Archives for February 2021

Conflict… is a theme that has occupied the thinking of man more than any other, save only God and love.
—Anatol Rapoport (American Mathematical Psychologist)

Don’t tell a woman she’s pretty; tell her there’s no other woman like her, and all roads will open to you.
—Jules Renard (French Author, Diarist)

A population weakened and exhausted by battling against so many obstacles—whose needs are never satisfied and desires never fulfilled—is vulnerable to manipulation and regimentation. The struggle for survival is, above all, an exercise that is hugely time-consuming, absorbing and debilitating. If you create these “anti-conditions,” your rule is guaranteed for a hundred years.
—Ryszard Kapuscinski (Polish Journalist)

The fact that there is a general belief in a future life is no evidence of its truth.
—Clarence Darrow (American Lawyer)

People are never free of trying to be content.
—Murray Bookchin (American Political Thinker)

Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.
—Thomas Merton (American Trappist Monk)

We pass our life in deliberation, and we die upon it.
—Pasquier Quesnel (French Theologian)

You should talk to people who disagree with you and you should talk to people who are not in the same emotional situation you are.
—Daniel Kahneman (American-Israeli Psychologist, Economist)

The noble title of ‘dissident’ must be earned rather than claimed; it connotes sacrifice and risk rather than mere disagreement.
—Christopher Hitchens (Anglo-American Social Critic)

Vicissitude of fortune which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, but buries empires and cities in a common grave.
—Edward Gibbon (English Historian)

True courage is more a matter of intellect than of feeling.
—Steve Pavlina (American Motivational Speaker)

The anguish of the neurotic individual is the same as that of the saint. The neurotic, the saint are engaged in the same battle. Their blood flows from similar wounds. But the first one gasps and the other one gives.
—Georges Bataille (French Essayist, Intellectual)

He who loses money, loses much; He who loses a friend, loses much more; He who loses faith, loses all.
—Eleanor Roosevelt (American Humanitarian)

The universe appears to me like an immense, inexorable torture-garden. Passions, greed, hatred, and lies; law, social institutions, justice, love, glory, heroism, and religion: these are its monstrous flowers and its hideous instruments of eternal human suffering.
—Octave Mirbeau (French Author)

The ultimate Path is without difficulty. Just avoid picking and choosing.
—Jianzhi Sengcan (Chinese-Buddhist Monk)

Modern society will find no solution to the ecological problem unless it takes a serious look at its lifestyle.
—Pope John Paul II (Polish Catholic Religious Leader)

There is an increasing awareness of the interrelatedness of things. We are becoming less prone to accept an immediate solution without questioning its larger implications.
—Arthur Erickson (Canadian Architect)

Good timber does not grow with ease:
The stronger wind, the stronger trees.
—Douglas Malloch (American Poet, Short-story Writer)

For, although he didn’t know it, to him work was a sort of intoxication which gave him a glowing health and plenty of easy sleep.
—Mulk Raj Anand (Indian Novelist, Critic)

A few heart-whole, sincere, and energetic men and women can do more in a year than a mob in a century.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Monk, Mystic)

There comes with old age a time when the heart is no longer fusible or malleable, and must retain the form in which it has cooled down.
—Sheridan Le Fanu (Irish Novelist)

If the mind loves solitude, it has thereby acquired a loftier character, and it becomes still more noble when the taste is indulged in.
—Wilhelm von Humboldt (German Statesman, Scholar)

All our religion is but a false religion, and all our virtues are mere illusions and we ourselves are only hypocrites in the sight of God, if we have not that universal charity for everyone—for the good, and for the bad, for the poor and for the rich, and for all those who do us harm as much as those who do us good.
—John Vianney (French Catholic Priest)

Life is short and often stingy; feast the heart with what it craves, short of cruelty, and let the world wonder.
—Reynolds Price (American Novelist)

There are philosophies which are unendurable not because men are cowards, but because they are men.
—Ludwig Lewisohn (American Novelist, Essayist)

There are things that happen and leave no discernible trace, are not spoken of or written of, though it would be wrong to say that subsequent events go on indifferently, all the same, as though such things had never been.
—A. S. Byatt (English Novelist, Poet)

Gossip’s a nasty thing, but it’s sickly, and if people of good intentions will let it entirely alone, it will die, ninety-nine times out of a hundred.
—Booth Tarkington (American Novelist)

Ethical religion can be real only to those who are engaged in ceaseless efforts at moral improvement. By moving upward we acquire faith in an upward movement, without limit.
—Felix Adler (American Philosopher, Educator)

The most reliable way to anticipate the future is by understanding the present.
—John Naisbitt (American Trend Analyst)