome responsibility. It has been rendered the solemn duty of the Supreme Court of the United States, laid upon it by Congress in pursuance of the Federal Government's power [t]o regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, U. S. Const., Art. I, § 8, cl. 3, to decide What Is Golf. I am sure that the Framers of the Constitution, aware of the 1457 edict of King James II of Scotland prohibiting golf because it interfered with the practice of archery, fully expected that sooner or later the paths of golf and government, the law and the links, would once again cross, and that the judges of this august Court would some day have to wrestle with that age-old jurisprudential question, for which their years of study in the law have so well prepared them: Is someone riding around a golf course from shot to shot really a golfer? The answer, we learn, is yes. The Court ultimately concludes, and it will henceforth be the Law of the Land, that walking is not a fundamental aspect of golf.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

PGA Tour, Inc. v. Martin, 532 U.S. 661 http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=000&invol=00-24 (2001) (dissenting).
2000s

Frédéric Chopin photo

“One needs only to study a certain positioning of the hand in relation to the keys to obtain with ease the most beautiful sounds, to know how to play long notes and short notes and to [attain] certain unlimited dexterity… A well formed technique, it seems to me, [is one] that can control and vary a beautiful sound quality.”

Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) Polish composer

As quoted in Chopin : Pianist and Teacher as Seen by His Pupils.
Source: Chopin : Pianist and Teacher as Seen by His Pupils (1986) by Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, Roy Howat, Naomi Shohet, and Krysia Osostowicz, p. 16

Robert Oppenheimer photo
Olaudah Equiano photo

“I was named Olaudah, which, in our language, signifies vicissitude or fortune also, one favoured, and having a loud voice and well spoken.”

Olaudah Equiano (1745–1797) African abolitionist

Chap. I
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789)

Ahmad Shah Massoud photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Humphrey Lyttelton photo
Nancy Mitford photo
Neal Shusterman photo

“I'm not scared of dying
And I, don't really care
If it' s peace you find in dying
Well then, let the time be near.”

Laura Nyro (1947–1997) American musician and songwriter

"And When I Die"
Lyrics

Noam Chomsky photo
Daniel Goleman photo
Gottfried Leibniz photo
Alessandro Del Piero photo

“Del Piero is the best player in the history of Italian football. He is a person for who I do not only have a lot of respect, but a lot of affection as well.”

Alessandro Del Piero (1974) Italian former professional footballer

Raúl González Blanco, Goal.com http://www.goal.com/en/news/10/italian-football/2014/12/16/7126242/del-piero-the-best-italian-player-ever-says-raul.html

Jordan Peterson photo

““The dominance hierarchy is a mechanism that selects heroes and breeds them. And so then we watch that for six million years. We start to understand what it means to be the hero. We start to tell stories about that, and so then not only are we genetically aiming at that with the dominance hierarchies - the selection mechanism mediated by female choice - but our stories are trying to push us in that direction. And so then we say, 'Well, look, that person is admirable.' We tell a story about him. And then we say, 'This person is admirable,' and we tell a story about him. And at the same time we talk about the people who aren't admirable. And then we start having admirable and non-admirable as categories. And out of that you get something like good and evil. And then you can start to imagine the perfect person. You take ten admirable people and you pull out someone who is meta-admirable. And that's a hero. That becomes a religious figure across time. That becomes a savior or a messiah across time as we conceptualize what the ideal person is. In the West here's how we figured it out: we said that the ideal man is the person that tells the truth. And what that means is that it's the best way of climbing up any possible dominance hierarchy in the way that's most stable and most lasting. That's the conclusion of Western culture."”

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

Concepts

Kobe Bryant photo
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar photo
Ian Fleming photo

“A dry martini,' he said. 'One. In a deep champagne goblet.'…
Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon-peel. Got it?”

Source: Casino Royale (1953), Ch. 7 : Rouge et Noir
Context: Bond insisted ordering Leiter's Haig-and-Haig "on the rocks" and then he looked carefully at the barman. "A Dry Martini", he said. "One. In a deep champagne goblet." "Oui, monsieur." "Just a moment. Three measures of Gordons, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?" "Certainly, monsieur." The barman seemed pleased with the idea.

