Quotes about wording
page 58

“The Americans never use the word peasant, because they have no idea of the class which that term denotes; the ignorance of more remote ages, the simplicity of rural life, and the rusticity of the villager have not been preserved among them; and they are alike unacquainted with the virtues, the vices, the coarse habits, and the simple graces of an early stage of civilization.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Source: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter XV-IXX, Chapter XVII.

Life, Age, Idea

“We do not demand for our own people any more than the basic human rights which we would extend to every nation, people and tribe on this planet: the right to preserve their own territory, traditions and ethnic identity. The right to preserve, in other words, the things which, by marking their differences from the mass of humanity, make them human and turn their society from an ant heap into a community.”

Nick Griffin (1959) British politician

Nick Griffin, The BNP: Anti-asylum protest, racist sect or power-winning movement? http://web.archive.org/web/20030605150634/http://www.bnp.org.uk/articles/race_reality.htm

People, Communication

“On Kant’s view it can never follow from the fact that God commands is to do such-and-such that we ought to do such-and-such. In order for us to reach such a conclusion we would also have to know that we always ought to do what God commands. But this last we could not know unless we ourselves possessed a standard of moral judgment independent of God’s commandments by means of which we could judge God’s deeds and words and so find the latter morally worthy of obedience. But clearly if we possess such a standard, the commandments of God will be redundant.”

Alasdair MacIntyre book After Virtue

Source: After Virtue (1981), p. 45.

God

“I have always considered myself, when I learned what the word meant, I've always considered myself a Pagan.”

Timothy Leary (1920–1996) American psychologist

At the Neo-Pagan Starwood Festival (July 1991), recorded on Timothy Leary Live at Starwood (2001) http://www.freetimes.com/story/3493 by the Association for Consciousness Exploration ISBN 1-59157-002-6

Learning

“Speech is our most valuable instrument, because we can make it fit our common lives. We are not born to follow words. Words follow life. It has always been so from the very beginning. In fact, the human larynx and the shape of the passages above it have evolved in harmony with the lives our earliest ancestors lived, first in the trees, and then on the ground.”

John Rupert Firth (1890–1960) English linguist

Source: The tongues of men. 1937, p. 25 (1968; 24)

Life, Tree

“A great chapter of the history of the world is written in the chalk. Few passages in the history of man can be supported by such an overwhelming mass of direct and indirect evidence as that which testifies to the truth of the fragment of the history of the globe, which I hope to enable you to read, with your own eyes, tonight.
Let me add, that few chapters of human history have a more profound significance for ourselves. I weigh my words well when I assert, that the man who should know the true history of the bit of chalk which every carpenter carries about in his breeches-pocket, though ignorant of all other history, is likely, if he will think his knowledge out to its ultimate results, to have a truer, and therefore a better, conception of this wonderful universe, and of man’s relation to it, than the most learned student who is deep-read in the records of humanity and ignorant of those of Nature.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

1860s, On a Piece of Chalk (1868)

Truth, World, Hope, History

“Abusive' (or 'hostile,' which in this context I take to mean the same thing) does not seem to me a very clear standard - and I do not think clarity is at all increased by adding the adverb objectively or by appealing to a reasonable person's notion of what the vague word means.”

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

Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc., 510 U.S. 17 http://straylight.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/92-1168.ZC.html (1993) (concurring). 1990s

Hostility, Thinking, Personality

“Forget the word youth – this is one of the best bands you'll ever hear.”

John Dankworth (1927–2010) British musician

Of the National Youth Jazz Orchestra Guardian, 18 Feb 2010 http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2010/feb/18/letter-john-dankworth-obituary

Youth, Forgetting

“Is compulsion necessarily a violation of the law of love? To offer an affirmative answer is to deny the validity of all existing governments. This is the position of Tolstoy and other absolute non-resistants. Few readers of these words, however, will agree that anarchy alone is consistent with love.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Individualism and Socialism (1933)

Love, Law

“They talked quietly, lying on their backs and letting the words float up to the ceiling as though they were talking to themselves. By reason of their calmness they could tell each other everything without shame, without its sounding like a confession. Nor were they surprised at what they found out about each other.”

Stig Dagerman book A Burnt Child

Source: A Burnt Child (1948), p. 191

Lying

“Son, you're probably too young to look for wisdom in anyone's words but your own, but I'll tell you this: love is the enemy… Yes. The poets continually and sometimes willfully mistake love. Love is the old slaughterer. Love is not blind. Love is a cannibal with extremely acute vision. Love is insectile; it is always hungry.
When asked what love eats:
Friendship. It eats friendship.”

Stephen King book Christine

Pt. 1, Ch. 11
Christine (1983)

Love, Wisdom, Friendship

“Venereal: From Venus, the goddess of love, this word refers to the reality of desire. With the rise of Protestantism and science, the word "disease" was tacked on in a revealing combination of categorization and moralizing. "Which disease?"”

John Ralston Saul The Doubter's Companion

"The disease of love."
"Venereal"
The Doubter's Companion (1994)

Love, Disease, Reality, Science

“Practice justice in word and deed, and do not get in the habit of acting thoughtlessly about anything.”

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher

As quoted in Divine Harmony: The Life and Teachings of Pythagoras by John Strohmeier and Peter Westbrook. (1999)
The Golden Verses

Justice

“The puzzle gets solved when one contemplates the character of Indian Secularism and finds that is no more than a smokescreen used by the Muslim-Christian-Communist combine in order to keep India's national society and culture at bay. … They are simply projecting their self-images on to those whom they view as their enemies. …. I have documented elsewhere how Pandit Nehru hounded out or silenced everyone… whom he suspected of having some Hindu feeling or sympathy for some Hindu cause… and how he objected to every Hindu symbol in India's public life. The country had been partitioned by the remnants of Islamic imperialism. But he blamed it on "communalism", a word by which he always meant Hinduism.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu and Hinduism, Manipulation of meanings, 1993.

Life, Feeling, Communication, Silence

“as my mother told me sticks and stones may break my bones but words don’t hurt me.”

