Quotes about housing
page 27

“It's funny. People come to my house because I was recommended to them to do some writing. They've never heard of me, and you can see the reticence written all over their faces. Then they look at the walls and see the platinum and gold albums and they say, "Oh. That one's from Prince! That's from Robert Palmer! Oh my God, Paul McCartney!" And then they say, "You're a really fine composer"--without having heard any of my music.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

As quoted in "Fischer: A Ferocious Teddy Bear" http://articles.latimes.com/1992-07-03/entertainment/ca-1426_1_teddy-bear

God, People, Music

“But I do not remember ever having seen a newspaper in the house; and, most certainly, that privation did not render us less industrious, happy, or free.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

Source: Life and Adventures of Peter Porcupine (1796), P. 22.

Happiness

“I watch the sea and the sky; sometimes I wade in the surf and build roads in the sand. At night I study the stars.”
“You have no friends?”
“No.”
“And what of the future?”
“The future stops at ‘now’.”
“As to that, I am not so sure,” said Shimrod. “It is at best a half-truth.”
“What of that? Half a truth is better than none: do you not agree?”
“Not altogether,” said Shimrod. “I am a practical man, I try to control the shape of the ‘nows’ which lie in the offing, instead of submitting to them as they occur.”
Melancthe gave an uninterested shrug. “You are free to do as you like.” Leaning back in the divan, she looked out across the sea.
Shimrod finally spoke. “Well then: are you ‘good’ or ‘bad’?”
“I don’t know.”
Shimrod became vexed. “Talking with you is like visiting an empty house.”

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Melancthe considered a moment before responding. “Perhaps,” she said, “you are visiting the wrong house. Or perhaps you are the wrong visitor.”
Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), Madouc (1989), Chapter 5, section 4 (p. 783)

Truth, Lie, Star, Study

“T was the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring,—not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.”

Clement Clarke Moore (1779–1863) American biblical scholar

A Visit from St. Nicholas, published anonymously in the Troy, New York Sentinel on December 23, 1823 and was reprinted frequently thereafter with no name attached; later attributed to Clement Clarke Moore and included in an 1844 anthology of his works.

Hope, Christmas, Night

“Grief hath stern and silent powers,
And her house is proud;
Not to-day’s cold guarded hours
Is despair allow'd;
But, shut out with haughty fears,
Pride with daylight disappears,
From the lovely Zegri Ladye —
The Ladye weeping there.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(1838 2) (Vol 53) Subjects for Pictures - The Zegri Lady’s Vigil
The Monthly Magazine

Love, Fear, Despair

“[that] simple people brought their bodies and shared their scanty bread with the artists. Kirchner learned the course of life again in their houses.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

later quote of Kirchner (writing in the third person); as quoted in Claire Louise Albiez https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272168564, in Brücke und Berlin: 100 Jahre Expressionismus; submitted to the Division of Humanities New College of Florida, Sarasota, Florida, May 2013, p. 38 about the relaxed atmosphere, not only found in die Brücke's ateliers, but also through the Brücke-artists' contact to common people in the working quarter of the city of Dresden, c. 1906-10 undated

Life, People, Learning

“…a fetid cabaret with a beer-bar, two houses of ill-fame disguised as coffee-shops…”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Beds in the East (1959)

Coffee, Beer

“A revolution was never fought, throughout history, for ideals. Revolutions were fought for much more concrete things: food, clothes, housing, and to relieve intolerable oppression. … I know of no one, outside of Patrick Henry, willing to die for an abstraction.”

William Powell (author) book The Anarchist Cookbook

Source: The Anarchist Cookbook (1971), Chapter Two: "Electronics, Sabotage, and Surveillance".

Food, History, Clothes

“I am disappointed by the president's decision to continue pushing forward on the disastrous Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement that will cost American jobs, harm the environment, increase the cost of prescription drugs and threaten our ability to protect public health. This treaty is opposed by every trade union in the country and virtually the entire grassroots base of the Democratic Party. … Secretary Clinton made her strongest statement to date against this deal. In my view, it is now time for the leadership of the Democratic Party in the Senate and the House to join Secretary Clinton and go on the record in opposition to holding a vote on this job-killing trade deal during the lame-duck session of Congress and beyond. We need to defeat this treaty and fundamentally rewrite our trade policies to create good-paying jobs in this country and throughout the world and end the race to the bottom. I will continue to do everything I can to make sure that the TPP does not get implemented.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Sanders Statement on Push to Pass Pacific Trade Pact http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sanders-statement-on-push-to-pass-pacific-trade-pact (12 August 2016) 2010s, 2016

Health, World, Disappointment, Decision

“Nearby, where the main road forked, stood an iron cross on a stone base. As the English couple watched, a mason was cutting in half a dozen fresh names. On the far side of the street, in the deep shadow of a doorway, a youngish woman in black was also watching. She was so pale they assumed at first she had some sort of wasting disease. She remained perfectly still, with one hand holding an edge of her headscarf so that it obscured her mouth. The mason seemed embarrassed and kept his back to her while he worked. After a quarter of an hour an old man in blue workman's clothes came shuffling along in carpet slippers and took her hand without a word and led her away. When the propriétaire came out he nodded at the other side of the street, at the empty space and murmured, 'Trois. Mari et deux frères,' as he set down their salads.This sombre incident remained with them as they struggled up the hill in the heat, heavy with lunch, towards the Bergerie de Tédenat. They stopped half way up in the shade of a stand of pines before a long stretch of open ground. Bernard was to remember this moment for the rest of his life. As they drank from their water bottles he was struck by the recently concluded war not as a historical, geopolitical fact but as a multiplicity, a near-infinity of private sorrows, as a boundless grief minutely subdivided without diminishment among individuals who covered the continent like dust, like spores whose separate identities would remain unknown, and whose totality showed more sadness than anyone could ever begin to comprehend; a weight borne in silence by hundreds of thousands, millions, like the woman in black for a husband and two brothers, each grief a particular, intricate, keening love story that might have been otherwise. It seemed as though he had never thought about the war before, not about its cost. He had been so busy with the details of his work, of doing it well, and his widest view had been of war aims, of winning, of statistical deaths, statistical destruction, and of post-war reconstruction. For the first time he sensed the scale of the catastrophe in terms of feeling; all those unique and solitary deaths, all that consequent sorrow, unique and solitary too, which had no place in conferences, headlines, history, and which had quietly retired to houses, kitchens, unshared beds, and anguished memories. This came upon Bernard by a pine tree in the Languedoc in 1946 not as an observation he could share with June but as a deep apprehension, a recognition of a truth that dismayed him into silence and, later, a question: what possible good could come of a Europe covered in this dust, these spores, when forgetting would be inhuman and dangerous, and remembering a constant torture?”

Ian McEwan book Black Dogs

Page 164-165.
Black Dogs (1992)

Love, Life, Death, War

“I appeal to the contemptible speech made lately by Sir Robert Peel to an applauding House of Commons. "Orders of merit," said he, "were the proper rewards of the military" (the desolators of the world in all ages). "Men of science are better left to the applause of their own hearts." Most learned legislator! Most liberal cotton-spinner! Was your title the proper reward of military prowess? Pity, you hold not the dungeon-keys of an English Inquisition! Perhaps Science, like Creeds, would flourish best under a little persecution.”

