Hurt Quotes (14 quotes)
As the issues are greater than men ever sought to realize before, the recriminations will be fiercer and pride more desperately hurt. It may help to recall that many recognized before the bomb ever feel that the time had already come when we must learn to live in One World.
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Be not afeard.
The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices
That if I then had waked after long sleep
Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.
The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices
That if I then had waked after long sleep
Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.
The Tempest (1611), III, ii.
Genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom. Persons of genius are, ex vi termini, more individual than any other people—less capable, consequently, of fitting themselves, without hurtful compression, into any of the small number of moulds which society provides in order to save its members the trouble of forming their own character.
In On Liberty (1859), 116. The Latin expression, “Ex vi terminii,” means “by definition”, though a literal translation is “from the strength of the border.”
How do we tell truths that might hurt?
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If every man waz a genius, mankind would be az bad oph az the heavens would be, with every star a comet, things would git hurt badly, and noboddy tew blame.
In The Complete Works of Josh Billings (1876), 79.
In arms and science tis the same
Our rival’s hurts create our fame.
Our rival’s hurts create our fame.
'Alma, or, The Progress of the Mind', in The Poetical Works of Matthew Prior (1779) Vol. 1, 358, Canto 1, line 196.
Indians walk softly and hurt the landscape hardly more than the birds and squirrels, and their brush and bark huts last hardly longer than those of wood rats, while their more enduring monuments, excepting those wrought on the forests by the fires they made to improve their hunting grounds, vanish in a few centuries.
In My First Summer in the Sierra (1911), 73. Based on Muir’s original journals and sketches of his 1869 stay in the Sierra.
It is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it, that doth the hurt.
'Essays or Counsels: Civil and Moral. I. Of Truth'. In Francis Bacon, James Spedding, The Works of Francis Bacon (1864), Vol. 6, 378.
Mathematics contains much that will neither hurt one if one does not know it nor help one if one does know it.
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The girls are all giggling, then one girl suddenly remembers
the wild goat. Up there, on the hilltop, in the woods
and rocky ravines, the peasants saw him butting his head
against the trees, looking for the nannies. He’s gone wild,
and the reason why is this: if you don’t make an animal work,
if you keep him only for stud, he likes to hurt, he kills.
the wild goat. Up there, on the hilltop, in the woods
and rocky ravines, the peasants saw him butting his head
against the trees, looking for the nannies. He’s gone wild,
and the reason why is this: if you don’t make an animal work,
if you keep him only for stud, he likes to hurt, he kills.
From Poem, 'The Goat God', Hard Labor (1936, 1976), 10.
Unfortunately what is little recognized is that the most worthwhile scientific books are those in which the author clearly indicates what he does not know; for an author most hurts his readers by concealing difficulties.
English version as given in Nicholas J. Rose, Mathematical Maxims and Minims (1988). Also seen (without citation) as an epigraph in Morris Kline, Mathematical Thought From Ancient to Modern Times (1990), Vol. 2, 752. From the original French, “C’est que, malheureusement, on ne se doute pas que le livre le plus précieux du plus savant serait celui où il dirait tout ce qu’il ne sait pas, c’est qu’on ne se doute pas qu’un auteur ne nuit* jamais tant à ses lecteurs que quand il dissimule une difficulté.” In 'Deux Mémoires d’Analyse Pure par E. Galois: Préface' (8 Oct 1831), collected in Jules Tannery (ed.), Manuscrits de Évariste Galois (1908), 27. A footnote indicates that the word “nuit” comes from an indistinct original. Since “nuit” (night) is an obvious error, Webmaster suggests the word “bruit” might make better sense, but is open to a better suggestion.
Whatever some ignorant or invidious Men may clamour. They hate and revile Things only for being above their Reach; and therefore hurt no body but themselves by their noisy Ignorance: … they only move Laughter and Mirth in such as know better.
From Author’s Preface to Boerhaave’s Aphorisms: Concerning the Knowledge and Cure of Diseases as translated from Latin (1735). A footnote added to the translation explains that “Boerbaave points here at Dr. Le Mort, Professor of Chymie at Leyden, who wrote a very foolish Libel in a very scurrilous Stile”, against modern medical methods.
When puzzled, it never hurts to read the primary documents–a rather simple and self-evident principle that has, nonetheless, completely disappeared from large sectors of the American experience.
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You ask me how, with so much study, I manage to retene my health. ... Morpheous is my last companion ; without 8 or 9 hours of him yr correspondent is not worth one scavenger's peruke. My practices did at ye first hurt my stomach, but now I eat heartily enou' as y’ will see when I come down beside you. [On the value of sleep, and harm of eating poorly while intent on study.]
Letter to Dr. Law (15 Dec 1716) as quoted in Norman Lockyer, (ed.), Nature (25 May 1881), 24, 39. The source refers to it as an unpublished letter.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