Philip Hammond (1955) British Conservative politician

23 August 2015
2015
Source: http://en.trend.az/iran/politics/2426555.html
Source: http://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/580077--hammond
Source: http://www.tehrantimes.com/Index_view.asp?code=248893

Hurt

“The word for smoke should look like smoke -- the word for rain should look like rain…”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

One of the calligraphers
The Pillow Book

“I was wondering the other day, why it is we turn pop figures into idols? I have a theory, of course. I think we have this need to be cool, that there is this undercurrent in society that says some people are cool and some people aren't. And it is very, very important that we are cool. So when we find somebody who is cool on television or on the radio, we associate ourselves with this person to feel valid ourselves. And the problem I have with this is that we rarely know what the person believes whom we are associating ourselves with. The problem with this is that it indicates there is less value in what people believe, what they stand for; it only matters that they are cool. In other words, who cares what I believe about life, I only care that I am cool. Because in the end, the undercurrent running through culture is not giving people value based upon what they believe and what they are doing to aid society, the undercurrent is deciding their value based upon whether of not they are cool.”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

Life, People, Feeling, Problem

“Do not speak badly of yourself, for the warrior that is inside you hears your words and is lessened by them. You are strong and you are brave. There is a nobility of spirit within you. Let it grow — you will do well enough.”

David Gemmell book Quest for Lost Heroes

Source: Drenai series, Quest for Lost Heroes, Ch. 3

Strong

“I can now present the first fundamental law of capitalism, which links the capital stock to the flow of income from capital. The capital/income ratio β is related in a simple way to the share of income from capital in national income, denoted α. The formula is
α = r × β
Where r is the rate of return on capital.
For example, if β=600% and r = 5%, then α = r × β = 30%.
In other words, if national wealth represents the equivalent of six years of national income, and the rate of return on capital is 5 percent per year, then capital’s share in national income is 30 percent.”

Thomas Piketty book Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Source: Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013), p. 52.

Law, Way, Wealth

“The connection between facts and values is straightforward and philosophically uninteresting… values reduce to facts about the well-being of conscious creatures; the well-being of conscious creatures is what can be valued in this universe… Now, here’s the one bit of philosophy I’m going to anchor this to: imagine a universe in which every conscious creature suffers as much as it can for as long as it can – I call this the worst possible misery for everyone. The worst possible misery for everyone is bad. If the word bad is to mean anything, surely it applies to the worst possible misery for everyone… the moment you grant me that the worst possible misery for everyone is bad and therefore worth avoiding… well then you have every other possible constellation of conscious experience which, by definition, is better. So you have this continuum here of states of consciousness and given that consciousness is related to the way the universe is, it’s constrained by the laws of nature in some way, there are going to be right and wrong ways to move along this continuum… now this is, in philosophy, a somewhat controversial statement. I do not see how.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, Sam Harris: Can Science Determine Human Values? http://fora.tv/2010/11/10/Sam_Harris_Can_Science_Determine_Human_Values (2010/11/10) 2010s

Law, Way, Imagination, Nature

“People who take things too literally don't get much of anything from my teaching. By never saying anything I mean, I say a great deal. I never mean anything I say under oath. I never mean exactly what I say. Not even this. You have to read between the words.”

John Sloan (1871–1951) American painter

In John Sloan on Drawing and Painting. Mineola NY: Dover Publications, 2000. Originally published in 1939 as The Gist of Art, p. 7.
The Gist of Art (1939)

People, Reading

“Screwing things up is a virtue. Being correct is never the point. I have an almost fanatically correct assistant, and by the time she re-spells my words and corrects my punctuation, I can't read what I wrote. Being right can stop all the momentum of a very interesting idea.”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

Quoted in: N.M. Kelby (2009) The Constant Art of Being a Writer, p. 102
21st Century

Idea, Time, Reading

“The death of Black Jade coincided with the wedding hour of Pao-yu and Precious Virtue. Shortly after Snow Duck was taken to the wedding chambers, Black Jade had regained consciousness. During this lucid moment, which was not unlike the afterglow of the setting sun, she took Purple Cuckoo's hand and said to her with an effort, "My hour is here. You have served me for many years, and I had hoped that we should be together the rest of our lives… but I am afraid…"
The effort exhausted her and she fell back, panting. She still held Purple Cuckoo's hand and continued after a while, "Mei-mei, I have only one wish. I have no attachment here. After my death, tell them to send my body back to the south––"
She stopped again, and her eyes closed slowly. Purple Cuckoo felt her mistress' hand tighten over hers. Knowing this was a sign of the approaching end, she sent for Li Huan, who had gone back to her own apartment for a brief rest. When the latter returned with Quest Spring, Black Jade's hands were already cold and her eyes dull. They suppressed their sobs and hastened to dress her. Suddenly Black Jade cried, "Pao-yu, Pao-yu, how––" Those were her last words.
Above their own lamentations, Li Huan, Purple Cuckoo, and Quest Spring thought they heard the soft notes of an ethereal music in the sky. They went out to see what it was, but all they could hear was the rustling of the wind through the bamboos and all they could see was the shadow of the moon creeping down the western wall.”

Wang Chi-chen (1899–2001)

Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (1958), p. 307

Death, Hope, Music, Spring

“The Mathematics which effectually exercises, not vainly deludes or vexatiously torments studious Minds with obscure Subtilties, perplexed Difficulties, or contentious Disquisitions; which overcomes without Opposition, triumphs without Pomp, compels without Force, and rules absolutely without Loss of Liberty; which does not privately overreach a weak Faith, but openly assaults an armed Reason, obtains a total Victory, and puts on inevitable Chains; whose Words are so many Oracles, and Works as many Miracles; which blabs out nothing rashly, nor designs anything from the Purpose, but plainly demonstrates and readily performs all Things within its Verge; which obtrudes no false Shadow of Science, but the very Science itself, the Mind firmly adheres to it, as soon as possessed of it, and can never after desert it of its own Accord, or be deprived of it by any Force of others: Lastly the Mathematics, which depend upon Principles clear to the Mind, and agreeable to Experience; which draws certain Conclusions, instructs by profitable Rules, unfolds pleasant Questions; and produces wonderful Effects; which is the fruitful Parent of, I had almost said all, Arts, the 47 unshaken Foundation of Sciences, and the plentiful Fountain of Advantage to human Affairs.”

