Ben Hur Quotes

Riches take wings, comforts vanish, hope withers away,but love stays with us. Love is God.

The happiness of love is in action; its test is what one is willing to do for others.

The architect had not stopped to bother about columns and porticos, proportions or interiors, or any limitation upon the epic he sought to materialize; he had simply made a servant of Nature - art can go no further.

Youth is but the painted shell within which, continually growing, lives that wondrous thing the spirit of a man, biding its moment of apparition, earlier in some than in others.

What children we are, even the wisest! When God walks the earth, his steps are often centuries apart.

To begin a reform, go not into the places of the great and rich; go rather to those whose cups of happiness are empty--to the poor and humble.

Perfection is God; simplicity is perfection. The curse of curses is that men will not let truths like these alone.

Knowledge leaves no room for chances.

Pride is never so loud as when in chains.

Believing in God, invisible yet supreme, I also believed it possible so to yearn for him with all my soul that he would take compassion and give me answer.

The one best place to bury a good dog is in the heart of his master.

Religion is merely the law which binds man to his Creator: in purity it has but these elements--God, the Soul, and their Mutual Recognition; out of which, when put in practise, spring Worship, Love, and Reward.

It is more beautiful to trust in God. The beautiful in this world is all from his hand, declaring the perfection of taste; he is the author of all form; he clothes the lily, he colours the rose, he distils the dewdrop, he makes the music of nature; in a word, he organized us for this life, and imposed its conditions; and they are such guaranty to me that, trustful as a little child, I leave to him the organization of my Soul, and every arrangement for the life after death. I know he loves me.

Would you hurt a man keenest, strike at his self-love; would you hurt a woman worst, aim at her affections.

Men speak of dreaming as if it were a phenomenon of night and sleep. They should know better. All results achieved by us are self-promised, and all self-promises are made in dreams awake. Dreaming is the relief of labor,the wine that sustains us in act. We learn to love labor, not for itself, but for the opportunity it furnishes for dreaming, which is the great under-monotone of real life, unheard, unnoticed, because of its constancy. Living is dreaming. Only in the graves are there no dreams.

We of the sea come to know each other quickly; our loves, like our hates, are born of sudden dangers.

Latin is an abomination!

Heaven may be won, not by the sword, not by human wisdom, but by Faith, Love, and Good Works.

They to whom a boy comes asking, Who am I, and what am I to be? have need of ever so much care. Each word in answer may prove to the after-life what each finger-touch of the artist is to the clay he is modelling.

When I was a boy of seven or eight I read a novel untitled "Abafi" — The Son of Aba — a Servian translation from the Hungarian of Josika, a writer of renown. The lessons it teaches are much like those of "Ben Hur," and in this respect it might be viewed as anticipatory of the work of Wallace. The possibilities of will-power and self-control appealed tremendously to my vivid imagination, and I began to discipline myself. Had I a sweet cake or a juicy apple which I was dying to eat I would give it to another boy and go through the tortures of Tantalus, pained but satisfied. Had I some difficult task before me which was exhausting I would attack it again and again until it was done. So I practiced day by day from morning till night. At first it called for a vigorous mental effort directed against disposition and desire, but as years went by the conflict lessened and finally my will and wish became identical.

The most perfect life develops as a circle, and terminates in its beginning, making it impossible to say, This is the commencement, that the end.

It is neither wise nor honest to detract from beauty as a quality. There cannot be a refined soul insensible to its influence.

Death, you know, keeps secrets better even than a guilty Roman.

For to-day I take or give; For to-day I drink and live; For to-day I beg or borrow; Who knows about the silent morrow?

Father of all--God!--what we have here is of thee; take our thanks and bless us, that we may continue to do thy will.

As a rule, there is no surer way to the dislike of men than to behave well where they have behaved badly.

A word as to the pleasure there is in the thought of a Soul in each of us. In the first place, it robs death of its terrors by making dying a change for the better, and burial but the planting of a seed from which there will spring a new life.

There is no law by which to determine the superiority of nations; hence the vanity of the claim, and the idleness of disputes about it. A people risen, run their race, and die either of themselves or in the hands of another, who, succeeding to their power, take possession of their place, and upon their monuments write new names; such is history.

