Modern Quotes - Page 7

• In Homer and Chaucer there is more of the innocence and serenity of youth than in the more modern and moral poets. The Iliad is not Sabbath but morning reading, and men cling to this old song, because they still have moments of unbaptized and uncommitted life, which give them an appetite for more.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Song, Morning, Reading

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.275, Delphi Classics

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• As with our colleges, so with a hundred "modern improvements"; there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance. The devil goes on exacting a compound interest to the last for his early share and numerous succeeding investments in them.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Education, College, Progress

  Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.84

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• I lately met with an old volume from a London bookshop, containing the Greek Minor Poets, and it was a pleasure to read once moreonly the words Orpheus, Linus, Musæus,--those faint poetic sounds and echoes of a name, dying away on the ears of us modern men; and those hardly more substantial sounds, Mimnermus, Ibycus, Alcæus, Stesichorus, Menander. They lived not in vain. We can converse with these bodiless fames without reserve or personality.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Echoes, Names

  Henry David Thoreau (2017). “The Most Alive is the Wildest – Thoreau’s Complete Works on Living in Harmony with the Nature: Walden, Walking, Night and Moonlight, The Highland Light, A Winter Walk, The Maine Woods, A Walk to Wachusett, The Landlord, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Autumnal Tints, Wild Apples…”, p.393, e-artnow

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• Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man?... We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, May, Might

  Henry David Thoreau (2004). “On Reading: From "Walden"”, p.5, Princeton University Press

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• The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have. The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity. They seem as solitary, and the letter in which they are printed as rare and curious, as ever.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Mother, Book, Character

  Henry David Thoreau (1939). “Walden: or, Life in the woods”

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• The need of exercise is a modern superstition, invented by people who ate too much and had nothing to think about.

  George Santayana

  Exercise, Thinking, People

  George Santayana (1937). “The Works of George Santayana”

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• ...I've learned exactly who the enemy are. I easily recognize them-business-suited in their modern American executive guise, each boss two feet taller than I am and impossible to meet eye to eye.

  Maxine Hong Kingston

  Eye, Two, Feet

  Maxine Hong Kingston (2010). “The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts”, p.57, Vintage

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• The history of modern nutritionism has been a history of macronutrients at war: protein against carbs; carbs against proteins, and then fats; fats against carbs.

  Michael Pollan

  War, Protein, Fats

  Michael Pollan (2008). “In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto”, p.30, Penguin

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• I [...] vowed that rather than let Alzheimer's take me, I would take it. I would live my life as ever to the full and die, ­before the disease mounted its last ­attack, in my own home, in a chair on the lawn, with a brandy in my hand to wash down whatever modern ­version of the "Brompton cocktail" some ­helpful medic could supply. And with ­Thomas Tallis on my iPod, I would shake hands with Death.

  Terry Pratchett

  Life, Home, Ipods

  "Terry Pratchett: my case for a euthanasia tribunal". www.theguardian.com. February 1, 2010.

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• Child! Turn your face to the light, to the science, to the reason, to the truth, to the peace! Child! Be modern, be compassionate, be individual, and be independent! Child! Don't be the man of anyone or any system, don't believe in any religious stories, and don't ever be silent against any oppressor! Child, turn your face to the light and walk towards the light!

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Religious, Peace, Children

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• All countries must be governed by the modern people; they must be governed by the progressive people; they must be governed by those who believe in the reason and science; they must be governed by the compassionate and just, by the ethical and honest, by the nonviolent and peaceful people; they must be governed by the libertarians; they must be governed by the people who believe in the enlightenment and who refuse to shape the society based on some childish religious stories!

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Country, Religious, Believe

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• Sports (and the often barely withheld violence around them) have become one of the few modern ways to connect with strangers. They give an amazing number of geeks things to talk about. In the old days we settled for, "Hello, how are you?

  Perry Brass

  Sports, Numbers, Giving

  Perry Brass (1998). “The Lover of My Soul: A Search for Ecstasy and Wisdom”, p.28, Perry Brass

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• The Egyptians had a particularly nasty way of getting rid of people they felt had no consequence. Instead of embalming them, they simply constructed a fake mummy made from old strips of linen wrapped around a dummy of mud. If, in our modern world, you feel that there are a lot of "mud mummies" around you, get rid of the mud.

