All Quotes

"I admit that there may be unnecessary niceties in ceremonious etiquette, but whether it partakes as much of folly as the adherence to ever-changing fashions of the West, is a question not very clear to my mind. Even fashions I do not consider solely as freaks of vanity; on the contrary, I look upon these as a ceaseless search of the human mind for the beautiful. Much less do I consider elaborate ceremony as altogether trivial; for it denotes the result of long observation as to the most appropriate method of achieving a certain result. If there is anything to do, there is certainly a best way to do it, and the best way is both the most economical and the most graceful."

"All the sartorial ingenuity of mankind has not yet succeeded in sewing an apron that will efficaciously hide our sense of shame. That samurai was right who refused to compromise his character by a slight humiliation in his youth; "because," he said, "dishonor is like a scar on a tree, which time, instead of effacing, only helps to enlarge.""

"Did not Socrates, all the while he unflinchingly refused to concede one iota of loyalty to his dæmon, obey with equal fidelity and equanimity the command of his earthly master, the State? His conscience he followed, alive; his country he served, dying. Alack the day when a state grows so powerful as to demand of its citizens the dictates of their conscience!"

"The tripod that supported the framework of Bushido was said to be Chi, Jin, Yu, respectively Wisdom, Benevolence, and Courage. A samurai was essentially a man of action. Science was without the pale of his activity. He took advantage of it in so far as it concerned his profession of arms. Religion and theology were relegated to the priests; he concerned himself with them in so far as they helped to nourish courage."

"The present system of paying for every sort of service was not in vogue among the adherents of Bushido. It believed in a service which can be rendered only without money and without price. Spiritual service, be it of priest or teacher, was not to be repaid in gold or silver, not because it was valueless but because it was invaluable."

"As the sun in its rising first tips the highest peaks with russet hue, and then gradually casts its rays on the valley below, so the ethical system which first enlightened the military order drew in course of time followers from amongst the masses. Democracy raises up a natural prince for its leader, and aristocracy infuses a princely spirit among the people. Virtues are no less contagious than vices."

"Scientific education is catholic; it embraces the whole field of human learning. No student can master all knowledge in the short years of his academic life, but a young man of ability and industry may reasonably hope to master the outlines of science, obtain a deep insight into the methods of scientific research, and at the same time secure an initiation into some one of the departments of science, in such a manner that he may fully appreciate the multitude of facts upon which scientific conclusions rest, and be prepared to enter the field of scientific research himself and make additions to the sum of human knowledge."

"Honest investigation is but the application of common sense to the solution of the unknown. Science does not wait on Genius, but is the companion of Industry."

"The Yamato spirit is not a tame, tender plant, but a wild—in the sense of natural—growth; it is indigenous to the soil; its accidental qualities it may share with the flowers of other lands, but in its essence it remains the original, spontaneous outgrowth of our clime. But its nativity is not its sole claim to our affection. The refinement and grace of its beauty appeal to our æsthetic sense as no other flower can. We cannot share the admiration of the Europeans for their roses, which lack the simplicity of our flower. Then, too, the thorns that are hidden beneath the sweetness of the rose, the tenacity with which she clings to life, as though loth or afraid to die rather than drop untimely, preferring to rot on her stem; her showy colors and heavy odors—all these are traits so unlike our flower, which carries no dagger or poison under its beauty, which is ever ready to depart life at the call of nature, whose colors are never gorgeous, and whose light fragrance never palls. Beauty of color and of form is limited in its showing; it is a fixed quality of existence, whereas fragrance is volatile, ethereal as the breathing of life. So in all religious ceremonies frankincense and myrrh play a prominent part. There is something spirituelle in redolence. When the delicious perfume of the sakura quickens the morning air, as the sun in its course rises to illumine first the isles of the Far East, few sensations are more serenely exhilarating than to inhale, as it were, the very breath of beauteous day."

"The state built on martial virtues...can never make on earth a "continuing city." Universal and natural as is the fighting instinct in man, fruitful as it has proved to be of noble sentiments and manly virtues, it does not comprehend the whole man. Beneath the instinct to fight there lurks a diviner instinct to love."

"Bushido as an independent code of ethics may vanish, but its power will not perish from the earth; its schools of martial prowess or civic honor may be demolished, but its light and its glory will long survive their ruins. Like its symbolic flower, after it is blown to the four winds, it will still bless mankind with the perfume with which it will enrich life. Ages after, when its customaries shall have been buried and its very name forgotten, its odors will come floating in the air as from a far-off unseen hill."