Chris Colfer photo
David Foster Wallace photo

“If, by the virtue of charity or the circumstance of desperation, you ever chance to spend a little time around a Substance-recovery halfway facility like Enfield MA’s state-funded Ennet House, you will acquire many exotic new facts…That certain persons simply will not like you no matter what you do. That sleeping can be a form of emotional escape and can with sustained effort be abused. That purposeful sleep-deprivation can also be an abusable escape. That you do not have to like a person in order to learn from him/her/it. That loneliness is not a function of solitude. That logical validity is not a guarantee of truth. That it takes effort to pay attention to any one stimulus for more than a few seconds. That boring activities become, perversely, much less boring if you concentrate intently on them. That if enough people in a silent room are drinking coffee it is possible to make out the sound of steam coming off the coffee. That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt. That you will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do. That there is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness. That it is possible to fall asleep during an anxiety attack. That concentrating intently on anything is very hard work. That 99% of compulsive thinkers’ thinking is about themselves; that 99% of this self-directed thinking consists of imagining and then getting ready for things that are going to happen to them; and then, weirdly, that if they stop to think about it, that 100% of the things they spend 99% of their time and energy imagining and trying to prepare for all the contingencies and consequences of are never good. In short that 99% of the head’s thinking activity consists of trying to scare the everliving shit out of itself. That it is possible to make rather tasty poached eggs in a microwave oven. That some people’s moms never taught them to cover up or turn away when they sneeze. That the people to be the most frightened of are the people who are the most frightened. That it takes great personal courage to let yourself appear weak. That no single, individual moment is in and of itself unendurable. That other people can often see things about you that you yourself cannot see, even if those people are stupid. That having a lot of money does not immunize people from suffering or fear. That trying to dance sober is a whole different kettle of fish. That different people have radically different ideas of basic personal hygiene. That, perversely, it is often more fun to want something than to have it. That if you do something nice for somebody in secret, anonymously, without letting the person you did it for know it was you or anybody else know what it was you did or in any way or form trying to get credit for it, it’s almost its own form of intoxicating buzz. That anonymous generosity, too, can be abused. That it is permissible to want. That everybody is identical in their unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else. That this isn’t necessarily perverse. That there might not be angels, but there are people who might as well be angels.”

Infinite Jest (1996)

Lillian Gilbreth photo
Rembrandt van Rijn photo
Arthur Schopenhauer photo
Ursula K. Le Guin photo
Jung Myung Seok photo

“Even if it is difficult, it is ‘to develop, fix, and make yourself.’ Then you will control yourself well, live your life easily, and prosper.”

Jung Myung Seok (1945) South Korean Leader of New Religious Movement, Poet, Author, Founder of Wolmyeongdong Center

Extracted from Proverbs Blog https://providencepath.wordpress.com/2016/06/16/jung-myung-seok-develop-fix-and-make-yourself/

Mortimer J. Adler photo
Anne Brontë photo
Ramakrishna photo
Murasaki Shikibu photo
Anna Kingsford photo

“How many times, for instance, have we not heard people speak with all the authority of conviction about the "canine teeth" and "simple stomach" of man, as certain evidence of his natural adaptation for a flesh diet! At least we have demonstrated one fact; that if such arguments are valid, they apply with even greater force to the anthropoid apes—whose "canine" teeth are much longer and more powerful than those of man … And yet, with the solitary exception of man, there is not one of these last which does not in a natural condition absolutely refuse to feed on flesh! M. Pouchet observes that all the details of the digestive apparatus in man, as well as his dentition, constitute "so many proofs of his frugivorous origin"—an opinion shared by Professor Owen, who remarks that the anthropoids and all the quadrumana derive their alimentation from fruits, grains, and other succulent and nutritive vegetable substances, and that the strict analogy which exists between the structure of these animals and that of man clearly demonstrates his frugivorous nature. This is also the view taken by Cuvier, Linnæus, Professor Lawrence, Charles Bell, Gassendi, Flourens, and a great number of other eminent writers.”

Anna Kingsford (1846–1888) English physician, activist and feminist

The Perfect Way in Diet (London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1881), pp. 13 https://archive.org/stream/perfectwayindie00kinggoog#page/n34-14.

Anna Kingsford photo

“Things are not going well for me. My chef at the Charité strongly disapproves of women students and took this means of showing it. About a hundred men (no women except myself) went round the wards today, and when we were all assembled before him to have our names written down, he called and named all the students except me, and then closed the book. I stood forward upon this, and said quietly, "Et moi aussi, monsieur." [And me, Sir. ] He turned on me sharply, and cried, "Vous, vous n'êtes ni homme ni femme; je ne veux pas inscrire vôtre nom."”

