Quotations by Franz Kafka

FRANZ KAFKA (1883 –1924), ONE OF THE SIGNIFICANT AUSTRIAN (CZECH) JEWISH NOVELISTS AND SHORT STORY WRITERS OF THE 20^TH-CENTURY MODERN WORLD LITERATURE.

 

 

 “Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live.”

~ Franz Kafka, The Trial

 

“I’m tired, can’t think of anything and want only to lay my face in your lap, feel your hand on my head and remain like that through all eternity.”

~ Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

 

“This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.”

~ Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

 

“I have spent all my life resisting the desire to end it.”

~ Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

 

“I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more”

~ Franz Kafka, The Castle

 

“It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.”

~ Franz Kafka, The Trial

 

“You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart; imagine my heartbeat when you are in this state.”

~ Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice‎

 

“I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.”

~ Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

 

“It would have been so pointless to kill himself that, even if he had wanted to, the pointlessness would have made him unable.”

~ Franz Kafka, The Trial

 

“Life's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come.”

~ Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910 1923

 

“Should I be grateful or should I curse the fact that despite all misfortune I can still feel love, an unearthly love but still for earthly objects.”

~ Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

 

“Being alone has a power over me that never fails. My interior dissolves (for the time being only superficially) and is ready to release what lies deeper. When I am willfully alone, a slight ordering of my interior begins to take place and I need nothing more.”

~ Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

 

“Forget everything. Open the windows. Clear the room. The wind blows through it. You see only its emptiness, you search in every corner and don’t find yourself.”

~ Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

 

“Nor is it perhaps really love when I say that for me you are the most beloved; In this love you are like a knife, with which I explore myself.”

~ Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

 

“Everything you love will probably be lost, but in the end, love will return in another way.”

~ Franz Kafka, Kafka's Selected Stories

 

“My condition is not unhappiness, but it is also not happiness, not indifference, not weakness, not fatigue, not another interest – so what is it then?”

~ Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

 

“I can’t feel a thing; All mournful petal storms are dancing inside the very private spring of my head.”

~ Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

 

“It seems to be a fact that man, tortured by his demons, avenges himself blindly on his fellow-man.”

~ Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

 

“You must not pay too much attention to opinions. The written word is unalterable, and opinions are often only an expression of despair.”

~ Franz Kafka, The Trial

 

“If a man has his eyes bound, you can encourage him as much as you like to stare through the bandage, but he'll never see anything.”

~ Franz Kafka, The Castle

 

“Since I met you, I've felt abandoned without your nearness; your nearness is all I ever dream of, the only thing.”

~ Franz Kafka, The Castle

 

“I'm on such a dangerous road, Milena. You're standing firmly near a tree, young, beautiful, your eyes subduing with their radiance the suffering world.”

~ Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

 

“The door could not be heard slamming; they had probably left it open, as is the custom in homes where a great misfortune has occurred.”

~ Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

 

“The man in ecstasy and the man drowning—both throw up their arms.”

~ Franz Kafka, Blue Octavo Notebooks

 

“Don't despair, not even over the fact that you don't despair. Just when everything seems over with, new forces come marching up, and precisely that means that you are alive. And if they don't, then everything is over with here, once and for all.”

~ Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

 

“There can be no more beautiful spot to die in, no spot more worthy of total despair, than one’s own novel.”

~ Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

 

“Illusions are more common than changes in fortune”

~ Franz Kafka, The Castle

 

“They did not know what we can now sense as we contemplate the course of history: that change begins in the soul before it shows in our lives...”

~ Franz Kafka, The Great Wall of China

 

“It's sometimes quite astonishing that a single, average life is enough to encompass so much that it's at all possible ever to have any success in one's work here.”

~ Franz Kafka, The Trial

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Quotations by Walter Scott

WALTER SCOTT, IN FULL SIR WALTER SCOTT, 1ST BARONET (1771 –1832) WAS A LEADING SCOTTISH NOVELIST, POET, AND CRITIC.

 

“For he that does good, having the unlimited power to do evil, deserves praise not only for the good which he performs, but for the evil which he forbears.”

~ Walter Scott, Ivanhoe

 

“Wounds sustained for the sake of conscience carry their own balsam with the blow.”

~ Walter Scott, Rob Roy

 

“You will, I trust, resemble a forest plant, which has indeed, by some accident, been brought up in the greenhouse, and thus rendered delicate and effeminate, but which regains its native firmness and tenacity, when exposed for a season to the winter air.”

~ Walter Scott, Redgauntlet

 

“I have heard men talk about the blessings of freedom," he said to himself, "but I wish any wise man would teach me what use to make of it now that I have it.”

~ Walter Scott, Ivanhoe

 

“Chivalry!---why, maiden, she is the nurse of pure and high affection---the stay of the oppressed, the redresser of grievances, the curb of the power of the tyrant ---Nobility were but an empty name without her, and liberty finds the best protection in her lance and her sword.”

~ Walter Scott, Ivanhoe

 

“No word of commiseration can make a burden feel one feather's weight lighter to the slave who must carry it.”

~ Walter Scott, Rob Roy

 

“I should be rather like the wild hawk, who, barred the free exercise of his soar through heaven, will dash himself to pieces against the bars of his cage.”

~ Walter Scott, Rob Roy

 

“Everything is possible for him who possesses courage and activity….and to the timid and hesitating everything is impossible, because it seems so.”

~ Walter Scott, Rob Roy

 

“Honour is a homicide and a bloodspiller, that gangs about making frays in the street; but Credit is a decent honest man, that sits at hame and makes the pat play.”

~ Walter Scott, Rob Roy

 

“Breathes there the man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land.”

~ Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel 1805

 

“Upon subjects which interested him, and when quite at ease, he possessed that flow of natural, and somewhat florid eloquence, which has been supposed as powerful as figure, fashion, fame, or fortune, in winning the female heart. There”

~ Walter Scott, Waverley

 

“I have sought but a kindred spirit to share it, and I have found such in thee.”

~ Walter Scott, Ivanhoe

 

“One or two of these scoundrel statesmen should be shot once a-year, just to keep the others on their good behavior.”

