Death is really a great blessing for humanity, without it there could be no real progress. People who lived for ever would not only hamper and discourage the young, but they would themselves lack sufficient stimulus to be creative.
Beware the man of a single book.
Winter garden, the moon thinned to a thread, insects singing.
The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seemed filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster
Hoping to live days of greater happiness, I forget that days of less happiness are passing by.
If you're losing your soul and you know it, then you've still got a soul left to lose.
We two have paddled in the stream, from morning sun till dine; But seas between us broad have roared since days of long ago.
Most of the trouble in this world has been caused by folks who can't mind their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus has.
There is only one unpardonable sin- deliberate cruelty. All rest can be forgiven.
You live but once; you might as well be amusing.
Since everything is in our heads, we had better not lose them.
Men always remember a woman who caused them concern and uneasiness
The life of a single human being is worth a million times more than all the property of the richest man on earth.
I knew that the moment the great governing spirit strikes the blow to divide all humanity into just two opposing factions, I would be on the side of the common people.
Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
To practice five things under all circumstances constitutes perfect virtueq gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness, and kindness.
Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
Being a woman is a terribly difficult trade since it consists principally of dealings with men.
At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.
Raising children is an uncertain thing; success is reached only after a life of battle and worry.
To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves. Nothing is often a good thing to say, and always a clever thing to say.
History is rich with adventurous men, long on charisma, with a highly developed instinct for their own interests, who have pursued personal power - bypassing parliaments and constitutions, distributing favours to their minions, and conflating their own desires with the interests of the community.
We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.
“If a separate personal Paradise exists for each of us, mine must be irreparably planted with trees of words which the wind silvers like poplars, by people who see their confiscated justice given back, and by birds that even in the midst of truth of death insist on singing in Greek and saying eros, eros, eros.”
The idea of God is the ignorance which solves all doubt by repressing it.
Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.
The only thing better than singing is more singing.
“I sing like I feel
Forgive me if I don’t have the words. Maybe I can sing it and you’ll understand.
Words have a magical power. They can bring either the greatest happiness or deepest despair; they can transfer knowledge from teacher to student; words enable the orator to sway his audience and dictate its decisions. Words are capable of arousing the strongest emotions and prompting all men’s actions.
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
“Drifting, drifting,/ what am I more than/ a single gull/ between sky and earth?
As land is improved by sowing it with various seeds, so is the mind by exercising it with different studies.
“In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.”
There is more to life than increasing its speed.
The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art's audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.
The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it.
Great ability develops and reveals itself increasingly with every new assignment.
We are in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity. We cannot remain looking inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet.
“To think is to confine yourself to a single thought that one day stands still like a star in the world’s sky.”
Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.”
“The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.
It is best to do things systematically, since we are only human, and disorder is our worst enemy.
It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.
As a body everyone is single, as a soul never.
People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.
Philosophy is overwhelmingly complicated, its procedure depressingly slow.
In fact men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth - often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.
It is true that we are made of dust. And the world is also made of dust. But the dust has motes rising.
Song, how hard it is sing you when I have to sing in fear!
We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt.
Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality.
Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity, it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.
I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses.
Your hand can seize today, but not tomorrow; and thoughts of your tomorrow are nothing but desire. Don’t waste this breath, if your heart isn’t crazy, since "the rest of your life" won’t last forever
When I sing, I become 14 years old.
“The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss - an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. - is sure to be noticed.”
It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.
You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing, and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life.
With increasing age, dullness of mind and heart sets in.
Modesty, arising from weakness, is not dignified.
If one had but a single glance to give the world, one should gaze on Istanbul.
Sometimes, when one person is missing, the whole world seems depopulated
The business of art is to reveal the relation between man and his environment.
He who a single one loves is blessed – beloved of everybody. Whoever self-interest forgets the best will blessèd dreams embody.
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet.
“We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is.
The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them in parliament.
It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.
It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”
Our Business here is not to know all things, but those which concern our conduct.
I'd rather sing one wild song and burst my heart with it, than live a thousand years watching my digestion and being afraid of the wet
“A monkey is always a monkey," says the proverb, "even if he has birth-tokens of gold." Although you have a book in your hand and read all the time, you do not understand a single thing that you read, but you are like the donkey that listens to the lyre and wags his ears.
Bourgeois class domination is undoubtedly an historical necessity, but, so too, the rising of the working class against it. Capital is an historical necessity, but, so too, its grave digger, the socialist proletariat.
Obsession is the single most wasteful human activity, because with an obsession you keep coming back and back and back to the same question and never get an answer.
In a world in which everything is subject to the passing of time, art alone is both subject to time and yet victorious over it.
You would hardly believe how difficult it is to place a figure alone on a canvas, and to concentrate all the interest on this single and universal figure and still keep it living and real.