John Joseph Griffin (1802–1877) English chemist and publisher

Chemical Recreations (7th Edition, 1834) "The Romance of Chemistry" p232

Men, Age, World, Learning

“I am going on very well with my pictures… the park [ Wivenhoe Park ] is the most forward — the great difficulty has been to get so much in as they wanted (his client, the Slater-Rebows) to make them acquainted with the scene — on my left is a grotto with some elms — at the head of a piece of water — in the center is the house over a beautifull wood and very far to the right is a Deer House — what it was necessary to add. So that my view comprehended to many degrees — but to day I got over the difficulty and I begin to like it 'myself'… I live in the park and Mrs. Rebow says I am very unsociable.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Letter to his future wife, Maria Bicknell (26 August 1816), as quoted in Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams, Constable (Tate Gallery Publications, London, 1993), p. 119
1800s - 1810s

Water

“Thus we seem to be on the verge of an expansion of welfare economics into something like a social science of ethics and politics: what was intended to be a mere porch to ethics is either the whole house or nothing at all. In so laying down its life welfare economics may be able to contribute some of its insights and analytical methods to a much broader evaluative analysis of the whole social process.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1940s, Economic Analysis, 1941, p. 34. (rev. ed. 1948) cited in: J.P. Roos (1973) Welfare Theory and Social Policy: A Study in Policy Science - Nummer 4. p. 102

Life, Science

“I notice in Kentucky a disposition to cry against the tyranny and oppression of our Government. Now, were it not for war you know tyranny could not exist in our Government; therefore any acts of late partaking of that aspect are the result of war; and who made this war? Already we find ourselves drifting toward new issues, and are beginning to forget the strong facts of the beginning. You know and I know that long before the North, or the Federal Government, dreamed of war the South had seized the U. S. arsenals, forts, mints, and custom-houses, and had made prisoners of war of the garrisons sent at their urgent demand to protect them 'against Indians, Mexicans, and negroes.”

William T. Sherman (1820–1891) American General, businessman, educator, and author.

1860s, 1864, Letter to James Guthrie (August 1864)

War, Dreams, Strong, Cry

“Every spirit makes his own house, but as afterwards the house confines its spirit, you had better build well.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Source: A Thousand & One Epigrams: Selected from the Writings of Elbert Hubbard (1911), p. 16.

“Anna and Elsa's parents didn't die. Yes, there was a shipwreck, but they were at sea a little bit longer than we think they were because the mother was pregnant, and she gave birth on the boat, to a little boy. They get shipwrecked, and somehow they really washed way far away from the Scandinavian waters, and they end up in the jungle. They end up building a tree house and a leopard kills them, so their baby boy is raised by gorillas.”

Chris Buck

10 August 2015 via MTV http://www.mtv.com/news/2236490/frozen-director-debunks-major-disney-conspiracy-theory/, affirmed 15 December 2017 by Seventeen https://www.seventeen.com/celebrity/movies-tv/news/a33173/chris-buck-talks-tarzan-frozen-theory/

Way, Boy, Birth, Thinking

“She is a brittle, relentless manipulator with few stable core values who shuffles through useful personalities like a card shark ("Cue the tears!"). Forget all her little gold crosses: Hillary's real god is political expediency. Do Americans truly want this hard-bitten Machiavellian back in the White House? Day one will just be more of the same.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

On Hillary Rodham Clinton, in "Camille Paglia on Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Iran and More" at Salon.com (8 January 2008) http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2008/01/10/hillary/

God, Tear, Personality, Forgetting

“Pleasure, the outer edge of ecstasy, was in the dour days of Protestantism, considered sinful in itself, wherever gained; Rome held specifically that any or all sexual pleasure was sinful. And for all this capped volcano produced in terms of bridges and houses, factories and bombs, it gouted from its riven sides a frightful harvest of neurosis. And even where a nation officially discarded the church, the same repressive techniques remained, the same preoccupation with doctrine, filtered through the same mesh of guilt. So sex and religion, the real meaning of human existence, ceased to be meaning and became means; the unbridgeable hostility between the final combatants was the proof of the identity of their aim—the total domination, for the ultimate satisfaction of the will to superiority, of all human minds.”

Theodore Sturgeon book Venus Plus X

Section 41 (p. 130)
Venus Plus X (1960)

Hostility, Pleasure, Religion, Sex

“MY dearest friend — White or some of my friends or the public papers by this time may have informed you of the terrible calamities that have fallen on our family. I will only give you the outlines. My poor dear dearest sister in a fit of insanity has been the death of her own mother. I was at hand only time enough to snatch the knife out of her grasp. She is at present in a mad house, from whence I fear she must be moved to an hospital. God has preserved to me my senses, — I eat and drink and sleep, and have my judgment I believe very sound. My poor father was slightly wounded, and I am left to take care of him and my aunt. Mr. Norris of the Bluecoat school has been very very kind to us, and we have no other friend, but thank God I am very calm and composed, and able to do the best that remains to do. Write, —as religious a letter as possible— but no mention of what is gone and done with. —With me “the former things are passed away,” and I have something more to do that [than] to feel. God almighty have us all in his keeping.”

Charles Lamb (1775–1834) English essayist

Lamb in September 27, 1796. In his letter to Coleridge; after the family tragedy. As quoted in Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. Letters (1905).

Death, God, Fear, School

“Obviously the future must be considered in the light of one's own power to influence events. The man of action cannot be a fatalist. The architect has to think of the future of the house he is building; a workman has to take measure for safeguarding his old age; a member of the Chamber has to consider the possible effects of the budget for which he is going to vote. But once decisions are made and measures taken, peace of mind must be re-established. It is absurd to try to foresee things when the means of doing it are lacking.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Happiness

Age, Peace, Thinking, Decision

“We should not delude ourselves into thinking that an incomes policy is other than a serious infringement of freedom…Nor have the Liberals explained how it is to be worked, and even if they had, it is certainly not a permanent answer to our economic troubles…At present, the Liberal-Social Democratic Alliance occasionally looks too much like a half-way house on the old road to state socialism. It will spend more than the Tories but rather less than Labour…Such compromises may win votes, but they will not improve the country.”

Jo Grimond (1913–1993) British soldier, politician and academic

In the Journal of Economic Affairs (October, 1981).

Way, Thinking, Freedom, Country

“Then came the dress, the tapes, and the Federal grand jury. The attempt to obstruct and cover-up grew, expanded, and developed a life of its own. It overpowered the underlying offense itself. A new strategy was required, fast: The President was advised: `Admit the sex, but never the lies.' Shift the blame; change the subject. Blame it on the plaintiff in the Arkansas case. Blame it on her lawyers. Blame it on the Independent Counsel. Blame it on partisanship. Blame it on the majority members of the House Judiciary Committee. Blame it on the process.”

Kay Bailey Hutchison (1943) American politician

Life, Sex, Change

“Every Sunday, practically, we were at home to friends and guests and frequently had 20 or 30 people at the house. We mixed them all up higgledy-piggledy, young and old, people of good social position or of no position, and I believe a good time was had by all. We served cake and punch, tea and coffee, and no matter who they were everybody had to "muck in" and wash dishes and tidy up the sitting room when the day was over.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: The Unfinished Autobiography (1951), Chapter V - Part 2

People, Home, Coffee, Time

“In the street the rain was little more than a fine mist which softened the outlines of the houses and even lent a touch of poetry to a neighbourhood unlikely to evoke tender emotions. He raised his eyes to a roofline bristling with television aerials, lowered them again to windows still blank before the evening lights were lit.”

