“
And worse I may be yet: the worst is not
So long as we can say 'This is the worst.
”
”
William Shakespeare (King Lear)
“
Tis in ourselves that we are thus
or thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the which
our wills are gardeners: so that if we will plant
nettles, or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up
thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs, or
distract it with many, either to have it sterile
with idleness, or manured with industry, why, the
power and corrigible authority of this lies in our
wills. If the balance of our lives had not one
scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the
blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us
to most preposterous conclusions: but we have
reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal
stings, our unbitted lusts, whereof I take this that
you call love to be a sect or scion.
”
”
William Shakespeare (Othello)
“
Tell him solitude is creative if he is strong
and the final decisions are made in silent rooms.
Tell him to be different from other people
if it comes natural and easy being different.
Let him have lazy days seeking his deeper motives.
Let him seek deep for where he is a born natural.
Then he may understand Shakespeare
and the Wright brothers, Pasteur, Pavlov,
Michael Faraday and free imaginations
Bringing changes into a world resenting change.
He will be lonely enough
to have time for the work
he knows as his own.
”
”
Carl Sandburg (The People, Yes)
“
Pour on, I will endure.
”
”
William Shakespeare
“
The effectance motive helps explain the progress principle: We get more pleasure from making progress toward our goals than we do from achieving them because, as Shakespeare said, “Joy’s soul lies in the doing.
”
”
Jonathan Haidt (The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom)
“
Fie, fie upon her! There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip, Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out at every joint and motive of her body.
”
”
William Shakespeare
“
And here’s an example of deliberate violation of a Fake Rule: Fake Rule: The generic pronoun in English is he. Violation: “Each one in turn reads their piece aloud.” This is wrong, say the grammar bullies, because each one, each person is a singular noun and their is a plural pronoun. But Shakespeare used their with words such as everybody, anybody, a person, and so we all do when we’re talking. (“It’s enough to drive anyone out of their senses,” said George Bernard Shaw.) The grammarians started telling us it was incorrect along in the sixteenth or seventeenth century. That was when they also declared that the pronoun he includes both sexes, as in “If a person needs an abortion, he should be required to tell his parents.” My use of their is socially motivated and, if you like, politically correct: a deliberate response to the socially and politically significant banning of our genderless pronoun by language legislators enforcing the notion that the male sex is the only one that counts. I consistently break a rule I consider to be not only fake but pernicious. I know what I’m doing and why.
”
”
Ursula K. Le Guin (Steering The Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story)
“
A mentor is a person, an expert in a specific area of endeavour who trains, guides and observes a less experienced person to also become an expert through support, advice, and involvement in character building opportunities.
”
”
Israelmore Ayivor (Michelangelo | Beethoven | Shakespeare: 15 Things Common to Great Achievers)
“
What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba
That he should weep for her? What would he do
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appall the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing—no, not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damned defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me “villain”? Breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by the nose? Gives me the lie i' th' throat
As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this?
”
”
William Shakespeare (Hamlet)
“
There’s language in her eye, her cheek, her lip; Nay, her foot speaks. Her wanton spirits look out At every joint and motive of her body. [Ulysses—4.5.64–66]
”
”
William Shakespeare (Troilus and Cressida (Folger Shakespeare Library))
“
If modern scholars overlook the entertainment motive, dominant in the Iliad, and treat Homer as a Virgil, Dante, or Milton, rather than as a Shakespeare or Cervantes, they are doing him a great disservice. The Iliad, Don Quixote and Shakespeare’s later plays are life—tragedy salted with humour; the Aeneid, the Inferno and Paradise Lost are literary works of almost superhuman eloquence, written for fame not profit, and seldom read except as a solemn intellectual task. The Iliad, and its later companion-piece, the Odyssey, deserve to be rescued from the classroom curse which has lain heavily on them throughout the past twenty-six centuries, and become entertainment once more; which is what I have attempted here. How this curse fell on them can be simply explained.
”
”
Robert Graves (The Anger of Achilles: Homer's Iliad)
“
Why is a prisoner’s motivation to earn a degree so that he can return to his family sooner viewed more negatively than a campus student’s motivation to earn a degree so he can make more money?