~ Walter Scott, Tales of My Landlord

 

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave...when first we practice to deceive.”

~ Walter Scott, Marmion

 

“We are like the herb which flourisheth most when trampled upon”

~ Walter Scott, Ivanhoe

 

“I envy thee not thy faith, which is ever in thy mouth but never in thy heart nor in thy practice”

~ Walter Scott, Ivanhoe

 

“the worst evil which befalls our race is, that when we are wronged and plundered, all the world laughs around, and we are compelled to suppress our sense of injury, and to smile tamely, when we would revenge bravely.”

~ Walter Scott, Ivanhoe

 

“Your lordship’s servant has a sensible, natural, pretty idea of military matters; somewhat irregular, though, and smells a little too much of selling the bear’s skin before he has hunted him.”

~ Walter Scott, A Legend of Montrose

 

“Blessed be his name, who hath appointed the quiet night to follow the busy day, and the calm sleep to refresh the wearied limbs and to compose the troubled spirit.”

~ Walter Scott, The Talisman

 

“The rose is fairest when 't is budding new,

And hope is brightest when it dawns from fears;

The rose is sweetest washed with morning dew

And love is loveliest when embalmed in tears.”

 

~ Walter Scott, The Lady Of The Lake: Canto Iv. - The Prophecy

 

“I'll listen, till my fancy hears

The clang of swords' the crash of spears!

These grates, these walls, shall vanish then

For the fair field of fighting men,

And my free spirit burst away,

As if it soared from battle fray.”

~ Walter Scott, Lady of the Lake

 

“A moment of peril is often also a moment of open-hearted kindness and affection. We are thrown off our guard by the general agitation of our feelings, and betray the intensity of those which, at more tranquil periods, our prudence at least conceals, if it cannot altogether suppress them.”

~ Walter Scott, Ivanhoe

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Quotations by Henry James

HENRY JAMES, (1843 –1916), WAS A PROMINENT AMERICAN NOVELIST AND CRITIC.

 

 

 “We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.”

~ Henry James, The Middle Years

 

“There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.”

~ Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

 

“It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance, for our consideration and application of these things, and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.”

~ Henry James, Letter to H. G. Wells, [10 July 1915]

 

“I'm yours for ever – for ever and ever. Here I stand; I'm as firm as a rock. If you'll only trust me, how little you'll be disappointed. Be mine as I am yours.”

~ Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

 

“She had an immense curiosity about life, and was constantly staring and wondering.”

~ Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

 

“Things are always different than what they might be...If you wait for them to change, you will never do anything.”

~ Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

 

“Sorrow comes in great waves—no one can know that better than you—but it rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us it leaves us on the spot, and we know that if it is strong we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain. It wears us, uses us, but we wear it and use it in return; and it is blind, whereas we after a manner see.”

~ Henry James, Letter to Grace Norton [July 28,1883]

 

“True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one's self; but the point is not only to get out - you must stay out; and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand.”

~ Henry James, Roderick Hudson

 

“You wanted to look at life for yourself - but you were not allowed; you were punished for your wish. You were ground in the very mill of the conventional!”

~ Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

 

“Live all you can: it's a mistake not to. It doesn't matter what you do in particular, so long as you have had your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?”

~ Henry James, The Ambassadors

 

“Of course I was under the spell, and the wonderful part is that, even at the time, I perfectly knew I was. But I gave myself up to it; it was an antidote to any pain, and I had more pains than one.”

~ Henry James, The Turn of the Screw

 

“Of course I was under the spell, and the wonderful part is that, even at the time, I perfectly knew I was.”

~ Henry James, The Turn of the Screw

 

“You must save what you can of your life; you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part.”

~ Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

 

“Her reputation for reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic.”

~ Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

 

“Life is, in fact, a battle. Evil is insolent and strong; beauty enchanting, but rare; goodness very apt to be weak; folly very apt to be defiant; wickedness to carry the day; imbeciles to be in great places, people of sense in small, and mankind generally unhappy. But the world as it stands is no narrow illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of the night; we wake up to it, forever and ever; and we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it.”

~ Henry James, Theory of Fiction: Henry James

 

“I'm yours for ever--for ever and ever. Here I stand; I'm as firm as a rock. If you'll only trust me, how little you'll be disappointed. Be mine as I am yours.”
 

~ Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

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Quotations by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW (1807–1882) WAS A RENOWNED 19TH-CENTURY NOVELIST AND POET.

“My soul is full of longing
for the secret of the sea,
and the heart of the great ocean
sends a thrilling pulse through me.”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Secret of the Sea

“No one is so accursed by fate,
No one so utterly desolate,
But some heart, though unknown,
Responds unto his own.”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Endymion (1842)

“Tell me not in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Voices of the Night

“Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Rainy Day

“Every heart has its secret sorrows which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad.”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hyperion, Bk. III, Ch. IV (1839)

“Look not mournfully into the Past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present. It is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy Future, without fear, and with a manly heart.”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hyperion, Bk. IV, Ch. VIII (1839)

 “Thy fate is the common fate of all;
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Rainy Day

“I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where.”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Arrow and the Song (1845)

 “God sent his Singers upon earth
With songs of sadness and of mirth,
That they might touch the hearts of men,
And bring them back to heaven again.”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Singers (1849)

“The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Ladder of St. Augustine, st. 10

“A Lady with a Lamp shall stand
In the great history of the land,
A noble type of good,
Heroic womanhood.”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Santa Filomena, st. 10 (1858)

“Time has laid his hand
Upon my heart, gently, not smiting it,
But as a harper lays his open palm
Upon his harp, to deaden its vibrations.”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Golden Legend, Pt. IV, The Cloisters (1872)

“The grave itself is but a covered bridge,
Leading from light to light, through a brief darkness!”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Golden Legend, Pt. V, A Covered Bridge at Lucerne

“All nature, he holds, is a respiration
Of the Spirit of God, who, in breathing hereafter
Will inhale it into his bosom again,
So that nothing but God alone will remain.”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Golden Legend, Pt. VI, A travelling Scholastic affixing his Theses to the gate of the College

“The holiest of all holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart,
When the full river of feeling overflows.”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Holidays (1878)

“I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Christmas Bells

“For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Morituri Salutamus

“Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Voices of the Night

“Nothing useless is, or low;
Each thing in its place is best;
And what seems but idle show
Strengthens and supports the rest.”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Builders (1849)

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Quotations by Wallace Stevens

WALLACE STEVENS IS A 20TH-CENTURY AMERICAN POET.

