Themes

"Álomban és szerelemben nincs lehetetlenség."

"Higher than the perfect song For which love longeth, Is the tender fear of wrong, That never wrongeth."

"Injuriarum remedium est oblivio."

"Once I guessed right, And I got credit by't; Thrice I guessed wrong, And I kept my credit on."

"A man finds he has been wrong at every preceding stage of his career, only to deduce the astonishing conclusion that he is at last entirely right."

"Sometimes, to do wrong deeds, one's intentions don't have to be bad; unfavorable timing and circumstances might lead one to do so."

"Alas! how easily things go wrong! A sigh too deep, or a kiss too long, And then comes a mist and a weeping rain, And life is never the same again."

"In the great right of an excessive wrong."

"Wrongs unredressed, or insults unavenged."

"Anything which is accomplished through making other people afraid is wrong. Anything which deprives other people of their dignity is wrong."

"Suffer not thy wrongs to shroud thy fate, But turn, my soul, to blessings which remain."

"Marie: Something funny might be nice. But not something necessarily big, hahaha, laugh out loud funny, and certainly not-make-fun-of-other-people funny, but certainly something human funny. And uh, if it could um, sneak up on you, surprise you, and at the same time make you think that what you thought was only right in a wrong kind of way, and when you're wrong, there's a certain rightness to your wrongness."

"Brother, brother; we are both in the wrong."

"If you're gonna work for me, you have to be willing to be wrong, willing to lose. 'Cause you just did. You're fired."

"Peace is never long preserved by weight of metal or by an armament race. Peace can be made tranquil and secure only by understanding and agreement fortified by sanctions. We must embrace international cooperation or international disintegration. Science has taught us how to put the atom to work. But to make it work for good instead of for evil lies in the domain dealing with the principles of human dignity. We are now facing a problem more of ethics than of physics."

"There's something in a flying horse, There's something in a huge balloon."

"Out of our reach the gods have laid Of time to come th' event, And laugh to see the fools afraid Of what the knaves invent."

"Pretty! in amber to observe the forms Of hairs, of straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms! The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare, But wonder how the devil they got there."

"Wonder [said Socrates] is very much the affection of a philosopher; for there is no other beginning of philosophy than this."

"The things that have been and shall be no more, The things that are, and that hereafter shall be, The things that might have been, and yet were not, The fading twilight of joys departed."

"This wonder lasted nine daies."

"Men love to wonder and that is the seed of our science."

"Long stood the noble youth oppress'd with awe, And stupid at the wondrous things he saw, Surpassing common faith, transgressing nature's law."

"We were young, we were merry, we were very, very wise, And the door stood open at our feast, When there passed us a woman with the West in her eyes, And a man with his back to the East."

"The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of onder."

"If a man proves too clearly and convincingly to himself … that a tiger is an optical illusion—well, he will find out he is wrong. The tiger will himself intervene in the discussion, in a manner which will be in every sense conclusive."

"Mira cano; sol occubuit; Nox nulla secuta est."

"Nothing but what astonishes is true."

"We nothing know, but what is marvellous; Yet what is marvellous, we can't believe."

"'Twas strange, 'twas passing strange; 'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful."

"Stones have been known to move and trees to speak."

"Can such things be, And overcome us like a summer's cloud, Without our special wonder?"

"O day and night, but this is wondrous strange."

"O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful! and yet again wonderful, and after that, out of all hooping."

"Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe."

"Never see … a dead post-boy, did you?" inquired Sam…. "No," rejoined Bob, "I never did." "No!" rejoined Sam triumphantly. "Nor never vill; and there's another thing that no man never see, and that's a dead donkey."

"A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour!"

"He shall have chariots easier than air, That I will have invented;… And thyself, That art the messenger, shalt ride before him On a horse cut out of an entire diamond. That shall be made to go with golden wheels, I know not how yet."

"If we suppose a sufficient righteousness and intelligence in men to produce presently, from the tremendous lessons of history, an effective will for a world peace — that is to say, an effective will for a world law under a world government — for in no other fashion is a secure world peace conceivable — in what manner may we expect things to move towards this end?… It is an educational task, and its very essence is to bring to the minds of all men everywhere, as a necessary basis for world cooperation, a new telling and interpretation, a common interpretation, of history."

