Quotes about wording
page 45

“I have been with the Court all my life, travelling with the King's Progress.
I didn't know how to go on. I sat and stared at this sentence, until Grundo said, "If you can't do it, I will."
If you didn't know Grundo, you'd think this was a generous offer, but it was a threat really. Grundo is dyslexic. Unless he thinks hard, he writes inside out and backwards. He was threatening me with half a page of crooked writing with words like "inside" turning up as "sindie" and "story" as "otsyr".”

Diana Wynne Jones (1934–2011) English children's fantasy writer

Source: Magids Series, The Merlin Conspiracy (2003), p. 7.
First lines of the novel.

Life, Travel, Thinking

“In 1843, after annexing the then-Indian village Miani of Sindh against orders, legend has it that British General Sir Charles Napier sent home a one word telegram, "Peccavi", taking use of its Latin meaning "I have sinned" and the heterograph "I have Sindh." This pun appeared under the title 'Foreign Affairs' in Punch magazine on 18 May 1844. The true author of the pun was, however, Englishwoman Catherine Winkworth, who submitted it to Punch, which then printed it as a factual report.”
Peccavi

Charles James Napier (1782–1853) Commander-in-Chief in British India

Misattributed

Home, Appearance

“The representational nature of maps, however, is often ignored – what we see when looking at a map is not the word, but an abstract representation that we find convenient to use in place of the world. When we build these abstract representations we are not revealing knowledge as much as are creating it.”

Alan MacEachren (1952) American geographer

(2004), p. v
How Maps Work: Representation, Visualization, and Design (1995)

World, Nature, Knowledge

“Islam is the best, but we Muslims are not the best. The West is neither corrupted nor degenerate. It is strong, well-educated, and organized. Their schools are better than ours. Their cities are cleaner than ours. The level of respect for human rights in the West is higher, and the care for the poor and less capable is better organized. Westerners are usually responsible and accurate in their words. Instead of hating the West, let us proclaim cooperation instead of confrontation.”

Alija Izetbegović (1925–2003) Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina

As quoted in The Two Faces of Islam, by Stephen Schwartz

Hate, Education, School, Strong

“She hurried at his words, beset with fears,
For there were sleeping dragons all around,
At glaring watch, perhaps, with ready spears —
Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found. —
In all the house was heard no human sound.
A chain-droop’d lamp was flickering by each door;
The arras, rich with horseman, hawk, and hound,
Flutter’d in the besieging wind’s uproar;
And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor.”

John Keats The Eve of St. Agnes

Stanza 40
Poems (1820), The Eve of St. Agnes

Fear, Way, Sleep, Housing

“When I was young, I thought the act of getting older meant, year by year, getting more sophisticated, more hard, cool, and unpitying. Less innocent.
Maybe that was a childish idea of what getting older was about. Maybe adults, mature adults, get more innocent with time, not less. Because the word “innocent” does not mean “naïve,” it means “not guilty.”
Children do small evils to each other, schoolyard fights and insults, not because their hearts are pure, but because their powers are small. Grownups have more power. Some of them do great evils with that power. But what about the ones who don’t? Aren’t they more innocent than children, not less?”

John C. Wright (1961) American novelist and technical writer

Source: Fugitives of Chaos (2006), Chapter 12, “North by Northwest” (p. 181)

Children, Idea, Evil, Time

“Pleasant, the word that utters the Trinity;
Also pleasant, extreme penance for sin.
Pleasant, the summer of pleasantness;
Communion with the Lord, in the day of judgment.”

Taliesin (534–599) Welsh bard

Book of Taliesin (c. 1275?), The Pleasant Things of Taliesin

Summer

“Illiteracy, both in words and numbers, is the foundation of financial struggle.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki (1947) American finance author , investor

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

“To get an idea of the sacrifices entailed, listen to the words of the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, "If aiding the lepers is so dear to the Missionaries, particularly the Catholic Missionaries, it is because there is no other service, which requires a greater spirit of sacrifice. Working in a leper asylum demands the highest ideals and the most perfect abnegation. The world of politics and journalism can point to few heroes who compare with Father Damien of Molokai. The Catholic Church on the other hand, counts by the thousand, those who after the example of Father Damien have vowed themselves to the service of the lepers. It is worth inquiring into such heroism!"”

Peter de Noronha (1897–1970) Indian businessman

The Pageant of Life (1964), On Priests & Bishops

World, Idea, Perfection

“We have a word game in English called "Twenty questions." To play Twenty Questions, one player imagines some object, and the other players must guess what it is by asking questions that can be answered with a "yes" or a "no." I imagine every language has a similar game, and, for those of us who speak the language of science, the game is called The Scientific Method.”

K. Barry Sharpless (1941) American chemist

Nobel Banquet speech, 2001

Imagination, Game, Question, Science

“This exchange – mainly in the form of letters [between the brothers van Gogh] – was not only about painting and art, but covered everything to do with one's existence and the philosophical or religious colouring, in a word: for the reader of the letters written by Vincent to his brother a total of human behaviour is revealed that of the dual being of van Gogh. This is how my first wish and then obsession was started, to build a monument for the two van Gogh brothers.”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

Source: 1940 - 1960, Les frères Van Gogh, origine et justification', c. 1955, pp. 67-69

Art, Painting

“To let the reader complete the symmetry between words and do no more than suggest it.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

“I use the word ‘guru' for him in the mythological sense — all other educationists ask for payment for knowledge imparted; this gentleman paid me and taught me. What a journey it has been, after I met him at the age of 17-and-a-half.”

Kamal Haasan (1954) Indian actor

About Balachander, in “His Master's voice 1 September 2010”

Age, Knowledge, Sense

“On the side adverse to the Government are found…in profuse abundance, station, title, wealth, social influence, the professions, or the large majority of them—in a word, the spirit and power of class. These are the main body of the opposing host. Nor is that all. As knights of old had squires, so in the great army of class each enrolled soldier has, as a rule, dependents. The adverse host, then, consists of class and the dependents of class. But this formidable army is in the bulk of its constituent parts the same…that has fought in every one of the great political battles of the last 60 years, and has been defeated. We have had great controversies before this great controversy—on free trade, free navigation, public education, religious equality in civil matters, extension of the suffrage to its present basis. On these and many other great issues the classes have fought uniformly on the wrong side, and have uniformly been beaten by a power more difficult to marshal, but resistless when marshalled—by the upright sense of the nation.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Address to the electors of Midlothian, Daily Review (3 May 1886), quoted in The Times (4 May 1886), p. 5.
1880s

Education, Sense, Parting, Dependency

“The idea of infinity cannot be expressed in words or even described, but it can be apprehended through art, which makes infinity tangible. The absolute is only attainable through faith and in the creative act.”