Isaac Barrow (1630–1677) English Christian theologian, and mathematician

"Ration before the University of Cambridge on being elected Lucasian Professor of Mathematics," (1660), reported in: Mathematical Lectures, (1734), p. 28

Faith, Art, Exercises, Mathematics

“Joined together with bones and sinews, having a plastering of skin and flesh, covered with hide, the body is not seen as it really is—full of intestines, full of stomach, of the lump of the liver, of bladder, of heart, of lungs, of kidneys and of spleen, of mucus, of saliva, and of sweat, and of lymph, of blood, of synovial fluid, of bile, and of fat, … and its hollow head is filled with brain. A fool, overwhelmed by ignorance, thinks of it as beautiful, but when it lies dead, swollen up and discoloured, cast away in a cemetery, relatives have no regard for it. Dogs devour it, and jackals, and wolves and worms. Crows and vultures devour it, and whatever other living creatures there are. The bhikkhu possessing knowledge here, having heard the Buddha's word, indeed understands it, for he sees the body as it really is.”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

§ 194-202
Pali Canon, Sutta Pitaka, Khuddaka Nikaya (Minor Collection), Sutta Nipata (Suttas falling down)

Beauty, Dogs, Fools, Understanding

“Shall we be despised by foreign powers for hesitating so long at a word?”

Abigail Adams (1744–1818) 2nd First Lady of the United States (1797–1801)

Letter to John Adams (7 May 1776)

“Prayer must lead us beyond mind, words, and ideas to a more spacious place where God has a chance to get in.”

Richard Rohr (1943) American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest

Source: Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (1999), p. 127

God, Idea, Chance

“[From Reginald Clinton]: I do not believe that the heart is turned from the Creator by enjoying his works. Of what avail is the sweet breath of the rose, the morning song of the lark? The pleasure they impart is not matter of necessity, and yet we delight in both. The soul of the poet is as much His gift as the fragrance of the flower, or the lay of the bird; and the page where inspired words record heroic deed, touching sorrow, or natural loveliness, is one of those pleasures for which we should be thankful. I, for my part, believe most devoutly in the Almighty mercy, when I see how much that is beautiful and gladdening has been scattered over our pilgrimage here.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Pleasure, Beauty, Soul, Flowers

“I have final say on the plot and characters, she has final say on the words and descriptions.”

James D. Macdonald (1954) American author and critic

Brief Biography http://biography.jrank.org/pages/1946/Macdonald-James-D-1954.html – JRank Articles

“The Dong button was just that, a big green button with the word Dong engraved on it. You pushed it, and it went dong. Well, that was almost too simple. Should there not be a deeper reason for it? And the small instruction plate over it didn’t add much. It read: “Wrong prong, bong gong.””

R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) American writer

Description of a Dong button, which is later revealed to reverse the flow of time for the wielder, if there has been a dire error made which needs correcting, Ch. 3
Ch. 3 -->
Space Chantey (1968)

Reading

“Tell all the stones we're gonna make a building…
We'll be cut into shape and set into place.
Or if you'd rather be a window, I'll gladly be the frame,
Reflecting any kind words, we'll let in all their blame…”

Aaron Weiss

Torches Together.
Catch For Us The Foxes (2004)

“All life, every living thing is a word for God in His mystery.”

Michael Elmore-Meegan (1959) British humanitarian

All Will be Well (2004)

Life, God

“Oh! for this baptism of fire! when every spoken word for Jesus shall be a thunderbolt, and every prayer shall bring forth a mighty flood.”

Abbott Eliot Kittredge (1834–1912) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 22.

“As the great words of freedom and fulfillment are pronounced by campaigning leaders and politicians, on the screens and radios and stages, they turn into meaningless sounds which obtain meaning only in the context of propaganda, business, discipline, and relaxation. This assimilation of the ideal with reality testifies to the extent to which the ideal has been surpassed. It is brought down from the sublimated realm of the soul or the spirit or the inner man, and translated into operational terms and problems. Here are the progressive elements of mass culture. The perversion is indicative of the fact that advanced industrial society is confronted with the possibility of a materialization of ideals. The capabilities of this society are progressively reducing the sublimated realm in which the condition of man was represented, idealized, and indicted. Higher culture becomes part of the material culture. In this transformation, it loses the greater part of its truth.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 57-58

Truth, Soul, Business, Problem

“Justice is a constant uprightness in words and in deeds.”

Alexander Hume

Four Discoveries of Praise to God, eds. ‎C. Matthew McMahon and ‎Therese B. McMahon (Puritan Publications, 2012), Ch. 2, p. 28

Justice

“I think "immoral" is probably the wrong word to use…I prefer the word "unethical."”

Ivan Boesky (1937) American investor, white-collar criminal

Den of Thieves (1992), by John B. Stewart

Thinking

“The president's linguistic infelicities—a word salad, at times—have given the press popinjays and their Washington overlords the foothold needed to go after the president. Throw in the 'bad' habits of a businessman he has retained. Trump transacts with everyone—Russians too. We voted for deals, not wars. This is the sum and substance of President Trump's offenses. That, and beating Hillary Clinton to the White House.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Trump Fends Off 'Showboat' Comey And The Federal Zombies," http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/06/trump_fends_off_showboat_comey_and_the_federal_zombies.html The American Thinker, June 9, 2017. 2010s, 2017

War, Time, Housing

“For seventeen months I have cried aloud
calling you back to your lair.
I hurled myself at the hangman's foot.
You are my son, changed into nightmare.
Confusion occupies the world,
and I am powerless to tell
somebody brute from something human,
or on what day the word spells, "Kill!"”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), Prologue

World, Change

“Daniel Dale is in my backyard taking pictures. I have little kids. He's taking pictures of little kids, I don't want to say that word but you start thinking what this guy is all about.”

Rob Ford (1969–2016) Canadian politician, 64th Mayor of Toronto

Ford, Interview to Conrad Black after confronting Daniel Dale http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/rob-ford-kids-quote-sparks-controversy-with-toronto-star-1.2458389 (10 December 2013); Ford subsequently withdrew the statements and apologized http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/rob-ford-apologizes-again-daniel-dale-drops-lawsuit-1.2469456 to Dale after Dale threatened to sue for defamation. 2010s, 2013

Guy, Thinking

“This is the Outsider's extremity. He does not prefer not to believe; he doesn't like feeling that futility gets the last word in the universe; his human nature would like to find something it can answer to with complete assent. But honesty prevents his accepting a solution that he cannot reason about.”

