“Dressing up in costumes, playing silly games
Hiding out in tree-tops shouting out rude names
— whistling tunes we hide in the dunes by the seaside
— whistling tunes we piss on the goons in the jungle.
It’s a knockout.”

Games Without Frontiers
Song lyrics, Peter Gabriel (III) (1980)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 14, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Dressing up in costumes, playing silly games Hiding out in tree-tops shouting out rude names — whistling tunes we hid…" by Peter Gabriel?
Peter Gabriel photo
Peter Gabriel 56
English singer-songwriter, record producer and humanitarian 1950

Related quotes

Tom Robbins photo

“Reality whistles a different tune underwater.”

Source: Skinny Legs and All

Nick Cave photo

“Numbin' the runt of reputation they call rat frame,
Top-E as a tourniquet,
A low tune whistles across his grave,
Forever the slave of his Six Strings.”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Song lyrics, The Firstborn Is Dead (1985), The Six Strings That Drew Blood

George William Curtis photo

“It is a wise old saw that warns us not to whistle until we are out of the woods.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)
Context: It is a wise old saw that warns us not to whistle until we are out of the woods. But, as we climb the Alps and, emerging from the morass and forest, set once more the sun and the broad landscape, we may fairly shout and sing, although we are still toiling on, and are yet far below the pure peaks towards which we go. In our Revolution, a man who saw distinctly, as we can now see, that the triumph of Great Britain would have imperiled constitutional liberty everywhere, surely had a right to rejoice over the victory of Saratoga, though it was not the end of the war. The battle did not end the war, indeed. The Tories sneered and bade the Yankees wait. They did wait. They waited from Burgoyne's surrender at Saratoga to Comwallis's surrender at Yorktown. Yankee pluck, as usual, waited until it won, as in later days it waited from Bull Run to Richmond. The battle of Saratoga was a skirmish compared with our later battles, but it was a fatal blow to Tory supremacy upon this continent. It was a gleam of sunshine in which it was right to shout and sing, for it was another great gain in the 'Good Fight of Man'.

Anton Mauve photo

“You go outside, light your pipe, whistle a tune and just paint what you come across. (translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

Anton Mauve (1838–1888) Dutch painter (1838–1888)

(version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Anton Mauve, in het Nederlands:) Je gaat naar buiten, steekt je pijpje op, fluit een deuntje en schildert wat je tegenkomt.
Mauve's advice to his students; as cited by H.L. Berckenhoff, in Anton Mauve, Etsen van Ph. Zilcken, met fascimiles naar schilderijen, teekeningen en studies, Amsterdam 1890, (microfiche RKD-Archive Den Haag: Berckenhoff, 1890, p. 20)
Mauve's way of painting was in fact the opposite of his advice: often changing and much struggle
undated quotes

Garry Trudeau photo

“Whether you think we belong in Iraq or not, we can't tune it out; we have to remain mindful of the terrible losses that individual soldiers are suffering in our name.”

Garry Trudeau (1948) cartoonist

Reported in Kerry Soper, Garry Trudeau: Doonesbury and the Aesthetics of Satire (2008), p. 50.

“The human heart is a band playing in a park at a distance; we see the crowds listening, but we catch but fragments of the music now and again, and cannot make out the tune.”

Frank Crane (1861–1928) American Presbyterian minister

Four Minute Essays Vol. 5 (1919), The Human Heart

Abraham Cowley photo

“Charm'd with the foolish whistling of a name.”

Abraham Cowley (1618–1667) British writer

Virgil, Georgics, book ii, line 72; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "Ravish'd with the whistling of a name", Alexander Pope, Essay on Man, epistle iv, line 281.

Rita Williams-Garcia photo
George William Russell photo

“All the morn a spirit gay
Breathes within my heart a rhyme,
'Tis but hide and seek we play
In and out the courts of Time.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

William Makepeace Thackeray photo

“Christmas is here:
Winds whistle shrill,
Icy and chill.
Little care we;
Little we fear
Weather without,
Sheltered about
The Mahogany Tree.”

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) novelist

The Mahogany Tree, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Related topics