Andrei Tarkovsky book Sculpting in Time

Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 39

Faith, Art, Idea

“That in which consciousness happens, the universal consciousness or mind, we call the ether of consciousness. All the objects of consciousness form the universe. What is beyond both, supporting both, is the supreme state, a state of utter stillness and silence. Whoever goes there, disappears. It is unreachable by words, or mind. You may call it God, or Parabrahman, or Supreme Reality, but these are names given by the mind. It is the nameless, contentless, effortless and spontaneous state, beyond being and not being.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Reality
Source: "I am That." P.35-6.

God, Support, Reality, Silence

“In a word, CLEANTHES, a man who follows your hypothesis is able perhaps to assert, or conjecture, that the universe, sometime, arose from something like design: but beyond that position he cannot ascertain one single circumstance; and is left afterwards to fix every point of his theology by the utmost license of fancy and hypothesis. This world, for aught he knows, is very faulty and imperfect, compared to a superior standard; and was only the first rude essay of some infant deity, who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance: it is the work only of some dependent, inferior deity; and is the object of derision to his superiors: it is the production of old age and dotage in some superannuated deity; and ever since his death, has run on at adventures, from the first impulse and active force which it received from him. You justly give signs of horror, DEMEA, at these strange suppositions; but these, and a thousand more of the same kind, are CLEANTHES’s suppositions, not mine. From the moment the attributes of the Deity are supposed finite, all these have place. And I cannot, for my part, think that so wild and unsettled a system of theology is, in any respect, preferable to none at all.”

David Hume book Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

Philo to Demea, Part V
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779)

Death, Age, World, Thinking

“I reject that criticism because this is indeed another kind of holocaust, by another name. At last count, more than 40 million unborn children have been deliberately, intentionally destroyed. What word adequately defines the scope of such slaughter? [After 9/11] the American people responded with shock, sadness and a deep and righteous anger — and rightly so. Yet let us not forget that every passing day in our country, more than three thousand innocent Americans are killed [through abortion].”

Jesse Helms (1921–2008) American politician

As quoted in Here's Where I Stand (2005)
2000s

Children, People, Sadness, Anger

“Matt Morgan: Have you been thinking about your religion/new order?Russell Brand: Yes I have actually Matt, and I've got a few more theories for it to make it absolutely watertight. We'll all be living on a nice island, vegetarians doing yoga and that. We'll get rid of ideas such as the nuclear family and like in African tribes the word 'mother' will mean all female members of the tribe and the word 'father' will mean all male members. There will be a lot of [wolf whistles] … and also we're not going to have no more currency, stuff like that, no brain-bending or mind-washing and we'll all be free to explore ourselves although there will be an age of consent and it'll be the same as usual so as people don't go 'Oh no…'.Matt Morgan: Pretty watertight, isn't it?Russell Brand: Pretty watertight so far Matt, I'd like to see a political theorist drive a bus through that. If so where did he get his licence? As we're in charge of issuing bus licences and they're not issued to possible dissenters, who are immediately killed on traitor's cove; one of the nicest parts of our island, decorated with all lovely corpses.”

Russell Brand (1975) British comedian, actor, and author

Radio 2 Show - 13th January 2007
Radio 2 Show (2007–2008)

Love, People, Age, Family

“Truth! stark naked truth, is the word, and I will not so much as take the pains to bestow the strip of a gauze-wrapper on it.”

John Cleland book Fanny Hill

Page 39
Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure

Pain, Truth

“And yet this might not necessarily involve the conversion of the Trinity into a Quaternity. If… in Greek, spirit, instead of being neuter had been feminine, who can say that the Virgin Mary might not already have become an incarnation or humanization of the Holy Spirit? …And thus a dogmatic evolution would have been effected parallel to that of the divinization of Jesus, the Son, and his identification with the Word.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VIII : From God to God

“All men, rich and poor, must aid one another materially and personally. The rules vary in detail, but they all maintain the principle of universal mutual aid in the Muslim fraternity. This fraternity is absolute, and it comprises men of all colours and all races… all are the sons of Adam in the flesh and all carry in them spark of the Divine Light. Everyone should strive his best to see that this spark be not extinguished but rather developed to that full "Companionship-on-High" which was the vision expressed in the last words of the Prophet [Muhammad] on his deathbed, the vision of that blessed state which he saw clearly awaiting him.”

Aga Khan III (1877–1957) 48th Imam of the Nizari Ismaili community

Memoirs of Aga Khan: World Enough & Time (1954)

Men, Light, Universe, Personality

“Van Gogh is congenial to me, 'Vincent' in his letters. Perhaps nature does have something. There is no need, after all, to speak of the smell of earth; it has too peculiar a savor. The words we use to speak about it, I mean, have too peculair a savor. Too bad that the early Van Gogh was so fine a human being, but not so good as a painter, and that the later, wonderful artist is such a marked man. A mean should be found between these four points pf comparison: then, yes!”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote (1908), # 808, in The Diaries of Paul Klee; University of California Press, 1964; as quoted by Francesco Mazzaferro, in 'The Diaries of Paul Klee - Part Three' : Klee as a Secessionist and a Neo-Impressionist Artist http://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.nl/2015/05/paul-klee-ev.html 1903 - 1910

Nature

“I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.”

Samuel Johnson book A Dictionary of the English Language

Preface http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/preface.html A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)

Idea, Science, Daughters, Forgetting

“As for the square at Meknes, where I used to go every day, it's even simpler: I do not see it at all anymore. All that remains is the vague feeling that it was charming, and these five words that are indivisibly bound together: a charming square at Meknes. … I don't see anything any more: I can search the past in vain, I can only find these scraps of images and I am not sure what they represent, whether they are memories or just fiction.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Diary entry of Friday 3:00pm (9 February?)
Nausea (1938)

Feeling, Search, Memory, Past

“Oh no! we never mention her,
Her name is never heard;
My lips are now forbid to speak
That once familiar word.”

Thomas Haynes Bayly (1797–1839) English poet, songwriter, dramatist, and writer

Oh no! we never mention her, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Variant: "Oh, no, we never mention him". Psychæ; or, Songs on butterflies &c http://books.google.com/books?id=M2IIAAAAQAAJ&q=%22Oh+no+we+never+mention+her+Her+name+is+never+heard+My+lips+are+now+forbid+to+speak+That+once+familiar+word%22&pg=PA20#v=onepage (1828).