Colin Wilson book The Outsider

Source: The Outsider (1956), Chapter Five, The Pain Threshold

Feeling, Nature, Universe

“The world had still a long march to make from the Rose of Queen Blanche to the guillotine of Madame du Barry; but the Roman de la Rose made epoch. For the first time since Constantine proclaimed the reign of Christ, a thousand years, or so, before Philip the Fair dethroned him, the deepest expression of social feeling ended with the word: Despair.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

World, Feeling, Time, Christ

“Men are idolaters, and want something to look at and kiss and hug, or throw themselves down before; they always did, they always will; and if you don't make it of wood, you must make it of words…”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

Source: The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872), p. 266 The Writings of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Vol. 3 (1892)

Men, Kiss

“The strange light illuminated all those night-time meetings that took place in every imaginable sort of café; the lips mouthing defiant words, heedless of restraint or consequence, often overbearing and brutal as only Norwegians can be, vast shadows of impotence misery and shabbiness – spirits training for fulfillment, striving in vain to be great, complete, unique. [Munch describes the environment and atmosphere of the Norwegian bohemia in Kristiana, where he himself lived and worked when he was about 23] And at the center of all the faces there would be Jaeger, whose logic was as sharp as a scythe and as cold as an icy blast..”

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) Norwegian painter and printmaker

in Edvard Munch, Pola Gaugain, Oslo Aschehoug, 1933, p. 15
after 1930

Imagination, Light, Time, Training

“Any intervention now would be a triumph for Germany! A military triumph! A war triumph! Intervention would have been for us a military disaster. Has the Secretary of State for War no right to express an opinion upon a thing which would be a military disaster? That is what I did, and I do not withdraw a single syllable. It was essential. I could tell the hon. Member how timely it was. I can tell the hon. Member it was not merely the expression of my own opinion, but the expression of the opinion of the Cabinet, of the War Committee, and of our military advisers. It was the opinion of every ally. I can understand men who conscientiously object to all wars. I can understand men who say you will never redeem humanity except by passive endurance of every evil. I can understand men, even—although I do not appreciate the strength of their arguments—who say they do not approve of this particular war. That is not my view, but I can understand it, and it requires courage to say so. But what I cannot understand, what I cannot appreciate, what I cannot respect, is when men preface their speeches by saying they believe in the war, they believe in its origin, they believe in its objects and its cause, and during the time the enemy were in the ascendant never said a word about peace; but the moment our gallant troops are climbing through endurance and suffering up the path of ascendancy begin to howl with the enemy.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1916/oct/11/statement-by-prime-minister in the House of Commons (11 October 1916) Secretary of State for War

Men, War, Peace, Courage

“Virginity, mysticism, melancholy, – three unknown words, – three new maladies brought in by Christ.”

Théophile Gautier book Mademoiselle de Maupin

Virginité, mysticisme, mélancolie, – trois mots inconnus, – trois maladies nouvelles apportées par le Christ.
Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835; Paris: Charpentier, 1866), ch. 9, p. 198; Mademoiselle de Maupin; and, One of Cleopatra's Nights (New York: Random House, 1948) p. 136.

Christ

“In other words, Lincoln's belief was that slavery could be ended peacefully through the action of the states themselves. It couldn't be done through direct intervention by the Federal government, but it could be done within the states themselves. And after all of the states north of the Mason-Dixon line had adopted plans for emancipation—slavery was lawful in every one of the 13 colonies, and the 13 states which declared their independence.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), Q&A

Law

“97. One of the brethren owned only a book of the Gospels. He sold this and gave the money for the support of the poor. He made a statement that deserves remembrance: "I have sold the very word that speaks to me saying: 'Sell your possessions and give to the poor.'"”

Evagrius Ponticus (345–399) Christian monk

The Praktikos

Money, Books, Support

“Roswell Gardiner has never wavered in his faith, from the time when his feelings were awakened by the just view of his own insignificance, as compared to the power of God! He then learned the first, great lesson in religious belief, that of humility; without which no man can be truly penitent, or truly a Christian. He no longer thought of measuring the Deity with his narrow faculties, or of setting up his blind conclusions, in the face of positive revelations. He saw that all must be accepted, or none; and there was too much evidence, too much inherent truth, a morality too divine, to allow a mind like his to reject the gospel altogether. With Mary at his side, he has continued to worship the Trinity, accepting its mysteries in an humble reliance on the words of inspired men.”

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American author

The Sea Lions or The Lost Sealers (1849)

Men, God, Truth, Faith

“In 1990 as a teenager I took my first step in cricket and was eager for some kind words in the cricketing world and I then I came across a comment from an accomplished Indian cricket. I quote 'This lad I don't see him winning Test match for India either at home or abroad. He rarely turns the ball, at best he can be restrictive'. The assessment came from Mr Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi. Two decades of international cricket and 619 Test wicket later, it is indeed a great honour to address this lecture.”

Anil Kumble (1970) Former Indian cricketer

India became a sporting nation in the last decade: Kumble

World, Quotes, Home

“Have you learned the alphabet of heaven and can count three? Do you know the number of God's family? Can you put mysteries into words? Do you presume to fable of the ineffable? Pray, what geographer are you, that speak of heaven's topography? Whose friend are you that speak of God's personality? … Tell me of the height of the mountains of the moon, or of the diameter of space, and I may believe you, but of the secret history of the Almighty, and I shall pronounce thee mad.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Sunday

God, Secret, Family, History

“Many magnify in words the importance of public duties, but few appreciate them in feeling; and that, not so much for want of feeling, as for want of carrying it out to whatever results the understanding reaches.”