”
”
Laura Bates (Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard)
“
What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,
Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff
That beetles o'er his base into the sea,
And there assume some other horrible form,
Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason
And draw you into madness? think of it:
The very place puts toys of desperation,
Without more motive, into every brain
That looks so many fathoms to the sea
And hears it roar beneath.
”
”
William Shakespeare (Hamlet)
“
What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord?
Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff
That beetles o'er his base into the sea,
And there assume some other horrible form
Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason
And draw you into madness? Think of it.
[The very place puts toys of desperation,
Without more motive, into every brain
That looks so many fathoms to the sea
And hears it roar beneath.]
”
”
William Shakespeare (Hamlet)
“
Every encounter with human truth—Jane Austen deftly showing how little we know our own motives; Dickens revealing the meaning of “economy” in the cheerful and charitable housekeeping of Esther Summerson, his finest heroine; or Shakespeare offering us the foolish Lear, mad and childish and yet “every inch a king”—can expand the soul; it helps to set us free from the common delusions of our time, the lies we believe and the lies we tell. But
”
”
Anthony Esolen (Life Under Compulsion: Ten Ways to Destroy the Humanity of Your Child)
“
Coleridge’s description of Iago’s actions as "motiveless malignancy" applies in some degree to all the Shakespearian villains. The adjective motiveless means, firstly, that the tangible gains, if any, are clearly not the principal motive, and, secondly, that the motive is not the desire for personal revenge upon another for a personal injury. Iago himself proffers two reasons for wishing to injure Othello and Cassio. He tells Roderigo that, in appointing Cassio to be his lieutenant, Othello has treated him unjustly, in which conversation he talks like the conventional Elizabethan malcontent. In his soliloquies with himself, he refers to his suspicion that both Othello and Cassio have made him a cuckold, and here he talks like the conventional jealous husband who desires revenge. But there are, I believe, insuperable objections to taking these reasons, as some critics have done, at their face value.
”
”
W.H. Auden (The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays)
“
The fact is that moving matter about, while a certain amount of it is necessary to our existence, is emphatically not one of the ends of human life. If it were, we should have to consider every navvy superior to Shakespeare. We have been misled in this matter by two causes. One is the necessity of keeping the poor contented, which has led the rich, for thousands of years, to preach the dignity of labor, while taking care themselves to remain undignified in this respect. The other is the new pleasure in mechanism, which makes us delight in the astonishingly clever changes that we can produce on the earth's surface. Neither of these motives makes any great appeal to the actual worker. If you ask him what he thinks the best part of his life, he is not likely to say: "I enjoy manual work because it makes me feel that I am fulfilling man's noblest task, and because I like to think how much man can transform his planet. It is true that my body demands periods of rest, which I have to fill in as best I may, but I am never so happy as when the morning comes and I can return to the toil from which my contentment springs.
”
”
Bertrand Russell (In Praise of Idleness)
“
In no particular order, I read what I could, sometimes with Fadiman as my docent, sometimes not: Flaubert, Twain, Kerouac, Brontë, Kafka, Camus, Ibsen, James, Thurber, Shakespeare. But in the course of reading great books, something happened. My reading molded me, the tool hammering its hand into shape. By some miracle—and by miracle, I mean great teachers—I pushed past the shallowness and stupidity of my own motivations. I fell in love with the actual literature and the actual ideas of great literature. As an immigrant, as a Vietnamese kid, as a poor kid, I had collected so many scarlet letters of alienation that I connected profoundly to the great works. As I read, I began to understand that all the great works wrangled with big questions, important questions: our place in the world, the value of our experience, the fairness and meaning of our suffering, our quest for love and belonging. Universal themes bound these great works together, and they bound me to their oaky, yellowed pages like Odysseus lashed to the mast of his ship. I felt a connective and humanizing resonance in books: I wasn’t alone in my aloneness. I wasn’t alone in my longing for love. I wasn’t alone in my fear of being rejected, my fear of never finding my place, my fear of failing. The snarl of my journey was untangled and laid out clearly by books.