Anna Kingsford (1846–1888) English physician, activist and feminist

[You, you are neither man nor woman; I don't want to write your name.] I stood silent in the midst of a dead silence.
Written to her husband in 1874; quoted in The Scalpel and the Butterfly by Deborah Rudacille (University of California Press, 2000), p. 35 https://books.google.it/books?id=BabamiCYEdUC&pg=PA35.

Michael Prysner photo
Arthur Ashe photo
David Silverman photo
Edward Snowden photo
Benny Hinn photo

“Adam was a super being when God created him…he had dominion over the fowls of the air which means he used to fly…well of course how could you have dominion over the birds and not be able to do what they do. Adam flew into space, with one thought he would be on the moon.”

Benny Hinn (1952) American-Canadian evangelist

[The Underground Christian Network, "Benny Hinn and Beyond: Word Faith movements hidden agenda: The Joker, The Guru and the Jack of Spades" http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=420067844, CD Edition 1 of 2, SermonAudio.com, 2006-04-21]

Nikos Kazantzakis photo
Cyril Connolly photo

“Miserable Orpheus who, turning to lose his Eurydice, beholds her for the first time as well as the last.”

Part II: Te Palinure Petens (p. 70)
The Unquiet Grave (1944)

Arthur Conan Doyle photo
Sigourney Weaver photo
Sukirti Kandpal photo
Sukirti Kandpal photo

“Being a part of the show, is nothing less than a compliment. This show has taken us all to a new height; we will miss each other a lot and hope to work with each other in the future as well. The show is going off air but something new will definitely come up for our fans.”

Sukirti Kandpal (1987) Indian actress

Message to fans on the ending of Pyaar Kii Ye Ek Kahaani http://www.tellychakkar.com/tv/tv-news/pyaar-kii-actors-get-nostalgic-about-the-show/
On her shows

Henri Fayol photo
Richelle Mead photo
Robert Fulghum photo

“Anything not worth doing is worth not doing well.”

Source: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Volodymyr Melnykov photo
John Gray photo
Jacinda Ardern photo
Angelina Jolie photo
Henry J. Heinz photo

“To do a common thing uncommonly well brings success.”

Henry J. Heinz (1844–1919) American businessman

Henry J. Heinz, cited in: John Woolf Jordan (1915). Genealogical and Personal History of Western Pennsylvania. p. 38

Sylvia Plath photo

“You walked in, laughing, tears welling confused, mingling in your throat. How can you be so many women to so many people, oh you strange girl?”

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

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath photo

“The blood of love welled up in my heart with a slow pain.”

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

1950-07-17 http://books.guardian.co.uk/firstchapters/story/0,6761,222716,00.html
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (2000)
Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

René Magritte photo
William Blackstone photo
John Napier photo
Rich Mullins photo
Ernst, Baron von Feuchtersleben photo
Vangelis photo

“On instruments: "Well, to be honest I don’t think it’s necessary to find out how pieces of equipment work. I would prefer to know how music works, or how my body and my mind work.”

Vangelis (1943) Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, pop rock, and orchestral music

After all, it’s more useful to know how to drive a car than it is to know what makes it go. Of course it’s important to know certain things about a machine, but I don’t need to be able to build my own synthesizer. It strikes me that the people who do build them don’t know how to play them, so l’d rather find out more about playing".
1984

Theodore Dalrymple photo
Jane Austen photo
Jamie Oliver photo
Horace Mann photo

“It is well to think well. It is divine to act well.”

Horace Mann (1796–1859) American politician

Source: Thoughts Selected from the Writings of Horace Mann (1872), p. 199
Context: Just in proportion as a man becomes good, divine, Christ-like, he passes out of the region of theorizing, of system-building, and hireling service, into the region of beneficent activities. It is well to think well. It is divine to act well.

Nasreddin photo
Kurt Cobain photo

“Things have never been so swell
and I have never felt this well! I have never failed to feel… Pain!”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

You Know You're Right.
Song lyrics, Posthumously released (post-1994)

Kurt Cobain photo

“Oh well, whatever, nevermind.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist
William Glasser photo