universal Quotes

“Fiction here is likely to contain more truth than fact. Therefore I propose, making use of all the liberties and licenses of a novelist, to tell you the story of the two days that preceded my coming here.”

“I shall have to controvert one or two ideas that are almost universally accepted.”

“The particularity of our problems can be made bearable only through the recognition of our universal humanity. We suffer uniquely, but we survive the same way.”

“If you speak and write in English, or Spanish, or Chinese, or any other language, then only a certain percentage of human beings will get your meaning . . . But when you draw a picture, everybody can understand it.”

“Faith is universal. Our specific methods for understanding it are arbitrary. Some of us pray to Jesus, some of us go to Mecca, some of us study subatomic particles. In the end we are all just searching for truth, that which is greater than ourselves.”

“They have no knowledge of the thoughts in his mind, but they are in love with their own opinions, not because they are true, but because they are their own […] If, on the other hand, they love them because they are true, they are both theirs and mine, for they are the common property of all lovers of the truth.”

“There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand different copies.”

“Metaphysics is universal and is exclusively concerned with primary substance . . . And here we will have the science to study that which is, both in its essence and in the properties which it has.”

“They had been brought up to think that the domestic virtues were self-evident and universal; they had been starved of the knowledge that most attracts the young mind: that the crown of life is the exercise of choice”

Many universal themes are addressed in this little book. Willfulness is mentioned first because I think it ties with the ending theme of original sin (which is a story about willfulness.) The child attempts to determine if she is a willful child, the cat confirms that she is. The child then concludes “willful is what I want to be… something special.”