”
”
Phuc Tran (Sigh, Gone: A Misfit's Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In)
“
Markets are not just about the steam engine, iron foundries, or today’s silicon-chip factories. Markets also supported Shakespeare, Haydn, and the modern book superstore. The rise of oil painting, classical music, and print culture were all part of the same broad social and economic developments, namely the rise of capitalism, modern technology, rule of law, and consumer society.
”
”
Tyler Cowen (Discover Your Inner Economist: Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Dentist)
“
Just as human nature is the same everywhere, so it is recognizably the same as it was in the past. A Shakespeare play is about motives and predicaments and feelings and personalities that are instantly familiar. Falstaff’s bombast, Iago’s cunning, Leontes’s jealousy, Rosalind’s strength, and Malvolio’s embarrassment have not changed in four hundred years. Shakespeare was writing about the same human nature that we know today. Only
”
”
Matt Ridley (The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature)
“
He knew he was in love with her the moment he realized what love was. It was just like what you read in books, what you see in Shakespeare, what you hear in Beatles songs. Honestly, it was even better than all that. It was perfection; she was. There wasn't a moment he didn't think of her. Every time she spoke to him, he tried to replay her voice in his head over and over again. He wouldn't stop smiling. It was all he needed to be happy. She, was all he needed.
He fell asleep at night thinking of her. He saw her in his dreams, her jet black hair and her brown eyes. Her long eyelashes. And that smile, oh that smile. She was all the motivation he needed. He didn’t understand how it was possible for someone to be so obsessed with another person. How could anyone possibly care for someone else the way he did for her?
But it was all happening, it was real. He would do anything for her, absolutely anything.
He knew he wouldn't ever force her to be with him. He would never put her on the spot; he would never risk losing her. In fact, he will give himself time, to become a better person, to grow into a more mature human being, the kind of man she deserves. He hoped, with all his heart, that someday, someday she'll love him the way he loves her. Let it be ten or twenty years from now, he didn’t care, he will wait for her. Until then he will love her, more and more, every day.
”
”
Thisuri Wanniarachchi (The Terrorist's Daughter)
“
SHAKESPEARE
What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more
(Hamlet)
There is no one kind of Shakespearean hero, although in many ways Hamlet is the epitome of the Renaissance tragic hero, who reaches his perfection only to die. In Shakespeare's early plays, his heroes are mainly historical figures, kings of England, as he traces some of the historical background to the nation's glory. But character and motive are more vital to his work than praise for the dynasty, and Shakespeare's range expands considerably during the 1590s, as he and his company became the stars of London theatre. Although he never went to university, as Marlowe and Kyd had done, Shakespeare had a wider range of reference and allusion, theme and content than any of his contemporaries. His plays, written for performance rather than publication, were not only highly successful as entertainment, they were also at the cutting edge of the debate on a great many of the moral and philosophical issues of the time.
Shakespeare's earliest concern was with kingship and history, with how 'this sceptr'd isle' came to its present glory. As his career progressed, the horizons of the world widened, and his explorations encompassed the geography of the human soul, just as the voyages of such travellers as Richard Hakluyt, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Sir Francis Drake expanded the horizons of the real world.
”
”
Ronald Carter (The Routledge History of Literature in English: Britain and Ireland)
“
In short it is possible, with a kind of selective squinting, to endow the alternative claimants with the necessary time, talent, and motive for anonymity to write the plays of William Shakespeare. But what no one has ever produced is the tiniest particle of evidence to suggest that they actually did so. These people must have been incredibly gifted—to create, in their spare time, the greatest literature ever produced in English, in a voice patently not their own, in a manner so cunning that they fooled virtually everyone during their own lifetimes and for four hundred years afterward. The Earl of Oxford, better still, additionally anticipated his own death and left a stock of work sufficient to keep the supply of new plays flowing at the same rate until Shakespeare himself was ready to die a decade or so later. Now that is genius! If it was a conspiracy, it was a truly extraordinary one.
”
”
Bill Bryson (Shakespeare: The World as Stage)
“
HAMLET
Ay, so, God be wi' ye;
Now I am alone.
O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wann'd,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
For Hecuba!
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damn'd defeat was made.
