[quotes] Passionate Nomad, The Life of Freya Stark - Jane Fletcher Geniesse 1999

 

"No crime short of murder... can be comparable to the crime of destroying in another the capacity to love: and this happens sometimes through the rashness of parents... but more often through some bitterness of experience when youth is still defenseless."

"I cannot help believing that if she had wanted life more, she could have held it: but she was not interested, and accepted death as she had accepted her marriage and her baptism, and no one outside her could help."

"I hope I shall not become so, resenting ideas that are not my ideas, and seeing the world with all its changes and growth as a series of congealed formulas."

"I never imagined that my first sight of the desert would come with such a shock of beauty and enslave me right away."

"But anything was possible, Freya was now allowing herself to believe, if she could only detach herself from the tender shackles that had kept her bound to home for so long."

"It came I think from a feeling which influences me greatly, whose beginning I cannot remember and whose origin I cannot trace - a feeling for the value of affection in itself, and a reluctance to waste any of it that happened to come my way."

"Freya was burnishing her new persona, burying the shy girl of her youth and creating a self-sufficiency to match her growing reputation as a person of fearless, even heroic, deeds."

"How brittle in reality are all the things whose permanence is never questioned."

"Freya, the chronic nomad, liked the thought of Venetia's stable life, while Venetia enjoyed the open horizons of Freya's."

"It is ridiculous to care so much, but after all there is less difference between us and a lizard than between us and God and we expect Him to feel an interest."

"Bribing people to adjust their beliefs was both cynical and repugnant."

"After Flora's death she used the writing to understand their complicated relationship and came to a forgiveness and reconciliation she could not have achieved had Flora been alive."

"... and the art of learning fundamental common values is perhaps the greatest gain of travel to those who wish to live at ease among their fellows."

"Perseverance is often praised, but it is not so often realized that another quality must accompany it to make it of any value - and that is elasticity; perseverance in only one direction very often fails: but if one is ready to take whatever road is offered, and to change the chosen way, if circumstances change, and yet to keep the end in view - then success is infinitely more probable."

"And it hardly made sense, she insisted, to make Palestinians pay with their homes and lands for injuries done to Jews by European Christians."

[quotes] The Story of My Experiments with Truth - Mohandas K. Gandhi autobiography 1948

 

"Her duty was easily converted into my right to exact faithfulness from her, and if it had to be exacted, I should be watchfully tenacious of the right."

"I saw that bad handwriting should be regarded as a sign of an imperfect education. I tried later to improve mine, but it was too late."

"True friendship is an identity of souls rarely to be found in this world. Only between like natures can friendship be altogether worthy and enduring."

"... the change harmonized my inward and outward life. It was also more in keeping with the means of my family. My life was certainly more truthful and my soul knew no bounds of joy."

 "So long as we are children we are attracted by toys, and the Tower was a good demonstration of the fact that we are all children attracted by trinkets. That may be claimed to be the purpose served by the Eiffel Tower."

"The hardship to which I was subjected was superficial - only a symptom of the deep disease of colour prejudice... Redress for wrongs I should seek only to the extent that would be necessary for the removal of the colour prejudice."

"Was this the meaning of Christianity? Did they cease to be Indians because they had become Christians?"

"I should not exhaust my skill as a fighter in insisting on retaining my turban. It was worthy of a better cause."

"It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow-beings."

"It is only the English-speaking ones who will not learn it, as though knowledge of English were an obstacle to learning our own languages."

"Such service can have no meaning unless one takes pleasure in it. When it is done for show or for fear of public opinion, it stunts the man and crushes the spirit."

"A patriot cannot afford to ignore any branch of service to the motherland."

"A public institution means an institution conducted with the approval, and from the funds, of the public. When such an institution ceases to have public support, it forfeits the right to exist. Institutions maintained on permanent funds are often found to ignore public opinion, and are frequently responsible to acts contrary to it."

"It is the reformer who is anxious for the reform, and not society, from which he should except nothing better than opposition, abhorrence and even mortal persecution."

"The deeper the search in the mine of truth the richer the discovery of the gems buried there, in the shape of openings for an ever greater variety of service."

