Variant: I want to do something splendid... something heroic or wonderful that won't be forgotten after I'm dead. I don't know what, but I'm on the watch for it and mean to astonish you all someday.
Source: Little Women
“As to us here our thoughts of every thing at home are suspended, by our astonishment at the wonderful Spectacle which is exhibited in a Neighbouring and rival Country—what Spectators, and what actors! England gazing with astonishment at a French struggle for Liberty and not knowing whether to blame or to applaud! The thing indeed, though I thought I saw something like it in progress for several years, has still something in it paradoxical and Mysterious. The spirit it is impossible not to admire; but the old Parisian ferocity has broken out in a shocking manner. It is true, that this may be no more than a sudden explosion… But if it should be character rather than accident, then that people are not fit for Liberty, and must have a Strong hand like that of their former masters to coerce them. Men must have a certain fund of natural moderation to qualifye them for Freedom, else it becomes noxious to themselves and a perfect Nuisance to every body else.”
Letter to Lord Charlemont (9 August 1789), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (Cambridge University Press, 1967), p. 10
1780s
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Do you have more details about the quote "As to us here our thoughts of every thing at home are suspended, by our astonishment at the wonderful Spectacle which i…" by Edmund Burke?
Edmund Burke 270
Anglo-Irish statesman 1729–1797Related quotes
Arthur Sullivan
(1842–1900) English composer of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo
A message on a phonograph cylinder, recorded by Arthur Sullivan at a demonstration of Thomas Edison's phonograph in London on 5 October 1888; cited from Michael Chanan Repeated Takes: A Short History of Recording and its Effects on Music (London: Verso, 1995) p. 26. See also "Historic Sullivan Recordings" http://diamond.boisestate.edu/gas/sullivan/html/historic.html at the Gilbert and Sullivan Archive; and Very Early Recorded Sound http://www.nps.gov/edis/photosmultimedia/very-early-recorded-sound.htm at the National Historical Park website. The recording was issued on CD by the British Library (Voices of History 2: NSACD 19-20, 2005).
“What an astonishing thing a book is.”
Carl Sagan
(1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator
42 min 33 sec
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), The Persistence of Memory [Episode 11]
Context: What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.
George Hendrik Breitner
(1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer
The Hague, 1881
version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner's brief, in het Nederlands:) Wat heerlijk wêer is 't vandaag geweest, ik was in geen tijd buiten geweest, en ben vandaag de heelen dag buiten gebleven. Maar heerlijk. Frisch en nieuw is de natuur altijd, en om frisch te blijven is zij de eenige die 't noodige geeft, Alles even rijk. ik bedoel niet bepaald het buiten, landschap of zoo iets, maar eenvoudig, ja alles, behalve je werkplaats, en ook die niet uitgezonderd. 'Le spectacle est dans le spectateur.' (Den Haag, 1881)
Quote of Breitner, in his letter to his Maecenas A.P. van Stolk, 12 August 1881, (location: The RKD in The Hague); as quoted by Helewise Berger in Van Gogh and Breitner in The Hague, her Master essay in Dutch - Modern Art Faculty of Philosophy University, Utrecht; Febr. 2008]], (translation from the original Dutch, Anne Porcelijn) p. 4.
this quote of Breitner dates from the years he spent in The Hague; a year later he would regularly sketch in the streets of this city with Vincent van Gogh.
before 1890
“I have gazed into the abyss, and the abyss has gazed into me. And neither of us liked what we saw.”
Brother Theodore
(1906–2001) German-American monologuist and comedian
[Brother Theodore Complete Collection on Letterman, 1982-89, Don Giller, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj5fVnHWUl4]
Ludwig Tieck
(1773–1853) German poet, translator, editor, novelist, and critic
Das wahrhaft Schöne, Große und Erhabene, so wie es uns in Erstaunen und Verwunderung setzt, überrascht uns doch nicht als etwas Fremdes, Unerhörtes und Niegesehenes, sondern unser eigenstes Wesen wird uns in solchen Augenblicken klar, unsre tiefsten Erinnerungen werden erweckt, und unsre nächsten Empfindungen lebendig gemacht.
"Der Pokal", from Phantasus (1812-16) http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/misc/gutenberg-de/1996/gutenb/tieck/pokal/pokal2.htm; translation from Thomas Carlyle German Romance: Specimens of its Chief Authors, (London: Tait, 1827), vol. 2, p. 163.
Ben Carson
(1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon
Source: Take The Risk (2008), p. 234
Charles Erwin Wilson
(1890–1961) American secretary of Defence
The difference did not exist. Our company is too big. It goes with the welfare of the country. Our contribution to the nation is considerable.
Charles E. Wilson (1952) in: Confirmation hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee, responding to Sen. Robert Hendrickson's question regarding conflicts of interest. Quoted in Safire's Political Dictionary (1978) by William Safire.