”
”
William Shakespeare (Hamlet)
“
I read Dickens and Shakespear without shame or stint; but their pregnant observations and demonstrations of life are not co-ordinated into any philosophy or religion: on the contrary, Dickens's sentimental assumptions are violently contradicted by his observations; and Shakespear's pessimism is only his wounded humanity. Both have the specific genius of the fictionist and the common sympathies of human feeling and thought in pre-eminent degree. They are often saner and shrewder than the philosophers just as Sancho-Panza was often saner and shrewder than Don Quixote. They clear away vast masses of oppressive gravity by their sense of the ridiculous, which is at bottom a combination of sound moral judgment with lighthearted good humor. But they are concerned with the diversities of the world instead of with its unities: they are so irreligious that they exploit popular religion for professional purposes without delicacy or scruple (for example, Sydney Carton and the ghost in Hamlet!): they are anarchical, and cannot balance their exposures of Angelo and Dogberry, Sir Leicester Dedlock and Mr Tite Barnacle, with any portrait of a prophet or a worthy leader: they have no constructive ideas: they regard those who have them as dangerous fanatics: in all their fictions there is no leading thought or inspiration for which any man could conceivably risk the spoiling of his hat in a shower, much less his life. Both are alike forced to borrow motives for the more strenuous actions of their personages from the common stockpot of melodramatic plots; so that Hamlet has to be stimulated by the prejudices of a policeman and Macbeth by the cupidities of a bushranger. Dickens, without the excuse of having to manufacture motives for Hamlets and Macbeths, superfluously punt his crew down the stream of his monthly parts by mechanical devices which I leave you to describe, my own memory being quite baffled by the simplest question as to Monks in Oliver Twist, or the long lost parentage of Smike, or the relations between the Dorrit and Clennam families so inopportunely discovered by Monsieur Rigaud Blandois. The truth is, the world was to Shakespear a great "stage of fools" on which he was utterly bewildered. He could see no sort of sense in living at all; and Dickens saved himself from the despair of the dream in The Chimes by taking the world for granted and busying himself with its details. Neither of them could do anything with a serious positive character: they could place a human figure before you with perfect verisimilitude; but when the moment came for making it live and move, they found, unless it made them laugh, that they had a puppet on their hands, and had to invent some artificial external stimulus to make it work.
”
”
George Bernard Shaw (Man and Superman)
“
We would prefer to say that such people cannot exist, that there aren't any. It is permissible to portray evildoers in a story for children, so as to keep the picture simple. But when the great world literature of the past -- Shakespeare, Schiller, Dickens -- inflates and inflates images of evildoers of the blackest shades, it seems somewhat farcical and lumsy to our contemporary percetption. The trouble lies in the way these classical evildoers are pictured. They recognize themselves as evildoers and they know their souls are black. And they reason: "I cannot live unless I do evil. So I'll set my father against my brother! I'll drink the victim's sufferings until I'm drunk with them!" Iago very precisely identifies his purposes and his motives as being black and born of hate.
But no; that's not the way it is! To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good, or else that it's a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human beingto seek a justifaction for his actions.
Macbeth's self-justifications were feeble -- and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too. The imagination and the spiritual strength of Shakespeare's evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they have no ideology.
Ideology-- that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad and in his own and other's eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will received praise and honors. That was how the agents of the Inquisition fortified their weills: by invoking Christianity; the conquerors of foreign lands, by extolling the grandeur of their Mother-land; the conolizers, by civilization; the Nazis, by race; and the Jacobins (early and late), by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations.
Thanks to ideology, the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing on a scale calculated in the millions. This cannot be denied, nor passed over, nor suppressed. How, then, do we dare insist that evildoers do not exist? And who was it that destroyed these millions? Without evildoers there would have been no Archipelago.
”
”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (The Gulag Archipelago)
“
Now I am alone. O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! (520)
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wann'd,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
For Hecuba!
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, (530)
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause, (540)
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat,
As deep as to the lungs? who does me this?
Ha!
'Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be
But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall (550)
To make oppression bitter, or ere this
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave's offal: bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
O, vengeance!
Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murder'd,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
And fall a-cursing, like a very drab, (560)
A scullion!