“The more abstract is form, the more clear and direct is its appeal. In any composition the material side may be more or less omitted in proportion as the forms used are more or less material, and for them substituted pure abstractions, or largely dematerialized objects. The more an artist uses these abstracted forms, the deeper and more confidently will he advance into the kingdom of the abstract. And after him will follow the gazer at his pictures, who also will have gradually acquired a greater familiarity with the language of that kingdom.
Must we then abandon utterly all material objects and paint solely in abstractions? The problem of harmonizing the appeal of the material and the non-material shows us the answer to this question. As every word spoken rouses an inner vibration, so likewise does every object represented. To deprive oneself of this possibility is to limit one's powers of expression. That is at any rate the case at present. But besides this answer to the question, there is another, and one which art can always employ to any question beginning with "must": There is no "must" in art, because art is free.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

VI. The language of Form and Colour
1910 - 1915, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1911

Art, Confidence, Question, Problem

“A good maxim allows you to have the last word without even starting a conversation.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 45

“Already, in the decades before Independence our people were giving thought to their vision of an Independent India. Pandit Motilal Nehru drafted the well-known Nehru Report on the Constitution of free India. The Karachi Session of the Indian National Congress held in March, 1931 adopted the famous Resolution moved by Mahatma Gandhi which contained our charter on Fundamental Rights. It is against this historical backdrop of a long and arduous struggle and the crystallization of our vision of a sovereign, democratic nation that the first session of the Constituent Assembly was held in 1946, when, as Panditji said, we embarked on `the high adventure of giving shape, in the printed and written word, to a nation's dream and aspiration.”

Shankar Dayal Sharma (1918–1999) Indian politician

Address By Dr. Shanker Dayal Sharma President Of India On The Occasion Of The 50th Anniversary Of The First Sitting Of The Constituent Assembly

People, Dreams

“London goes beyond any boundary or convention. It contains every wish or word ever spoken, every action or gesture ever made, every harsh or noble statement ever expressed. It is illimitable. It is Infinite London.”

Peter Ackroyd (1949) English author

London: The Biography (London: Vintage, [2000] 2001) p. 779.

“I'm always trying to understand myself, but it's like there's a point in the centre of the room, and there's a hundred windows to look at the same point from. All I can do is give you different angles on the same thing. God, you know, if I could find one conclusive thing in anything I would probably have something to put an anchor down on. But I can't, and I haven't met anyone that can. You can pick out anything you like in my lyrics, I don't seek to be cryptic. I love words for the sake of words, for me they're kind of free standing, and they don't really need to be explained. I think every word has its own character and colour and picture and the result you get with lyrics just depends how you put them together.”

KatieJane Garside (1968) English singer

On writing, Repeat https://web.archive.org/web/20031101121528/https://www.repeatfanzine.co.uk/interviews/queen%20adreena.htm fanzine (2003)

Love, God, Understanding, Thinking

“Here's what we're not taught [about the Declaration and Constitution]: Those words at the time they were written were blazingly, electrifyingly subversive. If you understand them truly now, they still are. […] You are not taught—and it is a disgrace that you aren't—that these men and women were radicals for liberty; that they had a vision of equality that was a slap in the face of what the rest of their world understood to be the unchanging, God-given order of nations; and that they were willing to die to make that desperate vision into a reality for people like us, whom they would never live to see.”

Naomi Wolf (1962) American writer

In The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/1603580115, Wolf, Chelsea Green Publishing (2007), Chapter One, 'The Founders and the Fragility of Democracy,' p. 27

Women, Men, God, People

“No group in America has been more harmed by Hillary Clinton's policies than African-Americans. If Hillary Clinton's goal was to inflict pain on the African-American community, she could not have done a better job. It's a disgrace. Tonight, I'm asking for the vote of every single African-American citizen in this country who wants to see a better future. The inner cities of our country have been run by the Democratic party for more than fifty years. Their policies have reduced only poverty, joblessness, failing schools and broken homes. It's time to hold Democratic politicians accountable for what they have done to these communities. At what point do we say, "enough?" It's time to hold failed leaders accountable for their results not just their empty words over and over again. Look at what the Democratic party has done to the city as an example and there are many others of Detroit: forty percent of Detroit's residents live in poverty. Half of all Detroit residents do not work and cannot work and can't get a job. Detroit tops the list of most dangerous cities in terms of violent crime. This is the legacy of the Democratic politicians who have run this city. This is the result of the policy agenda embraced by Hillary Clinton: thirty-three thousand emails gone. The only way to change results is to change leadership. We can never fix our problems by relying on the same politicians who created our problems in the first place. A new future requires brand new leadership. Look how much African-American communities suffered under Democratic control. To those I say the following: What do you have to lose by trying something new like Trump. What do you have to lose? I say it again, what do you have to lose. Look, what do you have to lose? You're living your poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs. Fifty-eight percent of your youth is unemployed? What the hell do you have to lose? And at the end of four years, I guarantee you, that I will get over ninety-five percent of the African-American vote. I promise you.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Speech to the African-American community in Dimondale, Michigan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5B5m1S5VTA (August 19, 2016) 2010s, 2016, August

Pain, Youth, School, Way

“This possession is a simple and abysmal tasting of all good and of eternal life; and in this tasting we are swallowed up above reason and without reason, in the deep Quiet of the Godhead, which is never moved…And therefrom follows the last point that can be put into words, that is, when the spirit beholds a Darkness into which it cannot enter with the reason. And there it feels itself dead and lost to itself, and one with God without difference and without distinction.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Spiritual Espousals (c. 1340)

Life, God, Feeling, Dead

“I am just thinking how unfair it is of you to quote their own words. It is a low blow to use what ExxonMobil has actually said against them. I mean, that is kind of a cheap shot, don't you think?”

Joe Barton (1949) United States congressional representative from Texas

Committee on Energy of Commerce Hearing: Gasoline: Supply, Price, and Specifications https://house.resource.org/109/org.c-span.192444-1.pdf, May 10, 2006 to Representative Anna Eshoo, on her citing ExxonMobil officials saying they don't want to build any new refineries in North America

Quotes, Thinking

“The word "Sanskrit" means "prepared, pure, refined or perfect". It was not for nothing that it was called the "devavani" (language of the Gods). It has an outstanding place in our culture and indeed was recognized as a language of rare sublimity by the whole world. Sanskrit was the language of our philosophers, our scientists, our mathematicians, our poets and playwrights, our grammarians, our jurists, etc. In grammar, Panini and Patanjali (authors of Ashtadhyayi and the Mahabhashya) have no equals in the world; in astronomy and mathematics the works of Aryabhatta, Brahmagupta and Bhaskar opened up new frontiers for mankind, as did the works of Charak and Sushrut in medicine.”

Markandey Katju (1946) Indian judge

On Sanskrit, as quoted in the transcript of a speech, titled "Sanskrit as a Language of Science" http://www.iisc.ernet.in/misc/bang_speech.html and delivered on 13 October 2009, published by Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore

God, World, Mathematics, Perfection

“Nigel: I don't regard clever as a dirty word.
Jack: Rule one, it's never clever to appear to be clever. Long words actually hurt people, you know that? Rule two, speak slowly and clearly as though to a group of malignant kids. Rule three, keep it short. Very short. Half-truths take less time than whole ones, old mate. Oh and I see you've let your locks sprout a bit. Get 'em cut, there's a good chap. Rolling stones gather no votes.”

