All Quotes

"Here Mr. Salinger was just Jerry, a quiet man who arrived early to church suppers, nodded hello while buying a newspaper at the general store and wrote a thank-you note to the fire department after it extinguished a blaze and helped save his papers and writings. Despite his reputation, Mr. Salinger “was not a recluse,” said Nancy Norwalk, a librarian at the Philip Read Memorial Library in Plainfield, which Mr. Salinger would frequent. “He was a towns-person.” And last week, after his death, his neighbors would not talk about him, reflecting what one called “the code of the hills.” “Nobody conspired to keep his privacy, but everyone kept his privacy — otherwise he wouldn’t have stayed here all these years,” said Sherry Boudro of nearby Windsor, Vt., who said her father, Paul Sayah, befriended Mr. Salinger in the 1970s. “This community saw him as a person, not just the author of ‘The Catcher in the Rye.’ They respect him. He was an individual who just wanted to live his life.” The curious constantly descended on Cornish and the surrounding area, asking residents for directions to Mr. Salinger’s house. Instead of finding the home, interlopers would end up on a wild goose chase. How far afield the directions went “depended on how arrogant they were,” said Mike Ackerman, owner of the Cornish General Store. Mr. Salinger, he said, “was like the Batman icon. Everyone knew Batman existed, and everyone knows there’s a Batcave, but no one will tell you where it is.”"

"We lose things, and then we choose things, and there are Louies and there are Georges...well, Louies...and George. But George has George! And I need...someone!"

"Pretty isn't beautiful, Mother. Pretty is what changes. What the eye arranges-- is what is beautiful."

"I want my glasses!"

"There are only two worthwhile things to leave behind when you depart this world of ours - children and art."

"I cannot divide my feelings up as neatly as you, and I am not hiding behind my canvas - I am living in it!"

"I am what I do. Which you knew. Which you always knew. What I thought you were a part of!"

"Stop worrying if your vision is new. Let others make that decision- they usually do."

"Anything you do, let it it come from you--then it will be new."

"White. A blank page or canvas. His favorite. So many possibilities. [last line]"

"(George) Yes she looks for me. Good. Let her look for me to tell me why she left me. As I always knew she would. I had thought she understood. They have never understood and no reason that they should. But if anybody could. Finishing the hat, how you have to finish the hat. How you watch the rest of the world from a window while you finish the hat. Mapping out a sky. What you feel like planning a sky. How you feel when voices that come through the window go until they distance and die. Until there's nothing but sky. And how you're always coming back too late from the grass or the stick or the dog or the light. How the kind of women willing to wait's not the kind that you want to find waiting to return you to the night. Dizzy from the height. Coming from the hat. Studying the hat. Entering the world of the hat. Reaching through the world of the hat like a window back to this one from that. Studying a face. Stepping back to look at a face leaves a little space in the way like a window. But to see, it's the only way to see. And when the woman that you wanted goes you can say to yourself "well, I give what I give," but the woman who won't wait for you knows that however you live there's a part of you always standing by, mapping out a sky. Finishing a hat. Starting on a hat. Finishing a hat. Look I made a hat...where there never was a hat!"

"τὰ ὄντα ἰέναι τε πάντα καὶ μένειν οὐδέν"

"πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει"

"δὶς ἐς τὸν αὐτὸν ποταμὸν οὐκ ἂν ἐμβαίης."

"χαλεπώτερον ἡδονῇ μάχεσθαι ἢ θυμῷ"

"τὴν μεταβολὴν ὁδὸν ἄνω κάτω, τόν τε κόσμον γίνεσθαι κατ' αὐτήν."

"αἰὼν παῖς ἐστι παίζων, πεσσεύων· παιδὸς ἡ βασιληίη."

"# The Cosmos is child's play: a child playing chess as King."

"#* Using English idioms to parallel the original's wordplay."

"# History is a child building a sand-castle by the sea, and that child is the whole majesty of man’s power in the world."

"#* A very free translation, as quoted in Contemporary Literature in Translation (1976), p. 21"

"# A lifetime is a child playing, playing checkers; the kingdom belongs to a child."

"#* As quoted in The Beginning of All Wisdom: Timeless Advice from the Ancient Greeks (2003) by Steven Stavropoulos, p. 95"

"# Time is a game played beautifully by children."