Fie upon't! foh! About, my brain! I have heard
That guilty creatures sitting at a play
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaim'd their malefactions;
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players
Play something like the murder of my father
Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks; (570)
I'll tent him to the quick: if he but blench,
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil: and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds
More relative than this: the play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.
”
”
William Shakespeare (Hamlet)
“
Wake up every day, expecting not to know what's going to happen, and look for the events to unfold with curiosity. Instead of stressing and managing, just be present at anything that pops up with the intention of approaching it with your best efforts. Whatever happens in the process of spiritual awakening is going to be unpredictable and moving forward, if you're just the one who notices it, not fighting or making a big project out there. • You may have emotional swings, energetic swings, psychic openings, and other unwanted shifts that, as you knew, feel unfamiliar to your personality. Be the beholder. Don't feel like you have something to fix or alter. They're going to pass. • If you have severe trauma in your history and have never had therapy, it might be very useful to release the pains of memories that arise around the events. Therapy teaches you how to express, bear witness, release, and move forward. Your therapist needn't know much about kundalini as long as he or she doesn't discount that part of your process. What you want to focus on is the release of trauma-related issues, and you want an experienced and compassionate therapist who sees your spiritual orientation as a motivation and support for the healing process. • This process represents your chance to wake up to your true nature. Some people wake up first, and then experience the emergence of a kundalini; others have the kundalini process going through as a preparation for the emergence. The appearance happens to do the job of wiping out, so is part of either pattern. Waking up means realizing that whoever looks through your eyes, lives through your senses, listens to your thoughts, and is present at every moment of your experience, whether good or bad, is recognized or remembered. This is a bright, conscious, detached and unconditionally loving presence that is universal and eternal and is totally free from all the conditions and memories you associate with as a personal identity. But as long as you believe in all of your personal conditions and stories, emotions, and thoughts, you have to experience life filtered by them. This programmed mind is what makes the game of life to be varied and suspense-filled but it also causes suffering and fear of death. When we are in Samadhi and Satori encounters, we glimpse the Truth about the vast, limitless space that is the foundation for our being. It is called gnosis (knowledge) or the One by the early Gnostics. Some spiritual teachings like Advaita Vedanta and Zen go straight for realization, while others see it as a gradual path through years of spiritual practices. Anyway, the ending is the same. As Shakespeare said, when you know who you are, the world becomes a stage and you the player, and life is more light and thoughts less intrusive, and the kundalini process settles down into a mellow pleasantness. • Give up places to go and to be with people that cause you discomfort.
”
”
Adrian Satyam (Energy Healing: 6 in 1: Medicine for Body, Mind and Spirit. An extraordinary guide to Chakra and Quantum Healing, Kundalini and Third Eye Awakening, Reiki and Meditation and Mindfulness.)
“
We would prefer to say that such people cannot exist, that there aren’t any. It is permissible to portray evildoers in a story for children, so as to keep the picture simple. But when the great world literature of the past — Shakespeare, Schiller, Dickens — inflates and inflates images of evildoers of the blackest shades, it seems somewhat farcical and clumsy to our contemporary perception. The trouble lies in the way these classic evildoers are pictured. They recognize themselves as evildoers, and they know their souls are black. And they reason: “I cannot live unless I do evil. So I’ll set my father against my brother! I’ll drink the victim’s sufferings until I’m drunk with them!” Iago very precisely identifies his purposes and his motives as being black and born of hate.
But no; that’s not the way it is! To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions.
Macbeth’s self-justifications were feeble — and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too. The imagination and the spiritual strength of Shakespeare’s evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology.
Ideology — that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others’ eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors. That was how the agents of the Inquisition fortified their wills: by invoking Christianity; the conquerors of foreign lands, by extolling the grandeur of their Motherland; the colonizers, by civilization; the Nazis, by race; and the Jacobins (early and late), by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations.
Thanks to ideology, the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing on a scale calculated in the millions. This cannot be denied, nor passed over, nor suppressed. How, then, do we dare insist that evildoers do not exist? And who was it that destroyed these millions? Without evildoers there would have been no Archipelago.