Henry Taylor (1800–1886) English playwright and poet

Source: The Statesman (1836), Ch. 9. p. 64

Feeling, Understanding

“I think that I say those things that make people so angry, not because I really mean them, but because I simply thought of a clever way to say them. It's a kind of art, to think of the perfect way to say an idea, and when you think of it then you have to say it, because words don't exist until you say them."
"A pretty feeble kind of art, Nyef, and I say you should give it up before it gets you killed.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, The Memory Of Earth (1992)

People, Art, Way, Idea

“We have no reason to suppose that we are the Creator's last word.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Everybody's Political What's What http://books.google.com/books?id=JSwBAAAAMAAJ&q=%22we+have+no+reason+to+suppose+that+we+are+the+Creator's+last+word%22&pg=PA234#v=onepage (1944) 1940s and later

“Luck's just another word for destiny…either you make your own or you're screwed.”

John le Carré book The Mission Song

The Mission Song (2006)

“The hordes of words that fill our books proclaim our ignorance, reveal the obscurities that flood our knowledge. If we were perfectly enlightened, our moral books would contain only maxims and our books on physics and spirituality would contain only axioms and facts. Everything else is clutter and shows no more than our gropings, our efforts, and our difficulties.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

Books, Knowledge, Effort

“The correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting — no more — and then it motivates one towards originality and instills the desire for truth. Suppose someone were to go and ask his neighbors for fire and find a substantial blaze there, and just stay there continually warming himself: that is no different from someone who goes to someone else to get to some of his rationality, and fails to realize that he ought to ignite his own flame, his own intellect, but is happy to sit entranced by the lecture, and the words trigger only associative thinking and bring, as it were, only a flush to his cheeks and a glow to his limbs; but he has not dispelled or dispersed, in the warm light of philosophy, the internal dank gloom of his mind.”

Plutarch book Moralia

οὐ γὰρ ὡς ἀγγεῖον ὁ νοῦς ἀποπληρώσεως ἀλλ' ὑπεκκαύματος μόνον ὥσπερ ὕλη δεῖται ὁρμὴν ἐμποιοῦντος εὑρετικὴν καὶ ὄρεξιν ἐπὶ τὴν ἀλήθειαν. ὥσπερ οὖν εἴ τις ἐκ γειτόνων πυρὸς δεόμενος, εἶτα πολὺ καὶ λαμπρὸν εὑρὼν αὐτοῦ καταμένοι διὰ τέλους θαλπόμενος, οὕτως εἴ τις ἥκων λόγου μεταλαβεῖν πρὸς ἄλλον οὐχ οἴεται δεῖν φῶς οἰκεῖον ἐξάπτειν καὶ νοῦν ἴδιον, ἀλλὰ χαίρων τῇ ἀκροάσει κάθηται θελγόμενος, οἷον ἔρευθος ἕλκει καὶ γάνωμα τὴν δόξαν ἀπὸ τῶν λόγων, τὸν δ᾽ ἐντὸς: εὐρῶτα τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ ζόφον οὐκ ἐκτεθέρμαγκεν οὐδ᾽ ἐξέωκε διὰ φιλοσοφίας.
On Listening to Lectures, Plutarch, Moralia 48C (variously called De auditione Philosophorum or De Auditu or De Recta Audiendi Ratione)
Moralia, Others

Happiness, Truth, Motivation, Thinking

“A movement is pioneered by men of words, materialized by fanatics, and consolidated by men of action.”

Eric Hoffer book The True Believer

The True Believer (1951), Part Four: Beginning and End

Men

“God cannot lie; and if, fleeing for refuge, you have run to the hope set before you in the gospel — if, nestling in some invitation or promise of God's changeless word, you are resolved that Death and the Judgment shall find you there, you are safe. The way to honor God is to trust His truth, and hidden in His word you are also hidden in His love. Rest there.”

James Hamilton (1814–1867) Scottish minister and a prolific author of religious tracts

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 240.

Love, Death, God, Truth

“In speaking of agricultural management, the French say, I'economie rurale, and the English, rural economy; and yet neither the one nor the other intend thereby to signify the absolute execution of agricultural operations, but only the division and circumstances or appurtenances of agriculture. In Germany, where a Latin or Greek name has lately been thought to give dignity to a science, and has, consequently, been introduced into the title of most of the scientific works, some authors have begun to term, not only the science of agriculture, but agriculture itself, the oekonomie; and the word is used exclusively in this sense by many persons. It is for this reason that those who are supposed to practise the art with the greatest skill and science, are termed oekonomen (economists); and that some of those who are employed in superintending the labourers, even though they frequently have not the least idea of the actual principles of agriculture, chose to be designated by this title.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

Source: The Principles of Agriculture, 1844, Section II. The Economy, Organization and Direction of an Agricultural Enterprise, p. 55.

Art, Idea, Sense, Science

“Jargon or gobbledygook, or what people who live in Washington or Ottawa call "federal prose," [is] the gabble of abstractions and vague words which avoids any simple or direct statement…. Direct and simple language always has some force behind it, and the writers of gobbledygook don't want to be forceful; they want to be soothing and reassuring.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

"Quotes", The Educated Imagination (1963), Talk 6: The Vocation of Eloquence

People

“It sets a path towards the elimination of nation states and the emergence of a European state in the strictest sense of the word. I'm definitely opposed to it.”

Lech Kaczyński (1949–2010) Polish politician, president of Poland

On the EU Constitution
Rzeczpospolita interview (March 2005)

Sense

“Now, my dear Philippine, a few words more. I am not rich; but my affairs are not in a deranged or desperate state, and were I to die to-day, and my property sold, it would fetch 5,000 dollars at least, so that I possess 2,000 dollars more than my father gave me. I have but 400 dollars salary; my practice is good, and becomes daily more lucrative; the income I derive from it now is more than sufficient to keep a good and respectable house; my prospects are flattering; but I can and must not name them at present; I will not bring them into account.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Housing

“The creation mandate was precisely the requirement that man subdue the earth and exercise dominion over it. There is not one word of Scripture to indicate or imply that this mandate ever was revoked. There is every word of Scripture to declare that this mandate must and shall be fulfilled. Those who attempt to break it shall themselves be broken.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Source: Writings, The Institutes of Biblical Law (1973), p. 14