“The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.”

~ Wallace Stevens, The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm

 

“If sex were all, then every trembling hand
Could make us squeak, like dolls, the wished-for words.”

~ Wallace Stevens, Le Monocle de Mon Oncle

 

“We say God and the imagination are one...
How high that highest candle lights the dark.”

~ Wallace Stevens, Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour

 

“For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.”

~ Wallace Stevens, The Snow Man

 

“The way through the world
Is more difficult to find than the way beyond it.”

~ Wallace Stevens, Collected Poetry and Prose

 

“I was myself the compass of that sea:
I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more truly and more strange.”

~ Wallace Stevens, Tea at the Palaz of Hoon

 

“The yellow glistens.
It glistens with various yellows,
Citrons, oranges and greens
Flowering over the skin.”

~ Wallace Stevens, Study of Two Pears

 

“Children picking up our bones
Will never know that these were once
As quick as foxes on the hill”

~ Wallace Stevens, A Postcard from the Volcano

 

“After the leaves have fallen, we return
To a plain sense of things. It is as if
We had come to an end of the imagination,
Inanimate in an inert savoir.”

~ Wallace Stevens, The Plain Sense of Things

 

“Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.”

~ Wallace Stevens, Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour

 

“The exceeding brightness of this early sun
Makes me conceive how dark I have become,”

~ Wallace Stevens, The Sun This March

 

“In my room, the world is beyond my understanding;
But when I walk I see that it consists of three or four
       Hills and a cloud.”

~ Wallace Stevens, Of the Surface of Things

 

“Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measures destined for her soul.”

~ Wallace Stevens, The Sun This March

 

“As April's green endures; or will endure
Like her remembrance of awakened birds,
Or her desire for June and evening, tipped
By the consummation of the swallow's wings.”

~ Wallace Stevens, The Sun This March

 

“Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.”

~ Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

“After all the pretty contrast of life and death
Proves that these opposite things partake of one,
At least that was the theory, when bishops' books
Resolved the world. We cannot go back to that.
The squirming facts exceed the squamous mind,
If one may say so. And yet relation appears,
A small relation expanding like the shade
Of a cloud on sand, a shape on the side of a hill.”

~ Wallace Stevens, Connoisseur of Chaos

 

“Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams
And our desires.”

~ Wallace Stevens, Sunday Morning

 

“Beauty is momentary in the mind—
The fitful tracing of a portal;
But in the flesh it is immortal.

 

The body dies; the body's beauty lives.
So evenings die, in their green going,
A wave, interminably flowing.”

~ Wallace Stevens, Peter Quince at the Clavier

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Quotations by Sophocles

SOPHOCLES (C. 496 - C. 406 BCE), A PROMINENT ANCIENT GREEK TRAGEDIAN.

“Do not believe that you alone can be right.
The man who thinks that,
The man who maintains that only he has the power
To reason correctly, the gift to speak, the soul—
A man like that, when you know him, turns out empty.”

~ Sophocles, Antigone

 

“In time you will know this well: For time, and time alone, will show the just man, though scoundrels are discovered in a day.”

~ Sophocles, Oedipus Rex

 

 “Let every man in mankind's frailty consider his last day; and let none presume on his good fortune until he find Life, at his death, a memory without pain.”

~ Sophocles, Oedipus Rex

 

“Take these things to heart, my son, I warn you.
All men make mistakes, it is only human.
But once the wrong is done, a man
can turn his back on folly, misfortune too,
if he tries to make amends, however low he's fallen,
and stops his bullnecked ways. Stubbornness
brands you for stupidity - pride is a crime.”

~ Sophocles, Antigone

 

“Men of ill judgment oft ignore the good
That lies within their hands, till they have lost it.”

~ Sophocles, Ajax

 

 “There is no happiness where there is no wisdom;
No wisdom but in submission to the gods.
Big words are always punished,
And proud men in old age learn to be wise.”

~ Sophocles, Antigone

 

“The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.”

~ Sophocles, Oedipus Rex

 

“To throw away an honest friend is, as it were, to throw your life away”

~ Sophocles, Oedipus Rex

 

“If you try to cure evil with evil
you will add more pain to your fate.”

~ Sophocles, Ajax

 

“I have no desire to suffer twice, in reality and then in retrospect.”

~ Sophocles, Oedipus Rex

 

“There's nothing in the world so demoralizing as money.”

~ Sophocles, Antigone

 

“Time, which sees all things, has found you out.”

~ Sophocles, Oedipus Rex

 

“I was born to join in love, not hate –

that is my nature.”

~ Sophocles, Antigone

 

“No one loves the messenger who brings bad news.”

~ Sophocles, Antigone

 

“Tomorrow is tomorrow.
Future cares have future cures,
And we must mind today.”

~ Sophocles, Antigone

 

“We have only a little time to please the living.

But all eternity to love the dead.”

~ Sophocles, Antigone

 

“How dreadful the knowledge of the truth can be
When there’s no help in truth.”

~ Sophocles, Oedipus Rex

 

“Alas, how terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit to the man that's wise!
This I knew well, but had forgotten it,
else I would not have come here.”

~ Sophocles, Oedipus Rex

 

“The tyrant is a child of Pride
Who drinks from his sickening cup
Recklessness and vanity,
Until from his high crest headlong
He plummets to the dust of hope.”

~ Sophocles, Oedipus Rex

 

“Death is not the worst; rather, in vain
To wish for death, and not to compass it.”

