Quotes about afternoon
page 3

“It was a bright September afternoon, and the streets of New York were brilliant with moving men…. He was pushed toward the ticket-office with the others, and felt in his pocket for the new five-dollar bill he had hoarded…. When at last he realized that he had paid five dollars to enter he knew not what, he stood stock-still amazed…. John… sat in a half-maze minding the scene about him; the delicate beauty of the hall, the faint perfume, the moving myriad of men, the rich clothing and low hum of talking seemed all a part of a world so different from his, so strangely more beautiful than anything he had known, that he sat in dreamland, and started when, after a hush, rose high and clear the music of Lohengrin's swan. The infinite beauty of the wail lingered and swept through every muscle of his frame, and put it all a-tune. He closed his eyes and grasped the elbows of the chair, touching unwittingly the lady's arm. And the lady drew away. A deep longing swelled in all his heart to rise with that clear music out of the dirt and dust of that low life that held him prisoned and befouled. If he could only live up in the free air where birds sang and setting suns had no touch of blood! Who had called him to be the slave and butt of all?… If he but had some master-work, some life-service, hard, aye, bitter hard, but without the cringing and sickening servility…. When at last a soft sorrow crept across the violins, there came to him the vision of a far-off home — the great eyes of his sister, and the dark drawn face of his mother…. It left John sitting so silent and rapt that he did not for some time notice the usher tapping him lightly on the shoulder and saying politely, 'will you step this way please sir?'… The manager was sorry, very very sorry — but he explained that some mistake had been made in selling the gentleman a seat already disposed of; he would refund the money, of course… before he had finished John was gone, walking hurriedly across the square… and as he passed the park he buttoned his coat and said, 'John Jones you're a natural-born fool.”

W.E.B. Du Bois book The Souls of Black Folk

Then he went to his lodgings and wrote a letter, and tore it up; he wrote another, and threw it in the fire....
Source: The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ch. XIII: Of the Coming of John

Life, Men, Money, World

“You fight dandelions all week-end, and late Monday afternoon there they are, pert as all get out, in full and gorgeous bloom, pretty as can be, thriving as only dandelions can in the face of adversity.”

Hal Borland (1900–1978) American journalist and writer

"Dandelions," http://books.google.com/books?id=IYYZAAAAIAAJ&q=%22You+fight+dandelions+all+week+end+and+late+Monday+afternoon+there+they+are+pert+as+all+get+out+in+full+and+gorgeous+bloom+pretty+as+can+be+thriving+as+only+dandelions+can+in+the+face+of+adversity%22&pg=PA60#v=onepage The New York Times, 9 May 1954 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=950CE5D9113CE43ABC4153DFB366838F649EDE

Fight

“With a wracking head and literally my whole body shaking as with ague I write this and tell you I have just this afternoon early finished Clavicembalisticum… The closing 4 pages are so cataclysmic and catastrophic as anything I've ever done — the harmony bites like nitric acid — the counterpoint grinds like the mills of God…”

Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892–1988) English composer, music critic, pianist and writer

Letter to his friend the Scots composer Erik Chisholm (1904-65) upon completion of Opus clavicembalisticum, 1930; quoted by pianist John Ogdon.

God

“If you want to advise me, do it on Saturday afternoon between one and four o'clock. And you've got 25 seconds to do it, between plays. Not on Monday. I know the right thing to do on Monday.”

Alex Agase (1922–2007) American football player and coach, college athletics administrator

As quoted in Fortune (13 May 1985).

“But what gave him the most satisfaction was going back through the pages to read about his first story appearing in the Saturday Evening Post.
That afternoon he'd bought Bird the largest bag of lemon drops he could find.
"He gives her candy," she had said, remembering too.”

Patricia Reilly Giff (1935) American children's writer

Source: Water Street (2006), Epilogue, p. 164 (closing words); reference to quote from Chapter 11

Bird, Appearance, Reading

“It is commonly said that seeing is believing, but feeling is the very truth. I shall, therefore, give the result of my experience of hypnotism in my own person. In the middle of September, 1844, I suffered from a most severe attack of rheumatism, implicating the left side of the neck and chest, and the left arm. At first the pain was moderately severe, and I took some medicine to remove it; but, instead of this, it became more and more violent, and had tormented me for three days, and was so excruciating, that it entirely deprived me of sleep for three nights successively, and on the last of the three nights I could not remain in any one posture for five minutes, from the severity of the pain. On the forenoon of the next day, whilst visiting my patients, every jolt of the carriage I could only compare to several sharp instruments being thrust through my shoulder, neck, and chest. A full inspiration was attended with stabbing pain, such as is experienced in pleurisy. When I returned home for dinner I could neither turn my head, lift my arm, nor draw a breath, without suffering extreme pain. In this condition I resolved to try the effects of hypnotism. I requested two friends, who were present, and who both understood the system, to watch the effects, and arouse me when I had passed sufficiently into the condition; and, with their assurance that they would give strict attention to their charge, I sat down and hypnotised myself, extending the extremities. At the expiration of nine minutes they aroused me, and, to my agreeable surprise, I was quite free from pain, being able to move in any way with perfect ease. I say agreeably surprised, on this account; I had seen like results with many patients; but it is one thing to hear of pain, and another to feel it. My suffering was so exquisite that I could not imagine anyone else ever suffered so intensely as myself on that occasion; and, therefore, I merely expected a mitigation, so that I was truly agreeably surprised to find myself quite free from pain. I continued quite easy all the afternoon, slept comfortably all night, and the following morning felt a little stiffness, but no pain. A week thereafter I had a slight return, which I removed by hypnotising myself once more; and I have remained quite free from rheumatism ever since, now nearly six years.”