"Rectitude carried to excess hardens into stiffness; Benevolence indulged beyond measure sinks into weakness."

"Propriety carried beyond right bounds becomes a lie."

"Tippu-Tib...told me that they usually kill several people, and have a grand feast, for the Wacusu are terrible cannibals. He then told me, amongst other stories, that long ago, when fighting near Maléla, they killed a great many of the enemy. The natives who were with him were cannibals, and not a body could be found next morning. (He tells me that two men will easily eat one man in a night.) He sent for water in the night to wash his hands and to drink, the water there being in a well. When it was brought, he could not make out why it stuck to his hands, and was so oily and bad to drink. Next day he and several Arabs went up to see what was the matter with the water, and there they saw a most horrible sight. The top of the water was all smeared with a thick layer of yellow fat, which was running over the side, and he found out that his natives had taken all the human meat to the well to wash it before eating. At the next place he camped by a stream, and made the natives camp below him. I told him that people at home generally believed that these were only "travellers' tales," as they are called in our country, or, in other words, lies. He then said something to an Arab called Ali, seated next him, who turned round to me and said, "Give me a bit of cloth, and see." I sent my boy for six handkerchiefs, thinking it was all a joke, and that they were not in earnest, but presently a man appeared, leading a young girl of about ten years old by the hand, and I then witnessed the most horribly sickening sight I am ever likely to see in my life. He plunged a knife quickly into her breast twice, and she tell on her face, turning over on her side. Three men then ran forward, and began to cut up the body of the girl; finally her head was cut off, and not a particle remained, each man taking his piece away down to the river to wash it. The most extraordinary thing was that the girl never uttered a sound, nor struggled, until she fell. Until the last moment, I could not believe that they were in earnest. I have heard many stories of this kind since I have been in this country, but never could believe them, and I never would have been such a beast as to witness this, but I could not bring myself to believe that it was anything save a ruse to get money out of me, until the last moment.The girl was a slave captured from a village close to this town, and the cannibals were Wacusu slaves, and natives of this place, called Mculusi. When I went home I tried to make some small sketches of the scene while still fresh in my memory, not that it is ever likely to fade from it. No one here seemed to be in the least astonished at it."

"Years of drought and famine come and years of flood and famine come, and the climate is not changed with dance, libation or prayer."

"The verb is relatively of much greater importance in an Indian tongue than in a civilized language."

"Possible ideas and thoughts are vast in number. A distinct word for every distinct idea and thought would require a vast vocabulary. The problem in language is to express many ideas and thoughts with comparatively few words."

"The integers of language are sentences, and their organs are the parts of speech. Linguistic organization, then, consists in the differentiation of the parts of speech and the integration of the sentence."

"Indian nouns are extremely connotive; that is, the name does more than simply denote the thing to which it belongs; in denoting the object, it also assigns to it some quality or characteristic."

"In Seneca the north is "the sun never goes there," and this sentence may be used as adjective or noun; in such cases noun, adjective, verb, and adverb are found as one vocable or word, and the four parts of speech are undifferentiated."

"In Ute the name for bear is "he seizes," or "the hugger." In this case the verb is used for the noun, and in so doing the Indian names the bear by predicating one of his characteristics. Thus noun and verb are undifferentiated."

"Economy in speech is the force by which its development has been accomplished, and it divides itself properly into economy of utterance and economy of thought. Economy of utterance has had to do with the phonic constitution of words; economy of thought has developed the sentence."

"In the past, history has been devoted chiefly to the exploits of heroes and the story of wars; but history is now being speedily reorganized and rewritten upon a scientific basis, to exhibit the growth of culture in all its grand departments. History itself is now a science, and is no longer an art in which men exploit in rhetorical paragraphs."

"Scientific education is a training in mental integrity. All along the history of culture from savagery to modern civilization men have imagined what ought to be, and then have tried to prove it true. This is the very spirit of metaphysic philosophy. When the imagination is not disciplined by unrelenting facts, it invents falsehood, and, when error has thus been invented, the heavens and the earth are ransacked for its proof."

"In science nothing can be permanently accepted but that which is true, and whatever is accepted as true is challenged again and again. It is an axiom in science that no truth can be so sacred that it may not be questioned. When that which has been accepted as true has the least doubt thrown upon it, scientific men at once re-examine the subject. No opinion is sacred. “It ought to be” is never heard in scientific circles. "It seems to be" and "we think it is" is the modest language of scientific literature."