~ Sophocles, Electra

 

“Fear? What has a man to do with fear? Chance rules our lives, and the future is all unknown. Best live as we may, from day to day.”

~ Sophocles, Oedipus Rex

 

“A man's anger can never age and fade away, not until he dies. The dead alone feel no pain.”

~ Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus

 

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

~ Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus

 

“It is not right

if I am wrong. But if I am young, and right,

what does my age matter?”

~ Sophocles, Antigone

 

“How terrible-- to see the truth when the truth is only pain to him who sees!”

~ Sophocles, Oedipus Rex

 

“Truly, to tell lies is not honorable;
but when the truth entails tremendous ruin,
To speak dishonorably is pardonable.”

~ Sophocles, Creusa

 

“Give me a life wherever there is an opportunity to live, and better life than was my father's.”

~ Sophocles, Oedipus Rex

 

“We long to have again the vanished past, in spite of all its pain.”

~ Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus

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B. F. Skinner Quotes

B. F. SKINNER (1904 –1990), A LEADING 20TH CENTURY AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST, PHILOSOPHER, INVENTOR AND POET.

"The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do."

~ B. F. Skinner, The Technology of Teaching

"It is a mistake to suppose that the whole issue is how to free man. The issue is to improve the way in which he is controlled."

 ~ B. F. Skinner, Walden Two

"The only geniuses produced by the chaos of society are those who do something about it. Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about."

 ~ B. F. Skinner, Walden Two

"No one asks how to motivate a baby. A baby naturally explores everything it can get at, unless restraining forces have already been at work. And this tendency doesn't die out, it's wiped out."

~ B. F. Skinner, Walden Two

"Going out of style isn't a natural process, but a manipulated change which destroys the beauty of last year's dress in order to make it worthless."

~ B. F. Skinner, Walden Two

"Some of us learn control, more or less by accident. The rest of us go all our lives not even understanding how it is possible, and blaming our failure on being born the wrong way."

~ B. F. Skinner, Walden Two

"A person who has been punished is not thereby simply less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment."

~ B. F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity

"The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man."

~ B. F. Skinner, Contingencies of Reinforcement: A Theoretical Analysis

"What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa."

~ B. F. Skinner, Walden Two

"At this very moment enormous numbers of intelligent men and women of goodwill are trying to build a better world. But problems are born faster than they can be solved."    

~ B. F. Skinner, Walden Two

"The amateur doesn't appreciate the need for experimentation. He wants his experts to know."

~ B. F. Skinner, Walden Two

"Nowadays, everybody fancies himself an expert in government and wants to have a say."

~ B. F. Skinner, Walden Two

"The final state of affairs may not have been foreseen. Perhaps we are merely reading a plan into the world after the fact."

~ B. F. Skinner, Walden Two

"In a democracy, there is no check against despotism, because the principle of democracy is supposed to be itself a check. But it guarantees only that the majority will not be despotically ruled."

~ B. F. Skinner, Walden Two

"Democracy is the spawn of despotism. And like father, like son. Democracy is power and rule. It's not the will of the people, remember; it's the will of the majority."

~ B. F. Skinner, Walden Two

"Men build society and society builds men."

~ B. F. Skinner, Walden Two

"A scientist may not be sure of the answer, but he's often sure he can find one. And that's a condition which is clearly not enjoyed by philosophy."

~ B. F. Skinner, Walden Two

"The tender sentiment of the 'one and only' has less to do with constancy of heart than with singleness of opportunity."

~ B. F. Skinner, Walden Two

"A fourth-grade reader may be a sixth-grade mathematician. The grade is an administrative device which does violence to the nature of the developmental process."

~ B. F. Skinner, Walden Two

"We are only just beginning to understand the power of love because we are just beginning to understand the weakness of force and aggression."

~ B. F. Skinner, Walden Two

"Something doing every minute' may be a gesture of despair--or the height of a battle against boredom."

~ B. F. Skinner, Walden Two

"But restraint is the only one sort of control, and absence of restraint isn't freedom. It's not control that's lacking when one feels 'free', but the objectionable control of force."

~ B. F. Skinner, Walden Two

"It is a surprising fact that those who object most violently to the manipulation of behaviour nevertheless make the most vigorous effort to manipulate minds."

~ B. F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity

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Quotations by Victor Hugo

VICTOR HUGO (1802 –1885) A WELL-REGARDED FRENCH POET, NOVELIST, AND DRAMATIST.

“God manifests himself to us in the first degree through the life of the universe, and in the second degree through the thought of man. The second manifestation is not less holy than the first. The first is named Nature, the second is named Art.”

~ Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare (1864), Part I, Book II, Chapter I

“These two halves of God, the Pope and the emperor.”

~ Victor Hugo, Hernani (1830), Act IV, Scene II

“But secondly you say 'society must exact vengeance, and society must punish'. Wrong on both counts. Vengeance comes from the individual and punishment from God.”

~ Victor Hugo, The Last Day of a Condemned Man

“I wanted to see you again, touch you, know who you were, see if I would find you identical with the ideal image of you which had remained with me and perhaps shatter my dream with the aid of reality.”

~ Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame

“He was fine; he, that orphan that foundling that outcast; he felt himself august and strong; he looked full in the face that society from which he was banished, and into which he had so powerfully intervened; that human justice from which he had snatched its prey; all those tigers whose jaws perforce remained empty; those myrmidons, those judges, those executioners, all that royal power which he, poor, insignificant being, had foiled with the power of God.”

~ Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

“Never, even among animals, does the creature born to be a dove change into an osprey. That is only seen among men.”

~ Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Let no one misunderstand our idea; we do not confound what are called 'political opinions' with that grand aspiration after progress with that sublime patriotic, democratic, and human faith, which, in our days, should be the very foundation of all generous intelligence.”

~ Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in--what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.”

~ Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Marius and Cosette were in the dark in regard to each other. They did not speak, they did not bow, they were not acquainted; they saw each other; and, like the stars in the sky separated by millions of leagues, they lived by gazing upon each other.”

~ Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“The poor man shuddered, overflowed with an angelic joy; he declared in his transport that this would last through life; he said to himself that he really had not suffered enough to deserve such radiant happiness, and he thanked God, in the depths of his soul, for having permitted that he, a miserable man, should be so loved by this innocent being.”

~ Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“During the years of suffering he reached the conclusion that life was war in which he was one of the defeated. Hatred was his only weapon, and he resolved to sharpen it in prison and carry it with him when he left.”

~ Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“The book the reader has now before his eyes - from one end to the other, in its whole and in its details, whatever the omissions, the exceptions, or the faults - is the march from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from the false to the true, from night to day, from appetite to conscience, from rottenness to life, from brutality to duty, from Hell to Heaven, from nothingness to God. Starting point: matter; goal: the soul. Hydra at the beginning, angel at the end.”

~ Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“There, at a depth to which divers would find it difficult to descend, are caverns, haunts, and dusky mazes, where monstrous creatures multiply and destroy each other. Huge crabs devour fish and are devoured in their turn. Hideous shapes of living things, not created to be seen by human eyes wander in this twilight. Vague forms of antennae, tentacles, fins, open jaws, scales, and claws, float about there, quivering, growing larger, or decomposing and perishing in the gloom, while horrible swarms of swimming things prowl about seeking their prey.

To gaze into the depths of the sea is, in the imagination, like beholding the vast unknown, and from its most terrible point of view. The submarine gulf is analogous to the realm of night and dreams. There also is sleep, unconsciousness, or at least apparent unconsciousness, of creation. There in the awful silence and darkness, the rude first forms of life, phantomlike, demoniacal, pursue their horrible instincts.”

~ Victor Hugo, The Toilers of the Sea

“They had done him the honor to take him for a madman, but had set him free on discovering that he was only a poet.”

~ Victor Hugo, The Man Who Laughs (1869)

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Quotations by Robert Louis Stevenson

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON (1850 –1894) WAS A PROMINENT SCOTTISH NOVELIST, ESSAYIST, AND POET WRITING TOWARDS THE END OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

“Fifteen men on the dead man's chest —
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest —
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”

~ Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island (1883)

“Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral.”

~ Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage (1878)

“In every part and corner of our life, to lose oneself is to be a gainer; to forget oneself is to be happy.”

~ Robert Louis Stevenson, Old Mortality (1884)

“So long as we love we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I would almost say that we are indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.”

~ Robert Louis Stevenson, "Lay Morals" Ch. 4, in Lay Morals and Other Essays (1911)

“Not every man is so great a coward as he thinks he is — nor yet so good a Christian.”

~ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Master of Ballantrae. Mr. Mackellar's Journey (1889)

“Our business in this world is not to succeed, but to continue to fail, in good spirits.”

~ Robert Louis Stevenson, Complete Works, vol. 26, Reflections and Remarks on Human Life, section 4

“There is no foreign land; it is the traveller only that is foreign, and now and again, by a flash of recollection, lights up the contrasts of the ear.”

~ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Silverado Squatters

“We do not go to cowards for tender dealing; there is nothing so cruel as panic; the man who has least fear for his own carcase, has most time to consider others.”

~ Robert Louis Stevenson, Aes Triplex (1878)

“Hope is the boy, a blind, headlong, pleasant fellow, good to chase swallows with the salt; Faith is the grave, experienced, yet smiling man.”

~ Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881) “Virginibus Puerisque”, Ch. 2

“Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but principally by catchwords; and the little rift between the sexes is astonishingly widened by simply teaching one set of catchwords to the girls and another to the boys.”

~ Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881) “Virginibus Puerisque”, Ch. 2

“Falling in love is the one illogical adventure, the one thing of which we are tempted to think as supernatural, in our trite and reasonable world.”

~ Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881) “Virginibus Puerisque”, Ch. 3

“The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish.”

~ Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881) “Truth of Intercourse”

“The time would fail me if I were to recite all the big names in history whose exploits are perfectly irrational and even shocking to the business mind. The incongruity is speaking; and I imagine it must engender among the mediocrities a very peculiar attitude, towards the nobler and showier sides of national life.”

~ Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881) “Crabbed Age and Youth”

“Age may have one side, but assuredly Youth has the other. There is nothing more certain than that both are right, except perhaps that both are wrong. Let them agree to differ; for who knows but what agreeing to differ may not be a form of agreement rather than a form of difference?”

~ Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881) “Crabbed Age and Youth”

“A faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity.”

~ Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881) “An Apology for Idlers”.

“Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life.”

~ Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881) “An Apology for Idlers”.

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Quotations by Jack London

JACK LONDON (1876 - 1916), A PROMINENT AMERICAN NOVELIST AND JOURNALIST WHO IS BEST KNOWN FOR "CALL OF THE WILD” (1903) AND “THE SEA WOLF” (1904).

“I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”

~Jack London, The Bulletin, San Francisco, California, December 2, 1916, part 2, p. 1.

“Life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do.”

~Jack London, White Fang (1906)

“The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances.”

~Jack London, “To Build a Fire” published as a collection of short stories in the book Lost Face (1910)

“I do not live for what the world thinks of me, but for what I think of myself.”

~Jack London, Letter to Charles Warren Stoddard (21 August 1903)

“But I am I. And I won't subordinate my taste to the unanimous judgment of mankind”

~Jack London, Martin Eden

“As one grows weaker one is less susceptible to suffering. There is less hurt because there is less to hurt.”

~Jack London, The Star Rover

“A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog when you are just as hungry as the dog.”

~Jack London,"Confession" in Complete Works of Jack London, Delphi Classics, 2013

“He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars.”

~Jack London,The Call of the Wild (1903)

“He was a killer, a thing that preyed, living on the things that lived, unaided, alone, by virtue of his own strength and prowess, surviving triumphantly in a hostile environment where only the strong survive.”

~Jack London, The Call of the Wild (1903)

“There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.”

~Jack London, The Call of the Wild (1903)

“These women, capable of the most sublime emotions, of the tenderest sympathies, were openmouthed and screaming. They wanted to live, they were helpless, likes rats in a trap, and they screamed.”