In warning there is strength.

The enemy of man is man, my brother.

There is no law by which to determine the superiority of nations; hence the vanity of the claim, and the idleness of disputes about it.

For power, you know, is a fretful thing, and hath its wings always spread for flight.

Hope deals with the future; now and the past are but servants that wait on her with impulse and suggestive circumstance.

A man is never so on trial as in the moment of excessive good-fortune.

From the depths of the well I had discovered a light above, and yearned to go up and see what all it shone upon. At last--ah, with what years of toil!--I stood in the perfect day, and beheld the principle of life, the element of religion, the link between the soul and God--Love!

The race was on; the souls of the racers were in it; over them bent the myriads.

In every four there is one the slowest, and one the swiftest; and while the race is always to the slowest, the trouble is always with the swiftest.

To begin a reform, go not into the places of the great and rich; go rather to those whose cups of happiness are empty--to the poor and humble.

A man can carry his mind with him as he carries his watch; but like the watch, to keep it going he must keep it wound up. Of

A man drowning may be saved; not so a man in love.

And who in this age can carry the faith of men to such a point but God himself? To redeem the race— I do not mean to destroy it— to redeem the race, he must make himself once more manifest; he must come in person.

for I thought there was a relation between God and the soul as yet unknown. On this theme the mind can reason to a point, a dead, impassable wall; arrived there, all that remains is to stand and cry aloud for help.

He was angry; not as the irritable, from chafing of a trifle; nor was his anger like the fool's, pumped from the wells of nothing, to be dissipated by a reproach or a curse; it was the wrath peculiar to ardent natures rudely awakened by the sudden annihilation of a hope --dream, if you will-- in which the choicest happinesses were thought to be certainly in reach. In such case nothing intermediate will carry off the passion --the quarrel is with Fate.

I see, I see! From association Messala, in boyhood, was almost a Jew; had he remained here, he might have become a proselyte, so much do we all borrow from the influences that ripen our lives; but the years in Rome have been too much for him. I do not wonder at the change; yet”--her voice fell--“he might have dealt tenderly at least with you. It is a hard, cruel nature which in youth can forget its first loves.

My ancestors further back than the first Roman were Hebrews." "The stubborn pride of thy race is not lost in thee," said Arrius, observing a flush upon the rower's face. "Pride is never so loud as when in chains." "What cause hast thou for pride?" "That I am a Jew." Arrius smiled.

Only those who have been wanderers long desolate can know the power there was in the latter appeal [Christianity].

If thou dost think of me again, O tribune, let it not be lost in thy mind that I prayed thee only for word of my people - mother, sister.

It was then I saw thy mother, and loved her, and took her away in my secret heart.

Your life is a miracle!"--Ben-Hur(1959)

They are like men: if bold, the better of scolding; if timid, the better of praise and flattery.

I will be the stronger of the knowledge. In warning there is strength.

SO YOU ARE THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO REJECT MY DIVINITY! - Caligula, 37 CE.

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Perfection is God; simplicity is perfection. The curse of curses is that men will not let truths like these alone.” He

The happiness of love is in action; its test is what one is willing to do for others.

To begin a reform, go not into the places of the great and rich; go rather to those whose cups of happiness are empty—to the poor and humble.

They rested and talked; and their talk was all about their flocks, a dull theme to the world, yet a theme which was all the world to them.

How often their thoughts passed each other in the endless search, his coming, theirs going!

The law of the place was Love, but Love without law.

Then, one can wait death with so much more faith out under the open sky.

Let us, in the meantime, live in the pleasure of the promise.

...one moment a philosopher, the next a teacher, and all the time a mother.

For that there is no logic in love, nor the least mathematical element, it is simply natural that she shall fashion the result who has the welding of the influence.

Alas, alas! What children we are, even the wisest! When God walks the earth, his steps are often centuries apart.

Pure wisdom always directs itself towards God; the purest wisdom is knowledge of God;

Every age has its plenty of sorrows; Heaven help where there are no pleasures!

an enigma to all who do not or cannot understand that every man is two in one—a deathless Soul and a mortal Body.