"The history of the world is replete with illustrations to the effect that the greater the ignorance the greater the abomination of unconforming opinion, and the greater the knowledge the greater the charity for dissenting opinions."

"On my return from the first exploration of the canyons of the Colorado, I found that...a story of disaster had been circulated, with many particulars of hardship and tragedy, so that it was currently believed throughout the United States that all the members of the party were lost save one. A good friend of mine had gathered a great number of obituary notices, and it was interesting and rather flattering to me to discover the high esteem in which I had been held by the people of the United States. In my supposed death I had attained to a glory which I fear my continued life has not fully vindicated."

"The exploration was not made for adventure, but purely for scientific purposes, geographic and geologic, and I had no intention of writing an account of it, but only of recording the scientific results."

"Realizing the difficulty of painting in word colors a land so strange, so wonderful, and so vast in its features, in the weakness of my descriptive powers I have sought refuge in graphic illustration."

"Many years have passed since the exploration, and those who were boys with me in the enterprise are—ah, most of them are dead, and the living are gray with age. Their bronzed, hardy, brave faces come before me as they appeared in the vigor of life; their lithe but powerful forms seem to move around me; and the memory of the men and their heroic deeds, the men and their generous acts, overwhelms me with a joy that seems almost a grief, for it starts a fountain of tears. I was a maimed man; my right arm was gone; and these brave men, these good men, never forgot it. In every danger my safety was their first care, and in every waking hour some kind service was rendered me, and they transfigured my misfortune into a boon."

"The mountain slopes...are covered with dense forests of pines and firs. The lakes are often fringed with beautiful aspens, and when the autumn winds come their golden leaves are carried over the landscape in clouds of resplendent sheen."

"The landscape everywhere, away from the river, is of rock—cliffs of rock, tables of rock, plateaus of rock, terraces of rock, crags of rock—ten thousand strangely carved forms; rocks everywhere, and no vegetation, no soil, no sand. In long, gentle curves the river winds about these rocks."

"On the walls, and back many miles into the country, numbers of monument-shaped buttes are observed. So we have a curious ensemble of wonderful features—carved walls, royal arches, glens, alcove gulches, mounds, and monuments. From which of these features shall we select a name? We decide to call it Glen Canyon."

"We have an unknown distance yet to run, an unknown river to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls rise over the river, we know not. Ah, well! we may conjecture many things. The men talk as cheerfully as ever; jests are bandied about freely this morning; but to me the cheer is somber and the jests are ghastly."

"The wonders of the Grand Canyon cannot be adequately represented in symbols of speech, nor by speech itself. The resources of the graphic art are taxed beyond their powers in attempting to portray its features. Language and illustration combined must fail. The elements that unite to make the Grand Canyon the most sublime spectacle in nature are multifarious and exceedingly diverse. The Cyclopean forms which result from the sculpture of tempests through ages too long for man to compute, are wrought into endless details, to describe which would be a task equal in magnitude to that of describing the stars of the heavens or the multitudinous beauties of the forest with its traceries of foliage presented by oak and pine and poplar, by beech and linden and hawthorn, by tulip and lily and rose, and by fern and moss and lichen. Besides the elements of form, there are elements of color, for here the colors of the heavens are rivaled by the colors of the rocks. The rainbow is not more replete with hues. But form and color do not exhaust all the divine qualities of the Grand Canyon. It is the land of music. The river thunders in perpetual roar, swelling in floods of music when the storm gods play upon the rocks and fading away in soft and low murmurs when the infinite blue of heaven is unveiled. With the melody of the great tide rising and falling, swelling and vanishing forever, other melodies are heard in the gorges of the lateral canyons, while the waters plunge in the rapids among the rocks or leap in great cataracts. Thus the Grand Canyon is a land of song. Mountains of music swell in the rivers, hills of music billow in the creeks, and meadows of music murmur in the rills that ripple over the rocks. Altogether it is a symphony of multitudinous melodies. All this is the music of waters. The adamant foundations of the earth have been wrought into a sublime harp, upon which the clouds of the heavens play with mighty tempests or with gentle showers.The glories and the beauties of form, color and sound unite in the Grand Canyon—forms unrivaled even by the mountains, colors that vie with sunsets, and sounds that span the diapason from tempest to tinkling raindrop, from cataract to bubbling fountain. But more, it is a vast district of country. Were it a valley plain it would make a State. It can be seen only in parts from hour to hour and from day to day and from week to week and from month to month. A year scarcely suffices to see it all. It has infinite variety, and no part is ever duplicated. Its colors, though many and complex, at any instant change with the ascending and declining sun; lights and shadows appear and vanish with the passing clouds, and the changing seasons mark their passage in changing colors. You cannot see the Grand Canyon in one view, as if it were a changeless spectacle from which a curtain might be lifted, but to see it you have to toil from month to month through its labyrinths. It is a region more difficult to traverse than the Alps or the Himalayas, but if strength and courage are sufficient for the task, by a year’s toil a concept of sublimity can be obtained, never again to be equaled on the hither side of Paradise."