Anita Brookner (1928–2016) British novelist and art historian.

Making Things Better (2002)

Light

“This is the very contrary of dropping out. Most people can't wait to get home to their house or apartment and shut that door and turn on the TV. To me, that's dropping out.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

On his living at a Zen center, as quoted in Los Angeles Times (24 September 1995)

People, Home, Waiting

“At times, we [the White Stripes] almost ignore our own music. If we have the stage, we've gotta play Son House's music, because there's nobody to keep it alive. We don't wanna be known as the band that's conducting music instruction class. But that's all everyone talks about - why MTV's not good, why radio's not good. And the answer is really because whatever you want to call it - blues, country, folk - isn't around any more. That's why everyone's so mad, and I'm tired of it being my job to bring it back.”

Jack White (1975) American musician and record producer

On why he tends to look to the past Perry, Andrew (2004). "The White Stripes uncut" http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,13887,1349947,00.html Observer Music Monthly (accessed June 19, 2007). 2010

Music, Time, Madness, Country

“In a brahmin house
where they feed the fire as a god
when the fire goes wild and burns the house
they splash on it
the water of the gutter and the dust of the street,
beat their breasts
and call the crowd.
These men then forget their worship
and scold their fire,
O lord of the meeting rivers!”

Basava (1134–1196) a 12th-century Hindu philosopher, statesman, Kannada Bhakti poet of Lingayatism

Basava’s saying in his “The Lord of the Meeting Rivers: Devotional Poems of Basavanna” quoted in The Lord of the Meeting Rivers Quotes, 23 November 2013, Goodreads.com http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3772282-the-lord-of-the-meeting-rivers-devotional-poems-of-basavanna,

Men, God, Water, Forgetting

“As our parliamentary system now stands, we say that this role of overseeing the Government has probably become the main function of the House of Commons. the purpose of this function is to illuminate the weaknesses in government policies, the errors that may have been committed and the sectors that may have been forgotten, and to suggest alternative solutions.”

John Allen Fraser (1931) Canadian politician

Source: The House Of Commons At Work (1993), Chapter 9, The House of Commons Functions, p. 122

Error

“Every man worships the dollar, and is down before his shrine from morning to night… Other men, the world over, worship regularly at the shrine with matins and vespers, nones and complines, and whatever other daily services may be known to the religious houses; but the New Yorker is always on his knees.”

Anthony Trollope (1815–1882) English novelist (1815-1882)

Source: North America (1862), Ch. 14

Men, World, Night

“The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.”

Joseph E. Stiglitz (1943) American economist and professor, born 1943.

"Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%" http://www.vanityfair.com/society/features/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105, Vanity Fair, May 2011.

Money, Fate, Education, History

“From the top of the campanile, or Giotto's bell tower, in Florence, one can look out over the city in all directions, past the stone banking houses where the rich Medici lived, past the art galleries they patronized, past the magnificent cathedral and churches their money helped to build, and on to the Tuscan vineyards where the contadino works the soil as hard and efficiently as he probably ever did. The city below is busy with life. The university halls, the shops, the restaurants are crowded. The sound of Vespas, the "wasps" of the machine age, fills the air, but Florence is not today what it once was, the center in the 15th century of a great civilization, one of the most extraordinary the world has ever known. Why? What produced the Renaissance in Italy, of which Florence was the center? How did it happen that such a small population base could produce, in the short span of a few generations, great historical figures first in commerce and literature, then in architecture, sculpture and painting, and finally in science and music? Why subsequently did Northern Italy decline in importance both commercially and artistically until at the present time it is not particularly distinguished as compared with many other regions of the world? Certainly the people appear to be working as hard and energetically as ever. Was it just luck or a peculiar combination of circumstances? Historians have been fascinated by such questions ever since they began writing history, because the rise and fall of Florence or the whole of Northern Italy is by no means an isolated phenomenon.”

David C. McClelland (1917–1998) American psychological theorist

Source: The Archiving Society, 1961, p. 1; lead paragraph, about the problem

Life, Money, People, Age

“I believe that architects should design gardens to be used, as much as the houses they build, to develop a sense of beauty and the taste and inclination toward the fine arts and other spiritual values.”

Luis Barragán (1902–1988) Mexican architect

Contemporary Architects, St. Martins Press.

Beauty, Art, Sense

““I think Kathaos fears no divine forces.”
“Then he’s a brave man.”
“Oh, men make their own gods,” Yannul remarked. “I have a god with a fat belly, and a house full of expensive women to attend his every need, and I call him Yannul the Lan in Five Years from This.””

Tanith Lee book The Storm Lord

Book 3, “The Meteoric Hero” Chapter 9 (p. 117)
The Storm Lord (1976)

Women, Men, God, Fear

“I make all this stuff in the studio, but I also work on these white elephants — like House or Untitled Monument — things that are incredibly ambitious, take an awful long time to do, involve a lot of controversy, an awful lot of people, and don't make any money particularly, but it's just because I need to make them.”

Rachel Whiteread (1963) British sculptor

As quoted in "Some day my plinth will come" by Lynn Barber in The Guardian (27 May 2001) http://observer.guardian.co.uk/life/story/0,6903,497037,00.html

Money, People, Time

“A report was brought to the Sultan that there was in Delhi an old Brahman (zunar dar) who persisted in publicly performing the worship of idols in his house; and that people of the city, both Musulmans and Hindus, used to resort to his house to worship the idol. The Brahman had constructed a wooden tablet (muhrak), which was covered within and without with paintings of demons and other objects. On days appointed, the infidels went to his house and worshipped the idol, without the fact becoming known to the public officers. The Sultan was informed that this Brahman had perverted Muhammadan women, and had led them to become infidels. An order was accordingly given that the Brahman, with his tablet, should be brought into the presence of the Sultan at Firozabad. The judges and doctors and elders and lawyers were summoned, and the case of the Brahman was submitted for their opinion. Their reply was that the provisions of the Law were clear: the Brahman must either become a Musulman or be burned. The true faith was declared to the Brahman, and the right course pointed out, but he refused to accept it. Orders were given for raising a pile of faggots before the door of the darbar. The Brahman was tied hand and foot and cast into it; the tablet was thrown on top and the pile was lighted. The writer of this book was present at the darbar and witnessed the execution. The tablet of the Brahman was lighted in two places, at his head and at his feet; the wood was dry, and the fire first reached his feet, and drew from him a cry, but the flames quickly enveloped his head and consumed him. Behold the Sultans strict adherence to law and rectitude, how he would not deviate in the least from its decrees!”

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

Delhi. Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi, Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. Elliot and Dowson. Vol. III, p. 365 ff https://archive.org/stream/cu31924073036737#page/n379/mode/2up Quoted in Shourie, Arun (2014). Eminent historians: Their technology, their line, their fraud. Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India : HarperCollins Publishers.

Women, People, Books, Faith

“A person who circumambulates this House (the Ka’bah) seven times and performs the two Rak’at Salat (of Tawaaf) in the best form possible will have his sins forgiven.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Biharul Anwar, Volume 96, Page 49
Shi'ite Hadith

Time, Personality

“We, we respect very much what the American want to do uh…but, you know sometime the American way of life and the…uh American democracy maybe uh cannot work in a country like mine, you know, in South Vietnam. Uh…so, we, we can have the principle and adapt that in the country but we cannot adapt what you have here, you know, eh two houses, all that stuff, you know, and changing the president every four year. You have many people here who can be leader of the country. We have a few in Vietnam, a few who can uh you know uh lead the country because education, because the training, because all that uh, background that we must have, you know.”