There was a rumor going the rounds between 1918 and 1920 that the Petrograd Cheka, headed by Uritsky, and the Odessa Cheka, headed by Deich, did not shoot all those condemned to death but fed some of them alive to the animals in the city zoos. I do not know whether this is truth or calumny, or, if there were any such cases, how many there were. But I wouldn’t set out to look for proof, either. Following the practice of the bluecaps, I would propose that they prove to us that this was impossible. How else could they get food for the zoos in those famine years? Take it away from the working class? Those enemies were going to die anyway, so why couldn’t their deaths support the zoo economy of the Republic and thereby assist our march into the future? Wasn’t it expedient?
That is the precise line the Shakespearean evildoer could not cross. But the evildoer with ideology does cross it, and his eyes remain dry and clear.
”
”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (The Gulag Archipelago)
“
As with modern totalitarian regimes, people developed techniques for speaking in code, addressing at one or more removes what most mattered to them. But it was not only caution that motivated Shakespeare's penchant for displacement. He seems to have grasped that he thought more clearly about the issues that preoccupied his world when he confronted them not directly but from an oblique angle. His plays suggest that he could best acknowledge the truth- to possess it fully and not perish of it- through the artifice of fiction or through historical distance.
”
”
Stephen Greenblatt (Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics)
“
Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none. -William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616)
”
”
M. Prefontaine (The Big Book of Quotes: Funny, Inspirational and Motivational Quotes on Life, Love and Much Else (Quotes For Every Occasion 1))
“
My life I never held but as [a] pawn To wage against thine enemies, ne’er [fear’d] to lose it, Thy safety being motive.
”
”
William Shakespeare (The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (37 plays, 160 sonnets and 5 Poetry Books With Active Table of Contents))
“
When I was young I was taught well
better to give than to receive
what to do with life I was told
what goals I must achieve
but well intentioned goals of others
were simply not my own
found living my own life no theirs
the full cost of which was my home
I'm full of clear dichotomy
of pleasure and of pain
like loving long days of summer
just as much as those of rain
a thriving centre of attention
I'm comfortable alone
putting others first comes naturally
but my motives are my own
I like to taste sweet delicacies
of loving and of touch
but equally my heart can freeze
when it all becomes too much.
I'm comfortable with the physical
what many would call sin
knowing you cannot spread love to others
if you can't love the skin you're in.
I find myself helping those with troubles
in their times of greatest need
yet my own pain that I suffer from
my own advice I ought heed
I do not expect a following
beside me in my pain
but I'm always pleasantly comforted
by those with me in the rain.
A hopeless female Shakespeare
whose world is getting dark
hoping in small ways at least
I'm able to leave my mark
a successful life is not counted in years
for I shall soon be gone
but by how many lives I have touched and helped
with my humble single one.
I'm grateful of the life I've had
mixed privilege with suffering
maybe I just lived it a little too fast
while others rested during buffering
what memory of me might last
when I step through the final door
I'd rather it be how I faced the world
always with a mighty roar.
And so when the time comes for me
to face my final curtain
I'll face death with the same energy for life
of this you can be certain
no subtle soft exit for this dark winged bird
I'm no peaceful mindless minion,
I'll regale of my sins with the devil himself
in eternity of riotous oblivion.
”
”
Raven Lockwood
“
Frequent suggestions were made during the course of the trial that the motives of the donor and the donees alike, in carrying out this transaction, were to escape death duties. I feel constrained to dispose once and for all of these suggestions by the short answer that the existence or otherwise of such motives is irrelevant, excep as evidence for or against the bona fides of the transactions. There is the highest authority for the proposition that, if a man can lawfully so order his affairs that the payment of revenue duties of any kind is reduced or avoided altogether, there is no legal objection to his doing so. Whatever may be thought as the the morality of such transactions in these times from the point of view of patriotism and public spirit, there is no ground for ignoring their legal effect, unless such transactions be proved to be amere sham, such as those falling within the words 'not bona fide' in the act of 1894, or the phrase 'artificial transaction' in the Finance Acts of more recent years.