"He was a horse of goodly countenance, rather expressive of vigilance than fire; though an unnatural appearance of fierceness was thrown into it by the loss of his ears, which had been cropped pretty close to his head."

"In the younger days of the Republic there lived in the county of —— two men, who were admitted on all hands to be the very best men in the county; which, in the Georgia vocabulary, means they could flog any other two men in the county."

"It is said that a hundred gamecocks will live in perfect harmony together it you do not put a hen with them; and so it would have been with Billy and Bob, had there been no women in the world. But there were women in the world, and from them each of our heroes had taken to himself a wife. The good ladies were no strangers to the prowess of their husbands. and, strange as it may seem, they presumed a little upon it."

"All the knowing ones were consulted as to the issue, and they all agreed, to a man, in one of two opinions: either that Bob would flog Billy, or Billy would flog Bob."

"Language cannot describe the scene that followed; the shouts, oaths, frantic gestures, taunts, replies, and little fights; and therefore I shall not attempt it."

"Ἄνθρωπ’, ἀπολεῖς με. τῶν γὰρ ἐκ τῆς ποικίλης στοᾶς λογαρίων ἀναπεπλησμένος νοσεῖς· "ἀλλότριόν ἐσθ’ ὁ πλοῦτος ἀνθρώπῳ, πάχνη· σοφία δ’ ἴδιον, κρύσταλλος. οὐθεὶς πώποτε ταύτην λαβὼν ἀπώλεσ’.’ ὦ τάλας ἐγώ, οἵῳ μ’ ὁ δαίμων φιλοσόφῳ συνῴκισεν. ἐπαρίστερ’ ἔμαθες, ὦ πόνηρε, γράμματα· ἀντέστροφέν σου τὸν βίον τὰ βιβλία· πεφιλοσόφηκας γῇ τε κοὐρανῷ λαλῶν, οἷς οὐθέν ἐστιν ἐπιμελὲς τῶν λόγων.""

"Ὁ Πανταλέων μὲν αὐτὸς αὐτοὺς τοὺς ξένους τούς τ᾿ ἀγνοοῦντας αὐτὸν ἐπλάνα, καὶ σχεδὸν ἀπεκραιπάλα τὰ πλεῖστα τοῦ γελάσαι χάριν, ἰδίαν τιν᾿ αὑτῷ θέμενος ἀδολεσχίαν."

"Ἐπαρίστερ´ ἔμαθες, ὦ πόνηρε, γράμματα· ἀνέστροφέν σου τὸν βίον τὰ βιβλία· πεφιλοσόφηκας γῇ τε κοὐρανῷ λαλῶν, οἷς οὐθέν ἐστιν ἐπιμελὲς τῶν σῶν λόγων."

"Wild thing You make my heart sing You make everything groovy Wild thing Wild thing, I think I love you But I wanna know for sure So come on and hold me tight I love you."

"There'll be no strings to bind your hands Not if my love can't bind your heart There's no need to take a stand For it was I who chose to start I see no need to take me home I'm old enough to face the dawn Just call me angel of the morning, angel Just touch my cheek before you leave me, baby Just call me angel of the morning, angel Then slowly turn away from me."

"To be or not to be, To free or not to free, To crawl or not to crawl. Fuck all those perfect people! To sleep or not to sleep, To creep or not to creep. And some can't remember, What others recall... Fuck all those perfect people!"

"Be that as it may, be that as it may not be! Jesus was a Union electrician by the sea of Galilee. He lit up the first moving picture just to brighten up the show. Will you be there in the last video?"

"Be that as it may, be that as it might! Jesus shot in eight millimeter, he preferred the black and white. He said: "do not play up to the lens, boys and girls, just give me what you know and I will see you in the last video!""

"Will you be there in the last video? Will your name be on the roll call at the end, my friend? Where the angels, and the gamblers, and the prisoners come and go? Will you be there in the last video?"

"Be that as it may, be that as it may not be! Some of us get in the way, oh, just look at you and me! And screw all the perfect people! Jesus said that long ago! Will you be there in the last video?"