Nguyen Khanh (1927–2013) South Vietnamese soldier

Evaluation of democracy and the American presence in the South
1980s, Interview with Nguyen Khanh (1981)

Life, People, Education, Way

“It is not with a view of overturning our institutions that I advocate these reforms in our representative system. It is because I believe that we may carry out these reforms from time to time, by discussions in this House, that I take my part in advocating them in this legitimate manner. They must be effected in this mode, or as has been the case on the Continent, by bayonets, by muskets, and in the streets. Now, I am no advocate for such proceedings. I conceive that men of political standing in this country—any Members of this House for instance—who join in advocating the extension of the suffrage at this moment, are the real conservators of peace.”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1848/jul/06/national-representation-adjourned-debate in the House of Commons (6 July 1848) in favour of a Reform Bill that would have extended the vote to middle class men. 1840s

Men, Peace, Time, Parting

“I will here say, before closing, that two weeks before I left St. George, the spirits of the dead gathered around me, wanting to know why we did not redeem them. Said they, "You have had the use of the Endowment House for a number of years, and yet nothing has ever been done for us. We laid the foundation of the government you now enjoy, and we never apostatized from it, but we remained true to it and were faithful to God." There were the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and they waited on me for two days and two nights. I thought it very singular, that notwithstanding so much work had been done, and yet nothing had been done for them. The thought never entered my heart, from the fact, I suppose, that heretofore our minds were reaching after our more immediate friends and relatives. I straightway went into the baptismal font and called upon brother McCallister to baptize me for the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and fifty other eminent men, making one hundred in all, including John Wesley, Columbus, and others; I then baptized him for every President of the United States, except three; and when their cause is just, somebody will do the work for them.”

Wilford Woodruff (1807–1898) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Journal of Discourses 19:229 (September 16, 1877)

Men, God, Faith, Waiting

“There is a peculiar atmosphere in the Committee this afternoon that I do not think that I am the only one to have sensed. It is not an agreeable atmosphere; it is an atmosphere of a certain embarrassment, or even suppressed tension. For a time I was striving to locate the parallel atmosphere of which I was being reminded. Then, suddenly, it occurred to me what it was. It is an atmosphere that will be familiar to nearly all hon. Members who have suffered a near and severe bereavement. We are in the circumstances of a household, between a decease and a funeral when the body is still in the house.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1977/feb/24/instructions-for-voting-please-read-1 in the House of Commons (24 February 1977). Two days previously a guillotine motion for the Bill had been defeated and it was generally accepted that there was no chance of the Bill being passed that session. 1970s

Thinking, Sense, Suffering, Time

“That night I slept there, but the next morning I began to hate the place. With her there it was part of a dream; without her, it was a house. I packed my things into the rumble seat and drove back to Los Angeles.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Hate, Dreams, Angels, Parting

“You remember that, at the close of Theodore Roosevelt’s second term as President, he went over to Africa to make war on some of his ancestors. You remember that, at the close of his expedition, he visited the capitals of Europe; and that he was wined and dined, dignified and glorified by all the Kaisers and Czars and Emperors of the Old World. He visited Potsdam while the Kaiser was there; and, according to the accounts published in the American newspapers, he and the Kaiser were soon on the most familiar terms. They were hilariously intimate with each other, and slapped each other on the back. After Roosevelt had reviewed the Kaiser’s troops, according to the same accounts, he became enthusiastic over the Kaiser’s legions and said: “If I had that kind of an army, I could conquer the world.” He knew the Kaiser then just as well as he knows him now. He knew that he was the Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin. And yet, he permitted himself to be entertained by that Beast of Berlin; had his feet under the mahogany of the Beast of Berlin; was cheek by jowl with the Beast of Berlin. And, while Roosevelt was being entertained royally by the German Kaiser, that same Kaiser was putting the leaders of the Socialist Party in jail for fighting the Kaiser and the Junkers of Germany. Roosevelt was the guest of honor in the white house of the Kaiser, while the Socialists were in the jails of the Kaiser for fighting the Kaiser. Who then was fighting for democracy? Roosevelt? Roosevelt, who was honored by the Kaiser, or the Socialists who were in jail by order of the Kaiser? “Birds of a feather flock together.””

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

The Canton, Ohio Speech, Anti-War Speech (1918)

War, World, Democracy, Bird

“Young men, you who have any piety at all, what sort is it? Is it a hot-house plant, which must be framed and glassed, lest March, that bold young fellow, should shake the life out. of it in his rough play among the flowers? or is it a hardy shrub, which rejoices when the wild winds course along the heather or howl above the crest of Lebanon ' We need, believe me, the bravery of godliness to bear true witness for our Master now.”

William Morley Punshon (1824–1881) English Nonconformist minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 452.

Life, Men, Flowers

“I spoke in debates arranged by the Indian students in London and once V. K. Krishna Menon opposed me. The debate concerned the role of Asia in world affairs and I used the word Asiatic. Menon raised a laugh against me by saying that he did not like the word because it rhymed with ‘lunatic’ although I should consider myself free to use it. He advised me to use the word ‘Asian’ instead. When my turn came for reply, I thanked him for his advice but preferred to stick to the Asiatics adding that he had no objection of Menon calling an Asian although the word rhymed with ‘Simian’. This brought the house down and even Menon joined in the laughter and clapping.”

Mohammad Hidayatullah (1905–1992) 11th Chief Justice of India

Source: Law in the Scientific Era, P.48.

World, Laughter

“Am I not among the early risers
and the long-distance walkers? Have I not stood, amazed, as I consider
the perfection of the morning star
above the peaks of the houses, and the crowns of the trees
blue in the first light?
Do I not see how the trees tremble, as though
sheets of water flowed over them
though it is only wind, that common thing,
free to everyone, and everything?”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

"Am I Not Among the Early Risers"
West Wind (1997)

Star, Tree, Light, Water

“To the Whigs of the seventeenth century we owe it that we have a House of Commons. To the Whigs of the nineteenth century we owe it that the House of Commons has been purified. The abolition of the slave-trade, the abolition of colonial slavery, the extension of popular education, the mitigation of the rigour of the penal code, all, all were effected by that party; and of that party, I repeat, I am a member. I look with pride on all that the Whigs have done for the cause of human freedom and of human happiness. I see them now hard pressed, struggling with difficulties, but still fighting the good fight. At their head I see men who have inherited the spirit and the virtues, as well as the blood, of old champions and martyrs of freedom…While one shred of the old banner is flying, by that banner will I at least be found.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Speech http://www.bartleby.com/349/authors/133.html to the electors at Edinburgh (May 1839)

Men, Happiness, Education, Freedom

“Nasrudin walked into a house and exclaimed, "The moon is more useful than the sun."
"Why?" he was asked.
"Because at night we need the light more."”