The old religion had nearly ceased to be a faith; at most it was a mere habit of thought and expression

I believed in prayer; and to make my appeals pure and strong, like you, my brethren, I went out of the beaten ways, I went where man had not been, where only God was.

The fiend whose task it is to torture us with fears and bitter thoughts seldom does his work by halves.

While craving justice for ourselves, it is never wise to be unjust to others. To deny valor in the enemy we have conquered is to underrate our victory; and if the enemy be strong enough to hold us at bay, much more to conquer us"--she hesitated--"self-respect bids us seek some other explanation of our misfortunes than accusing him of qualities inferior to our own.

They took him last night, and tried him," the man continued. "At dawn they led him before Pilate. Twice the Roman denied his guilt; twice he refused to give him over. At last he washed his hands, and said, 'Be it upon you then;' and they answered--" "Who answered?" "They--the priests and people--'His blood be upon us and our children.'" "Holy father Abraham!" cried Ben-Hur; "a Roman kinder to an Israelite than his own kin! And if--ah, if he should indeed be the son of God, what shall ever wash his blood from their children? It must not be--'tis time to fight!

Everyone has known this condition of mind, though perhaps not all in the same degree; everyone will recognise it as the condition in which he has done brave things with apparent serenity; and everyone reading will say, Fortunate for Ben Hur if the folly which now catches him is but a friendly harlequin with whistle and pointed cap, and not some Violence with a pointed sword pitiless.

the wife of Ben-Hur, sat in her room in the beautiful villa by Misenum. It was noon, with a warm Italian sun making summer for the roses and vines outside. Everything in the apartment was Roman,

At the same time we are helped to the knowledge that love is there yet, for the two are in each other's arms. Riches take wings, comforts vanish, hope withers away, but love stays with us. Love is God.

Religion is merely the law which binds man to his Creator: in purity it has but these elements--God, the Soul, and their Mutual Recognition; out of which, when put in practise, spring Worship, Love, and Reward

- Δεν θα πάρεις και χουρμάδες; - Όχι. Δεν είμαι Άραβας. - Ούτε σύκα; - Αυτό θα μ' έκανε Εβραίο. Όχι, τίποτα εκτός από σταφύλια. Ποτέ νερά δεν έσμιξαν τόσο γλυκά, όσο το αίμα του Έλληνα με τον χυμό των σταφυλιών.

She covers my face and neck in wet cheesecloths soaked in calamine lotion. I look like the leper from Ben-Hur. She brings me cold chamomile tea and a straw. Puts a bowl of ice next to the bed. Swallowing is torture.

He was so jealous of that boy yesterday, the one with the chest like Charlton Heston in Ben-Hur. He wanted everything he had, that body, that girl, that car, that freedom, that way of thinking. That hair, that bloody hair. What he would give to have hair that moved so freely in the wind. But shouldn’t that boy be jealous of Karl? Shouldn’t he wonder what Karl had seen and done? Shouldn’t he look at Karl and think, If only I get to lead a life like yours?

To every bench, as a fixture, there was a chain with heavy anklets. These the hortator proceeded to lock upon the oarsmen, going from number to number, leaving no choice but to obey, and, in event of disaster, no possibility of escape.

In a verse of the Shema they found all the learning and all the law of their simple lives--that their Lord was One God, and that they must love him with all their souls. And they loved him, and such was their wisdom, surpassing that of kings.

Men speak of dreaming as if it were a phenomenon of night and sleep. They should know better. All results achieved by us are self-promised, and all self-promises are made in dreams awake. Dreaming is the relief of labor, the wine that sustains us in act. We learn to love labor, not for itself, but for the opportunity it furnishes for dreaming, which is the great under-monotone of real life, unheard, unnoticed, because of its constancy. Living is dreaming. Only in the grave are there no dreams.

Such were the shepherds of Judea! In appearance, rough and savage as the gaunt dogs with them around the blaze; in fact, simple-minded, tender-hearted; effects in due, in part, to the primitive life they led, but chiefly to their constant care of things lovable and helpless.