We are free, but not to be evil, not to be indifferent to human suffering, not to profit from the people, from the work created and sustained through their spirit of political association, while refusing to contribute to the political state that we profit from.
I sing because the moment exists
If we have been pleased with life, we should not be displeased with death, since it comes from the hand of the same master.
Possessing by letting go of things was a secret of ownership unknown to youth.
“The more we love someone, the less we flatter them; it is by excusing nothing that true love shows itself.
The duty of comedy is to correct men by amusing them.
I would like to paint the way a bird sings.
It's on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.
We want deeper sincerity of motive, a greater courage in speech and earnestness in action.
Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.
Every single pleasure I can imagine or have experienced is more delightful, more of a pleasure, if you take it in small sips, if you take your time. Reading is not an exception.
Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.
Politics is the art of preventing people from busying themselves with what is their own business.
To begin with myself, then, the utterances of men concerning me will differ widely, since in passing judgment almost every one is influenced not so much by truth as by preference, and good and evil report alike know no bounds.
I've always wanted to sing, just as I've always known that one day I would have my own niche in the annals of song. It was a feeling I had.
To sing is to bring to life; impossible if the words are mediocre, however good the music.
People say that I could sing the phone book and make it sound good.
Singing is a way of escaping. It's another world. I'm no longer on earth.
To draw you must close your eyes and sing.
The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web.
One of the penalties for refusing to take part in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting.
The modern artist is working with space and time, and expressing his feelings rather than illustrating. Jackson Pollock
I build no system. I ask an end to privilege, the abolition of slavery, equality of rights, and the reign of law. Justice, nothing else; that is the alpha and omega of my argument: to others I leave the business of governing the world.
It doesn't seem to me that anyone has discovered much that's new since the Iliad or the Odyssey.
If I could believe that this was said sincerely, I could put up with anything.
There's no question of practising law here, it's almost a farce. I often have to suspend my sense of reality when I enter court.
My intention here is to make it clear that not a single cell of my composition, here in regard to The Raven, is found by chance or intuition, that the composition moved towards perfection with the precision and inevitability of a mathematical equation.
You might lose your spontaneity and, instead of composing first-rate Gershwin, end up with second rate Ravel.
“I have arrived more definitely than any other painter during his lifetime; honours shower upon me from every side; artists pay me compliments on my work; there are many people to whom my position must seem enviable…. But I don’t seem to have a single real friend!”
“If you paint the leaf on a tree without using a model, your imagination will only supply you with a few leaves; but Nature offers you millions, all on the same tree. No two leaves are exactly the same. The artist who paints only what is in his mind must very soon repeat himself.”
A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire.
It is the artist's business to create sunshine when the sun fails.
I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.
When you have increasing power of religious groups, oppression of women increases. Women are oppressed in all religions.
A little and a little, collected together, becomes a great deal; the heap in the barn consists of single grains, and drop and drop make the inundation.
Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during a moment.
It would be better if there were nothing. Since there is more pain than pleasure on earth, every satisfaction is only transitory, creating new desires and new distresses, and the agony of the devoured animal is always far greater than the pleasure of the devourer.
Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.
Our castle is not imposing, but is well built, and surrounded by a very fine garden. I live in the bailiff's house.
The Beardmore Glacier is not difficult in fine weather, but on our return we did not get a single completely fine day; this with a sick companion enormously increased our anxieties.
The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.
We look before and after, And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
Whatever else has been said about me personally is unimportant. When I sing, I believe. I'm honest.
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.
I won't say that I'm an agnostic, since agnosticism maintains that one cannot know... but I'm not averse to the idea of some intelligence or some organizing force that set up the initial conditions of the universe in such a way that ultimately generated stars, planets and life.
The more you struggle to live, the less you live. Give up the notion that you must be sure of what you are doing. Instead, surrender to what is real within you, for that alone is sure....you are above everything distressing.
I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.
Love has always been the most important business in my life, I should say the only one.
I haven't understood a single piece of music in my life, but I have felt it.
I sing, bird alone. Only me, I sing alone. Oh how old is my song!
Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.
Since the masses are always eager to believe something, for their benefit nothing is so easy to arrange as facts.
Most persons are so absorbed in the contemplation of the outside world that they are wholly oblivious to what is passing on within themselves.
The spread of civilization may be likened to a fire; first, a feeble spark, next a flickering flame, then a mighty blaze, ever increasing in speed and power.
An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.
Nothing is more natural than mutual misunderstanding; the contrary is always surprising.
“There are desires to return, to love, to not disappear, and there are desires to die, fought by two opposing waters that have never isthmused.”
Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.
All sins are attempts to fill voids.
Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.”
To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves
Simplicity and sincerity generally go hand in hand, as both proceed from a love of truth.
Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.
In history as in human life, regret does not bring back a lost moment and a thousand years will not recover something lost in a single hour.