"#* A free translation, as quoted in Fragments (2001) translated by Brooks Haxton"

"# Lifetime is a child at play, moving pieces in a game. Kingship belongs to the child."

"#* As quoted in The Art and Thought of Heraclitus (1979) translated by Charles H. Kahn"

"χρὴ γὰρ εὖ μάλα πολλῶν ἴστορας φιλοσόφους ἄνδρας εἶναι"

"Πόλεμος πάντων μὲν πατήρ ἐστι πάντων δὲ βασιλεύς, καὶ τοὺς μὲν θεοὺς ἔδειξε τοὺς δὲ ἀνθρώπους, τοὺς μὲν δούλους ἐποίησε τοὺς δὲ ἐλευθέρους."

""You know Adam?" Teddy asked him."Do I know who?""Adam. In the Bible."Nicholson smiled. "Not personally," he said dryly."

"What experience and history teach is this — that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it."

"Amid the pressure of great events, a general principle gives no help."

"To him who looks upon the world rationally, the world in its turn presents a rational aspect. The relation is mutual."

"We must first of all, however, definitely understand, in reference to the end we have in view, that it is not the concern of philosophy to produce religion in any individual. Its existence is, on the contrary, presupposed as forming what is fundamental in every one. So far as man's essential nature is concerned, nothing new is to be introduced into him. To try to do this would be as absurd as to give a dog printed writings to chew, under the idea that in this way you could put mind into it. It may happen that religion is awakened in the heart by means of philosophical knowledge, but it is not necessarily so. It is not the purpose of philosophy to edify, and quite as little is it necessary for it to make good its claims by showing in any particular case that it must produce religious feelings in the individual."

"The science of religion is one science within philosophy; indeed it is the final one. In that respect it presupposes the other philosophical disciplines and is therefore a result."

"The beginning of religion, more precisely its content, is the concept of religion itself, that God is the absolute truth, the truth of all things, and subjectively that religion alone is the absolutely true knowledge."

"The Church has consistently and justly refused to allow that reason might stand in opposition to faith, and yet be placed under subjection to it. The human spirit in its inmost nature is not something so divided up that two contradictory elements might subsist together in it. If discord has arisen between intellectual insight and religion, and is not overcome in knowledge, it leads to despair, which comes in the place of reconciliation. This despair is reconciliation carried out in a one-sided manner. The one side is cast away, the other alone held fast; but a man cannot win true peace in this way. The one alternative is, for the divided spirit to reject the demands of the intellect and try to return to simple religious feeling. To this, however, the spirit can only attain by doing violence to itself, for the independence of consciousness demands satisfaction, and will not be thrust aside by force; and to renounce independent thought, is not within the power of the healthy mind. Religious feeling becomes yearning hypocrisy, and retains the moment of non-satisfaction. The other alternative is a one-sided attitude of indifference toward religion, which is either left unquestioned and let alone, or is ultimately attacked and opposed. That is the course followed by shallow spirits."

"Spirit is knowledge; but in order that knowledge should exist, it is necessary that the content of that which it knows should have attained to this ideal form, and should in this way have been negated. What Spirit is must in that way have become its own, it must have described this circle; then these forms, differences, determinations finite qualities, must have existed in order that it should make them its own. This represents both the way and the goal-that Spirit should have attained to its own notion or conception, to that which it implicitly is, and in this way only, the way which has been indicated in its abstract moments, does it attain it. Revealed religion is manifested religion, because in it God has become wholly manifest. Here all is proportionate to the notion; there is no longer anything secret in God."

"It is easier to discover a deficiency in individuals, in states, and in providence, than to see their real import or value."

"Life has a value only when it has something valuable as its object."

"History is not the soil of happiness. The periods of happiness are blank pages in it."

"Serious occupation is labor that has reference to some want."

"[W]hen Hitler says that “the State dominates the nation because it alone represents it,” he is only putting into loose popular language the formula of Hegel, that “the State is the general substance, whereof individuals are but accidents.”"

"What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. I mean I've left schools and places I didn't even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don't care if it's a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it. If you don't, you feel even worse."