Dennis Potter (1935–1994) English television dramatist, screenwriter and journalist

Vote, vote, vote for Nigel Barton (1965)

People, Truth, Appearance, Time

“On this day I remember words that have stayed with me since my childhood and which matter a great deal to me today, my school motto: "I will try my outmost". This is my promise to all of the people of Britain and now let the work of change begin.”

Gordon Brown (1951) British Labour Party politician

Statement at Downing Street http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page12155.asp, 27 June 2007. Statement outside 10 Downing Street immediately after becoming Prime Minister. The motto referred to is an English translation of the Latin Usque conabor. Brown said "outmost", as spelled on the BBC News transcript http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6246114.stm, but other sources usually give "utmost". Prime Minister

People, School, Change, Childhood

“Aside from Cauchy, the greatest contributory to the theory [of determinants] was Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi. With him the word "determinant" received its final acceptance. He early used the functional determinant which Sylvester has called the Jacobian, and in his famous memoirs in Crelle's Journal for 1841 he considered these forms as well as that class of alternating functions which Sylvester has called alternants.”

David Eugene Smith (1860–1944) American mathematician

History of Mathematics (1925) Vol.2

“Freedom! That belabored word! It is a big, empty word, and yet, when some experience reminds us what freedom is, how clear and particular its meaning becomes, how unspeakably sweet, and full!”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Part 3, Chapter 19 (p. 226)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

Freedom

“WOODSTOCK NATION is built on ELECTRICITY. It is our energy, music, politics, school, religion, play, battleground and our sensuality. I hesitate only in using the word Morality, for Morality means soul and ELECTRICITY lack soul but so too does the wood pen I scratch against the yellow pad. Morality rests in God's imagination and if we see ourselves as gods I guess we alone make those choices. Moral decisions never rest in our tools, be they electricity or pencils, flowers, or guns.”

Abbie Hoffman book Woodstock Nation

Woodstock Nation (1969)

God, School, Religion, Music

“No doubt analytical psychologists could tear it all to bits and explain it in the jargon of this or that psychological school. Critics could trample on my dreams and say that it was too much in the realm of feeling to have any value, but so is falling in love. Is that not real, and highly significant, and life-changing? So is the state of mind induced by music, or by some of the glories of Nature, or by some of the works of man... All I can say is that to me it was an experience of God, never to be denied... No one who has had such an experience can ever doubt but that in the end good will triumph over every form of evil, and that every life, however humble, frustrated, indifferent or even careless, is in the care of this Power and within a Plan, vast beyond our power to imagine, which will work out in a blessedness which brings utter satisfaction and quality of bliss for which there are no words.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

(76-77) [ellipsis added]
The Christian Agnostic (1965)

Love, Life, God, School

“To the people of New York, Paris, or London, "death" is a word that is never pronounced because it burns the lips. The Mexican, however, frequents it, jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it; it is one of his favorite toys and most steadfast love. Of course, in his attitude perhaps there is as much fear as there is in one of the others; at least he does not hide it; he confronts it face to face with patience, disdain, or irony.”

Octavio Paz book The Labyrinth of Solitude

The Labyrinth of Solitude (1950)

Love, Death, People, Fear

“We hope the "real" person behind the words will be revealed as ignominiously as a shapeless snail without its shapely shell.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

On “consumeristic appetite for interviews,” New York Times (17 August 1986)

Hope, Personality

“There is a saying by Gustave Dore which I have always admired: "J'ai la patience d'un boeuf." [I have the patience of an ox]. I find in it a certain goodness, a certain resolute honesty, more, it has a deep meaning that saying, it is the word of a real artist. When one thinks of the men from whose heart such a saying sprang, all the arguments one too often hears of art dealers about "natural gifts", seem to become a terrible raven's croaking.”

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

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Drenthe, The Netherlands, Autumn 1883; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 336) p. 34 1880s, 1883

Men, Art, Nature, Thinking

“[On "You're fired!":] There's a beauty in those two words. When you utter those words, there's very little that can be said. There's a succinctness to those words.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Trump TV / 'The Apprentice' takes realistic inside look at corporate world
San Francisco Chronicle
2004-03-28
David
Armstrong
http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Trump-TV-The-Apprentice-takes-realistic-2802491.php
2000s

Beauty

“There is nothing reasonable about faith. Those two words mean completely opposite things. Putting them together creates an oxymoron, That’s why William Lyin’ Craig thought it would make a clever book title. Faith is an unreasonable conviction which is assumed without reason and defended against all reason. That’s why faith is the most dishonest position it is possible to have. It really is!”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, A Letter to a Certain Christian http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2013/10/12/a-letter-to-a-certain-christian/ (October 12, 2013)

Books, Faith

“There is, I venture to think, no ground for the ordinarily accepted statement of the relation of philosophy to theology and religion. It is usually said that while^hilosophy is the creation of an individual mind, theology or religion is, like folk-lore and language, the product of the collective mind of a people or a race. This is to confuse philosophy with philosophies, a conmion and, it must be admitted, a not unnatural confusion. But while a philosophy is the creation of a Plato, an Aristotle, a Spinoza, a Kant, or a Hegel, ^hilosophy itself is, like religion, folk-lore and language, a product of the collective mind of humanity. It is advanced, as these are, by individual additions, interpretations and syntheses, but it is none the less quite istinct from such individual contributions. philosophy is humanity's hold on Totality, and it becomes richer and more helpful as man's intellectual horizon widens, as his intellectual vision grows clearer, and as his insights become more numerous and more sure. Theology is philosophy of a particular type. It is an interpretation of Totality in terms of God and His activities. In the impressive words of Principal Caird, that philosophy which is theology seeks "to bind together objects and events in the links of necessary thought, and to find their last ground and reason in that which comprehends and transcends all— the nature of God Himself." Religion is the apprehension and the adoration of the Grod Whom theology postulates.
If the whole history of philosophy be searched for material with which to instruct the beginner in what philosophy really is and in its relation to theology and religion, the two periods or epochs that stand out above all others as useful for this purpose are Greek thought from Thales to Socrates, and that interpretation of the teachings of Christ by philosophy which gave rise, at the hands of the Church Fathers, to Christian theology. In the first period we see the simple, clear-cut steps by which the mind of Europe was led from explanations that were fairy-tales to a natural, well-analyzed, and increasingly profound interpretation of the observed phenomena of Nature. The process is so orderly and so easily grasped that it is an invaluable introduction to the study of philosophic thinking. In the second period we see philosophy, now enriched by the literally huge contributions of Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics, intertwining itself about the simple Christian tenets and building the great system of creeds and thought which has immortalized the names of Athanasius and Hilary, Basil and Gregory, Jerome and Augustine, and which has given color and form to the intellectual life of Europe for nearly two thousand years. For the student of today both these developments have great practical value, and the astonishing neglect and ignorance of them both are most discreditable.”

