Yitzchok > Yitzchok's Quotes

“If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.”
― Isaac Asimov

“The mitnagged served the Shulhan Aruch (the Law), but the hasid served Ha-Kadosh Baruch Hu (God).”
― Menahem Mendel

“Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.”
― Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

“One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.”
― Jane Austen, Emma

“What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance.”
― Jane Austen

“You deserve a longer letter than this; but it is my unhappy fate seldom to treat people so well as they deserve.”
― Jane Austen

“I do not think it worth while to wait for enjoyment until there is some real opportunity for it.”
― Jane Austen

“Marriage is indeed a maneuvering business.”
― Jane Austen

“Only those will apprehend religion who can probe its depth, who can combine intuition and love with the rigor of method”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel

“The worship of reason is arrogance and betrays a lack of intelligence. The rejection of reason is cowardice and betrays a lack of faith.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel

“There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation.”
― William Paley

“To the broody hen the notion would probably seem monstrous that there should be a creature in the world to whom a nestful of eggs was not utterly fascinating and precious and never-to-be-too-much-sat-upon object which it is to her.”
― William James

“A good debater is not necessarily an effective vote-getter: you can find a hole in your opponent's argument through which you could drive a coach and four ringing jingle bells all the way, and thrill at the crystallization of a truth wrung out from a bloody dialogue - which, however, may warm only you and your muse, while the smiling paralogist has in the meantime made votes by the tens of thousands.”
― William Buckley

“When the day shall come that we do part," he said softly, and turned to look at me, "if my last words are not 'I love you'-ye'll ken it was because I didna have time.”
― Diana Gabaldon

“I stood still, vision blurring, and in that moment, I heard my heart break. It was a small, clean sound, like the snapping of a flower's stem.”
― Diana Gabaldon, Dragonfly in Amber

“I talk to you as I talk to my own soul," he said, turning me to face him. He reached up and cupped my cheek, fingers light on my temple. "And Sassenach," he whispered, "Your face is my heart.”
― Diana Gabaldon, Dragonfly in Amber

“Very few people really care about freedom, about liberty, about the truth, very few. Very few people have guts, the kind of guts on which a real democracy has to depend. Without people with that sort of guts a free society dies or cannot be born.”
― Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

“I hated the 1960's feminists," she says. "They were dogmatists, you see. In comes ideology, and out goes common sense. This is my experience of life.”
― Doris Lessing

“Ms. Lessing points to a current dogma: political correctness. "It's a continuation of the old Communist Party. It is! The same words, the same attitudes... 'the Communist Party has made a decision and this is the line."

At first, she says, political correctness had a good beginning; she remembers saying that the language that we use is sexist, racist and so on. But then, "that became a dogma. Because we love a dogma,you know, we really do. We can never just let things develop easily from an idea, it seems to me there's always a group of fanatics who grasp it and make it a dogma.”
― Dorris Lessing

“It is absurd for the Evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing, and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“The general root of superstition : namely, that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss; and commit to memory the one, and forget and pass over the other.”
― Francis Bacon, The Collected Works of Sir Francis Bacon (Unexpurgated Edition)

“We do not simply decide to believe, having been convinced by factual evidence. We first grasp the truth, being enabled by the Holy Spirit, and then the external evidence for the truth suddenly takes on new significance. Thus we ‘understand’ by faith.

Anselm said, ‘I believe in order that I may understand’ whereas Abelard said, ‘I seek to understand in order that I may believe.”
― Arthur C. Custance

“The Jew is that sacred being, who has brought down from Heaven the everlasting fire, and has illumined with it the entire world. He is the religious source, spring, and fountain out of which all the rest of the peoples have drawn their beliefs and their religions.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created for years or even generations.”
― Khalil Gibran

“Nothing is lost upon a man who is bent upon growth; nothing wasted on one who is always preparing for - life by keeping eyes, mind and heart open to nature, men, books, experience - and what he gathers serves him at unexpected moments in unforeseen ways.”
― Hamilton Wright Mabie

“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not a mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition and of unspeakable love.”
― Washington Irving

“The decision to kiss for the first time is the most crucial in any love story. It changes the relationship of two people much more strongly than even the final surrender; because this kiss already has within it that surrender.”
― Emil Ludwig

“Only yesterday I was no different than them, yet I was saved. I am explaining to you the way of life of a people who say every sort of wicked thing about me because I sacrificed their friendship to gain my own soul. I left the dark paths of their duplicity and turned my eyes toward the light where there is salvation, truth, and justice. They have exiled me now from their society, yet I am content. Mankind only exiles the one whose large spirit rebels against injustice and tyranny. He who does not prefer exile to servility is not free in the true and necessary sense of freedom.”
― Kahlil Gibran

“Our sadness is an energy we discharge in order to heal. …Sadness is painful. We try to avoid it. Actually discharging sadness releases the energy involved in our emotional pain.

To hold it in is to freeze the pain within us. The therapeutic slogan is that grieving is the ‘healing feeling.’

”
― John Bradshaw

“To love is to see myself in you and to wish to celebrate myself with you. What I love is the embodiment of my values in another person. Love is an act of self-assertion, self-expression and a celebration of being alive.”
― Nathaniel Branden