Quotes by Diplomats - Page 12

God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illuminated by the steady radiance renewed daily of a wonder the source of which is beyond all reason.
Dag Hammarskjöld
Chese now," quod she, "oon of thise thynges tweye:To han me foul and old til that I deye,And be to yow a trewe, humble wyf,And nevere yow displese in al my lyf,Or elles ye wol han me yong and fair,And take youre aventure of the repairThat shal be to youre hous by cause of me,Or in som oother place, may wel be.Now chese yourselven, wheither that yow liketh.
Geoffrey Chaucer
The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.
Czesław Miłosz
Beneath the instinct to fight there lurks a diviner instinct to love.
Inazo Nitobe
Remember always that you have not only the right to be an individual you have an obligation to be one.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Truth is elusive, subtle, manysided. You know, Priscilla, there’s an old Hindu story about Truth. It seems a brash young warrior sought the hand of a beautiful princess. Her father, the king, thought he was a bit too cocksure and callow. He decreed that the warrior could only marry the princess after he had found Truth. So the warrior set out into the world on a quest for Truth. He went to temples and monasteries, to mountaintops where sages meditated, to remote forests where ascetics scourged themselves, but nowhere could he find Truth. Despairing one day and seeking shelter from a thunderstorm, he took refuge in a musty cave. There was an old crone there, a hag with matted hair and warts on her face, the skin hanging loose from her bony limbs, her teeth yellow and rotting, her breath malodorous. But as he spoke to her, with each question she answered, he realized he had come to the end of his journey: she was Truth. They spoke all night, and when the storm cleared, the warrior told her he had fulfilled his quest. ‘Now that I have found Truth,’ he said, ‘what shall I tell them at the palace about you?’ The wizened old creature smiled. ‘Tell them,’ she said, ‘tell them that I am young and beautiful.
Shashi Tharoor
Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best
Otto von Bismarck
The four most miserable years of my life . . .
John Adams
Power is nothing unless you can turn it into influence.
Condoleezza Rice
Ask yourself the question: If I don't do it, who will? If you find the answer is no one will do it, then do it yourself.
Omar Saif Ghobash
You are not the oil, you are not the air—merely the point of combustion, the flash-point where the light is born. You are merely the lens in the beam. You can only receive, give, and possess the light as the lens does. If you seek yourself, you rob the lens of its transparency. You will know life and be acknowledged by it according to your degree of transparency—your capacity, that is, to vanish as an end and remain purely as a means.
Dag Hammarskjöld
For this reason a prince ought to take care that he never lets anything slip from his lips that is not replete with the above-named five qualities, that he may appear to him who sees and hears him altogether merciful, faithful, humane, upright, and religious. There is nothing more necessary to appear to have than this last quality, inasmuch as men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, because it belongs to everybody to see you, to few to come in touch with you. Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them; and in the actions of all men, and especially of princes, which it is not prudent to challenge, one judges by the result.
Niccolò Machiavelli
You are an Universe of Universes and your soul a source of songs.
Rubén Darío
Progress in human affairs, whether in science or in history or in society, has come mainly through the bold readiness of human beings not to confine themselves to seeking piecemeal improvements in the way things are done, but to present fundamental challenges in the name of reason to the current way of doing things and to the avowed or hidden assumptions on which it rests
Edward Hallett Carr
Good heavens of what uncostly material is our earthly happiness composed ... if we only knew it. What incomes have we not had from a flower and how unfailing are the dividends of the seasons.
James Russell Lowell
The almighty dollar that great object of universal devotion throughout our land seems to have no genuine devotees in these peculiar villages.
Washington Irving
Life has got to be lived - that's all there is to it. At seventy I would say the advantage is that you take life more calmly. You know that 'this too shall pass!'
Eleanor Roosevelt
Many things we need can wait. The child cannot. Now is the time his bones are formed, his mind developed. To him we cannot say tomorrow, his name is today.
Gabriela Mistral
I must judge for myself, but how can I judge, how can any man judge, unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by reading.
John Adams
Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn't have the power to say yes.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Whose starboard eyeSaw chariot 'swing low'?
James Weldon Johnson
And so this letter endswith no sadness:my feet are firm upon the earth,my hand writes this letter on the road,and in the midst of life I shall bealwaysbeside the friend, facing the enemy,with your name on my mouthand a kiss that neverbroke away from yours.
Pablo Neruda
Washington is a place where men praise courage and act on elaborate personal cost-benefit calculations.
J. K. Galbraith
If America is a melting-pot, then to me India is a thali, a selection of sumptuous dishes in different bowls. Each tastes different, and does not necessarily mix with the next, but they belong together on the same plate, and they complement each other in making the meal a satisfying repast.