BEN-HUR." Esther returned the letter to her father, while a choking sensation gathered in her throat. There was not a word in the missive for her--not even in the salutation had she a share--and it would have been so easy to have written "and to thine, peace." For the first time

For know you, child, I have that faculty which is better than any one sense, better than a perfect body, better than courage and will, better than experience, ordinarily the best product of the longest lives—the faculty divinest of men, but which”—he stopped, and laughed again, not bitterly, but with real zest—“but which even the great do not sufficiently account, while with the herd it is a non-existent—the faculty of drawing men to my purpose and holding them faithfully to its achievement, by which, as against things to be done, I multiply myself into hundreds and thousands.

From her love, O, reader!--her mother-love, which, if thou wilt observe well, hath this unlikeness to any other love: tender to the object, it can be infinitely tyrannical to itself, and thence all its power of self-sacrifice. Not for restoration to health and fortune, not for any blessing of life, not for life itself,

The four sprang forward affrighted. No hand had ever been laid upon them except in love; they had been nurtured ever so tenderly; and as they grew, their confidence in man became a lesson to men beautiful to see. What should such dainty natures do under such indignity but leap as from death? Forward they sprang as with one impulse, and forward leaped the car. Past question, every experience is serviceable to us. Where got Ben-Hur the large hand and mighty grip which helped him now so well? Where but from the oar with which so long he fought the sea? And what was this spring of the floor under his feet to the dizzy eccentric lurch with which in the old time the trembling ship yielded to the beat of staggering billows, drunk with their power? So he kept his place, and gave the four free rein, and called to them in soothing voice, trying merely to guide them round the dangerous turn; and before the fever of the people began to abate, he had back the mastery.

A MAN WHOM THE WORLD COULD NOT DO WITHOUT. Of this declaration, apparently so simple, a shrewd mind inspired by faith will make much--and in welcome. Before his time, and since, there have been men indispensable to particular people and periods; but his indispensability was to the whole race, and for all time--a respect in which it is unique, solitary, divine. To

What I have to tell, my brethren, is so strange that I hardly know where to begin or what I may with propriety speak. I do not yet understand myself. The most I am sure of is that I am doing a Master's will, and that the service is a constant ecstasy. When I think of the purpose I am sent to fulfil, there is in me a joy so inexpressible that I know the will is God's.

Somewhere out of sight a punching-bag was rat-tat-tatting on a board. I stepped through a doorless aperture opposite the door I'd come in by, and found myself in the main hall. It was comparatively small, with seats for maybe a thousand rising on four sides to the girders that held up the roof. An ingot of lead-gray light from a skylight fell through the moted air onto the empty roped square on the central platform. Still no people, but you could tell that people had been there. The same air had hung for months in the windowless building, absorbing the smells of human sweat and breath, roasted peanuts and beer, white and brown cigarettes, Ben Hur perfume and bay rum and hair oil and tired feet. A social researcher with a good nose could have written a Ph.D. thesis about that air.

Why should there be a Soul in every man? Look, O son of Hur--for one moment look at the necessity of such a device. To lie down and die, and be no more--no more forever--time never was when man wished for such an end; nor has the man ever been who did not in his heart promise himself something better. The monuments of the nations are all protests against nothingness after death; so are statues and inscriptions; so is history.

difference in their ages. The elder was bareheaded. A loose tunic, dropping to the knees, was his attire complete, except sandals and a light-blue mantle spread under him on the seat. The costume left his arms and legs exposed, and they were brown as the face; nevertheless, a certain grace of manner, refinement of features, and culture of voice decided his rank. The tunic, of softest woollen, gray-tinted, at the neck, sleeves, and edge of the skirt bordered with red, and bound to the waist by a

A few days later, from a wall along the river, Martha Gellhorn watched the Soviet troops move on. ‘The army came in like a flood; it had no special form, there were no orders given. It came and rolled over the stone quays and out onto the roads like water rising, like ants, like locusts. What was moving along there was not so much an army, but a whole world.’ Many of the soldiers were wearing medals from the Battle of Stalingrad, and the entire group had fought its way at least 4,000 kilometres to the west in the last few years, most of it on foot. The trucks were kept rolling with impromptu repairs, the countless female soldiers looked like professional boxers, the sway-backed horses were driven along as though by Ben Hur himself, there seemed to be neither order nor plan, but according to Gellhorn it was impossible ‘to describe the sense of power radiating from this chaos of soldiers and broken-down equipment’. And she thought how sorry the Germans must be that they had ever started a war with the Russians.