Exercises

“… I'm a Christian, and as a Christian, I can't prove it to you, but God has definitely shown me very clearly through His word, and He has shown Himself in the person of Jesus Christ, that the Bible is the word of God. I admit that that is where I start from. I can challenge people that you can go and test that, you can make predictions based on that, you can check the prophecies in the Bible, you can check the statements in Genesis. I did a little bit of that tonight. I can't ultimately prove that to you, all I can do is to say to someone look, if the Bible really is what it claims to be, if it really is the word of God, (and that's what it claims), then, check it out, and the Bible says that if you come to God believing that He is, He will reveal Himself to you and you will know. As Christians we can say we know, and so, as far as the word of God is concerned… No, one is ever going to convince me that the word of God is not true.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

Bill Nye, " Bill Nye Debates Ken Ham (video - 165:32) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6kgvhG3AkI&hd=1", YouTube, (February 4, 2014) "Bill Nye Debates Ken Ham" (February 4, 2014)

God, People, Christ, Personality

“2) "the a of différance also recalls that spacing is temporization, the detour and postponement by means of which intuition, perception, consummation - in a word, the relationship to the present, the reference to a present reality, to a being - are always deferred. Deferred by virtue of the very principle of difference which holds that an element functions and signifies, takes on or conveys meaning, only by referring to another past or future element in an economy of traces. This economic aspect of différance, which brings into play a certain not conscious calculation in a field of forces, is inseparable from the more narrowly semiotic aspect of différance.”

Jacques Derrida book Positions

Source: Positions (1982), p. 28

Reality, Past, Future

“Jim was a big sheepdog of a man, 6-feet-4, 250 pounds, softhearted, soft-spoken. I never heard him use a dirty word; I never heard him tell a salacious story. Yet his novels are full of such words and stories; he seemed to have a need to dig deeply into the dark depraved nature of man. Nobody did it better. But then, anything he did, he did better. Two years ago, crippled by strokes, he appeared in a film, "Farewell, My Lovely," playing the cuckolded judge. When his wife in the film, played by Charlotte Rampling, carries on with Robert Mitchum in front of him, there is a look on his face that is part bewilderment, part despair and all forgiveness. He was that way, turning up the dark corners of the soul with love and forgiveness.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

From "Jim Thompson, 1906 - 1977"
Other Topics

Love, Way, Soul, Forgiveness

“I have used the word 'flow' at many places without really elaborating its meaning. What is this flow? And what are these joys? I could call them moments of magic. I see an anology between these moments and the high that you experience when you play badminton or go jogging. Flow is a sensation we experience when we act with total involvement. During flow, action follows action according to an internal logic that seems to need no conscious intervention on the part of the worker. There is no hurry, there are no distracting demands on one's attention. The past and the future disappear. So does the distinction between self and the activity.”

A. P. J. Abdul Kalam book Wings of Fire

Source: Wings of Fire, p. 91.

Past, Future, Joy, Parting

“The reverse process is extremely important to me — that artistic images can inspire to words and different myths, and that in certain cultures this process has been the normal relation between images and words. It is known as a rule in the so-called Germanic art, and through the middle ages heaps of such stories are directly inspired by fantastic images.”

Asger Jorn (1914–1973) Danish artist

Quote in Jorn's letter to anthropologist Francis Huxley (1970) - on the relation between words and images
1959 - 1973, Various sources

Age, Art

“What is good looking, as Horace Smith remarks, but looking good? Be good, be womanly, be gentle,—generous in your sympathies, heedful of the well-being of all around you; and, my word for it, you will not lack kind words of admiration.”

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892) American Quaker poet and advocate of the abolition of slavery

The Beautiful, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“The word phobic has its place when properly used, but lately it's been declawed by the pompous insistence that most animosity is based upon fear rather than loathing. No credit is given for distinguishing between these two very different emotions.”

David Sedaris book Me Talk Pretty One Day

Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000)

Fear

“HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT. FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.”

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) American writer

"I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" (1967)

Hate, Feeling

“We now know that linguistic change does not operate in such an across-the-board manner. Some speakers introduce the change into their speech before others; some use it more frequently and consistently than others; and some words are affected before others. A more accurate view is to think of a change gradually spreading through the words of a language – a view that is known as a lexical diffusion. At first just a few people use a change sporadically in a few words (commonly occurring words are influenced very quickly); then a large number of words are affected, with the sound gradually being used more consistently; then the majority of the words take up the change.”

David Crystal (1941) British linguist and writer

Source: How Language Works, 2007, p. 359

People, Thinking, Change

“For do our Theologians pretend to make a monopoly of the word, action, and may not the atheists likewise take possession of it, and affirm that plants, animals, men, &c. are nothing but particular actions of one simple universal substance, which exerts itself from a blind and absolute necessity?”

David Hume book A Treatise of Human Nature

Part 4, Section 5
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 1: Of the understanding

Men, Universe, Animals

“No word floats without an anchoring connection within an overall structure.”

Stanley Fish (1938) American academic

Source: How To Write A Sentence And How To Read One (2011), Chapter 2, Why You Don't Find The Answer In Strunk And White, p. 17

“It depends on how you define the word "racialist." If you mean being conscious of the differences between men and nations, and from that, races, then we are all racialists. However, if you mean a man who despises a human being because he belongs to another race, or a man who believes that one race is inherently superior to another, then the answer is emphatically "No."”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

When asked by David Frost if he were a racialist (3 January 1969), from Simon Heffer, Like the Roman. The Life of Enoch Powell (Phoenix, 1999), p. 504.
1960s

Men, Dependency

“Classical poetry counts on people's similarity. It regards idea associations as unequivocal. This is a mistake. In any case, it rests on a fulcrum of idea associations: 'Above the peaks is peace.'... The poet counts on poetic feelings. And what is a poetic feeling? The whole poetry of peace / quiet stands or falls on the reader's ability to feel. Words are not judged here.”

Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) German artist

1920s
Source: 'Consistent Poetry Art', Schwitters' contribution to 'Magazine G', No. 3, 1924, ed. Hans Richter; as quoted in I is Style, ed. Siegfried Gohr & Gunda Luyken, (commissioned by Rudi Fuchs, director of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam), NAI Publishers, Rotterdam 2000, p. 151.

People, Peace, Feeling, Idea

“Islam has emphasized Ethics, good deeds and nice words in order to build a better world and an ideal society as it aims at bringing up the best in humans.”