Nasreddin (1208–1284) philosopher, Sufi and wise man from Turkey, remembered for his funny stories and anecdotes

Paul Blenkiron, Stories and Analogies in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (2010), , p. 43

Light, Sun, Night

“We used to say in the White House that if a place is too dangerous, too small or too poor, send the First Lady.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Iowa stump speech. http://www.rollingstone.com/nationalaffairs/index.php/2008/03/11/sinbad-on-his-and-hillarys-red-phone-moments-in-bosnia/ Presidential campaign (January 20, 2007 – 2008)

“These are points to consider when we put our house in order for the advancing hordes of aliens. Experience has taught us to have faith in the bulk of our people. The great decisions in American history have always been right. The heart of the nation is sound and must be kept sound. It is a characteristic of ours that we are ashamed not to be right. I believe that our present concern about immigration is a fear that we will not be able to protect ourselves and at the same time discharge our obligations.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Whose Country Is This? (1921)

People, Fear, Faith, History

“The seven dwarfs were devastated when an eighth joined them one morning before they went to work. He went straight into their house, took little plates and cutlery out of his waistcoat, grabbed the mining tools and was the first dwarf to set off for work. Caught off-guard by his cheeky but honest manner, the others followed, angry because he was showing them the way along the path they took every day and surprised when they found he had turned into dark grotto into a glass palace with Snow White hewn in gold. For these established prospectors it was terrible to behold the intruder appropriating for himself the right to mine the virgin goldmine.”

Günter Brus (1938) Austrian artist

Source: Nervous Stillness on the Horizon (2006), P. 216 (1993)

Way

“The first thing the Muslim Sultanate of Delhi started on was construction of impressive buildings. The first sultan Qutbuddin Aibak had to establish Muslim power in India and to raise buildings "as quickly as possible, so that no time might be lost in making an impression on their newly-conquered subjects". Architecture was considered as the visual symbol of Muslim political power. It denoted victory with authority. The first two buildings of the early period in Delhi are the Qutb Minar and the congregational mosque named purposefully as the Quwwat-ul-Islam (might of Islam) Masjid. This mosque was commenced by Aibak in 592/1195. It was built with materials and gold obtained by destroying 27 Hindu and Jain temples in Delhi and its neighborhood. A Persian inscription in the mosque testifies to this. The Qutb Minar, planned and commenced by Aibak sometime in or before 1199 and completed by Iltutmish, was also constructed with similar materials, "the sculptured figures on the stones being either defaced or concealed by turning them upside down". A century and a quarter later Ibn Battutah describes the congregational mosque and the Qutb Minar. "About the latter he says that its staircase is so wide that elephants can go up there." About the former his observations are interesting. "Near the eastern gate of the mosque their lie two very big idols of copper connected together by stones. Every one who comes in and goes out of the mosque treads over them. On the site of this mosque was a bud khana, that is an idol house. After the conquest of Delhi it was turned into a mosque."”

Qutb al-Din Aibak (1150–1210) Turkic peoples king of Northwest India

Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 5 (quoting Gordon Sanderson, 'Archaeology at the Qutb', Archaeological Survey of India Report, 1912-13; Ibn Battutah)

Lie, Time, Victory

“If your house has Cold Mountain poems
They are better for you than sutras
Hang them up where you can see them
Read them and read them again”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

Mountain, Reading

“The appropriate emotion is shame — shame at our own dependency, in this case, on the underpaid labor of others. When someone works for less pay than she can live on — when, for example, she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply and conveniently — then she has made a great sacrifice for you, she has made you a gift of some part of her abilities, her health, and her life. The "working poor," as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone else.”

Barbara Ehrenreich (1941) American writer and journalist

Evaluation (p. 221)
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America (2001)

Life, Children, Health, Home

“Do you promise you won't hurt me?" asked Arthur.
"You will be safe from all harm for the space of a quarter hour, as measured by this clock," replied the Old One. "You are mortal enough that I would not slay you like a wandering cockroach, or a Denizen of the House.”

Garth Nix (1963) Australian fantasy writer

"Thanks," said Arthur. "I think."
Source: The Keys to the Kingdom series, Superior Saturday (2008), p. 67.

Thinking, Hurt

“She never came back. The family
Sort of drifted off. Nobody wears shiny boots like that now.
But I know she is beautiful forever, and lives
In a beautiful house, far away.
She called my name once. I didn't even know she knew it.”

Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989) American poet, novelist, and literary critic

"True Love"

Family, Beauty

“I’ve grown up with animals in the house, I have 3 brothers and 3 sisters, and all of us had cats, dogs, mice, chickens, frogs, tortoises, so they’ve always been a big part of my life. My dog, Scamp, was my best friend when I was growing up, and he was just as much a brother to me as my human brothers. Someone threw acid on him, and he almost died, but my parents spent their life savings having him treated. It appalled me that people could be so cruel, and ever since I have stuck up for animals. It is something I can be active in, unlike trying to figure out the appalling things humans do to each other.”

Geezer Butler (1949) English musician, bassist and lyricist of Black Sabbath

“Black Sabbath's Geezer Butler,” interview with Devils Gate Media (24 March 2016) http://devilsgatemedia.com/interview-black-sabbaths-geezer-butler/.

Life, People, Dogs, Cats

“The antagonist to the Republican Party has been the Democrats, the party of collective subjugation and individual enslavement. Then physical, now economic. The first black members of the U. S. House and Senate were Republicans. The first civil rights legislation came from Republicans. Democrats gave us the KKK, Jim Crow, lynchings, poll taxes, literacy tests, and failed policies like the 'Great Society'. Republican President Eisenhower ordered troops to enforce school desegregation. Republican Senator Everett Dirksen enabled the 1964 civil rights legislation to pass, in opposition to Democrat Senators Robert Byrd, a KKK Grand Wizard, and Al Gore, Sr.”

Allen West (politician) (1961) American politician; retired United States Army officer

2010s, Voting Democratic for the next 200 years (2014)

School

“The time was, when I was a boy, when people hardly dreamed that the day would come when there would be large numbers of Members in this House who could not afford to perform their duties here unless they had an allowance; but I think, looking at the whole Continent of Europe, that, the more the basis of our liberty and our Constitution is broadened, the better for our country. Would anyone who remembers the old days here go back to them and give up what we have gained? This Chamber, the most famous Chamber in democratic government in the world, is now open to all, and, once you admit that everybody has a right to be elected to this House if he can, you cannot logically create or leave a financial bar.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1937/apr/12/ministers-of-the-crown-bill in the House of Commons (12 April 1937) announcing an increase in MP's salaries. 1937

People, World, Dreams, Boy

“My labor had not been easy nor light; our Masonry had spun a most intricate net of anti-religious activity; it dominated the currents of thought; it exercised its influence over publishing houses, over teaching, over the administration of justice and even over certain dominant sections of the armed forces. To give an idea of how far things had gone, this significant example is sufficient. When, in parliament, I delivered my first speech of November 16, 1922, after the Fascist revolution, I concluded by invoking the assistance of God in my difficult task. Well, this sentence of mine seemed to be out of place! In the Italian parliament, a field of action for Italian Masonry, the name of God had been banned for a long time. Not even the Popular party — the so-called Catholic party — had ever thought of speaking of God. In Italy, a political man did not even turn his thoughts to the Divinity. And, even if he had ever thought of doing so, political opportunism and cowardice would have deterred him, particularly in a legislative assembly. It remained for me to make this bold innovation! And in an intense period of revolution! What is the truth! It is that a faith openly professed is a sign of strength. I have seen the religious spirit bloom again; churches once more are crowded, the ministers of God are themselves invested with new respect. Fascism has done and is doing its duty.”