Attorney General vs. Goneril Albany in re the estate of King Lear, MORE LEGAL FICTIONS
”
”
A. Laurence Polak
“
If one considers the characters in the plays of Shakespeare, in the poems of the Roman poet Ovid, in the Greek tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides, and even in the hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt, they can be recognized in our daily lives. Their actions were driven by the same motives as ours—ambition, love, pride, fear, anger, sympathy, and fun.
”
”
John H. Vanston (Minitrends: How Innovators & Entrepreneurs Discover & Profit From Business & Technology Trends: Between Megatrends & Microtrends Lie MINITRENDS, Emerging Business Opportunities in the New Economy)
“
Critics of correctional education say that prisoners are motivated only by the time cut. (In some states, they can reduce their sentence by a year or two by earning a degree.) I have two responses to that. One: Why is a prisoner’s motivation to earn a degree so that he can return to his family sooner viewed more negatively than a campus student’s motivation to earn a degree so he can make more money? And, two: What about the motivation of a prisoner, like Newton, who is serving a sentence of life with no possibility of parole?
”
”
Laura Bates (Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard)
“
No one had ever asked them to question such fundamental concepts that drove their lives and motivated their criminal choices.
”
”
Laura Bates (Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard)
“
Richard the Second is our launching pad that brings convicts back to normalcy. Then we break the curse that they are defined by their deeds with Henry the Fourth. After that, we build in them the potential for greatness with Henry the Fifth. In Henry the Sixth, we teach them to keep that potential grounded in realistic options. And with Richard the Third, we show them that it is essential that they follow their intrinsic motivations. Richard the Third is the consequence of not being rewarded as one thinks he should be. He is the consequence of extrinsic motivation.
”
”
Laura Bates (Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard)
“
Quotes and Comparison-2
Several quotes by various philosophers and figures, such as William Shakespeare, Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, James Russell Lowell, Galileo Galilei, Bill Gates, Ernest Hemingway, Dale Carnegie, Aristotle, and Stephen Hawking, provide a critical comparison with a journalist and scholar Ehsan Sehgal Quotes.
7. I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.
Bill Gates
A lazy one remains only the lazy, whether one provides only difficult or non-difficult ways; the problem is laziness, not the nature of matter.
Ehsan Sehgal
8. Don't compare yourself with anyone in this world. If you do so, you are insulting yourself.
Bill Gates
You may compare yourself with others in the world to correct your flaws and do your best to become unique. Without that, you learn nothing.
Ehsan Sehgal
8. If you are born poor it's not your mistake, But if you die poor it's your mistake.
Bill Gates
As a nature, each one is born equal, the world divides that into the classes for its motives. It is not a mistake; one is born and dies, rich or poor. It is one's fate since the world runs with it.
Ehsan Sehgal
9. As a writer, you should not judge. You should understand.
Ernest Hemingway
As a writer, you should judge and observe; it leads you to understand.
Ehsan Sehgal
10. Feeling sorry for yourself, and your present condition is not only a waste of energy but the worst habit you could possibly have.
Dale Carnegie
Feeling sorry for oneself demonstrates the way of realizing the tragedies and mistakes of life that may soften the burden of the pain, looking forward with the best efforts. Indeed, sorry is a confession, not a waste of time.
Ehsan Sehgal
11. The United Nations was set up not to get us to heaven, but only to save us from hell.
Winston Churchill
The States of the World reorganized the intergovernmental organization the League of Nations as the United Nations, not for saving us from hell but for bringing us to hell, obeying the Veto Drivers. However, be sure that changing all the long-standing objects, subjects, figures, systems, and monopolies will create a way of peace and heaven.
Ehsan Sehgal
12. Pleasure in the job puts perfection in work.
Aristotle
Pleasure in whatever subject shows willingness and accuracy, not perfection since humans are incapable of that.
13. Dignity does not consist in possessing honours, but in deserving them.
Aristotle
Sober character, honest conduct, and sweet talk entitle a person to real dignity, nothing else.
Ehsan Sehgal
14. You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honour.
Aristotle
Indeed, without concrete action, courage collapses and stays dishonored and unvalued since alone courage establishes nothing.
Ehsan Sehgal
15. Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.