"Faith must now get what is essentially the form of mediation. It itself is already this form implicitly, for it is knowledge of God and of his character, and this knowledge is in itself a process, a movement—is life, mediation. It is involved in the very nature of the freedom which is the inner characteristic of faith, that it should not be what we at first called substantial, solid unity, that it should not be idea; in freedom I exist on the contrary as that activity in the affirmation which is infinite negation of itself. Now if we should wish to give to mediation the form of an external mediation as the foundation of faith, then such a form would be a wrong one. This mediation, of which the basis is something external is false. The content of faith my indeed come to be my means of instruction, miracle, authority, etc. These may be the foundation of faith as subjective faith. But it is just in giving this position to the content whereby it assumes the character of a basis for me, that we go on a wrong track; and when faith is reached, this externality must drop away. In faith I make that my own which comes to me thus, and it ceases to be for me an Other. Immediate faith may be so defined as being the witness of the Spirit to Spirit, and this implies that no finite content has any place in it. Spirit witnesses only of Spirit, and only infinite things are mediated by means of external grounds. The true foundation of faith is the Spirit, and the witness of the Spirit is inherently living. Verification may at first appear in that external formal manner, but this must drop away. It may thus happen that faith in a religion has its commencement form such testimony, from miracles, that is in a finite content. Christ Himself, however, spoke against miracles, He reproached the Jews for demanding them of Him, and said to His disciples, “The Spirit will guide you into all truth.”"

"These are the Galla and Gaga tribes, which, as the most savage and most barbarous of conquerors, have repeatedly descended upon the coasts since the year 1542, pouring forth from the interior and inundating the whole country. These look upon man in the strength of his consciousness as too exalted to be capable of being killed by anything so obscure as the power of nature. What therefore takes place is, that sick people, in whose case magic has proved ineffectual, are put to death by their friends. In the same way the wild tribes of North America too killed their aged who had reached decrepitude, the meaning of which is unmistakable, namely, that man is not to perish by means of nature, but is to have due honour rendered to him at human hands. There is another people again who have the belief that everything would go to ruin if their high-priest were to die a natural death. He is therefore executed as soon as ever he becomes ill and weak; if a high-priest should notwithstanding die of some disease, they believe that some other person killed him by means of magic, and the magicians have to ascertain who the murderer was, when he is at once made away with. On the death of a king in particular, many persons are killed: according to a missionary of older days, it is the devil of the king who is slain. Such, then, is the very first form of religion, which cannot indeed as yet be properly called religion."

"An Englishman who, by a most careful investigation into the various representations, has sought to discover what is meant by Brahma, believes that Brahma is an epithet of praise, and is used as such just because he is not looked on as being himself solely this One, but, on the contrary, everything says of itself that it is Brahma. I refer to what Mill says in his History of India. He proves from many Indian writings that it is an epithet of praise which is applied to various deities, and does not represent the conception of perfection or unity which we associate with it. This is a mistake, for Brahma is in one aspect the One, the Immutable, who has, however, the element of change in him, and because of this, the rich variety of forms which is thus essentially his own is also predicated of him. Vishnu is also called the Supreme Brahma. Water and the sun are Brahma."

"That man should think of God as nothingness must at first sight seem astonishing, must appear to us a most peculiar idea. But, considered more closely, this determination means that God is absolutely nothing determined. He is the Undetermined; no determinateness of any kind pertains to God; He is the Infinite. This is equivalent to saying that God is the negation of all particularity."

"Among the Romans in Christian times Mithras-worship as very widely spread, and so late as the Middle Ages we meet with a secret Mithras-worship ostensibly connected with the order of the Knights-Templars. Mithras thrusting the knife into the neck of the ox is a figurative representation belonging essentially to the cult of Mithras, of which examples have been frequently found in Europe."

"In the religion of absolute Spirit the outward form of God is not made by the human spirit. God Himself is, in accordance with the true Idea, self-consciousness which exists in and for itself, Spirit. He produces Himself of His own act, appears as Being for “Other”; He is, by His own act, the Son; in the assumption of a definite form as the Son, the other part of the process is present, namely, that God loves the Son, posits Himself as identical with Him, yet also as distinct from Him. The assumption of form makes its appearance in the aspect of determinate Being as independent totality, but as a totality which is retained within love; here, for the first time, we have Spirit in and for itself. The self-consciousness of the Son regarding Himself is at the same time His knowledge of the Father; in the Father the Son has knowledge of His own self, of Himself. At our present stage, on the contrary, the determinate existence of God as God is not existence posited by Himself, but by what is Other. Here Spirit has stopped short half way."