Benito Mussolini book My Autobiography

1920s
Source: My Autobiography (1928)

God, Truth, Faith, Justice

“Miracles will have their claimers
More will bow to Rome
He and she are in the house
But there's only me at home.
-- Anagram (For Mongo) (1989)”

Neil Peart (1952–2020) Canadian-American drummer , lyricist, and author

Rush Lyrics

Home

“When I was born 20.6. [18]87, I was influenced by Picasso to cry. When I could walk and speak I still stood under Picasso's influence and said to my mother: 'Tom' or 'Happening', meaning the entrances of the canal under the street. My lyrical time was when I lived in the Violet Street. I never saw a violet. That was my influence by Matisse because when he painted rose I did not paint violet. As a boy of ten I stood under Mondrian's influence and built little houses with little bricks. Afterwards I stood under the influence of the Surrealists... I never stood under the influence of Dadaism because whereas the Dadaist created Spiegel-dadaismus (Mirror-Dada) on the Zurich Lake, I created MERZ on the Leine-river, under the influence of Rembrandt. Time went on, and when Hans Arp made concrete Art, I stayed Abstract. Now I do concrete Art, and Marcel Duchamp went over to the Surrealists.... and at all I have much fun about Art.”

Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) German artist

Source: 1940s, I is Style (2000), p. 100 : in 'My art and My live' (1940 – 1946), Kurt Schwitters.

Art, Boy, Time, Painting

“If I am elected President, I will work with anyone who sincerely wants to get this country moving again. I will listen to any idea that is offered in good faith and intended to help solve our problems, not make them worse. I will seek the counsel of members of Congress from both parties in forming government policy before I ask them to support it. I will ask Democrats to serve in my administration. My administration will set a new standard for transparency and accountability. I will hold weekly press conferences. I will regularly brief the American people on the progress our policies have made and the setbacks we have encountered. When we make errors, I will confess them readily, and explain what we intend to do to correct them. I will ask Congress to grant me the privilege of coming before both houses to take questions, and address criticism, much the same as the Prime Minister of Great Britain appears regularly before the House of Commons.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

[Text of McCain's Speech on First-Term Goals, http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/05/15/text_of_mccains_vision_of_2013.html, washingtonpost.com, 2008-05-15, 2008-06-01]
2000s, 2008

People, Faith, Error, Idea

“On Mirror Lake outspread for miles and miles,
The lotus lilies in full blossom teem.
In fifth moon Xi Shi gathers them with smiles,
Watchers o'erwhelm the bank of Yuoye Stream.
Her boat turns back without waiting moonrise
To royal house amid amorous sighs.”

Li Bai (701–762) Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty poetry period

Ballads Of Four Seasons: Summer (子夜四时歌夏歌)

Smile, Waiting

“Let me introduce myself. My name is, uh, Kangaroo… Kangaroo — Captain Kangaroo … I'm the keeper here of the Treasure House.”

Bob Keeshan (1927–2004) United States Marine

Premiere episode of Captain Kangaroo (3 October 1955)

“We are paramountly concerned, like, I am sure, the bulk of the House—I am sure that the country is also concerned—about what we can do to protect those who rightly and naturally look to us for protection. So far, they have been betrayed. The responsibility for the betrayal rests with the Government. The Government must now prove by deeds—they will never be able to do it by words—that they are not responsible for the betrayal and cannot be faced with that charge. That is the charge, I believe, that lies against them. Even though the position and the circumstances of the people who live in the Falkland Islands are uppermost in our minds—it would be outrageous if that were not the case—there is the longer-term interest to ensure that foul and brutal aggression does not succeed in our world. If it does, there will be a danger not merely to the Falkland Islands, but to people all over this dangerous planet.”

Michael Foot (1913–2010) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1982/apr/03/falkland-islands in the House of Commons (3 April 1982) after Argentina's invasion of the Falkland Islands. 1980s

People, World, Nature, Betrayal

“Afflictions, they are but as a dark entry into your Father's house; they are but as a dirty lane to a royal palace. Now, tell me, souls, whether it be not very great madness to shun the ways of holiness, and to walk in the ways of wickedness, because of those afflictions which attend the ways of holiness.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices, 1652

Way, Soul, Affliction, Madness

“As one can ascend to the top of a house by means of a ladder or a bamboo or a staircase or a rope, so diverse also are the ways and means to approach God, and every religion in the world shows one of these ways.”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Saying 269
Râmakrishna : His Life and Sayings (1898)

God, World, Religion, Way

“Took a walk and passed your house late last night,
All the shades were pulled and drawn way down tight.
From within, the dim light cast two silhouettes on the shade.”

Frank Slay (1930–2017) American record producer

Song: "Silhouettes"

Way, Light, Night

“Hansel and Gretel discovered the ginger bread house about 45 minutes after they discovered the mushrooms.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Toledo Window Box (1974)

“In the mass movement into the suburban areas a new kind of community was produced, which caricatured both the historic city and the archetypal suburban refuge: a multitude of uniform, unidentifiable houses, lined up inflexibly, at uniform distances, on uniform roads, in a treeless communal waste, inhabited by people of the same class, the same income, the same age group, witnessing the same television performances, eating the same tasteless prefabricated foods, from the same freezers, conforming in every outward and inward respect to a common mold, manufactured in the central metropolis. Thus the ultimate effect of the suburban escape in our time is, ironically, a low-grade uniform environment from which escape is impossible.”

Lewis Mumford book The City in History

pg 486
The City in History (1961)

People, Age, Food, Communication

“If you think that the intifada in France is about housing, go and try covering the story wearing a yarmulka.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2005-11-07

The Laura Ingraham Show, quoted in * 2005-11-10

http://leninology.blogspot.com/2005/11/christopher-hitchens-bad-language.html

Christopher Hitchens' Bad Language

Lenin's Tomb

2011-12-19
2000s, 2005

Thinking

“No child, I think, can walk through a common market or slaughter-house without receiving moral injury; nor am I quite sure that any virtuous adult can.”

William Alcott (1798–1859) American physician and author

Source: Vegetable Diet (1838), pp. 270-271

Thinking

“This is our Smeg fridge, the whole house is made of Smeg. We're made of Smeg, aren't we, Roy?”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

"Yes, dear."
On visiting your children's friends' parents.
Monster (2004)

“To protest about bullfighting in Spain, the eating of dogs in South Korea, or the slaughter of baby seals in Canada while continuing to eat eggs from hens who have spent their lives crammed into cages, or veal from calves who have been deprived of their mothers, their proper diet, and the freedom to lie down with their legs extended, is like denouncing apartheid in South Africa while asking your neighbors not to sell their houses to blacks.”

Peter Singer book Animal Liberation

Source: Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for our Treatment of Animals (1975), Ch. 4: Becoming a Vegetarian

Lie, Dogs, Freedom, Baby

“Everyone wants to kill me! The Americans want to kill me, the Shiites want to kill me, the Kurds want to kill me and even the insurgents.... Every night a different car passes by my house.”

Fakhri al-Qaisi

"A Nation in Blood and Ink" by Dexter Filkins, The New York Times, August 14, 2005
Commenting on the suspicions against him due to his roles as member of the constitutional committee, and as a Sunni Muslim who knows people with ties to the Iraqi insurgency.