~Jack London, The Sea-Wolf (1904)

“Do you know the only value life has is what life puts upon itself? And it is of course overestimated, for it is of necessity prejudiced in its own favour. Take that man I had aloft. He held on as if he were a precious thing, a treasure beyond diamonds of rubies. To you? No. To me? Not at all. To himself? Yes. But I do not accept his estimate. He sadly overrates himself. There is plenty more life demanding to be born. Had he fallen and dripped his brains upon the deck like honey from the comb, there would have been no loss to the world. The supply is too large.”

~Jack London, The Sea-Wolf (1904)

“The loneliness of the man is slowly being borne in upon me. There is not a man aboard but hates or fears him, nor is there a man whom he does not despise.”

~Jack London, The Sea-Wolf (1904)

“And through it all, calm and impassive, leaning on his elbow and gazing down, Wolf Larsen seemed lost in a great curiosity. This wild stirring of yeasty life, this terrific revolt and defiance of matter that moved, perplexed and interested him.”

~Jack London, The Sea-Wolf (1904)

“Men do not knowingly drink for the effect alcohol produces on the body. What they drink for is the brain-effect; and if it must come through the body, so much the worse for the body.”

~Jack London, John Barleycorn (1913)

“The fortunate man is the one who cannot take more than a couple of drinks without becoming intoxicated. The unfortunate wight is the one who can take many glasses without betraying a sign; who must take numerous glasses in order to get the kick.”

~Jack London, John Barleycorn (1913)

“There are things greater than our wisdom, beyond our justice. The right and wrong of this we cannot say, and it is not for us to judge.”

~Jack London, “An Odyssey of the North" in The Best Short Stories of Jack London (1962)

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Quotations by Noam Chomsky

NOAM CHOMSKY (B. 1928) IS AN EMINENT AMERICAN LINGUIST, PHILOSOPHER, AND POLITICAL WRITER.

“The beauty of our system is that it isolates everybody. Each person is sitting alone in front of the tube, you know. It's very hard to have ideas or thoughts under those circumstances. You can't fight the world alone.”

~ Noam Chomsky

“I think it only makes sense to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of life, and to challenge them; unless a justification for them can be given, they are illegitimate, and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human freedom.”

~ Noam Chomsky

“Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.”

~ Noam Chomsky

 “The whole educational and professional training system is a very elaborate filter, which just weeds out people who are too independent, and who think for themselves, and who don't know how to be submissive, and so on -- because they're dysfunctional to the institutions.”

~ Noam Chomsky

“If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.”

~ Noam Chomsky

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum...”

~ Noam Chomsky, The Common Good

“That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything.”

~ Noam Chomsky

“All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.”

~ Noam Chomsky

“If you assume that there is no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, that there are opportunities to change things, then there is a possibility that you can contribute to making a better world.”

~ Noam Chomsky

“The war is simply an obscenity, a depraved act by weak and miserable men, including all of us who have allowed it to go on and on with endless fury and destruction - all of us who would have remained silent, had stability and order been secured.”

~ Noam Chomsky,  American Power and the New Mandarins, 1969

“Personally I'm in favor of democracy, which means that the central institutions in the society have to be under popular control. Now, under capitalism we can't have democracy by definition. Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control. Thus, a corporation or an industry is, if we were to think of it in political terms, fascist; that is, it has tight control at the top and strict obedience has to be established at every level -- there's a little bargaining, a little give and take, but the line of authority is perfectly straightforward. Just as I'm opposed to political fascism, I'm opposed to economic fascism. I think that until major institutions of society are under the popular control of participants and communities, it's pointless to talk about democracy.”

~ Noam Chomsky, "One Man's View : Noam Chomsky interviewed by an anonymous interviewer," Business Today, May 1973.

“In the American Jewish community, there is little willingness to face the fact that the Palestinian Arabs have suffered a monstrous historical injustice, whatever one may think of the competing claims. Until this is recognized, discussion of the Middle East crisis cannot even begin.”

~ Noam Chomsky, Peace in the Middle East? Reflections on Justice and Nationhood, 1974, p. 54.

“The Cold War ideology and the international communist conspiracy function in an important way as essentially a propaganda device to mobilize support at a particular historical moment for this long-time imperial enterprise. In fact, I believe that this is probably the main function of the Cold War: it serves as a useful device for the managers of American society and their counterparts in the Soviet Union to control their own populations and their own respective imperial systems.”

~ Noam Chomsky, Government in the Future, 1970, P. 143

“We may usefully think of the language faculty, the number faculty, and others as 'mental organs,' analogous to the heart or the visual system or the system of motor coordination and planning. There appears to be no clear demarcation line between physical organs, perceptual and motor systems and cognitive faculties in the respects in question.”

~ Noam Chomsky, Rules and Representations (1980), P. 4

“That is what I have always understood to be the essence of anarchism: the conviction that the burden of proof has to be placed on authority, and that it should be dismantled if that burden cannot be met.”

~ Noam Chomsky

“It is quite possible--overwhelmingly probable, one might guess--that we will always learn more about human life and personality from novels than from scientific psychology”

~ Noam Chomsky

“Science is a bit like the joke about the drunk who is looking under a lamppost for a key that he has lost on the other side of the street, because that's where the light is. It has no other choice.”

~ Noam Chomsky

“Our ignorance can be divided into problems and mysteries. When we face a problem, we may not know its solution, but we have insight, increasing knowledge, and an inkling of what we are looking for. When we face a mystery, however, we can only stare in wonder and bewilderment, not knowing what an explanation would even look like.”

~ Noam Chomsky

“The death penalty can be tolerated only by extreme statist reactionaries who demand a state that is so powerful that it has the right to kill.”

~ Noam Chomsky

“The key element of social control is the strategy of distraction that is to divert public attention from important issues and changes decided by political and economic elites, through the technique of flood or flooding continuous distractions and insignificant information.”