"Universal Peace, assuming it to be in the fullest sense realizable, might not require eons for its accomplishment, however probable this may appear, judging from the imperceptibly slow growth of all great reformatory ideas of the past. … Our accepted estimates of the duration of natural metamorphoses, or changes in general, have been thrown in doubt of late. The very foundations of science have been shaken."

"As for us, the ‘ordinary people’ of today, like our grandparents and great-grandparents in the late 1930s, we are sure that we want all the advantages of prosperity, safety, a roof over our heads and the conveniences of fast travel and communication. And, like them, we want the gift of international peace, which guarantees all these good things. However, many of us also seem to think we can combine these benefits with crude national self-aggrandizement while remaining immune to the consequences. No one really expects another war in Europe. However, it is also true that for the first time in almost three-quarters of a century, no one really rules it out. In this trend lies the chilling similarity between our world and the experience of the people living day by day, week by week, through the chaotic and unpredictable time immediately preceding the outbreak of the Second World War. This is how it felt to be human beings existing in the thick of a fateful and ultimately catastrophic phase in European history, their experience unmediated by hindsight. Like most of us today, our grandparents and great-grandparents were largely preoccupied with private daily duties and routines, preoccupations and gratifications. They could not, of course, foresee the future. Wider dangers remained unseen or half-seen, individual and communal hopes for peace and continuing prosperity had not yet been dashed."

"The development of the doctrine of international arbitration, considered from the standpoint of its ultimate benefits to the human race, is the most vital movement of modern times. In its relation to the well-being of the men and women of this and ensuing generations, it exceeds in importance the proper solution of various economic problems which are constant themes of legislative discussion or enactment."

"Rules of conduct which govern men in their relations to one another are being applied in an ever-increasing degree to nations. The battlefield as a place of settlement of disputes is gradually yielding to arbitral courts of justice."

"The question of whether world peace will ever be possible can only be answered by someone familiar with world history. To be familiar with world history means, however, to know human beings as they have been and always will be. There is a vast difference, which most people will never comprehend, between viewing future history as it will be and viewing it as one might like it to be. Peace is a desire, war is a fact; and history has never paid heed to human desires and ideals."

"It was the human spirit itself that failed at Paris. It is no use passing judgments and making scapegoats of this or that individual statesman or group of statesmen. Idealists make a great mistake in not facing the real facts sincerely and resolutely. They believe in the power of the spirit, in the goodness which is at the heart of things, in the triumph which is in store for the great moral ideals of the race. But this faith only too often leads to an optimism which is sadly and fatally at variance with actual results. It is the realist and not the idealist who is generally justified by events. We forget that the human spirit, the spirit of goodness and truth in the world, is still only an infant crying in the night, and that the struggle with darkness is as yet mostly an unequal struggle…. Paris proved this terrible truth once more. It was not Wilson who failed there, but humanity itself. It was not the statesmen that failed, so much as the spirit of the peoples behind them."

"To Woodrow Wilson, the apparent failure, belongs the undying honor, which will grow with the growing centuries, of having saved the "little child that shall lead them yet." No other statesman but Wilson could have done it. And he did it."

"Peace on the earth, good will to men, / From Heaven's all gracious King."

"The structure of world peace cannot be the work of one man, or one party, or one Nation. It cannot be just an American peace, or a British peace, or a Russian, a French, or a Chinese peace. It cannot be a peace of large Nations- or of small Nations. It must be a peace which rests on the cooperative effort of the whole world. It cannot be a structure of complete perfection at first. But it can be a peace—and it will be a peace—based on the sound and just principles of the Atlantic Charter—on the concept of the dignity of the human being—and on the guarantees of tolerance and freedom of religious worship."

"Peace is the music of every soul. Our glory lies in understanding, listening and honoring that music."

"So long as [men] hold the tribal notion that the individual is sacrificial fodder for the collective, that some men have the right to rule others by force, and that some (any) alleged 'good' can justify It — there can be no peace ‘within’ a nation and no peace among nations."