Cars, Night

“[JawlenskyPickWerefkin] Yes, we [ Marianne Werefkin and Gabriéle] shared very much the same tastes and ideas, when we lived together in this house (the so-called 'Russian house' in Murnau]. She was extremely perceptive and intelligent, but Jawlensky [living with Marianne Werefkin] didn't always approve her work... Suddenly Jawlensky would pick on some tiny detail of one of Marianne's best and most original pictures and exclaim: 'That patch of color, there, is laid on much too flat and smoothly. It's just like old Riepin' [famous Russian painter Ilya Repin ] and their common former teacher in Russia]. Of course it was nonsense and he was only saying it to annoy her. But Jawlensky really was a devotee of the 'touche de peinture' of the French Fauvists, rather than an innovator, a believer in a new kind of art of the future.”

Gabriele Münter (1877–1962) German painter

Source: Interview by Edouard Roditi (1958), pp. 118-119

Art, Color, Intelligence, Idea

“It may be that everywhere else in the world, the ascendance of Flower Power began and ended in the sixties, Mr. Speaker, but in Montreal it began in 1971 and ended yesterday when Guy Lafleur retired. This is the end of a great era, Mr. Speaker. I am certain that the House and the entire population of Canada will join me in wishing him good luck in the future and thanking him for the unforgettable moments he has given us.”

Guy Lafleur (1951) Canadian ice hockey player

Canadian MP Lorne Nystrom comments on Lafleur's retirement, in the House of Commons. Quoted in Kevin Shea, "One on One with Guy Lafleur," http://www.legendsofhockey.net/html/spot_oneononep198802.htm Legends of Hockey.net (2003-03-16) About

World, Guy, Flowers, Future

“In 1932 many dark clouds still hung round the horizon. In 1933, although the outlook was distinctly brighter, there was no settled feeling that we were about to enjoy a spell of fine weather. To-day the atmosphere is distinctly brighter. The events of the last 12 months have shown gratifying evidence that the efforts of His Majesty's Government are bearing fruit…If you look to what I might call the telltale statistics, the unemployment figures and statistics of such things as retail trade, consumption of electricity, transport, iron and steel production and house building, in every case you see a definite revival of activity…If I might borrow an illustration from the titles of two well-known works of fiction, I would say that we have now finished the story of "Bleak House" and that we are sitting down this afternoon to enjoy the first chapter of "Great Expectations."”

Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Budget speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1934/apr/17/financial-statement in the House of Commons (17 April 1934) Chancellor of the Exchequer

Feeling, Effort, Weather

“One day I rode in company with ‘Alã-ul-mulk and arrived at a plain called Tarna at a distance of seven miles from the city. There I saw innumerable stone images and animals, many of which had undergone a change, the original shape being obliterated. Some were reduced to a head, others to a foot and so on. Some of the stones were shaped like grain, wheat, peas, beans and lentils. And there were traces of a house which contained a chamber built of hewn stone, the whole of which looked like one solid mass. Upon it was a statue in the form of a man, the only difference being that its head was long, its mouth was towards a side of its face and its hands at its back like a captive’s. There were pools of water from which an extremely bad smell came. Some of the walls bore Hindî inscriptions. ‘Alã-ul-mulk told me that the historians assume that on this site there was a big city, most of the inhabitants of which were notorious. They were changed into stone. The petrified human form on the platform in the house mentioned above was that of their king. The house still goes by the name of ‘the king’s house’. It is presumed that the Hindî inscriptions, which some of the walls bear, give the history of the destruction of the inhabitants of this city. The destruction took place about a thousand years ago…”

Ibn Battuta (1304–1377) Moroccan explorer

Lahari Bandar (Sindh) . The Rehalã of Ibn Battûta translated into English by Mahdi Hussain, Baroda, 1967, p. 10.
Travels in Asia and Africa (Rehalã of Ibn Battûta)

History, Water, Change, Animals

“Convince yourself. Kovno is a treasure-trove for artists. It is gloomy, the lamps don't make it lighter and the streets are getting darker. Their violet windows hover threateningly in the darkness. The elusive lines of low houses, on them - the glimmer of green and red flames - illuminating rows of shops. Bright green bright red stripes [all] fall on the violet sidewalk. And all those shadows are full of people who only speak about one thing, about love, in the dialect, Polish or broken Russian. Whispers and loud words touch the silence, like the green and red bands of light - the darkness of the night. Something terrible, terrible lies over everything, I feel a shudder, it seems I am in another world, far away from real life.”

Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938) expressionist painter

Quote from Werefkin's letter to Alexej von Jawlensky, between December 1909 and Spring 1910; as cited in 'Ambiguity of Home: Identity and Reminiscence in Marianne Werefkin's Return Home, c. 1909', Adrienne Kochman http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/spring06/52-spring06/spring06article/171-ambiguity-of-home-identity-and-reminiscence-in-marianne-werefkins-return-home-c-1909 1906 - 1911

Love, Life, People, World

“The famous Lord Hallifax (though so much talked of) was rather a pretender to taste, than really possessed of it.—When I had finished the two or three first books of my translation of the Iliad, that lord, "desired to have the pleasure of hearing them read at his house." Addison, Congreve, and Garth, were there at the reading.—In four or five places, Lord Hallifax stopped me very civilly; and with a speech, each time of much the same kind: "I beg your pardon, Mr. Pope, but there is something in that passage that does not quite please me.—Be so good as to mark the place, and consider it a little at your leisure.—I am sure you can give it a little turn."—I returned from Lord Hallifax's with Dr. Garth, in his chariot; and as we were going along, was saying to the doctor, that my lord had laid me under a good deal of difficulty, by such loose and general observations; that I had been thinking over the passages almost ever since, and could not guess at what it was that offended his lordship in either of them.—Garth laughed heartily at my embarrassment; said, I had not been long enough acquainted with Lord Hallifax, to know his way yet: that I need not puzzle myself in looking those places over and over when I got home. "All you need do, (said he) is to leave them just as they are; call on Lord Hallifax two or three months hence, thank him for his kind observations on those passages; and then read them to him as altered. I have known him much longer than you have, and will be answerable for the event."—I followed his advice; waited on Lord Hallifax some time after: said, I hoped he would find his objections to those passages removed[; ] read them to him exactly as they were at first; and his lordship was extremely pleased with them, and cried out, "Ay now, Mr. Pope, they are perfectly right! nothing can be better."”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

As quoted in Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters, of Books and Men (1820) by Joseph Spence [published from the original papers; with notes, and a life of the author, by Samuel Weller Singer]; "Spence's Anecdotes", Section IV. pp. 134–136.
Attributed

Pleasure, Books, Hope, Way

“The wide experience to be gained at the Scots Bar has its advantages. It does not enable one to become such an expert in any single department as the English specialist… but it tends to a sound knowledge of the legal principles common to all branches of the law. The Scottish Judges have always been more interested in principle than in precedent and the Bar have conformed to this lead. In the House of Lords this feature of Scottish advocacy has been often remarked and admired.”

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan (1873–1952) British judge

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), At the Scottish bar, p. 48

Law, Knowledge

“You employ stone, wood and concrete, and with these materials you build houses and palaces. That is construction. Ingenuity is at work.
But suddenly you touch my heart, you do me good, I am happy and I say: "This is beautiful."”