Stephen Hawking
Before observing the stars, first, one should also maintain a foot position for safety so that one can confidently focus on the mysteries and science of the universe; indeed, curiosity reaches and reveals the realities of that.
Ehsan Sehgal
”
”
Ehsan Sehgal
“
On February 7, 1601, about two years before the queen’s death, an uprising against the crown had begun at the Globe Theatre with a treasonous production of Richard II in which Elizabeth was satirized as the incompetent Richard surrounded by villainous counselors. This rebellion, which would march on London the following morning, was led by two fallen favorites, Robert Devereux, the 2nd Earl of Essex, and Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd Earl of Southampton. We can’t be sure of their motive in starting this doomed rebellion, but it seems likely these two hyper-educated earls, symbols of the fast-fading English Renaissance, had been attempting to free their aged queen from the grasp of her powerful secretary, Sir Robert Cecil, in order to thwart Cecil’s plan to control the crown upon Elizabeth’s death.
”
”
Lee Durkee (Stalking Shakespeare: A Memoir of Madness, Murder, and My Search for the Poet Beneath the Paint)
“
This probably all sounds strange. Where Isocrates and Shakespeare wished us to be self-contained, self-motivated, and ruled by principle, most of us have been trained to do the opposite. Our cultural values almost try to make us dependent on validation, entitled, and ruled by our emotions. For a generation, parents and teachers have focused on building up everyone’s self-esteem. From there, the themes of our gurus and public figures have been almost exclusively aimed at inspiring, encouraging, and assuring us that we can do whatever we set our minds to.
”
”
Ryan Holiday (Ego Is the Enemy)
“
Listen to the part of you that is made of the same stuff as stars, the same stuff as Shakespeare. That part knows for sure that you are special, that your life has a purpose greater than anything you can imagine. That's the part worth listening to.
”
”
Jolene Stockman (Total Blueprint for World Domination - Illustrated)
“
I believe that more can be learned of the life of Shakespeare from his plays than from such documents showing that he sued people for small debts. I hold to the theory that a pattern of similar events, concentration on a similar emotion occurring in several plays indicated a strong personal motive. I am however opposed to deducing personal conclusions from an isolated episode or often from a casual remark by a character.
”
”
Albert Mordell (The Erotic Motive In Literature)
“
Tiff rolled her eyes like her brother before her. “Just because you can use big words doesn’t mean you’re smart okay”.
“My apologies my Princessness” Pae said making fun of her title. “I wasn’t aware that you can’t understand three syllable words”.
“I understand what you just said better than you do. I bet you don’t even know a word longer than three syllables” Tiff argued.
“Well then maybe it is simply inadequacy of sleep which motivates your insufficient comprehension of stratification” Pae replied.
“Okay Shakespeare” interrupted Pen. “I think that’s enough for the day. Why don’t you go back to our rooms while we spend the next three days determining what you just said”.
”
”
Benedict Fetsch (Defend Us in Battle)
“
When we are called upon to do things that we find hateful and stupid, we are simultaneously forced to act contrary to the structure of values motivating us to move forward stalwartly and protecting us from dissolution into confusion and terror. “To thine own self be true,”1 as Polonius has it, in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. That “self”—that integrated psyche—is in truth the ark that shelters us when the storms gather and the water rises. To act in violation of its precepts—its fundamental beliefs—is to run our own ship onto the shoals of destruction. To act in violation of the precepts of that fundamental self is to cheat in the game we play with ourselves, to suffer the emptiness of betrayal, and to perceive abstractly and then experience in embodied form the loss that is inevitably to come.
”
”
Jordan B. Peterson (Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life)
“
Yes, when you are sharpened with the true information, you will be motivated to make impacts.
”
”
Israelmore Ayivor (Michelangelo | Beethoven | Shakespeare: 15 Things Common to Great Achievers)
“
Many a times William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet inspired me to think what an epic love they had but my current condition de-motivates me to such an extent that my heart and mind revolts together against this immortal epic
”
”
Ayaan Basu (The Storm in My Mind)
“
What about the motivation of a prisoner, like Newton, who is serving a sentence of life with no possibility of parole?
”
”
Laura Bates (Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard)