Quotes by Dutch Authors - Page 12

The word is always a word for others. Words need to be heard. When we give words to what we are living, these words need to be received and responded to. A speaker needs a listener. A writer needs a reader.When the flesh – the lived human experience – becomes word, communitycan develop. When we say, 'Let me tell you what we saw. Come and listento what we did. Sit down and let me explain to you what happened to us.Wait until you hear whom we met,' we call people together and make ourlives into lives for others. The word brings us together and calls usinto community. When the flesh becomes word, our bodies become part ofa body of people.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
I always knew that words are suitcases with false bottoms.
Hans Keilson
I thought I would be understood without words.
Vincent van Gogh
Literature is impossible, in exactly this sense: every new generation has so much 'catching up' to do that the real choice that presents itself soon is the following one: one either spends ones entire life just reading all the classics, or one pretends to be 'contemporary and hip' and never reads any of the classics because in order to pretend to be contemporary one has to at least superficially read the works of contemporaries. Hence the dilemma: one either does not care about being fashionable, or one is fashionable and just learns to mimic some knowledge about the classics. As time develops this rift just becomes bigger, because the amount of books written grows and grows to insane proportions. Conclusion: one can only be hip in the future if one does not read at all, which is a phenomenon I am already witnessing in the media.
Martijn Benders
I shouted the perfect words to scare him off. It was just the delivery (and only the delivery) that made me sound like a twelve-year-old girl with pee running down her leg. I felt dirty and stupid.
Graham Parke
If I read a book that impresses me, I have to take myself firmly in hand before I mix with other people; otherwise they would think my mind rather queer.
Anne Frank
Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don't know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!
Anne Frank
That's the thing about magic; you've got to know it's still here, all around us, or it just stays invisible for you.
Charles de Lint
Both she and I have grief enough and trouble enough, but as for regrets – neither of us have any.
Vincent van Gogh
We change with time by how we view the future and reflect the past
Ronnie Cornelisz
The past was dwindling, like something shrinking to a speck in the rear-view mirror, and the future was shining through the windscreen, demanding her full attention.
Michel Faber
You can't afford to let the heartbreaks in life ruin your future.
Cheryl Koevoet
I also came to see that I should not worry about tomorrow, next week, next year, or next century. The more willing I was to look honestly at what I was thinking and saying and doing now, the more easily I would come into touch with the movement of God's Spirit in me, leading me to the future. God is a God of the present and reveals to those who are willing to listen carefully to the moment in which they live the steps they are to take toward the future. "Do not worry about tomorrow," Jesus says, "tomorrow will take care of itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own" (Matthew 6:34).
Henri J.M. Nouwen
Something went greatly wrong in our collective history and the starting point of it was the industrial revolution. Our school systems are focussed on a single objective: to produce model citizens for society in order to feed this machine and prevent its breakdown. That’s why our school systems have no interest in developing models that actually require and stimulate useful values in people, such as courage or imagination or inventiveness. None of these are taught in our schools, on the contrary the system focuses on memorizing. Memorizing is a way of overloading the mind with mental baggage it doesn’t really need. Besides being horribly dull and stiffening the effect of 20 years of abundant memorization training is modern man: an unimaginative creature stuffed with useless knowledge and unable to clean his mind of this information dirt: our school systems are purposely constructed to deliver mental automatons that are unable to think creatively.
Martijn Benders
I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I, which is my life, the power to create.
Vincent van Gogh
To the inexperienced and naive, creativity often looks like magic. But in truth creativity is rooted in the fertile grounds of knowledge and many hours of hard work and thinking.
Jurgen Appelo
Be creative! Write, sing, dance, paint, whatever you do, make something for your Maker!
Marja Meijers
How noble and good everyone could be if, every evening before falling asleep, they were to recall to their minds the events of the whole day and consider exactly what has been good and bad. Then without realizing it, you try to improve yourself at the start of each new day.
Anne Frank
You'll never fly, if you're too scared of the height,You'll never live if you're just too scared to die,Everybody wants heaven, I knowBut darling freedom ain't free, it's a long roadYou'll never find your place up there in the skyIf you never say goodbye.
Hardwell & Dyro & Bright Lights
Living and struggling, for others, is a great and dignified life. Whereas, living for oneself exhibits just egocentric and own importance, since mostly falls under it.
Ehsan Sehgal
Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.” Corrie ten Boom
Corrie ten Boom
Those who love much, do much and accomplish much, and whatever is done with love is done well.... Love is the best and noblest thing in the human heart, especially when it is tested by life as gold is tested by fire. Happy is he who has loved much, and although he may have wavered and doubted, he has kept that divine spark alive and returned to what was in the beginning and ever shall be. If only one keeps loving faithfully what is truly worth loving and does not squander one's love on trivial and insignificant and meaningless things then one will gradually obtain more light and grow stronger.
Vincent van Gogh
As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties the inmost strength of the heart is developed.
Vincent van Gogh
Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.
Corrie ten Boom
I lay there for three whole days, totally paralyzed. My friends helped me to the bathroom and anywhere else I needed to move; but I have very vague impressions of those days because it was a time of complete darkness for me. Somebody told me later that what I had was a form of hysteria: my body and my mid fled into paralysis. There was nothing wrong with me organically, but somewhere inside I suffered a complete breakdown.
Diet Eman
Free man needs loyalty to the self first of all, and this implies the right to be himself
Joost A.M. Meerloo
We live in a world of constant noise which captures our minds even when we are not aware of it
Joost A.M. Meerloo
The scientific study of suffering inevitably raises questions of causation, and with these, issues of blame and responsibility. Historically, doctors have highlighted predisposing vulnerability factors for developing PTSD, at the expense of recognizing the reality of their patients' experiences… This search for predisposing factors probably had its origins in the need to deny that all people can be stressed beyond endurance, rather than in solid scientific data; until recently such data were simply not available… When the issue of causation becomes a legitimate area of investigation, one is inevitably confronted with issues of man's inhumanity to man, with carelessness and callousness, with abrogation of responsibility, with manipulation and with failures to protect.
Bessel A. van der Kolk
The traumatic stress field has adopted the term “Complex Trauma” to describe the experience of multiple and/or chronic and prolonged, developmentally adverse traumatic events, most often of an interpersonal nature (e.g., sexual or physical abuse, war, community violence) and early-life onset. These exposures often occur within the child’s caregiving system and include physical, emotional, and educational neglect and child maltreatment beginning in early childhood- Developmental Trauma Disorder
Bessel A. van der Kolk
Beneath the surface of the protective parts of trauma survivors there exists an undamaged essence, a Self that is confident, curious, and calm, a Self that has been sheltered from destruction by the various protectors that have emerged in their efforts to ensure survival. Once those protectors trust that it is safe to separate, the Self will spontaneously emerge, and the parts can be enlisted in the healing process
Bessel A. van der Kolk
Something in me whispered that I needed to stop thinking, that I should above all not go too farwith thinking. But that never worked; I always thought things through to the end, to their mostextreme consequence.
Herman Koch
Freedom and respect for the individual are rooted in the Old Testament, which convinced man that he makes his own history, that he is responsible for his history. Such freedom implies that a man throws off his inertia, that he does not cling arbitrarily to tradition, that he strives knowledge and accepts moral responsibility. The fear of freedom is the fear of assuming responsibility.Freedom can never be completely safeguarded by rules and laws. It is as much dependent on courage, integrity, and responsibility of each of us as it is on these qualities in those who govern. Every trait in us and our leaders which points to passive submission to mere power betrays democratic freedom.
Joost A.M. Meerloo
Our society is so fragmented, our family lives so sundered by physical and emotional distance, our friendships so sporadic, our intimacies so 'in-between' things and often so utilitarian, that there are few places where we can feel truly safe.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
What does it mean to be an 'open source' society? What does one mean when one says one has an 'open mind'? Open source means that its a society everybody can work on improving. It has a synergy that allows the best minds to float on top, since there is no entropical hierarchy of mediocrity - once everything stays fluid there is the odd chance for genius elements to actually lead. Such is the case now in Turkey. The protesters are a fluid synergy that have no entropical leadership, and thus the most brilliant PR moves are made by the resistance, who are opposed by the worst sort of mediocrity that is totally at odds with reality. An 'open mind' follows a similar process, but in this case the entropy hides in the hierarchy of ideas that is implanted in the brain: once a person follows mediocre ideas - such as the 'idea' that 'marriage is the meaning of life' or 'having a job is the purpose of existence' etc - then the phenomenon of the 'open mind' becomes already impossible, for there is an internal hierarchy of entropy present that will prevent any sort of original impulse to have the meaning it truly has. Hence, the only way to escape the mediocrity of ones own mind is to allow anything to build and revise it.
