Jacques Brel Quotes

I was in 'Jacques Brel' Off-Broadway for many years, so I've always been a singing actress, but the songwriting was a complete surprise. I had never written a song in my life. We were on the road with 'Jacques Brel' doing the national tour, and I picked up a guitar one day and I wrote a song. ~ Amanda McBroom

My trade is a lonely one. I'm a craftsman, if you like. It so happens that these days singers are better paid than blacksmiths. ~ Jacques Brel

Talent is 98% hard work - even Brel said so. The best signal for lack of talent is therefore quite simply low production. That does of course not mean high production guarantees talent, so something does exist that needs to be present - what is that? Talent and Drive - both are quite useless without the other, but what exactly is 'talent'? I would say its a form of the unconditioned: in some people it survives, even unto old age. Some learn to focus it on a particular craft. But without drive, it still goes nowhere. ~ Martijn Benders

You don't forget a thing, you just get used to it all.... ~ Jacques Brel

When you write a song, most of the words you use are in black and white, and then, from time to time, you use one that's in color. These words in color are a part of ourselves, because we give them a meaning. If you like, we give them a third dimension. ~ Jacques Brel

Love to the love tear, even too, same evil, Attempt, without strength and armor, To reach the unreachable star.. ~ Jacques Brel

I don't remember everything that was happening around me at the time, but gangster life was intoxicating and irresistible. It's difficult to describe the feeling. It's that jungle culture, the lion syndrome, the Tarzan tag; the invincibility, the lure of living on the edge; having not just one woman but a whole brothel on your tail; the shooting irons, the fast cars and the endless supply of cocaine. ~ Jacques Pauw

If there wasn't a God we would have to invent one to keep people sane. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

How would you like it if, at your job, every time you made the slightest mistake a little red light went on over your head and 18,000 people stood up and screamed at you? ~ Jacques Plante

In ordinary speech the words perception and sensation tend to be used interchangeably, but the psychologist distinguishes. Sensations are the items of consciousness
a color, a weight, a texture
that we tend to think of as simple and single. Perceptions are complex affairs that embrace sensation together with other, associated or revived contents of the mind, including emotions. ~ Jacques Barzun

Lark of memory
it is your blood that is flowing
and not mine
Lark of memory
I have tightened my fist
Lark of memory
dead bird of mist
you should not have come
to eat from my hand
the grains of oblivion. ~ Jacques Prevert

First Principle: Have a point and make it by means of the best word. ~ Jacques Barzun

Not all the subtilties of metaphysics can make me doubt a moment of the immortality of the soul, and of a beneficent Providence. I feel it, I believe it, I desire it, I hope it, and will defend it to my last breath. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The end approaches, but the apocalypse is long lived. ~ Jacques Derrida

Nothing is more human than for man to desire naturally things impossible to his nature. It is, indeed, the property of a nature which is not closed up in matter like the nature of physical things, but which is intellectual or infinitized by the spirit. It is the property of a metaphysical nature. Such desires reach for the infinite, because the intellect thirsts for being and being is infinite. ~ Jacques Maritain

Cinema explains American society. It's like a Western, with good guys and bad guys, where the weak don't have a place. ~ Jacques Delors

Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition. ~ Jacques Barzun

I wore only black socks, because I had heard that white ones were the classic sign of the American tourist. Black ones though,- those'll fool 'em. I supposed I hoped the European locals' conversation would go something like this:

PIERRE: Ha! Look at that tourist with his camera and guidebook!
JACQUES: Wait, but observe his socks! They are...black!
PIERRE: Zut alors! You are correct! He is one of us! What a fool I am! Let us go speak to him in English and invite him to lunch! ~ Doug Mack

It is only through the mystery of the redeeming Incarnation that a Christian sees the proper dignity of human personality, and what it costs. The idea which he has of it stretches out indefinitely, and only attains the absolute fullness of its significance in Christ. But by the very fact that it is secular and not sacred, this common task does not in the least demand in its beginning a profession of faith in the whole of Christianity from each man. On the contrary, it includes in its characteristic features a pluralism which makes possible the convivium of Christians and non-Christians in one temporal city. ~ Jacques Maritain

One can go to war alone, but you can't build peace alone. ~ Jacques Chirac

What, then, is the government? An intermediary body established between the subjects and the sovereign for their mutual communication, a body charged with the execution of the laws and the maintenance of freedom, both civil and political. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The writings of women are always cold and pretty like themselves. There is as much wit as you may desire, but never any soul. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

If you look at American studios, the big productions have nothing to do with reality. ~ Jacques Audiard

Do we root for Michael Corleone in the 'Godfather' films? I think so, even if he is a monster. ~ Jacques Audiard

The human heart is certainly an abyss of misery and sin, but God lies in its depths. ~ Jacques Philippe

The beloved's features too were standardized in certain adjectives of color and shape and likened to natural objects, fruit and flowers especially. As a result, ingenuity in finding fresh ways to follow the pattern was required in addition to actual poetic powers. The challenge was great and it accounts for the quantity of verbal lovemaking in the blue, addressed to the remote or non-existent tribes of Celias and Delias. ~ Jacques Barzun

