Born on April 15 — Quotes

Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold. For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you. So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will then be powerless to vex your mind.

In our contemporary situation we are tempted to become totally inculturated in the present, thereby losing our sense of identity as followers of Jesus Christ, overlooking the importance of memory, abandoning hope and placing all the emphasis on the here and now. We are in a season of transition, as we watch the collapse of the world as we have known it in its political forms and economic realities of the past which are becoming increasingly ineffective. It has been said by many critics of religion that the problem of our time is not atheism but idolatry. It is not that we are non-believers but that our beliefs are assigned to unworthy and unworkable objects. Today in a variety of ways the State wants to reshape our values, our fears and dreams in ways that are fundamentally opposed to the Gospel.

In the very first year of his reign, he [Jahangir] tortured Guru Arjun Dev to death. His contempt for Hindus comes out clearly in his Tuzuk-i-Jahãngîrî: “A Hindu named Arjun lived in Govindwal on the bank of river Beas in the garb of a saint and in ostentation. From all sides cowboys and idiots became his fast followers. The business had flourished for three or four generations. For a long time it had been in my mind to put a stop to this dukãn-e-bãtil (mart of falsehood) or to bring him into the fold of Islam.” According to other accounts, he asked the Guru to include some sûrahs of the Quran in the Ãdi Grantha, which the Guru refused to do. In the eighth year of his reign, he destroyed the temple of Bhagwat at Ajmer. He persecuted the Jains in Gujarat, and ordered that Jain monks should not be seen in his kingdom on pain of death. Finally, he sent Murtaza Khan to Kangra for reducing that city of temples. The siege lasted for 20 months at the end of which he himself went to Kangra for slaughtering cows in that sacred place of Hindus, and building a mosque where none had existed before.

Details make perfection, and perfection is not a detail.

Do you see that corner of canvas there [of his painting 'La Ferme'], large as the hand, does it not seem to you that it far surpasses in intensity, in clearness, in expression, the rest of the canvas? [Sensier confirmed]. Well, then, all the rest must pass under the control of that little centre; all that which surrounds it submit itself to that diapason of light and the whole of the picture be as charged with life as that which you see there. Must we not incessantly lift ourselves, surpass ourselves, in this terrible profession of painter?

It is, I think, an indisputable fact that Americans are, as Americans, the most self-conscious people in the world, and the most addicted to the belief that the other nations of the earth are in a conspiracy to undervalue them.

In the natural sciences, language (mathematics) is a useful tool: like the microscope or telescope, it enables us to see what is otherwise invisible. In the social sciences, language (literalized metaphor) is an impediment: like a distorting mirror, it prevents us from seeing the obvious. That is why in the natural sciences, knowledge can be gained only with the mastery of their special languages; whereas in human affairs, knowledge can be gained only by rejecting the pretentious jargons of the social sciences.

Doubt comes in at the window, when Inquiry is denied at the door.

He who does not punish evil, commands it to be done.

Tell me if anything was ever done... Tell me... Tell me.

Non appena nasce la virtù, nasce contro di lei l'invidia, e farà prima il corpo a perdere la sua ombra che la virtù la sua invidia.

He who offends others, does not secure himself.

In every disadvantage that a woman suffers at the hands of a man, there is inevitably, in what concerns the man, an element of cowardice. When I say "inevitably," I mean that this is what the woman sees in it.

Men will deal rude blows to that which is the cause of their life:—They will thrash the grain.

life without love, is no life at all