Martijn Benders
The formation of society serves not only for defensive purposes, but is also very useful, and, indeed, absolutely necessary, as rendering possible the division of labor. If men did not render mutual assistance to each other, no one would have either the skill or the time to provide for his own sustenance and preservation: for all men are not equally apt for all work, and no one would be capable of preparing all that he individually stood in need of. Strength and time, I repeat, would fail, if every one had in person to plow, to sow, to reap, to grind corn, to cook, to weave, to stitch and perform the other numerous functions required to keep life going; to say nothing of the arts and sciences which are also entirely necessary to the perfection and blessedness of human nature.
Baruch Spinoza
Actually, in its essence, democracy is a totalitarian ideology, though not as extreme as Nazism, fascism or communism. In principle, no freedom is safe in a democracy, every aspect of the individual's life is potentially subject to government control. At the end of the day, the minority is completely at the mercy of the whims of the majority. Even if a democracy has a constitution limiting the powers of the government, this constitution too can be amended by the majority. The only fundamental right you have in a democracy, besides running for office, is the right to vote for a political party. With that solitary vote you hand over your independence and your freedom to the will of the majority.
Frank Karsten
A person who is worth nothing must introduce you to a person worth next-to-nothing, and that person to another, and so on and so forth until finally you can step across the threshold, almost one of the family.
Michel Faber
As a woman you are better off in life earning your own money. You couldn't prevent your husband from leaving you or taking another wife, but you could have some of your dignity if you didn't have to beg him for financial support.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Literature takes us away from our grey everyday experience, but brings us back enriched with new sensibilities.
Willie van Peer
There's no such thing as fiction", Annie told him once. "If you can imagine something, then it's happened.
Charles de Lint
Thanks to Dashiell Hammett. "He was thin, walked with a stick, and was the only private dick I knew who used the pockets of his sport coat. Maybe that means something, maybe not." Ramone Ramone, 2013
Thomas Dekooning
...Sigerius realized that every academic looked like every other academic." - Bonita Avenue, p.49
Peter Buwalda
Well, here we are."Sometimes a statement of the bloody obvious was the only appropriate way forward. As if to give life ceremonious permission to proceed.
Michel Faber
Young bodies are like tender plants, which grow and become hardened to whatever shape you've trained them.
Erasmus
A well-known psychologist once said, 'When a child reaches his third birthday, his parents will have given him half of all that they will ever be able to give him in the way of education.
Corrie ten Boom
At first sight, joy seems to be connected with being different. When you receive a compliment or win an award, you experience the joy of not being the same as others. You are faster, smarter, more beautiful, and it is that difference that brings you joy. But such joy is very temporary. True joy is hidden where we are the same as other people: fragile and mortal. It is the joy of belonging to the human race. It is the joy of being with others as a friend, a companion, a fellow traveler. This is the joy of Jesus, who is Emmanuel: God-with-us.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
We must be so careful that we do not refuse the cross that the Lord has given us to carry. Let us remember that our present sufferings serve to prepare us for entering into the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Corrie ten Boom
A good mother does not live only for her children. She always has some bond with other mothers, no matter what class, nationality or race they may be. All mothers have the same joys, the same sorrows, the same anxieties. All mothers think first of their child and of children.
Werenfried Von Straaten
While optimism makes us live as if someday soon things will soon go better for us, hope frees us from the need to predict the future and allows us to live in the present, with the deep trust that God will never leave us alone but will fulfill the deepest desires of our heart... Joy in this perspective is the fruit of hope.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
Joy is based on the spiritual knowledge that, while the world in which we live is shrouded in darkness, God has overcome the world.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
I have female friends that get mails from publishers that read 'Hey. I heard you write about sex. This is a very popular topic now'.
Martijn Benders
The eyes and the sex understand and know every language without any distinction.
Ehsan Sehgal
Something is wrong here: sex has been with us since the human race began its existence, yet I would estimate that 90 percent of human beings still suffer enormous inhibitions in this area.
Xaviera Hollander
Everything is the way it is because we've all agreed that's the way it is.
Charles de Lint
This is reality, back home is routine.
George Ikilikjan
Proof, once again, that reality was not objective, but always waiting to be reshaped and redefined by one's attitude.
Michel Faber
The reality waves itself an assertion as the rose its fragrance; it doesn't require verifiability of it. Indeed, the weak and ignorant minds need that.
Ehsan Sehgal
I had great pity on Ansje, because she always acted very happy, but I believed that it was really a front. I could see through it. Inside she was crying because she was really very sad. You pity people like that -- the ones who try to lie to themselves -- because they suffer so much and don't face reality.
Diet Eman
Luckily, however, life doesn't always follow tradition, but craves out a path of its own.
Kader Abdolah