Shashi Tharoor
Well, nowIf little by little you stop loving meI shall stop loving youLittle by littleIf suddenly you forget meDo not look for meFor I shall already have forgotten youIf you think it long and mad the wind of banners that passes through my lifeAnd you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have rootsRememberThat on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my armsAnd my roots will set off to seek another land
Pablo Neruda
Horror is the law of the world of living creatures, and civilization is concerned with masking that truth. Literature and art refine and beautify, and if they were to depict reality naked, just as everyone suspects it is (although we defend ourselves against that knowledge), no one would be able to stand it.
Czesław Miłosz
Take a winter as you find him and he turns out to be a thoroughly honest fellow with no nonsense in him: and tolerating none in you which is a great comfort in the long run.
James Russell Lowell
I was born anew, owner of my own darkness.
Pablo Neruda
We allow ourselves to be blown by the winds because we do know what we want: our hearts know it, even if our thoughts are sometimes slow to follow- but in the end they do catch up with our hearts and then we think we have made a decision
Muhammad Asad
LearningTo believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life.
Czesław Miłosz
Love, my territory of kisses and volcanoes.
Pablo Neruda
Governments from the top fail as often as those from the bottom; and every great failure brings a sad social reaction, thousands and millions of helpless men laying down their lives in the unhappy process. Why may not statesmen study the past and avoid such catastrophes?"Delivered in his capacity as the American Ambassador to Germany, on October 12, 1933, in a speech to the Berlin branch of the American Chamber of Commerce, quoted in Erik Larson's book, In the Garden of Beasts.
William E. Dodd
In the long run we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.
Eleanor Roosevelt
India shaped my mind, anchored my identity, influenced my beliefs, and made me who I am. ... India matters to me and I would like to matter to India.
Shashi Tharoor
I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,vacillating, stretched out, shivering with sleep,downward, in the soaked guts of the earth,absorbing and thinking, eating each day.
Pablo Neruda
A task becomes a duty from the moment you suspect it to be an essential part of that integrity which alone entitles a man to assume responsibility.
Dag Hammarskjöld
You always admire what you really don't understand.
Eleanor Roosevelt
If luck wouldn't find him, he would do his best to make his own.
Michael Punke
I went to the little window and inhaled the country air. One could hear the breathing of the night, feminine, enormous.
Octavio Paz
It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.
Niccolò Machiavelli
To the traveller imbued with a feeling for the historical and poetical, so inseparately interwined in the annals of romantic Spain, the Alhambra is a much an object of devotion as is the Caaba to all true Moslems. How many legends and traditions, true and fabulous, - how many songs and ballards, Arabian and Spanish, of love and war and chivalry, are associated with this Oriental pile!
Washington Irving
Every day you play with the light of the universe.
Pablo Neruda
Once I had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: "No good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.
Eleanor Roosevelt
But Lord Crist! whan that it remembreth me Upon my yowthe and on my jolitee It tickleth me aboute myn herte roote. Unto this day it dooth myn herte boote That I have had my world as in my tyme. But age alias! that al wole envenyme Hath me biraft my beautee and my pith. Lat go farewel! the devel go therwith! The flour is goon ther is namoore to telle The bren as I best kan now most I selle.
Geoffrey Chaucer
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Swim or sink live or die survive or perish with my country was my unalterable determination.
John Adams
What you don't do can be a destructive force.
Eleanor Roosevelt
More die in the United States of too much food than of too little.
J. K. Galbraith
Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There is too much fraternizing with the enemy.
Henry Kissinger
An appeal to fear never finds an echo in German hearts.
Otto von Bismarck
the main thing is to make history not to write it
Otto von Bismarck
... By disarming, you at once give offense, since you show your subjects that you distrust them, either as doubting their courage, or as doubting their fidelity, each of which imputations begets hatred against you.
Niccolò Machiavelli
The betrayal I now felt was greater because it had been perpetrated with the greatest of charm and courtesy.
E.R. Braithwaite
Donde termina el arco iris,en tu alma o en el horizonte?Where does the rainbow end,in your soul or on the horizon?
Pablo Neruda
Posterity! you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it.
John Adams
Our whole way of life today is dedicated to the removal of risk. Cradle to grave we are supported insulated and isolated from the risks of life- and if we fall our government stands ready with Band-Aids of every size.
Shirley Temple Black
To reduce poetry to its reflections of historical events and movements would be like reducing the poet's words to their logical or grammatical connotations.
Octavio Paz
Is life so wretched? Isn't it rather your hands which are too small your vision which is muddled? You are the one who must grow up.
Dag Hammarskjöld
CodaPerhaps to love is to learnto walk through this world.To learn to be silentlike the oak and the linden of the fable.To learn to see.Your glance scattered seeds.It planted a tree. I talkbecause you shake its leaves.
Octavio Paz