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

" Philosophy" (a lecture delivered at Columbia University in the series on science, philosophy and art, March 4, 1908) https://archive.org/details/philosophyalect00butlgoog"

Life, God, People, Religion

“I say looking at the next 100 years that there are two trends in the world today. The first trend is toward what we call a type one civilization, a planetary civilization… The danger is the transition between type zero and type one and that’s where we are today. We are a type zero civilization. We get our energy from dead plants, oil and coal. But if you get a calculator you can calculate when we will attain type one status. The answer is: in about 100 years we will become planetary. We’ll be able to harness all the energy output of the planet earth. We’ll play with the weather, earthquakes, volcanoes. Anything planetary we will play with. The danger period is now, because we still have the savagery. We still have all the passions. We have all the sectarian, fundamentalist ideas circulating around, but we also have nuclear weapons. …capable of wiping out life on earth. So I see two trends in the world today. The first trend is toward a multicultural, scientific, tolerant society and everywhere I go I see aspects of that birth. For example, what is the Internet? Many people have written about the Internet. Billions and billions of words written about the Internet, but to me as a physicist the Internet is the beginning of a type one telephone system, a planetary telephone system. So we’re privileged to be alive to witness the birth of type one technology… And what is the European Union? The European Union is the beginning of a type one economy. And how come these European countries, which have slaughtered each other ever since the ice melted 10,000 years ago, how come they have banded together, put aside their differences to create the European Union? …so we’re beginning to see the beginning of a type one economy as well…”

Michio Kaku (1947) American theoretical physicist, futurist and author

"Will Mankind Destroy Itself?" http://bigthink.com/videos/will-mankind-destroy-itself (29 September 2010)

Life, People, World, Idea

“Look what I found; a litter version of the Internet! This used to be something that could convert carbon dioxide to oxygen using only sunlight, water, and a few nutrients. But now it's way cooler; it has two functions. You can either put little words on it, or crumple it up into a tiny ball and throw it!”

Ze Frank (1972) American online performance artist

http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2007/04/best_of_050806.html
"The Show" (www.zefrank.com/theshow/)

Way, Water

“Not believing in something is not in itself a belief or a philosophy: it is the 'ism' at the end that tends to cause the trouble. Both atheists and believers can be as arrogant and witless as each other in frustrated debate, and people may choose strong and unapologetic words to raise awareness of the agenda. But despite the name-calling, it is still a fair point that to not believe in God is no more a 'belief in itself' than to not believe in the Loch Ness Monster, Poseidon or anything else one might personally consider far-fetched. Beyond that, there is only how you choose to express yourself.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Books, Tricks of the Mind (2006)

God, People, Strong, Personality

“Let's step back and think about the likely outcome of a scenario that involves the words "James Nicoll", "a box of sharp needles" and "possibly without ever having achieved full consciousness" for a moment, shall we?”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

LiveJournal comment http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/228255.html?thread=2188959#t2188959 2000s

Thinking, Box

“I heard the quotation read in a summary of the speech. I thought the words sounded familiar and suddenly it dawned on me that they were out of my little book.”

Minnie Haskins (1875–1957) British poet and sociologist

Her reaction on hearing her poem. Daily Telegraph, 16 Aug 2008 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherhowse/3561497/At-the-Gate-of-the-Year.html

Books, Reading

“Stolen's a strong word. It's copyrighted content that the owner wasn't paid for. So yes.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

On his use of YouTube to watch videos. "Bill Gates on ...the Competition" in The Wall Street Journal (19 June 2006); also quoted in "Bill Gates' piracy confession" http://www.computerworld.com/blogs/node/2803 at ComputerWorld.com 2000s

Strong

“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.' (quoting John Greenleaf Whittier)”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

The Man Upstairs (1914)

Sadness, Quotes

“Whatever the word "great" means, Dickens was what it means.”

G. K. Chesterton Charles Dickens

Source: Charles Dickens (1906), Ch 1 : "The Dickens Period"

“What is unbelievable is that I am in a position where people reproach me for making a profit. The people who lose money – nobody says a word. Reproach the people who lose money. I do business by managing in a safe way in a healthy way and on top of that you reproach me for making money. It looks like we are in a business where the quality is to lose money.”

Arsène Wenger (1949) French footballer and manager

(2010) http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/wenger-hopes-record-profits-prove-his-wisdom-2089020.html Arsenal (1996–present)

Money, People, Way, Business

“At present no Government dare say a word to the Church—that overgrown and monstrous abuse assumes airs as if it were not an abuse. It is a wen upon the head and pretends to be the head, and no administration is strong enough to say a word against it. With 14,000 Dissenting Chapels in England and Wales, with two-thirds of Scotland in dissenting ranks, with five-sixths of Ireland hostile to the Church, how comes it that this scandalous abuse puts on the character of a national and useful institution? Simply because it has the Crown and the Peers on its side by tradition and the constitution, and has gained great power in the Commons thro' our defective representation. Let the representation be amended, and then the Church will be more humble, and will submit, of necessity, to be overhauled as one of the departments of the State.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Letter to Charles Villiers (15 July 1852), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp. 201-202.
1850s

Hostility, Strong

“Even the word depression itself was the terminological product of an effort to soften the connotation of deep trouble. In the last century, the term crisis was normally employed. With time, however, this acquired the connotation of the misfortune it described.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Affluent Society

Source: The Affluent Society (1958), Chapter 4, Section IV, p. 45

Effort, Time

“If you want to accomplish something in the world, idealism is not enough — you need to choose a method that works to achieve the goal. In other words, you need to be pragmatic.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

1990s, Copyleft: Pragmatic Idealism (1998)

World

“A right word is the most direct route between two minds.”

Anu Garg (1967) Indian author

A.Word.A.Day (Feb 17, 2014) http://wordsmith.org/words/escutcheon.html

“Of all the weapons in the Federal Reserve arsenal, words were the the most unpredictable in their consequences.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Great Crash, 1929

Source: The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929), Chapter III, Something Should Be Done?, Section IV, p. 38

“Men who offer laudatory speeches to the rich … are insidious because, although mere abundance is by itself quite enough to puff up the souls of its possessors, and to corrupt them, and to turn them aside from the way by which salvation can be reached, these men bring fresh delusion to the minds of the rich by exciting them with the pleasures that come from their immoderate praises, and by rendering them contemptuous of absolutely everything in the world except the wealth which is the cause of their being admired. In the words of the proverb, they carry fire to fire, when they shower pride upon pride, and heap on wealth, heavy by its own nature, the heavier burden of arrogance.”

Clement of Alexandria (150–215) Christian theologian

Source: The Rich Man's Salvation, p. 271.

