Riaan en Kari Doorduin: The power of words

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." -Albert Einstein

"He who cannot draw on 3000 years is living from hand to mouth." -Goethe

"When confronted with a work of art, we have to open our minds to allow it to carry us away. If we seek to relate intimately to another person, we have to be prepared to make ourselves vulnerable.." - Karen Armstrong

I wanted to live everywhere and smell, taste, feel everything. I wanted to go to sea, explore unknown lands, take off in a space rocket, dine only at all-you-can-eat restaurants, be the last to leave parties. What I couldn’t acknowledge then, and hardly now, is that life just isn’t like that for most of us. The quicksands of suburbia were lurking at every step, and those who broke on through to the sunlit uplands couldn’t find their way back, even when the poverty and lack of enthusiasm for climbing means they wanted to come back. It was the dream of an immature young man, which is exactly what I was.
My eyes would be drawn inevitably to the low ridge of purple hills that ringed the east side of Manchester. The weight of the city; of all those people moving on their tiny arcs across its concrete streets, would be lifted for a moment. That place, over there in those hills, was somewhere I could feel alive, where the moment of release could give me the clarity to understand unconsciously that poetry, prophecy, and religion are all one.

- Ed Douglas: Voices from the Summit, 2000

Nog quotes

Behold the guarantee - the bold print giveth, and the fine print taketh away.

Ask not for whom the telephone bell tolls. If thou art in the bath, it tolls for thee.

If the world were good for nothing else, it is a fine subject for speculation.

What is my loftiest ambition? I've always wanted to throw an egg into an electric fan..

His handshake ought not to be used except as a tourniquet.

Some people can stay longer in an hour than others can in a week.

Many a man's reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.

The world is moving so fast these days, that men who says it can't be done are generally interrupted by men who are doing it.

Pioneers are the people with the arrows in their backs.

03 April 2012

The power of words

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Nog quotes