  Perry Brass

  People, Fake, World

  Perry Brass (1998). “The Lover of My Soul: A Search for Ecstasy and Wisdom”, p.27, Perry Brass

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• Skijoring is just something that people want to see, it's like Ben Hur on snow, the modern way. I love the speed, the adrenalin rush is something special. It's just unique.

  Charlton Heston

  Love, Unique, People

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• It's fashionable for modern actors to talk about getting 'inside' a character. But you can't get to the inside without getting the outside right first.

  Charlton Heston

  Character, Actors, Firsts

  "Charlton Heston: Great sport with a line in heroic role models". "The Sunday Times" Newspaper, June 17, 1990.

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• The modern age has been characterized by a Promethean spirit, a restless energy that preys on speed records and shortcuts, unmindful of the past, uncaring of the future, existing only for the moment and the quick fix. The earthly rhythms that characterize a more pastoral way of life have been shunted aside to make room for the fast track of an urbanized existence. Lost in a sea of perpetual technological transition, modern man and woman find themselves increasingly alienated from the ecological choreography of the planet.

  Jeremy Rifkin

  Life, Past, Men

  Jeremy Rifkin (1989). “Time Wars: The Primary Conflict in Human History”, Touchstone

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• Beside the brand-ambassador elements of the modern racing driver, the evolution of the athlete has mandated that as drivers, we are very committed to fitness.

  Charlie Kimball

  Athlete, Racing, Elements

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• One cannot deny that in former times man's life had been one of toil and hardship. It is correct to say, therefore, that modern civilization and the progress of science have greatly improved man's life and have brought comfort and ease in their trail.

  Haile Selassie

  Men, Civilization, Progress

  Interview with editor of "The Voice of Ethiopia", April 5, 1948.

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• I like musicianship, and it's quite lacking in most modern popular music. You're always safe with old Chicago, the Allman Brothers, Gov't Mule, or Tower of Power.

  Mark Rippetoe

  Brother, Chicago, Towers

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• I think one of the serious breakdowns in modern evangelism is this: it has offered too much for too little. What we do mostly is offer forgiveness. We need cleansing! There is no true conversion until a man takes up his cross.

  Leonard Ravenhill

  Men, Thinking, Needs

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• Inanimate objects are sometimes parties to litigation. A ship has a legal personality, a fiction found useful for maritime purposes. The corporation sole - a creature of ecclesiastical law - is an acceptable adversary, and large fortunes ride on its cases... So it should be as respects valleys, alpine meadows, rivers, lakes, estuaries, beaches, ridges, groves of trees, swampland, or even air that feels the destructive pressures of modern technology and modern life.

  William O. Douglas

  Party, Technology, Air

  "Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. April 19, 1972.

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• Modern man has no real "value" for the ocean. All he has is the most crass form of egoist, pragmatic value for it. He treats it as a "thing" in the worst possible sense, to exploit it for the "good" of man. The man who believes things are there only by chance cannot give things a real value. But for the Christian the value of a thing is not in itself autonomously, but because God made it.

  Francis Schaeffer

  Christian, Real, Believe

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• Despite its protests to the contrary, modern Christianity has become willy-nilly the religion of the state and the economic status quo. Because it has been so exclusively dedicated to incanting anemic souls into Heaven, it has been made the tool of much earthly villainy. It has, for the most part, stood silently by while a predatory economy has ravaged the world, destroyed its natural beauty and health, divided and plundered its human communities and households.

  Wendell Berry

  Community, Heaven, Soul

  Wendell Berry (2003). “The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry”, p.319, Counterpoint

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• No institutions in modern society are better equipped to catalyze the necessary transition to a sustainable world than colleges and universities. They have access to the leaders of tomorrow and the leaders of today. What they do matters to the wider public.

  David W. Orr

  College, Leaders Of Tomorrow, Environmental

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• Unrestrained automobility, hedonism, individualism, and conspicuous consumption cannot be sustained because they take more than they give back. A spiritually impoverished world cannot be sustained because meaninglessness, anomie, and despair will corrode the desire to be sustained and the belief that humanity is worth sustaining. But these are the very things that distinguish the modern age from its predecessors, Genuine sustainability, in other words, will come not from superficial changes but from a deeper process akin to humankind growing up to a fuller stature.

  David W. Orr

  Growing Up, Giving, Humanity

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