Men, Pleasure, World, Way

“Nature is just a dictionary, you hunt in it for words.... you find in it the elements which make a phrase or a story; but nobody would regard a dictionary as a composition in the poetic sense of the term. Besides, nature is far from being always interesting from the point of view of the effect of the whole... If each detail is perfect in some way, the union of these details seldom gives an effect equivalent to that which arises, in the work of a great artist, from the total composition.”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

Delacroix, quoted by Paul Signac: in D'Eugene Delacroix au Neo-impressionnisme, Chap. I.; as quoted by John Rewald, in Georges Seurat', a monograph https://ia800607.us.archive.org/23/items/georges00rewa/georges00rewa.pdf; Wittenborn and Compagny, New York, 1943. p.10 + note 15 Quotes, undated

Way, Nature, Sense, Perfection

“LUNGREN: Mr. Speaker, I ask that the gentleman's words be taken down once more.”

Anthony Weiner (1964) American politician

“Now as there are, according to Humboldt, one hundred and seventy words in common between the languages of the new and old continents, and many of these are expressive of the most primitive ideas, there is, by Dr Young's calculation, overpowering proof of the original connection of the American and other human families.”

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) book Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation

Source: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), p. 294

Family, Idea

“Hello everyone!
I suppose that you think that nothing much is happening at the moment. Ah ah ah! Well, that's what I want to talk to you all about: endings. Now, endings normally happen at the end. But, as we all know, endings are just beginnings. You know, once these things really get started, it's jolly hard to stop them again.
However, as we have all come this far, I think, under the circumstances, the best solution is that we all just keep going. Let's keep going inside, never an ending. Let's remember that this world wants fresh beginnings. I feel here, in this Country, and throughout the world, we are crying out for beginnings, beginnings!
We never want to hear this word "endings". I know you don't want to sit down. Of course, you're looking for the good start. Of course you're looking for a fresh start.
Isn't that charming? Do you know, I really feel I could dance…”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Amarok (1990)

World, Feeling, Thinking, Dance

“A while ago there was an article in the New York Times about some women in Tennessee who wanted the middle grade text books removed from the school curriculum, not because they were inadequate educationally, but because these women were afraid that they might stimulate the childrens' imaginations.
What!?!
It was a good while later that I realized that the word, imagination, is always a bad word in the King James translation of the Bible. I checked it out in my concordance, and it is always bad.
Put them down in the imagination of their hearts. Their imagination is only to do evil.
Language changes. What meant one thing three hundred years ago means something quite different now. So the people who are afraid of the word imagination are thinking about it as it was defined three centuries ago, and not as it is understood today, a wonderful word denoting creativity and wideness of vision.
Another example of our changing language is the word, prevent. Take it apart into its Latin origin, and it is prevenire. Go before. So in the language of the King James translation if we read, "May God prevent us," we should understand the meaning to be, "God go before us," or "God lead us."
And the verb, to let, used to mean, stop. Do not let me, meant do not stop me. And now it is completely reversed into a positive, permissive word.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Acceptance Speech for the Margaret Edwards Award (1998)

Women, God, Children, People

“At the present we have no adequate scientific method for representing the psychological life span. In accord with the general methods of psychology, the study of environmental influences began with classification and statistics… they gave us excellent descriptions of the home environment. The method of representation is partly akin to that of the novelist i. e., one trying to make as lifelike picture of the situation as possible by choosing expressive words and bringing out significant traits with examples. In general, the descriptions that have been made valuable to science have not been those made by scientific methods. Where theoretical concepts have been introduced with the concrete description, they often stand out as something alien. In stead of scientific descriptions they are nothing more than speculative interpretation.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Source: 1930s, Principles of topological psychology, 1936, p. 12-13.

Life, Home, Study, Science

“But so far as the Hindus are concerned, this period was a prolonged spell of darkness which ended only when the Marathas and the Jats and the Sikhs broke the back of Islamic imperialism in the middle of the 18th century. The situation of the Hindus under Muslim rule is summed up by the author of Tãrîkh-i-Wassãf in the following words: “The vein of the zeal of religion beat high for the subjection of infidelity and destruction of idols… The Mohammadan forces began to kill and slaughter, on the right and the left unmercifully, throughout the impure land, for the sake of Islãm, and blood flowed in torrents. They plundered gold and silver to an extent greater than can be conceived, and an immense number of precious stones as well as a great variety of cloths… They took captive a great number of handsome and elegant maidens and children of both sexes, more than pen can enumerate… In short, the Mohammadan army brought the country to utter ruin and destroyed the lives of the inhabitants and plundered the cities, and captured their off-springs, so that many temples were deserted and the idols were broken and trodden under foot, the largest of which was Somnãt. The fragments were conveyed to Dehlî and the entrance of the Jãmi‘ Masjid was paved with them so that people might remember and talk of this brilliant victory… Praise be to Allah the lord of the worlds.””

Sita Ram Goel book The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India

The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India (1994)

Children, People, World, Religion

“It does not frighten me to leave this life that my only son left five years ago, this life that insists we bear sorrow upon sorrow long after we can bear no more. No, I believe I shall gladly take my leave when the time comes. What frightens me, hamshira, is the day God summons me before him and asks, Why did you not do as I said, Mullah? Why did you not obey my laws? How shall I explain myself to him, hamshira? What will be my defense for not heeding His commands? All I can do, all any of us can do, in the time we are granted, is to go on abiding by the laws He has set for us. The clearer I see my end, hamsira, the nearer I am to my day of reckoning, the more determined I grow to carry out His word. However painful it may prove.”

Khaled Hosseini book A Thousand Splendid Suns

Talib Judge, p. 366
A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

Life, God, Pain, Law

“Be both a speaker of words and a doer of deeds.”

Homér Iliad

IX. 443 (tr. Andrew Lang).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

“Starkey put his fingers under the man's chin and pushed his head back. As he did so, the man's eyeballs fell back into his head with a meaty little thud. The words on the sign had been written in red Magic Marker. NOW YOU KNOW IT WORKS, the sign said, ANY QUESTIONS?”

Stephen King book The Stand

The Stand (1978)

Question

“.. that famous idea of 'beauty', which is, as everybody says, the goal of the arts. If it is their only goal, what becomes of the men like Rubens, Rembrandt, and all the northern natures generally, who prefer other qualities? Demand purity, In a word beauty... In general the men of the north tend less in that direction. The Italian prefers ornament.”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

Quote 1847, as cited in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 229
1831 - 1863

Men, Beauty, Art, Idea

“But words are imperfect, and our system of writing, for all its great glories, has its limitations in terms of its ability to describe creation in all its manifest and hidden glories … So we would have to invent another way of describing things.”

