Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities

'Words are the most powerful drug'

My book-of-the-month summary for July is “The Great Thoughts” (Balentine Books, 1996, 543 pages). The quotes, ranging from B.C. to the 1990s, were compiled by George Seldes, who died at 104 in 1995 before publication.

Selections:

• “Women are wiser than men because they know less and understand more.” — James Stephens

• “The great artist is the simplifier.” — Henri Amiel

• “God is not adverse to deceit in a holy cause.” — Aeschylus

• “Children’s talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.” — Maya Angelou

• “Intelligence is characterized by a natural incomprehension of life.” — Henri Bergson

• “The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles” — John Adams

• “The most useful piece of learning is to unlearn what is untrue.” — Antisthenes

• “We cannot learn without pain.” — Aristotle

• “One (has) too much only by causing others not to have enough.” — Francois-Noel Babeuf

• “The American Negro has never believed … the myth to which white Americans cling … that Americans have always dealt honorably with Mexicans and Indians and all other inferiors.” — James Baldwin

• “There are no illegitimate children — only illegitimate parents.”—Leon Yankwich

• “God is the only being who does not have to exist in order to reign.” — Charles Baudelaire

• “Ignorance is the womb of monsters.” — Henry Ward Beecher

• “To generalize is to be an idiot.” — William Blake

• “The painful burden of having nothing to do.” — Nicolas Boileau-Despereaux

• “Pray: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.” — Ambrose Bierce

• “Man is the only animal that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.” — Mark Twain

• “Don’t wait for the last judgment. It takes place every day.” — Albert Camus

• “Property given away is the only kind that will forever be yours.” — Marcus Martialis

• “A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes.” — Gotthold Lessing

• “Love is a kind of warfare.” — Ovid

• “The heart has its reasons which reason does not understand.” — Blaise Pascal

• “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.” — Horace Mann

• “No one can be a great thinker who does not follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead.” — John Stuart Mill

• “Where no hope is left, is left no fear.” — John Milton

• “No man is useless while he has a friend.” — Robert Louis Stevenson

• “You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.” — John Morley

• “More are taken in by hope than cunning.” — Marques de Vauvenargues

• “No guilty man is ever acquitted at the bar of his own conscience.” — Juvenal

• “The wise man looks at death with honesty, dignity and calm, recognizing the tragedy it brings is inherent in the great gift of life.” — Corliss Lamont

• “Sin is the breaking of one’s own integrity.” — D.H. Lawrence

• “How much trouble he avoids who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks.” — Marcus Antonius

• “Words are the most powerful drug used by mankind.” — Rudyard Kipling

• “How impressive are ordinary magicians who turn critique into awe by seeing through others’ eyes.” — Wendel Sloan

Contact Wendel Sloan at: [email protected]

 
 
Rendered 03/13/2024 23:31