Mohammed Alkobaisi (1970) Iraqi Islamic scholar

Understanding Islam, "Morals and Ethics" http://vod.dmi.ae/media/96716/Ep_03_Morals_and_Ethics Dubai Media

World

“I am gratified by her having pleasure in what I write, but I wish the knowledge of my being exposed to her discerning criticism may not hurt my style, by inducing too great a solicitude. I begin already to weigh my words and sentences more than I did, and am looking about for a sentiment, an illustration, or a metaphor in every corner of the room. Could my ideas flow as fast as the rain in the store-closet it would be charming.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter (1809-01-24) [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters

Pleasure, Idea, Knowledge, Hurt

“As Tarzan finished reading, Clayton entered and came toward him with extended hand.
Here was the man who had Tarzan's title, and Tarzan's estates, and was going to marry the woman whom Tarzan loved — the woman who loved Tarzan. A single word from Tarzan would make a great difference in this man's life.
It would take away his title and his lands and his castles, and — it would take them away from Jane Porter also. "I say, old man," cried Clayton, "I haven't had a chance to thank you for all you've done for us. It seems as though you had your hands full saving our lives in Africa and here.
"I'm awfully glad you came on here. We must get better acquainted. I often thought about you, you know, and the remarkable circumstances of your environment.
"If it's any of my business, how the devil did you ever get into that bally jungle?"”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

"I was born there," said Tarzan, quietly. "My mother was an Ape, and of course she couldn't tell me much about it. I never knew who my father was."
Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 28 : Conclusion

Love, Life, Business, Chance

“There are probably no creatures that require more the protective Divine word against the presumption of man than the animals, which, like man, have sensations and instincts, but whose body and powers are nevertheless subservient to man. In relation to them man so easily forgets that injured animal muscle twitches just like human muscle, that the maltreated nerves of an animal sicken like human nerves, that the animal being is just as sensitive to cuts, blows and beating as man. Thus man becomes the torturer of the animal soul, which has been subjected to him only for the fulfilment of humane and wise purposes; sometimes out of self-interest, at other times in order to satisfy a whim, sometimes out of thoughtlessness—yes, even for the satisfaction of crude satanic desire.”

Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808–1888) Jewish theologian, germany 19th century

Horeb: A Philosophy of Jewish Laws and Observances, translated by Isidor Grunfeld, London: Soncino Press, 1968, vol. II https://books.google.it/books?id=tEIIAAAAIAAJ, p. 292, sec. 415.

Soul, Time, Animals, Forgetting

“Why doesn't Senator Kerry, rather than saying, I meant to put in the word, "us" — and you try to put in "us" here, left out the word "us" — and if you don't — if you don't, you get stuck in Iraq. Where does "us" fit in? You don't "us" get stuck? I don't understand. It just — it doesn't scan here.”

Tony Snow (1955–2008) American White House Press Secretary

White House Press Briefing, on Kerry's claim to have meant "you get us stuck in Iraq." http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2006/11/20061101-3.html (2006-11-01).

Understanding

“It has often been asserted that the polytheistic Hindu failed to establish a spiritual kinship with the monotheistic Muslim who held much that is Indian in scorn and still seeks his spiritual inspiration abroad. How can we say that India ignored the teachings of Islam when we find saints like Nanak and Chaitanya, Namdev and Tukaram, preaching the brotherhood of man and the futility of caste in matters spiritual? Although attempts on Hindu culture and institutions fill the pages of Indian history, how can we assert that Muslims ignored the appeal of Hindu culture when we find Muhammad Jayasi weaving a beautiful romance to illustrate the teachings of Hindu philosophy, when we read the simple devotional hymns of Kabir and Sheikh Farid, who refused to recognise the barriers of caste and creed on the high road to God’s kingdom? “Utter not one disagreeable word,” said Farid, “since the true lord is in all men. Distress no one’s heart for every heart is a precious jewel.” In the same strain did Kabir proclaim, “There is the same God for the Hindu as for the Muslim.””

Syama Prasad Mookerjee (1901–1953) Indian politician

A rejuvenated India found an Akbar to put an end to political chaos and social disharmony and a Shah Jahan to dream a dream in marble the like of which is not to be met in the world.
Speech delivered at Patna University Convocation on 27th November 1937.

Men, God, World, Beauty

“He pointed diagonally across the lake with a ski-pole, to where a broad slope of pine trees covered with frost shone golden in the sun.
"Do you know what those black lumps on the branches of that pine are?"
"Aren't they just heath-grouse? Kauko looked in the direction indicated by his brother's ski pole.
"Just heath-grouse!" Auku shouted. "Just heath-grouse! It's a wonder you didn't say just chickadees! You're some hunter, you are. Those are ptarmigan, genuine hook-beaked ptarmigan, and like damned blockheads, we have to be without a gun."
"You're starting to make a habit of cursing." Kauko was a little annoyed at the sharpness of his brother's eyes and was not quite willing to admit that he was right.
"The word 'damn' isn't cursing."
"What is it then? And there's no proof that those are ptarmigan." "Hmh!" Kauko heard a laugh behind him. "We'd be carrying a lot more rabbits and birds back to the house if I did the snaring. "You can't even get a permit to carry a gun yet," said Kauko.
"Who cares about permits? If I can't get a permit to carry a gun, then I'll drag it along behind me. Do you need a permit for that too?" "Don't be smart."”

Kalle Päätalo (1919–2000) Finnish novelist

Kalle Päätalo (1960), Our Daily Bread: A Novel, p. 67

Bird, Tree, Sun, Housing

“The so-called "don't say gay" law is premised on the misguided belief that, by not talking about gay people, they can simply make us disappear. I am here to tell Tennessee and all LGBT youth and teachers who would be affected by this law, that I am here for you. In fact, I am lending my name to the cause. Any time you need to say the word "gay", you can simply say "Takei". For example, you could safely proclaim you are a supporter of Takei marriage. If you're in a more festive mood, you can march in a Takei pride parade. Even homophobic slurs don't seem as hurtful if someone says, "That is soooo Takei."”