Nick Drake (poet) (1961) British writer

Ch 11
The Rahotep series, Book 2: Tutankhamun

Way

“To all the politicians, donors and special interests, hear these words from me today: there is only one core issue in the immigration debate and it is this: the well-being of the American people. Nothing even comes a close second.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Immigration speech (31 August 2016)
Source: https://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/donald-trump-immigration-address-transcript-227614

People

“He fixed his definition thus: reflection is the possibility of the relation, consciousness is the relation, the first form of which is contradiction. He soon noted that, as a result, the categories of reflection are always dichotomous. For example ideality and reality, soul and body, to recognize – the true, to will – the good, to love – the beautiful, God and the world, and so on, these are categories of reflection. In reflection, these touch each other in such a way that a relation becomes possible. The categories of consciousness, on the other hand, are trichotomous, as language itself indicates, for when I say I am conscious of this, I mention a trinity. Consciousness is mind and spirit, and the remarkable thing is that when in the world of mind or spirit one is divided, it always becomes three and never two. Consciousness, therefore, presupposes reflection. If this were not true it would be impossible to explain doubt. True, language seems to contest this, since in most languages, as far as he knew, the word ‘doubt’ is etymologically related to the word ‘two’. Yet in his opinion this only indicated the presupposition of doubt, especially because it was clear to him that as soon as I, as spirit, become two, I am eo ipso three. If there were nothing but dichotomies, doubt would not exist, for the possibility of doubt lies precisely in that third which places the two in relation to each other. One cannot therefore say that reflection produces doubt, unless one expressed oneself backwards; one must say that doubt presupposes reflection, though not in a temporal sense. Doubt arises through a relation between two, but for this to take place the two must exist, although doubt, as a higher expression, comes before rather than afterwards.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Johannes Climacus (1841) p. 80-81
1840s, Johannes Climacus (1841)

Love, God, World, Beauty

“We venture to say a few words in explanation of the plan of this work. Its object is not to force upon the public the personal views or theories of its author; nor has it the pretensions of a scientific work, which aims at creating a revolution in some department of thought. It is rather a brief summary of the religions, philosophies, and universal traditions of human kind, and the exegesis of the same, in the spirit of those secret doctrines, of which none — thanks to prejudice and bigotry — have reached Christendom in so unmutilated a form, as to secure it a fair judgment. Since the days of the unlucky mediaeval philosophers, the last to write upon these secret doctrines of which they were the depositories, few men have dared to brave persecution and prejudice by placing their knowledge upon record. And these few have never, as a rule, written for the public, but only for those of their own and succeeding times who possessed the key to their jargon. The multitude, not understanding them or their doctrines, have been accustomed to regard them en masse as either charlatans or dreamers. Hence the unmerited contempt into which the study of the noblest of sciences — that of the spiritual man — has gradually fallen.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

Introduction
Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume I

Men, Secret, Religion, Understanding

“I cannot see the word ‘troubled’ prefixing the name of some poor starlet who has been dragged through the mire of tabloid spite without vomiting directly onto the newspaper. Troubled by whom? Troubled by you, you fuckwits.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Books, Confessions of a Conjuror (2010)

“Now and always as in that morning twilight on the Galilean lake Christ comes to men. Everywhere He is present, everywhere revealing Himself. Now, as then, our eyes are holden by our own fault, so that we recognize not the merciful Presence which is all around us. Now, as then, it is they who are nearest to Christ by love who see Him first. Still Jesus joins Himself to us; still He walks with us; still He instructs us, speaking to us by His word, His providences, His Spirit; still He seeks to enter into our sorrows and trials, and to console and cheer us. But we know Him not. Our eyes are holden by unbelief. We do not press Him to abide with us. Hence He is grieved, and we are left alone in the night.”

Richard Fuller (minister) (1804–1876) United States Baptist minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 96.

Love, Men, Christ, Night

“The one affectation I have forced on the publisher … are my apostrophe-free ellisions. Because I write my scripts to read myself, I dont spell 'don't' with an apostrophe. I spell it 'dont'. We all know the word and it seems foolish to put in an extraneous apostrophe. Punctuation marks are devices we use to make the meaning of sentences clear. There is nothing confusing about a word like 'dont' printed without an apostrophe to indicate an omitted letter.”

Andy Rooney (1919–2011) writer, humorist, television personality

Reading

“There is a world of visual beauty open to the one willing to undergo the practice and striving necessary to the understanding of its language.
This world is a important as culturally as is the world of words or of music. My ideal is to form and to paint as Schubert sings his songs and as Beethoven creates his world in sounds. That is to say, creation of one’s own inner world through the same human and artistic discipline.
An inner sensation can find external expression only through spiritual realization.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

'Painting and Culture' p. 58
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

World, Beauty, Music, Understanding

“"The words still don't move."
"The words don't need to move. It is you who is moved by them."”

Ian McDonald book River of Gods

Source: River of Gods (2006), Ch. 19 (p. 239).

“Words should be employed as the means, not as the end: language is the instrument, conviction is the work.”

Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) English painter, specialising in portraits

Discourse no. 4; vol. 1, p. 94.
Discourses on Art

“A mediator is one who perceives the divinity within himself and who self-destructively sacrifices himself in order to reveal, communicate, and represent to all mankind this divinity in his conduct and actions, in his words and works.”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

Ein Mittler ist derjenige, der Göttliches in sich wahrnimmt, und sich selbst vernichtend Preis giebt, um dieses Göttliche zu verkündigen, mitzutheilen, und darzustellen allen Menschen in Sitten und Thaten, in Worten und Werken.
“Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 44

Communication

“The aversion of the first Christians to the images, inspired by the Pagan simulachres, made room, during the centuries which followed the period of the persecutions, to a feeling of an entirely different kind, and the images gradually gained their favour. Reappearing at the end of the fourth and during the course of the fifth centuries, simply as emblems, they soon became images, in the true acceptation of this word; and the respect which was entertained by the Christians for the persons and ideas represented by those images, was afterwards converted into a real worship. Representations of the sufferings which the Christians had endured for the sake of their religion, were at first exhibited to the people in order to stimulate by such a sight the faith of the masses, always lukewarm and indifferent. With regard to the images of divine persons of entirely immaterial beings, it must be remarked, that they did not originate from the most spiritualised and pure doctrines of the Christian society, but were rejected by the severe orthodoxy of the primitive church. These simulachres appear to have been spread at first by the Gnostics,—i. e., by those Christian sects which adopted the most of the beliefs of Persia and India. Thus it was a Christianity which was not purified by its contact with the school of Plato,—a Christianity which entirely rejected the Mosaic tradition, in order to attach itself to the most strange and attractive myths of Persia and India,—that gave birth to the images.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Source: A Treatise of Relics (1549), p. 13

People, School, Faith, Religion

“Men saw the stars at the edge of the sea
They thought great thoughts about liberty
Poets wrote down words that did fit
Writers wrote books
Thinkers thought about it.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Take It Where You Find It
Song lyrics, Wavelength (1978)

Men, Books, Star, Sea

“The preceding criticism … justifies the following definition of the entire human: human existence as the life of “unmotivated” celebration, celebration in all meaning of the word: laughter, dancing, orgy, the rejection of subordination, and sacrifice that scornfully puts aside any consideration of ends, property, and morality.”

