Moment Quotes
 
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All places where women are excluded tend downward to barbarism; but the moment she is introduced, there come in with her courtesy, cleanliness, sobriety, and order.
harriet beecher stowe— Household Papers and Stories, Part 2, Chapter 2 (1864)
'Curiouser and curiouser!' cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English).
Lewis Carroll— 1865 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, ch.2,'The Pool of Tears'.
Labour once spent has no influence on the future value of any article; it is gone and lost for ever. In commerce bygones are forever bygones; and we are always starting clear at each moment, judging the values of things with a view to future utility.
william stanley jevons— The Theory of Political Economy (1871)
Some wonder why I have such a feeling of concern over the imposition of the death penalty. I ask those who wonder how would you feel if you defended a man charged with murder, who was as innocent as any hon. member in this House at this very moment, who was convicted; whose appeal was dismissed, who was executed; and six months later the star witness for the Crown admitted that he, himself, had committed the murder and blamed it on the accused? That experience will never be effaced from my memory.
john diefenbaker— May 1, 1972, House of Commons.
We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing.
ronald david laing— p. 1 of Introduction
The moment the first American soldier sets foot on the Japanese mainland, all prisoners of war will be shot.
Hideki Tojo— Note signed by Tojo (June 1945), left at a camp during the Bataan Death March. Possible forgery since Tojo was no longer in power for over a year at the time of the discovery. Also, the Japanese homeland was not threatened with invasion at the time and it was common sense that the Philippines would be attacked before.
If they have real grievances redress them, if possible; or acknowledge the justice of them, and your inability to do it at the moment. If they have not, employ the force of government against them at once.
george washington— Letter to Henry Lee (31 October 1786).
Each individual work serves as an expression of our most personal state of mind at that particular moment and of the inescapable, imperative need for release by means of an appropriate act of creation: in the rhythm, form, colour and mood of a picture.
Lyonel Feininger— 1917 Letter to Paul Westheim, quoted in Wolf-Dieter Dube The Expressionists (1972).
Magic is not about having a puzzle to solve. It's about creating a moment of awe and astonishment. And that can be a beautiful thing
david blaine— Interview with Brett Martin for Time Out New York (April 1-8, 1999, on-line).[1]
I had the pleasure of not only performing for him in tribute, but performing in his stead at the Grammy Awards in 1998, singing 'Nessun Dorma.' I had one magnificent and absolute and defining moment when he came to the stage to thank me for my performance. The world has lost one of the greatest voices of all time.
Luciano Pavarotti— Aretha Franklin
Many scholars have felt that the Heronian passage [on a pipe-organ moved by an anemourion-like wheel] can be disregarded because it is not confirmed by other writings. Heron presumably mentioned the anemourion in a moment of distraction, forgetting that it had not been invented yet. We know that he was given to such lapses.
lucio russo— 4.7, "Use of Natural Power", p. 126
In societies with fewer opportunities for amusement, it was also easier to tell a mere wish from a real desire. If, in order to hear some music, a man has to wait for six months and then walk twenty miles, it is easy to tell whether the words, "I should like to hear some music," mean what they appear to mean, or merely, "At this moment I should like to forget myself." When all he has to do is press a switch, it is more difficult. He may easily come to believe that wishes can come true.
wystan hugh auden— Interlude: West's Disease", p. 245
At the same moment a peculiar fragrance was borne upon the breeze, as if a passing fairy had hiccuped, and had previously been to a wine vaults.
charles dickens— 1843-4 On Mrs Gamp's entering a room. Martin Chuzzlewit, ch.25.
To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it "the way it really was"...It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger.
walter benjamin— VI
The news of the discovery spread fast all over the country, and inquisitive enquiries mingled with congratulations from this moment became the daily programme.
howard carter— Diary, 7 November 1922
...the place [Dogtown, in Gloucester, Massachusetts] is forsaken and majestically lovely as if nature had at last formed one spot where she can live for herself alone....[It] looked like a cross between Easter Island and Stonehenge – essentially druidic in it appearance – it gives the feeling that an ancient race might turn up at any moment and renew an ageless rite there.
marsden hartley— Somehow a Past, 1933-c, 1939, unpublished manuscript, Hartley Archive, Yale University, as quoted in Marsden Hartley, by Gail R. Scott, Abbeville Publishers, Cross River Press, 1988, New York p. 90
Mass, time, magnetic moment, the unconscious: we have grown up with these symbolic concepts, so that we are startled to be told that man had once to create them for himself. He had indeed, and he has: for mass is not an intuition in the muscle, and time is not bought ready-made at the watchmaker's.
jacob bronowski— Science and Human Values, Part 2: "The Habit of Truth", §5 (1956, 1965, p. 35)
It seems hard to sneak a look at God's cards. But that He plays dice and uses "telepathic" methods... is something that I cannot believe for a single moment.
Albert Einstein— p. 68 - letter to Cornel Lanczos, 21 Mar 1942
The most favorable moment to seize a man and influence him is when he is alone in the mass. It is at this point that propaganda can be most effective.
jacques ellul— Vintage, p.9.
Ghosts of melodious prophesyings rave Round every spot where trod Apollo's foot; Bronze clarions awake, and faintly bruit, Where long ago a giant battle was; And, from the turf, a lullaby doth pass In every place where infant Orpheus slept. Feel we these things? that moment have we stept Into a sort of oneness, and our state Is like a floating spirit's. But there are Richer entanglements, enthralments far More self-destroying, leading, by degrees, To the chief intensity: the crown of these Is made of love and friendship, and sits high Upon the forehead of humanity.
john keats— Bk. I, l. 789.
At this moment, God is watching your life and at some point in this trial, He will say enough. You don’t need to falter.
james macdonald— p. 109 (Always True (Moody, 2011))
Suspect each moment, for it is a thief, tiptoeing away with more than it brings.
john updike— A Month of Sundays (1975)
Kudiyattam plays, always based on classical Sanskrit texts, many of them composed in Kerala, invariably include a long nirvahanam or “retrospective” in which a character reveals, mostly by the silent language of hand- and eye-gestures, abhinaya, the long process that has brought him or her to the present moment in the play.
— David Shulman in Creating and Destroying the Universe in Twenty-Nine Nights
[re: Abraham Lincoln.] "For whatever reason, and I can't explain why - that moment at which one is drawn into the orbit, irrevocably, of a life. I felt the tug of that orbit. I didn't know why; I was quite alarmed by it..."
daniel day-lewis— YouTube video
As a matter of fact, capitalist economy is not and cannot be stationary. Nor is it merely expanding in a steady manner. It is incessantly being revolutionized from within by new enterprise, i.e., by the intrusion of new commodities or new methods of production or new commercial opportunities into the industrial structure as it exists at any moment.
joseph schumpeter— Part I, Chapter III, pg.31
The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing... not healing, not curing... that is a friend who cares.
henri nouwen— Henri Nouwen, in Larry Chang Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing, Gnosophia Publishers, 2006, p.326
At any given moment in your life, you have the choice between love and fear. And that’s a choice you make. You make the choice of how you react to events.
jennifer beals— Interview with Windy City Queercast (5 February 2011)
The present moment is our ain, The neist we never saw!
william julius mickle— The Mariner's Wife (1769), st. 6
Falling between order and chaos, the moment of complexity is the point at which self-organizing systems emerge to create new patterns of coherence and structures of behaviour.
— M.C. Taylor, The Moment of Complexity: Emerging Network Culture. (2001), p. 25
