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Van Loon's Lives QUOTES

Van Loon's Lives QUOTES

1 " Is there any greater pleasure in this world than to sit around a table with people you really like, with whom you are tuned in on the same emotional and spiritual wave length, so that there never is any static, and with whom you agree so fully upon all matters of real significance that you can disagree just as heartily upon the nonessentials? We have by far too little of that sort of thing in America. We seem to feel that we should always be doing something. Just to sit and talk or, even worse, just to sit and do nothing at all, not even talk, is held to be a waste of time. How can one waste something that does not really exist, I never have been able to understand, but I do think that it would be of the greatest benefit to us as a nation if we could learn to spend at least half an hour after every meal sitting quietly around the dinner table. "

― Hendrik Willem van Loon , Van Loon's Lives

2 " He was like one of those elderly gentlemen in Central Park who go around feeding birds and squirrels. Their pockets are filled with everything these small creatures may like to eat. The birds and the squirrels sense this and they perch on the shoulders of their benefactors and climb all over them in quest of what they consider their legitimate belongings. "

― Hendrik Willem van Loon , Van Loon's Lives

3 " (G)aiety and kindness and tolerance and understanding were the gifts he bestowed upon the world. Wherever he went, he squandered these rare possessions in a most magnificent and bountiful manner, for he knew (what all wise people have realized since the beginning of time) that the only treasures which are truly ours are those we lay up in the hearts of our friends. "

― Hendrik Willem van Loon , Van Loon's Lives

4 " As a day well spent gives joyful sleep, so does a life well spent give joyful death.

—Leonardo da Vinci "

― Hendrik Willem van Loon , Van Loon's Lives

5 " Never worry about what may happen tomorrow, for in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, it won't. And don't take things too seriously, for very few things are worth it. "

― Hendrik Willem van Loon , Van Loon's Lives

6 " (N)o more weeping, if you please...Do you remember what our ancestors used to say when everything went wrong? Ende desespereert nite. Whatever we do, let us never despair. So here is to good health and here is to our love for each other and here is to hope. "

― Hendrik Willem van Loon , Van Loon's Lives

7 " What poor, deluded fools these human beings are! Won't they ever learn? Of course, today they seem to do everything at a much faster rate of speed than we did in our day. They get born faster. They live faster. They eat faster. They burn out faster. But what do they gain? And you tell me that all of them can now read and write! But what do they read and what do they write? And are they any better at living in peace with each other than we were? Do they love each other any the better? Let me put it even more simply. Do they treat each other with any greater decency and tolerance than we did in our own time, when we were forever slaughtering each other for some opinion which was mere guesswork and probably always would remain so, and yet caused one half of humanity to send the other half to the gallows and the stake—and for what?...I am sorry, but even today, I don't quite know for what! "

― Hendrik Willem van Loon , Van Loon's Lives

8 " As if any of us could bear to live in a world of unadulterated truth! "

― Hendrik Willem van Loon , Van Loon's Lives

9 " (B)ut what use is even the best of remedies, concocted by the most learned of apothecaries, if the patient throws the mixture out of the window and his physician after it? "

― Hendrik Willem van Loon , Van Loon's Lives

10 " Half a century of digging among the ruins of the past had made me painfully familiar with the feet of clay which were buried deeply in the sands of time and which only too often supported the magnificent superstructure of some of the statues erected to our departed gods and half-gods. But, on the other hand, where would we have been—yes, where would we be today—unless occasionally there had been feet of granite, willing and able to carry their owners into the realm of the unknown and find new roads toward progress? The answer was—nowhere at all. We needed those voortrekkers, as our South African cousins used to call them. We needed a few stout hearts to do the pioneering. Without those men and women who trekked ahead of the rest of the crowd and either found new grazing fields or died in the attempt, no one of us would ever have gotten very far. We would have been obliged to stick to the swampy coastal regions, where we had lived and died until then, since the beginning of time, and we would never have known what lay hidden beyond the distant mountain ranges. "

― Hendrik Willem van Loon , Van Loon's Lives

11 " For youth can no more live without some kind of hero than it can without its daily supply of fresh air and vitamins. "

― Hendrik Willem van Loon , Van Loon's Lives

12 " (F)or no word that has been uttered for the purpose of making man the master of his own fate has been spoken in vain. "

― Hendrik Willem van Loon , Van Loon's Lives