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“You will allow that one's curiosity must be aroused when one learns that a lady is prepared to elope to escape from advances one had not the least intention of making!”
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“I am bigger than anything that can happen to me. All these things, sorrow, misfortune and suffering, are outside my door. I am in the house and I have the key.”
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“Pedantry and mastery are opposite attitudes toward rules. To apply a rule to the letter, rigidly, unquestioningly, in cases where it fits and in cases where it does not fit, is pedantry. [...] To apply a rule with natural ease, with judgment, noticing the cases where it fits, and without ever letting the words of the rule obscure the purpose of the action or the opportunities of the situation, is mastery.”
Source : George Pólya (1945). “How to Solve it: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method”
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“Just because you liked something as a youngster doesn't mean you have to like it as an adult. You can change your taste a little bit on the sweets and things like that.”
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“If you do not understand what God's present claims over you are, you may depend upon it that as days of testing come on you will not be able to keep your footing.”
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“There'll never be a 'Rocky IV.' You gotta call a halt.”
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“Revolt by all means, but only on one issue at a time. To do more would be to confuse the whips.”
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“The distinction between right and wrong ("la distinction du bien et du mal", Fr.), is nothing else than their unyielding (or implacable) opposition; thus the moral consciousness is an innate and intimate revelation of the absolute, which goes beyond (or goes pass, or exceed) every empirical data (or given information). It is only on these principles that we will be able to establish ("pourront être édifiées", Fr.) the real basis of morality.”
Source : "Paroles d'un sage: Choix de pensées d'African Spir" ("Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir") by Hélène Claparède-Spir, (p. 60), 1937.