~ Noam Chomsky

“In summary, it is the diversity of human behavior, its appropriateness to new situations, and man’s capacity to innovate – the creative aspect of language use providing the principal indication of this –that leads Descartes to attribute possession of mind to other humans, since he regards this capacity as beyond the limitations of any imaginable mechanism.”

~ Noam Chomsky, Cartesian Linguistics (3rd ed., 2009)

“Cartesian linguistics was not concerned simply with descriptive grammar, in this sense, but rather with “grammaire générale,” that is, with the universal principles of language structure.”

~ Noam Chomsky, Cartesian Linguistics (3rd ed., 2009)

“Despite these shortcomings, the insights into the organization of grammar that were achieved in Cartesian linguistics remain quite impressive, and a careful study of this work can hardly fail to prove rewarding to a linguist who approaches it without prejudice or preconceptions as to the a priori limitations on permitted linguistic investigation.”

~ Noam Chomsky, Cartesian Linguistics (3rd ed., 2009)

Human language appears to be a unique phenomenon, without significant analogue in the animal world.

~ Noam Chomsky

“Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.”

~ Noam Chomsky

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Quotations by Alexander Pushkin

ALEXANDER PUSHKIN, A RUSSIAN POET, NOVELIST, AND PLAYWRIGHT, WHO IS WIDELY REGARDED BY MANY AS THE GREATEST POET OF ALL TIME.

“What grace could all your worldly power bring
To One whose crown of thorns has made him King,
The Christ who gave His body to the flails,
Who humbly bore the lance and piercing nails?
Or do you fear the rabble might disgrace The One.”

~ Alexander Pushkin, Secular Power

“The heavy hanging chains shall fall,
The walls shall crumble at the word,
And Freedom greet you with the light
And brothers give you back the sword.”

~ Alexander Pushkin, The Decembrists

“Come purge my soul, Thou Master of my days,
Of vain and empty words, of idle ways,
Of base ambition and the urge to rule;
That hidden serpent that corrupts a fool;
and grant me, Lord, to see my sins alone.
That I not call my brother to atone;
Make chaste my heart and lend me from above
Thy fortitude, humility, and love.”

 ~ Alexander Pushkin, A Prayer

“‘Tis time, my friend, ‘tis time!
For rest the heart is aching;
Days follow days in flight, and every day is taking
Fragments of being, while together you and I
Make plans to live. Look, all is dust, and we shall die.”

~ Alexander Pushkin,  'Tis Time, My Friend, l. 1-5 (1834)

“Unforced, as conversation passed,
he had the talent of saluting
felicitously every theme,
of listening like a judge-supreme
while serious topics were disputing,
or, with an epigram-surprise,
of kindling smiles in ladies' eyes.”

~ Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin (1823), Ch. 1, st. 5.

“A man who's active and incisive
can yet keep nail-care much in mind:
why fight what's known to be decisive?
custom is despot of mankind.”

~ Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin (1823), Ch. 1, st. 25.

“The illness with which he'd been smitten
should have been analysed when caught,
something like spleen, that scourge of Britain,
or Russia's chondria, for short.”

~ Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin (1823), Ch. 1, st. 38.

“Love passed, the Muse appeared, the weather
of mind got clarity new-found;
now free, I once more weave together
emotion, thought, and magic sound.”

~ Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin (1823), Ch. 1, st. 59.

“The less we show our love to a woman,
Or please her less, and neglect our duty,
The more we trap and ruin her surely
In the flattering toils of philandery.”

~ Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin (1823), Ch. 4, st. 1.

“Sad that our finest aspiration
Our freshest dreams and meditations,
In swift succession should decay,
Like Autumn leaves that rot away.”

~ Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin (1823), Ch. 8, st. 11.

“And thus He mused: "From here, indeed
Shall we strike terror in the Swede?
And here a city by our labor
Founded, shall gall our haughty neighbor;
"Here cut" - so Nature gives command -
Your window through on Europe; stand
Firm-footed by the sea, unchanging!”

~ Alexander Pushkin, The Bronze Horseman (1833).

“Two fixed ideas can no more exist together in the moral world than two bodies can occupy one and the same place in the physical world.”

~ Alexander Pushkin, The Queen of Spades (1833)

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Quotations by Leo Tolstoy

LEO TOLSTOY (1828-1910), RUSSIAN NOVELIST AND MORAL PHILOSOPHER, STANDS AMONGST BEST WRITERS OF ALL TIME.

 “Error is the force that welds men together; truth is communicated to men only by deeds of truth.”

~ Leo Tolstoy, My Religion (1884), Ch. 12

“The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful, is Truth.”

~ Leo Tolstoy, Sevastopol in May (1855), Ch. 16

“A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.”

~ Leo Tolstoy, Writings on Civil Disobedience and Nonviolence (1886)

“All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do. “

~ Leo Tolstoy, The Law of Love and the Law of Violence (1908)

“We acknowledge God only when we are conscious of His manifestation in us. All conclusions and guidelines based on this consciousness should fully satisfy both our desire to know God as such as well as our desire to live a life based on this recognition.”

~ Leo Tolstoy, Entry in Tolstoy's Diary (1 November 1910)

“Men think it right to eat animals, because they are led to believe that God sanctions it. This is untrue. No matter in what books it may be written that it is not sinful to slay animals and to eat them, it is more clearly written in the heart of man than in any books that animals are to be pitied and should not be slain any more than human beings. We all know this if we do not choke the voice of our conscience.”

~ Leo Tolstoy, The Pathway of Life: Teaching Love and Wisdom (posthumous), Part I, International Book Publishing Company, New York, 1919, p. 68

“Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.”

~ Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (1865–1867; 1869), Book IV, ch. 11

“The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.”

~ Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (1865–1867; 1869), Bk. X, ch. 16

“War is not a courtesy but the most horrible thing in life; and we ought to understand that, and not play at war. We ought to accept this terrible necessity sternly and seriously. It all lies in that: get rid of falsehood and let war be war and not a game. As it is now, war is the favourite pastime of the idle and frivolous.”

~ Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (1865–1867; 1869), Bk. X, ch. 25

“Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.”

~ Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (1865–1867; 1869),  Thoughts of Prince Andrew Bk XII, Ch. 16

“To love life is to love God. Harder and more blessed than all else is to love this life in one's sufferings, in undeserved sufferings.”

~ Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (1865–1867; 1869), Bk. XIV, ch. 15

“History is the life of nations and of humanity. To seize and put into words, to describe directly the life of humanity or even of a single nation, appears impossible.”

~ Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (1865–1867; 1869),  Epilogue II, ch. 1

“The peculiar and amusing nature of those answers stems from the fact that modern history is like a deaf person who is in the habit of answering questions that no one has put to them.”

~ Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (1865–1867; 1869),  Vol 2, pt 5, p 236 — Selected Works, Moscow, 1869

“My reason will still not understand why I pray, but I shall still pray, and my life, my whole life, independently of anything that may happen to me, is every moment of it no longer meaningless as it was before, but has an unquestionable meaning of goodness with which I have the power to invest it.”

~ Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1875–1877; 1878), Pt. VIII, ch. 19

“Go — take the mother's soul, and learn three truths: Learn What dwells in man, What is not given to man, and What men live by. When thou hast learnt these things, thou shalt return to heaven.”

~ Leo Tolstoy, What Men Live By (1881), Ch. IV

“Quite often a man goes on for years imagining that the religious teaching that had been imparted to him since childhood is still intact, while all the time there is not a trace of it left in him.”

~ Leo Tolstoy, Confession (1882), Pt. I, ch. 1

“Science has adapted itself entirely to the wealthy classes and accordingly has set itself to heal those who can afford everything, and it prescribes the same methods for those who have nothing to spare.”

~ Leo Tolstoy, What then must we do? (1886)

“The only significance of life consists in helping to establish the kingdom of God; and this can be done only by means of the acknowledgment and profession of the truth by each one of us.”

~ Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894)

“Art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen.”

~ Leo Tolstoy, What is Art? (1897), Ch. 8

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Quotations by Ted Hughes

TED HUGHES, A 20TH CENTURY ENGLISH WRITER OF POETRY, NON-FICTION AND CHILDREN'S BOOKS.

“You were overloaded. I said nothing.
I said nothing. The stone man made soup.
The burning woman drank it.”

~ Ted Hughes, Birthday Letters

 “Do as you like with me. I'm your parcel. I have only our address on me. Open me, or readdress me.”

~ Ted Hughes, Birthday Letters

“I shall also take you forth and carve our names together in a yew tree, haloed with stars...”

~ Ted Hughes, Letters of Ted Hughes 

 “The Iron Man came to the top of the cliff. How far had he walked? Nobody knows. Where did he come from? Nobody knows. How was he made? Nobody knows. Taller than a house the Iron Man stood at the top of the cliff, at the very brink, in the darkness.”

~ Ted Hughes, The Iron Man

“The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.”

~ Ted Hughes, Letters of Ted Hughes

“So we found the end of our journey.
So we stood, alive in the river of light,
Among the creatures of light, creatures of light.”

~ Ted Hughes, River

“Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business”

~ Ted Hughes, The Thought-Fox

“In the pit of red
You hid from the bone-clinic whiteness

But the jewel you lost was blue.”

~ Ted Hughes, Birthday Letters

“The brassy wood-pigeons
Bubble their colourful voices, and the sun
Rises upon a world well-tried and old.”

~ Ted Hughes, Stealing Trout on a May Morning

“You could become internationally famous - you're Gemini, and according to antique authority have a literary talent, which of course your letters prove.”

~ Ted Hughes, Letters of Ted Hughes

“The world’s decay where the wind’s hands have passed,
And my head, worn out with love, at rest
In my hands, and my hands full of dust,”

~ Ted Hughes, Song

“There is no better way to know us
Than as two wolves, come separately to a wood.”

~ Ted Hughes, A Modest Proposal

“He could not stand. It was not
That he could not thrive, he was born
With everything but the will –
That can be deformed, just like a limb.
Death was more interesting to him.
Life could not get his attention.”

~ Ted Hughes, Season Songs

“The Shell

The sea fills my ear
with sand and with fear.

You may wash out the sand,
but never the sound
of the ghost of the sea
that is haunting me.”

~ Ted Hughes, The Mermaid's Purse

“where are the gods
the gods hate us
the gods have run away
the gods have hidden in holes
the gods are dead of the plague
they rot and stink too

there never were any gods
there’s only death”

~ Ted Hughes, Seneca's Oedipus

“The dreamer in her
Had fallen in love with me and she did not know it.
That moment the dreamer in me
Fell in love with her and I knew it”

~ Ted Hughes, Birthday Letters

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Quotations by Gerard Manley Hopkins

GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS, VICTORIAN POET, WHOSE POETRY REVOLVES AROUND RELIGION, NATURE, AND MELANCHOLY.

“The best ideal is the true
And other truth is none.
All glory be ascribed to
The holy Three in One.”

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins, Summa

“All the world is full of inscape and chance left free to act falls into an order as well as purpose.”

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins, Journal (24 February 1873)

“A great work by an Englishman is like a great battle won by England. It is an unfading bay tree.”

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins, Letter to Robert Bridges (13 October 1886)

“Gather gladness from the skies;
Take a lesson from the ground;
Flowers do ope their heavenward eyes
And a Spring-time joy have found;
Earth throws Winter's robes away,
Decks herself for Easter Day.”

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins, Easter

“Let Him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east.”

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Wreck of the Deutschland

“O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed.”

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins, No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief

“Hope had grown grey hairs,
Hope had mourning on,
Trenched with tears, carved with cares,
Hope was twelve hours gone.”

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins,The Wreck of the Deutschland

“ELECTED Silence, sing to me
And beat upon my whorlèd ear,
Pipe me to pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear.”

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Habit of Perfection

“And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins, God's Grandeur

“Nothing is so beautiful as Spring-
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins, Spring

“I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.
And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.”

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins, Heaven-Haven

“What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.”

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins, Inversnaid

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