Revolution he contemplated, of course; but the processes of revolution have always been the same, and to lead men into them there have always been required, first, a cause or presence to enlist adherents; second, an end, or something as a practical achievement. As a rule he fights well who has wrongs to redress; but vastly better fights he who, with wrongs as a spur, has also steadily before him a glorious result in prospect--a result in which he can discern balm for wounds, compensation for valor, remembrance and gratitude in the event of death.

Gli uomini dicono, lo so, che non vi sarà felicità finché Roma non sarà rasa al suolo sui suoi colli: cioé, i mali presenti non dipendono, come credevo, dall'ignorare Dio, ma dal malgoverno dei regnanti. Abbiamo bisogno di sentirci dire che i governi umani non sono mai amici della religione? Quanti re sono stati migliori dei loro sudditi? Ah, no, no, la redenzione non può avere uno scopo politico: abbattere governanti e sovrani e lasciare i posti vuoti solo perché altri li prendano e li godano. Se tutto fosse qui, la saggezza divina cesserebbe di essere insuperabile.

The wretchedness of the masses, and their hopeless condition, had no relation whatever to religion; their murmurs and groans were not against their gods or for want of gods. In the oak-woods of Britain the Druids held their followers; Odin and Freya maintained their godships in Gaul and Germany and among the Hyperboreans; Egypt was satisfied with her crocodiles and Anubis; the Persians were yet devoted to Ormuzd and Ahriman, holding them in equal honor; in hope of the Nirvana, the Hindoos moved on patient as ever in the rayless paths of Brahm; the beautiful Greek mind, in pauses of philosophy, still sang the heroic gods of Homer; while in Rome nothing was so common and cheap as gods. According to whim, the masters of the world, because they were masters, carried their worship and offerings indifferently from altar to altar, delighted in the pandemonium they had erected. Their discontent, if they were discontented, was with the number of gods; for, after borrowing all the divinities of the earth they proceeded to deify their Caesars, and vote them altars and holy service. No, the unhappy condition was not from religion, but misgovernment and usurpations and countless tyrannies.

Past question, every experience is serviceable to us. Where got Ben-Hur the large hand and mighty grip which helped him now so well? Where but from the oar with which so long he fought the seas? And what was this spring of the floor under his feet to the dizzy lurch with which in the old time the trembling ship yielded to the beat of staggering billows, drunk with their power? So he kept his place, and gave the four free rein, and called to them in soothing voice, trying merely to guide them round the dangerous turn; and before the fever of the people began to abate, he had back the mastery.

the impression made upon them by the first view of a camel equipped and loaded for the desert. Custom, so fatal to other novelties, affects this feeling but little. At the end of long journeys with caravans, after years of residence with the Bedawin, the Western-born, wherever they may be, will stop and wait the passing of the stately brute. The charm is not in the figure, which not even love can make beautiful; nor in the movement, the noiseless stepping, or the broad careen. As is the kindness of the sea to a ship, so that of the desert to its creature. It clothes him with all its mysteries;

Getting back to Audrey, though, I should really feel complimented that she won’t ever touch me because she likes me more than anyone else. It makes perfect sense, really, doesn’t it? If she ever gets down or depressed, i can make out the figure of her through the front window of the shack. She comes in and we drink cheap beer or wine and watch a movie or all three. Something old and long like Ben-Hur that stretches into the night. She’ll be next to me on the couch in her flannel shirt and jeans that have been cut into shorts,and eventually, when she’s asleep, I’ll bring a blanket out and cover her up. I kiss her cheek. I stroke her hair. I think of how she lives alone, just like me, and how she never had any real family, and how she only has sex with people. She never lets any love get in the way. I think she had a family once, but it was one of those beat-the-crap-out-of-each-other situations. There’s no shortage of them around here. I think she loved them and all she ever did was hurt her. That’s why she refuses to love. Anybody. I guess she feels better off that way, and who can blame her? When she sleeps on my couch, I think about all that. Everytime. I cover her up, then go to the bed and dream. With my eyes open.

April 4: At the Academy Awards, Some Like It Hot receives only one award, for costume design. Ben Hur wins eleven awards.