“When I play on my fiddle in Dooney,
Folk dance like a wave of the sea.”
W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright
The Fiddler Of Dooney http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1620/, st. 1 <br class="br">The Wind Among the Reeds (1899)
Plus léger qu'un bouchon j'ai dansé sur les flots. <br class="br">St. 4 <br class="br"> Le Bateau Ivre http://www.mag4.net/Rimbaud/poesies/Boat.html (The Drunken Boat) (1871)
“When I play on my fiddle in Dooney,
Folk dance like a wave of the sea.”
W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright
The Fiddler Of Dooney http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1620/, st. 1 <br class="br">The Wind Among the Reeds (1899)
“Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free.”
Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist
Song lyrics, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), Mr. Tambourine Man
“I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to to dance better than myself.”
Mikhail Baryshnikov (1948) Soviet-American dancer, choreographer, and actor born in Letonia, Soviet Union
Martin Gardner (1914–2010) recreational mathematician and philosopher
Introduction to The Annotated Alice (1960) // The Annotated Alice. The Definitive Edition (1999), by Lewis Carroll (Author, Christ Church College, Oxford), John Tenniel (Illustrated by), Martin Gardner (Editor, Introduction and notes by), page viii
Context: The last level of metaphor in the Alice books is this: that life, viewed rationally and without illusion, appears to be a nonsense tale told by an idiot mathematician. At the heart of things science finds only a mad, never-ending quadrille of Mock Turtle Waves and Gryphon Particles. For a moment the waves and particles dance in grotesque, inconceivably complex patterns capable of reflecting on their own absurdity.
James Joyce book A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Source: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Harry Reid (1939) American politician
Source: "Reid Says He's A Fighter Who'd Rather Dance", All Things Considered, NPR (18 May 2010) https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126905578
“Some contemptible scoundrel stole the cork from my lunch …”
W.C. Fields (1880–1946) actor
You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (1940)
Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2
PENN Address (2004)
Context: This is the straight truth, the righteous truth. It's not a theory, it's a fact. The fact is that this generation — yours, my generation — that can look at the poverty, we're the first generation that can look at poverty and disease, look across the ocean to Africa and say with a straight face, we can be the first to end this sort of stupid extreme poverty, where in the world of plenty, a child can die for lack of food in it's belly. We can be the first generation. It might take a while, but we can be that generation that says no to stupid poverty. It's a fact, the economists confirm it. It's an expensive fact but, cheaper than say the Marshall Plan that saved Europe from communism and fascism. And cheaper I would argue than fighting wave after wave of terrorism's new recruits.
“I would rather dance as a ballerina, though faultily, than as a flawless clown.”
Margaret Atwood book Surfacing
Lady Oracle (1976)
Source: Surfacing