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

Source: On Nietzsche (1945), p. xxxii

Life, Laughter, Dance

“Those who marry God can become domesticated too—it’s just as hum-drum a marriage as all the others. The word “Love” means a formal touch of the lips as in the ceremony of the Mass, and “Ave Maria” like “dearest” is a phrase to open a letter. This marriage like the world’s marriages was held together by habits and tastes shared in common between God and themselves—it was God’s taste to be worshipped and their taste to worship, but only at stated hours like a suburban embrace on a Saturday night.”

Graham Greene book A Burnt-Out Case

Pt. 1, ch. 1, sct. 2
A Burnt-Out Case (1960)

Love, God, Marriage, World

“If you say to someone who has ears to hear: "What you are doing to me is not just," you may touch and awaken at its source the spirit of attention and love. But it is not the same with words like, "I have the right…" or "you have no right to…" They evoke a latent war and awaken the spirit of contention.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Human Personality (1943), p. 63

Love, War

“Whatever happens to me from now on, I can't ever imagine wanting to distance myself from The X Factor, or having a bad word to say about it, because the show opened doors for me that had never opened before.”

Leona Lewis (1985) British singer-songwriter

Daily Mail, October 2007

Imagination

“Why?’ My mother’s question hangs in the still air of memory. The loneliness I have felt many mornings, however, has not made me forget that I am engaged in a highly public activity. I sit here in silence writing this small volume of words, and it seems to me the most public thing I ever have done. My mother’s letter has served to remind me: I am making my personal life public. Probably I will never try to explain my motives to my mother and father. My mother’s question will go unanswered to her face.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982)

Life, Motivation, Question, Silence

“unbelievers (so called) as well as of believers, there are many species, including almost every variety of moral type. But the best among them, as no one who has had opportunities of really knowing them will hesitate to affirm (believers rarely have that opportunity), are more genuinely religious, in the best sense of the word religion, than those who exclusively arrogate to themselves the title.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/45/mode/1up pp. 45–46

Religion, Sense

“Part of the unknown reality, then, is hidden beneath language and the enforced pattern of accustomed words-so, for an exercise, look about your environment. Make up new, different 'words' for the objects that you see about you. Pick up any object, for example. Hold it for a few seconds, feel its texture, look at its color, and spontaneously give it a new name by uttering the sounds that come into your mind. See how the sounds bring out certain aspects of the object that you may not have noticed before. The new word will fit as much as the old one did. It may, in fact, fit better. Do this with many objects, following the same procedure. You can instead say the name of any object backwards. In such ways you break up to some extent the automatic patterning of familiar phrases, so that you can perceive the individuality that is within each object.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 726, p. 460
The “Unknown” Reality: Volume Two, (1979)

Color, Way, Feeling, Exercises

“Editions and Revisions. The printed Bible text of Luther had the same fate as the written text of the old Itala and Jerome's Vulgate. It passed through innumerable improvements and mis-improvements. The orthography and inflections were modernized, obsolete words removed, the versicular division introduced (first in a Heidelberg reprint, 1568), the spurious clause of the three witnesses inserted in 1 John 5:7 (first by a Frankfurt publisher, 1574), the third and fourth books of Ezra and the third book of the Maccabees added to the Apocrypha, and various other changes effected, necessary and unnecessary, good and bad. Elector August of Saxony tried to control the text in the interest of strict Lutheran orthodoxy, and ordered the preparation of a standard edition (1581). But it was disregarded outside of Saxony.
Gradually no less than eleven or twelve recensions came into use, some based on the edition of 1545, others on that of 1546. The most careful recension was that of the Canstein Bible Institute, founded by a pious nobleman, Carl Hildebrand von Canstein (1667-1719) in connection with Francke's Orphan House at Halle. It acquired the largest circulation and became the textus receptus of the German Bible.
With the immense progress of biblical learning in the present century, the desire for a timely revision of Luther's version was more and more felt. Revised versions with many improvements were prepared by Joh.- Friedrich von Meyer, a Frankfurt patrician (1772-1849), and Dr. Rudolf Stier (1800-1862), but did not obtain public authority.
At last a conservative official revision of the Luther Bible was inaugurated by the combined German church governments in 1863, with a view and fair prospect of superseding all former editions in public use.”

Philip Schaff (1819–1893) American Calvinist theologian

Luther's Bible club

Fate, Books, Learning, Change

“A person who does not enter the new [Rastakhiz] party… is either an individual who belongs to an illegal organization, or is related to the outlaw Tudeh Party, or in other words is a traitor. Such an individual belongs in an Iranian prison, or if he desires, he can leave the country tomorrow… because he is not an Iranian, he has no nation, and his activities are illegal and punishable according to law.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

As quoted in Marvin Zonis (1991), Majestic Failure: The Fall of the Shah, page 75
Attributed

Law, Personality, Country

“No treaty, however much it may be to the advantage of all, however tightly it may be worded, can provide absolute security against the risks of deception and evasion. But it can — if it is sufficiently effective in its enforcement and if it is sufficiently in the interests of its signers — offer far more security and far fewer risks than an unabated, uncontrolled, unpredictable arms race.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, American University speech

“I conceive it is a vulgar error in translating poets, to affect being fidus interpres… [for] poetry is of so subtile a spirit, that in the pouring out of one language into another, it will all evaporate; and if a new spirit be not added in the transfusion, there will remain nothing but a caput mortuum, there being certain graces and happinesses peculiar to every language, which give life and energy to the words… therefore if Virgil must needs speak English, it were fit he should speak not only as a man of this nation, but as [a] man of this age.”

John Denham (1615–1669) English poet and courtier

The Destruction of Troy (1656), Preface.

Life, Happiness, Age, Error

“If countries were named after the words you first hear when you go there, England would have to be called Damn It.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

F 33
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook F (1776-1779)

Country

“On "shithole countries": "What makes a country, the place or the people? Does the country create the man or does the man make the country? The answer is no chicken-or-egg quandary. Human action is the ultimate adjudicator of a human being's worth. The aggregate action of many human beings acting in concert is what makes or breaks a society. In other words, it is the individual who creates the collective, not the other way around. The Man makes the country what it is."”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

" Why Trump Pooh-Poohed 'Shithole Countries,' https://townhall.com/columnists/ilanamercer/2018/02/01/why-trump-poohpoohed-sithole-countries-part-2-n2442943" Townhall.com, February 1, 2018. 2010s, 2018

People, Way, Country

Quotes about wording page 45

Quotes about wording
page 45