George Takei (1937) American actor and author

Regarding the Tennessee Senate Judiciary Committee passing state senator Stacey Campfield's bill SB49, which bans mentioning homosexuality in public schools prior to ninth grade

Marriage, People, Youth, Law

“The generally accepted idea that He will return as a triumphant warrior, omnipotent and irresistible, has surely no basis in fact. That He will ultimately lead His people, humanity, into Jerusalem is a fact, founded on a secure foundation, but it will not be into a Jewish city called Jerusalem but into "the place of peace" (as the word "Jerusalem" means).”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: The Reappearance of the Christ (1948), Chapter III: The Reappearance of the Christ, World Expectancy

People, Peace, Idea

“A man who is convinced of the truth of his religion is indeed never tolerant. At the least, he is to feel pity for the adherent of another religion but usually it does not stop there. The faithful adherent of a religion will try first of all to convince those that believe in another religion and usually he goes on to hatred if he is not successful. However, hatred then leads to persecution when the might of the majority is behind it.
In the case of a Christian clergyman, the tragic-comical is found in this: that the Christian religion demands love from the faithful, even love for the enemy. This demand, because it is indeed superhuman, he is unable to fulfill. Thus intolerance and hatred ring through the oily words of the clergyman. The love, which on the Christian side is the basis for the conciliatory attempt towards Judaism is the same as the love of a child for a cake. That means that it contains the hope that the object of the love will be eaten up…”

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

Letter to Rabbi Solomon Goldman of Chicago's Anshe Emet Congregation, p. 51
Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein's God (1997)

Love, Truth, Faith, Religion

“The word “art” does not designate the concept of a mere eventuality; it is a concept of rank.”

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German philosopher

Source: Nietzsche (1961), p. 125

Art

““Try to be a man about whom nothing is known,” our father said, when we were young. Our father said several other interesting things, but we have forgotten what they were. “Keep quiet,” he said. That we remember. He wished more quiet. One tends to want that, in a National Park. Our father was a man about whom nothing was known. Nothing is known about him still. He gave us the recipes. He was not very interesting. A tree is more interesting. A suitcase is more interesting. A canned good is more interesting. When we sing the father hymn, we notice that he was not very interesting. The words of the hymn notice it. It is explictly commented upon, in the text.”

Donald Barthelme book Snow White

Source: Snow White (1967), pp.18–19.

Tree, Singing

“The line "because you're mine, I walk the line." It kept coming to me, you know? But I was — I was … young and not been married too long. Yes, it kept coming to me. Because you're mine, I walk the line. And then the words just naturally flowed. It was an easy song to write.”

Johnny Cash (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter

CNN interview (2002)

Nature

“No one in the history of the written word, not even William MacGonagall, or Spike Milligan or D. H. Lawrence, is so wide open to damaging quotation. Try this, more or less at random: 'A murderer in the moment of his murder could feel a sense of beauty and perfection as complete as the transport of a saint.' Or this: Film is a phenomenon whose resemblance to death has been ignored for too long. His italics.
On every page Mailer will come up with a formulation both grandiose and crass. This is expected of him. It is also expected of the reviewer to introduce a lingering 'yet' or 'however' at some point, and say that 'somehow' Mailer's 'fearless honesty' redeems his notorious excesses. He isn't frightened of sounding outrageous; he isn't frightened of making a fool of himself; and, above all, he isn't frightened of being boring. Well, fear has its uses. Perhaps he ought to be a little less frightened of being frightened.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

Review of The Essential Mailer by Norman Mailer, p. 267
The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000 (2001)

Death, Fear, Beauty, Fools

“In the lexicon of youth, which fate reserves
For a bright manhood, there is no such word
As "fail."”

Edward Bulwer-Lytton Richelieu

Act iii, Scene i.
Richelieu (1839)

Fate, Youth

“From a high tower I have looked to the four points of the horizon.
I will go and lift up the dead on the battlefield.
I will stretch out their contorted arms and legs.
I will close their cold eyelids on their fixed pupils.
I cannot bear to see eyes if I do not receive any words.
Invisible life entrusts us with sad tasks,
I look back to my years, and the pains I have suffered
are not enough.
Soon there will be clashings of men and horrible clanging sounds.
And people hunted, pushed, wrenched.
Also I will find myself in the midst of the madness of war.
I will open pure words, orders of thought, fraternal acts.
In the meantime they will bring forward the man
condemned to death and they will tell him to dig his own grave.
He will look up at the still hills and the sky.
Some distant sounds of life will still reach him.
He will not have time to think back to his many days –
to the voices of his dear people, and the close relationships.
Not even will he be able to look ahead,
to come to terms with what is happening now.
And when the shots will be fired, with the flash a cry will go up
The human cry which is too late, and it’s lost.
To free, to free as soon as possible.
They will ask me: why don’t you come to fight with us?
They will not understand, they will carry on with the war.
I loved to be with other people, as the light of the day.
It is so good to work together, in trust, in mutual help.
To lose myself in the crowd in modest clothes.
In a circle of equals to listen and to speak.
And now nobody wants to listen, and yet they are all people.
I have become a stranger, the others do not know that I am there.
The abrupt reply, the friend who looks the other way.
It would be easy to join them in earnest action.
Forgetting the deeper unity, beyond the war?
I remain here, isolated from everybody,
working for a deeper togetherness.
Everything was only a trial, reality must yet begin.
Every being was partaking of another reality yet he did not know.
But now this reality is becoming clear,
and it matters only what opens us to it.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

Love, Life, Death, Men

“I would not like to use big words to apply generic labels. It certainly contains elements that can favor peace, it also has other elements: we must always seek the best elements.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

When asked by reporters if Islam is a religion of peace. [Pope says terror attacks cannot be defined as anti-Christian, Catholic News Agency, 2005-07-25, http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/pope_says_terror_attacks_cannot_be_defined_as_antichristian/, 2016-02-25]
2005

Peace

“Imagine a lover who has received a letter from his beloved – I assume that God’s Word is just as precious to you as this letter is to the lover. I assume that you read and think you ought to read God’s Word in the same way the lover reads this letter.”

Sören Kierkegaard book For Self-Examination

Soren Kierkegaard, For Self-Examination, Hong p. 26
1850s, For Self-Examination (1851), What is Required in Order to Look at Oneself with True Blessing in the Mirror of the Word?

God, Way, Imagination, Lovers

“Redemption's just a word and as I'm not a Christian it means nothing to me.”

Susan Howatch book The Wheel of Fortune

The Wheel of Fortune (1984), Part 6: Hal