"I believed then and I believe even now, that, no matter what amount of work one has, one should always find some time for exercise, just as one does for one's meals... far from taking away from one's capacity for work, it adds to it."

"A writer almost always presents one aspect of a case, whereas every case can be seen from no less than seven points of view, all of which are probably correct by themselves, but not correct at the same time and in the same circumstances."

"The newspaper press is a great power, but just as an unchained torrent of water submerges whole countrysides and devastates crops, even so an uncontrolled pen serves but to destroy."

"It is a rare thing in this world to be born as a human being, and I would far rather die in your arms than pollute my body with such abominations."

"... even truthfulness in the practice of the profession cannot cure it of the fundamental defect that vitiates it."

"I had seen packets of indigo, but little dreamed that it was grown and manufactured in Champaran at great hardship to thousands of agriculturists."

"My coworkers and I had built many castles in the air, but they all vanished for the time being."

"... whose desperate struggle for bread renders them insensible to all feelings of decency and self-respect. And our philanthropists, instead of providing work for them and insisting on their working for bread, give them alms."

"Civility does not here mean the mere outward gentleness of speech cultivated for the occasion, but an inborn gentleness and desire to do the opponent good."

"The lesson was indelibly imprinted on the public mind that the salvation of the people depends upon themselves, upon their capacity for suffering and sacrifice."

"What a tragedy that the language of the country should be taboo in meetings held in the country, for work relating to the country, and that a speech there in Hindustani by a stray individual like myself should be a matter for congratulations!"

"It was one interwoven with my course of life which is guided by principles no longer depending upon outside authority."

"To see the universal and all-pervading Spirit of Truth face to face one must be able to love the meanest of creation as oneself."

"That is why my devotion to Truth has drawn me into the field of politics; and I can say without the slightest hesitation, and yet in all humility, that those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means."

"In bidding farewell to the reader... I ask him to join with me in prayer to the God of Truth that He may grant me the boon of Ahimsa in mind, word and deed."

[quotes] Gilead - Marilynne Robinson 2004

 

"If you're a grown man when you read this - it is my intention for this letter that you will read it then - I'll have been gone a long time. I'll know most of what there is to know about being dead, but I'll probably keep it to myself. That seems to be the way of things."

"... and I wonder what it expends out of your system, so that you have to do it till you're done, like crying in a way, I suppose, except that laughter is much more easily spent."

"So the congregation took up collections to put him in college and then to send him to Germany. And he came back an atheist. That's what he always to be, at any rate."

"We'd go through the possibilities we were aware of. There weren't many."

"You may not remember me at all, and it may seem to you to be no great thing to have been the good child of an old man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind. If only I had the words to tell you."

"But in fact one lapse in judgment can quickly create a situation in which only foolish choices are possible."

"I have been thinking lately how I have loved my physical life."

"These people who can see right through you never quite do you justice, because they never give you credit for the effort you're making to be better than you actually are, which is difficult and well meant and deserving of some little notice."

"I never dared to ask him what he'd been up to. I couldn't risk the possibility of knowing things that were worse than my suspicions."

"It was kindly intended, but not considerate, I understand that."

"Calvin says somewhere that each of us is an actor on a stage and God is the audience... How well do we understand our role? With how much assurance to we perform it?"

"... she did by loving that unremarkable book so much that I noticed and read it, too. That was providence telling me what she could not have told me."

"I wish I could leave you certain of the images in my mind, because they are so beautiful that I hate to think they will be extinguished when I am."

"Because nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense."

"... just an old man struggling with the difficulty of understanding what it is he's struggling with."

"I truly suspect I never left because I was afraid I would not come back."

"How could I accept the advice of someone who had such a low estimation of me?"

"... and he would protect him like a father cannot, defend him with a strength he does not have, sustain him with a bounty beyond any resource he could ever dream of having."

"They mattered or they didn't and that's the end of it."

"Here on the prairie there is nothing to distract attention from the evening and the morning, nothing on the horizon to abbreviate or to delay. Mountains would seem an impertinence from that point of view."

"I love this town. I think sometimes of going into the ground here as a last wild gesture of love - I too will smolder away the time until the great and general incandescence."