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What we take to be our strongest tower of delight, only stands at the caprice of the minutest event — the falling of a leaf, the hearing of a voice, or the receipt of one little bit of paper scratched over with a few small characters by a sharpened feather.
--
Bk. IV

 

Herman Melville

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For me the voice of God, of Conscience, of Truth or the Inner Voice or ‘the still small Voice’ mean one and the same thing. I saw no form. I have never tried, for I have always believed God to be without form. One who realizes God is freed from sin for ever.... But what I did hear was like a Voice from afar and yet quite near. It was as unmistakable as some human voice definitely speaking to me, and irresistible. I was not dreaming at the time I heard the Voice. The hearing of the Voice was preceded by a terrific struggle within me. Suddenly the Voice came upon me. I listened, made certain that it was the Voice, and the struggle ceased. I was calm. The determination was made accordingly, the date and the hour of the fast were fixed.... Could I give any further evidence that it was truly the Voice that I heard and that it was not an echo of my own heated imagination? I have no further evidence to convince the sceptic. He is free to say that it was all self-delusion or hallucination. It may well have been so. I can offer no proof to the contrary. But I can say this — that not the unanimous verdict of the whole world against me could shake me from the belief that what I heard was the true voice of God.

 

Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi

 

You will turn over many a futile new leaf till you learn we must all write on scratched-out pages.

 

Mignon McLaughlin

 

However we may dwell upon the difficulties of General Dyer during the Amritsar riots, upon the anxious and critical situation in the Punjab, upon the danger to Europeans throughout that province, ... one tremendous fact stands out – I mean the slaughter of nearly 400 persons and the wounding of probably three to four times as many, at the Jallian Wallah Bagh on 13th April. That is an episode which appears to me to be without precedent or parallel in the modern history of the British Empire. ... It is an extraordinary event, a monstrous event, an event which stands in singular and sinister isolation.

 

Winston Churchill

 

The heart should have fed upon the truth, as insects on a leaf, till it be tinged with the color, and show its food in every ... minutest fiber.

 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

 

I bought a doughnut and they gave me a receipt for the doughnut. I don't need a receipt for the doughnut. I'll just give you the money, and you give me the doughnut, end of transaction. We don't need to bring ink and paper into this. I just can't imagine a scenario where I would have to prove that I bought a doughnut. Some skeptical friend: "Don't even act like I didn't get that doughnut! I got the documentation right here...oh, wait it's at home...in the file...under "D", for "doughnut."

 

Mitch Hedberg