The master always keeps a piece of learning
that is to say, a piece of the student's ignorance
up his sleeve. I understood that, says the satisfied student. You think so, corrects the master. in fact, there's a difficulty here that I've been sparing you until now. We will explain it when we get to the corresponding lesson. What does this mean? asks the curious student. I could tell you, responds the master, but it would be premature: you wouldn't understand at all. It will be explained to you next year. The master is always a length ahead of the student, who always feels that in order to go farther he must have another master, supplementary explications. Thus does the triumphant Achilles drag Hector's corpse, attached to his chariot, around the city of Troy. ~ Jacques Ranciere

An unbroken horse erects his mane, paws the ground and starts back impetuously at the sight of the bridle; while one which is properly trained suffers patiently even whip and spur: so savage man will not bend his neck to the yoke to which civilised man submits without a murmur, but prefers the most turbulent state of liberty to the most peaceful slavery. We cannot therefore, from the servility of nations already enslaved, judge of the natural disposition of mankind for or against slavery; we should go by the prodigious efforts of every free people to save itself from oppression. I know that the former are for ever holding forth in praise of the tranquillity they enjoy in their chains, and that they call a state of wretched servitude a state of peace: miserrimam servitutem pacem appellant. But when I observe the latter sacrificing pleasure, peace, wealth, power and life itself to the preservation of that one treasure, which is so disdained by those who have lost it; when I see free-born animals dash their brains out against the bars of their cage, from an innate impatience of captivity; when I behold numbers of naked savages, that despise European pleasures, braving hunger, fire, the sword and death, to preserve nothing but their independence, I feel that it is not for slaves to argue about liberty. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The bigger a state becomes the more liberty diminishes. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Political correctness does not legislate tolerance; it only organizes hatred. ~ Jacques Barzun

Later traded to Jacques Caboche, another settler, it was in 1850 lost in a game of chess or poker to a newcomer named Hans Zimmerman; being used by him as a beer-stein until one day, under the spell of its contents, he suffered it to roll from his front stoop to the prairie path before his home - where, falling into the burrow of a prairie-dog, it passed beyond his power of discovery or recovery upon his awaking. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

The continual emotion that is felt in the theater excites us, enervates us, enfeebles us, and makes us less able to resist our passions. And the sterile interest taken in virtue serves only to satisfy our vanity without obliging us to practice it. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

If y'can't see with yore own two eyes what's in front of them, then y'better off closin' 'em an' goin' t'sleep, 'tis far more restful!
- Gerul ~ Brian Jacques

I am not prepared to accept the economics of a housewife. ~ Jacques Chirac

I may be no better, but at least I am different. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

There is one further distinguishing characteristic of man which is very specific indeed and about which there can be no dispute, and that is the faculty of self-improvement - a faculty which, with the help of circumstance, progressively develops all our other faculties. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

We must give up believing that we can 'improve' the world, that at least we can make man better, even if we cannot make him happy. At the same time, if we take this situation of the Christian seriously, we must refuse to further the disintegrating tendency in the world. We must not say to ourselves, 'We can't do anything about it!' To talk like this is to play into the hands of the Prince of this world. Thus we seem caught between two necessities, which nothing can alter: on the one hand it is impossible for us to make this world less sinful; on the other hand it is impossible for us to accept it as it is. ~ Jacques Ellul

Defend the weak, protect both young and old, never desert your friends. Give justice to all, be fearless in battle and always ready to defend the right.
- The law of Badger Lords ~ Brian Jacques

Move beyond the educated elite, and the great majority in most countries outside Europe don't speak English. ~ Martin Jacques

For the educated, the authority of science rested on the strictness of its methods; for the mass, it rested on the powers of explanation. ~ Jacques Barzun

When one has suffered or fears suffering, one pities those who suffer; but when one is suffering, one pities only oneself. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Man has always had one unfailing subject of conversation, life's vexations. ~ Jacques Ellul

Technological society leads to increasing numbers of people who cannot adapt to the inhuman rhythm of modern life with its emphasis on specialization. A class of people is growing up who are unexploitable because they are not worth employing even for the minimum wage. Technological progress makes whole categories of people useless without making it possible to support them with the wealth produced by the progress. ~ Jacques Ellul

When innocent and
virtuous men liked to have gods as witnesses of their actions,
they lived with them in the same huts. But having soon become
evil, they grew weary of these inconvenient spectators and
relegated them to magnificent temples. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

In order to resist fear and discouragement, it is necessary that through prayer - through a personal experience of God re-encountered, recognized and loved in prayer - we taste and see how good the Lord is (Psalm 34). ~ Jacques Philippe

It has never been recommended to confuse "loving" with "seeking to please" ... Salome pleased Herod's guests; I can hardly believe she was burning with love for them. As for poor John the Baptist ... she certainly did not envelop him in her love. ~ Jacques Maritain