Le Corbusier (1887–1965) architect, designer, urbanist, and writer

That is Architecture. Art enters in.
Vers une architecture [Towards an Architecture] (1923)

Happiness, Beauty, Art, Heart

“Laws, like houses, lean on one another.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

From the Tracts Relative to the Laws Against Popery in Ireland (c. 1766), not published during Burke's lifetime.
1760s

Law

“We are keenly in sympathy with the representatives of Labour. We have too few of them in the House of Commons. …The Liberal party, high and low, have discovered, if they ever forgot it, that the real road to success…lies in adhering to the old principles of the party.”

Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1836–1908) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to Liberals in Belmont (2 January 1903), quoted in John Wilson, C.B.: A Life of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (London: Constable, 1973), p. 394
Leader of the Opposition

Success

“And he said "God, make it a dream!"
as he rode his last ride down.
And he sideswiped nineteen neat parked cars,
clipped off thirteen telephone poles,
hit two houses, bruised eight trees,
and Blue-Crossed seven people.
it was then he lost his head,
not to mention an arm or two before he stopped.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

30,000 Pounds of Bananas
Song lyrics, Verities & Balderdash (1974)

God, People, Dreams, Cars

“The house was filled with the piano and violin. I turned towards the art of painting.”

Jean Metzinger (1883–1956) French painter

Cubism was born

Art, Painting

“If you didn't serve the nasty fellow (God), the Romans would burn your house down. If you did serve him, you were called a Christian and got to burn other people's houses down.”

Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume

Jitterbug Perfume (1984)

God, People

“If I had not gone into Monty Python, I probably would have stuck to my original plan to graduate and become a chartered accountant, perhaps a barrister lawyer, and gotten a nice house in the suburbs, with a nice wife and kids, and gotten a country club membership, and then I would have killed myself.”

John Cleese (1939) actor from England

On Fresh Air with Terry Gross (1997)

Country

“About one-fifth of all the heat that enters the average house comes through windows. …external shading is by far the most efficient method for controlling interior heat build-up. The air-wash between the shading screen and the window is also very effective. The screen should have a light-colored finish… Insulation boards placed next to the window pane at night, will help prevent heat losses through glazed openings. Overhangs and horizontal sunshades placed above south-facing windows serve effectively as heat reducers.”

Ken Kern American writer

The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

Color, Light, Loss, Help

“You may produce a case here and there of abuse of the dole: you may produce an occasional man who marches with the unemployed and has a bad record; but every Member of this House who has been in a contested election and has come into personal contact with the unemployed knows that the great mass of unemployed men are those same men who saved us during the War. They are the same men who stood side by side in the trenches. They are the heroes of 1914 and 1918, though they may be pointed out as the Bolshevists of to-day.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1922/nov/23/debate-on-the-address in the House of Commons (23 November 1922) 1920s

Men, War, Personality

“The most minute directions were given as to the killing of these animals. Every priest became a butcher, every synagogue a slaughter-house. Nothing could be more utterly shocking to a refined soul, nothing better calculated to harden the heart, than the continual shedding of innocent blood. This terrible system culminated in the sacrifice of Christ. His blood took the place of all other. It is not necessary to shed any more. The law at last is satisfied, satiated, surfeited.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Some Reasons Why (1881)

Law, Soul, Heart, Animals

“In our Father s house it will not be the pearl gate or the streets of gold that will make us happy. But oh, how tran-scendently glad shall we be when we see our Lord. Perhaps in that "upper room," also, He may show us His hands and His side, and we may cry out with happy Thomas, "My Lord and my God!"”

Theodore L. Cuyler (1822–1909) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 303.

God, Happiness, Cry

“Stephen Sommers certainly knew what he was doing. Indiana Jones is a hardened cynical guy with a heart of mush and Stephen created an Indiana Jones-lite, one who was a jocular guy willing to take a pie to the face, handle a gun, work in a fist fight, and handle all the requirements of an action hero. Brendan has the unique ability to take a pie to the face, let himself be in a situation where he feels overwhelmed, and then survive. This was definitely in the wheel house of Indiana Jones and always has been. It was quite conscious on Stephen’s part and now I’ve dome something different with it.”

Rob Cohen (1949) American film director, producer and writer

Director Rob Cohen Resurrects 'The Mummy' http://www.newsarama.com/254-director-rob-cohen-resurrects-the-mummy.html (June 25, 2008)

Guy, Feeling, Heart, Fight

“Ginsberg used to stay in the publishing house. Our editorial office had two rooms and a kitchen; it was a tiny place. And one of the rooms was kind of a guest room so that visiting authors could stay there. Allen would come sometimes for a week at a time or more. And he hung out in the store, also. The store had become quite a center for writers by that time. Ginsberg was working on "The Fall of America," which was his long chronicle of the Vietnam War, which is full of the anguish and passion and anger that so many people felt. The war had been going on for such a long time by then. That book won the National Book Award [in 1974].”

Nancy Peters (1936) American writer and publisher

"And the beat goes on", http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/06/09/DD158147.DTL San Francisco Chronicle, 2003-06-09. 2000s

War, People, Books, Passion

“[four years younger! ], you better paint houses, you better focus yourself on townscapes.”

Andreas Schelfhout (1787–1870) Dutch painter, etcher and lithographer

(translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, original Dutch, citaat van Schelfhout:) Jonge Bart [vier jaar jonger!], je mot liever huize schilderen, leg je liever toe op stadsgezigtjes.
short quote of Schelfhout, c. 1814; as cited in 'Van IJs naar Sneeuw - De ontwikkeling van het wintergezicht in de 19de eeuw', by Arsine Nazarian, July 2008 Utrecht Student-number: 03609533.8
Schelfhout was the four years older nephew of the painter and gave him this advice

Painting

“Ibn 'Umar reported that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "All of you are shepherds. Each of you is responsible for his flock. An amir is a shepherd. A man is a shepherd in respect of his family. The woman is a shepherd in respect of her husband's house and children. All of you are shepherds and each of you is responsible for his flock."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 2, hadith number 283
Sunni Hadith

Children, Family, Peace

“In general, how did the Son of Heaven come about? Did he descend from Heaven, or did he emerge from the earth? A leader is chosen to be the head of the neighborhood when five houses become neighbors. A leader is chosen to be the head of the village when five neighborhoods become neighbors. A leader is chosen to be the head of the county when five villages become neighbors. Several heads of counties choose a feudal lord, and several feudal lords choose the Son of Heaven. Thus the Son of Heaven is chosen by the people.”

Jeong Yak-yong (1762–1836) Korean scholar and philosopher

湯論

People

“Simonson, in rubber jacket and similar galoshes, bound with whip-cord over woolen socks (he was a vegetarian and did not use the skin of animals), was also awaiting the departure of the party. He stood near the entrance of the house, writing down in a note-book a thought that occurred to him. “If,” he wrote, “a bacterium were to observe and analyze the nail of a man, it would declare him an inorganic being. Similarly, from an observation of the earth’s surface, we declare it to be inorganic. That is wrong.””

Leo Tolstoy book Resurrection

Source: Resurrection (1899), Ch. 83

Books, Departure, Animals

“Your commanders have ordered you to storm the White House and to arrest me. But I as the elected President of Russia give you the order to turn your tanks and not to fight against your own people.”

Boris Yeltsin (1931–2007) 1st President of Russia and Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR

Appeal to the military to not participate in the coup attempt, while standing on a tank during troop movements against the Russian White House. (19 August 1991)
1990s

People, Fight

Quotes about housing page 27

Quotes about housing
page 27