James Braid (1795–1860) Scottish surgeon, hypnotist, and hypnotherapist

In “The First Account of Self-Hypnosis Quoted in “The Original Philosophy of Hypnotherapy (from The Discovery of Hypnosis)”.

Pain, Truth, Way, Feeling

“Carol was discovering that the one thing that can be more disconcerting than intelligent hatred is demanding love. "She supposed that she was being gracefully dull and standardized in the Smails' presence, but they scented the heretic, and with forward-stooping delight they sat and tried to drag out her ludicrous concepts for their amusement. They were like the Sunday-afternoon mob starting at monkeys in the Zoo, poking fingers and making faces and giggling at the resentment of the more dignified race… They were staggered to learn that a real tangible person, living in Minnesota, and married to their own flesh-and-blood relation, could apparently believe that divorce may not always be immoral; that illegitimate children do not bear any special and guaranteed form of curse; that there are ethical authorities outside of the Hebrew Bible; that men have drunk wine yet not died in the gutter; that the capitalistic system of distribution and the Baptist wedding-ceremony were not known in the Garden of Eden;… that there are Ministers of the Gospel who accept evolution; that some persons of intelligence and business ability do not always vote the Republican ticket straight;… that a violin is not inherently more immoral than a chapel organ… 'Where does she get all them the'ries?'”

Sinclair Lewis book Main Street

marveled Uncle Whittier Smail.
Main Street (1920)

Love, Men, Children, Intelligence

“Yesterday I received a letter from my father [ Dutch landscape-painter J. W. Bilders. ] He told me to come at once, to paint the goats in a rather large forest landscape-painting he just finished, which has to be sent away at once [to Saint Petersburg, Russia]. I earn back my travelling [from Leiden to Amsterdam, probably by travel coach] but will loose one day studying in open air. When my goats will succeed, and they are not too stubborn, I'll be back here [in Leiden] tomorrow at one o'clock in the afternoon.”

Gerard Bilders (1838–1865) painter from the Netherlands

Source: 1850's, Vrolijk Versterven' (from Bilders' diary & letters), p. 30 - quote of Bilder's letter to Johannes Kneppelhout, from Leiden, August 1859

Travel, Study, Painting

“In the line of work that I'm in, every day is Saint Patrick's Day. So I might decide, any old three o'clock in the afternoon, it's Saint Patrick's Day today!”

Paul F. Tompkins (1968) American actor

Freak Wharf (2009)

“When afternoon came to Vidyasagar Road, wet clothes … hung from a clothesline which stretched from one side to another on the veranda of the first floor. The line, which had not been tightly drawn anyway, sagged with the pressure of the heavy wet clothes that dripped, from sleeves and trouser-ends, a curious grey water on to the floor, and, especially in the middle, one noticed the line curved downwards, as if a smile were forming.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

Freedom Song (1998)

Smile, Water, Clothes

“During the afternoon it rained only in this stadium - our kitman saw it. There must be a micro-climate here. The pitch was like a swimming pool.”

José Mourinho (1963) Portuguese association football player and manager

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/teams/c/chelsea/4392444.stm
Chelsea FC

“In our online descriptions and program literature we describe the cloisters as a public sphere for networked interaction, the gathering place for students, professors, and librarians engaged in planning, evaluating, or reviewing the efforts of research and study utilizing the whole range of technologies of literacy. We go further and describe the task of the cloisters as to "channel flows of research, learning and teaching between the increasingly networked world of the library and the intimacy and engagement of our classrooms and other campus spaces". There we continue to explore the "collectible object", which I tentatively described in Othermindedness in terms of maintaining an archive of "the successive choices, the errors and losses, of our own human community" and suggesting that what constitutes the collectible object is the value which suffuses our choices. It seemed to me then that electronic media are especially suited to tracking such "changing change".
I think it still seems so to me now but I do fear we have lost track of the beauty and nimbleness of new media in representing and preserving the meaning-making quotidian, the ordinary mindfulness which makes human life possible and valuable.
It is interesting, I think, that recounting and rehearsing this notion leaves this interview layered and speckled with (self) quotations, documentations, implicit genealogies, images, and traditions of continuity, change, and difference. Perhaps the most quoted line of afternoon over the years has been the sentence "There is no simple way to say this."”

Michael Joyce (1945) American academic and writer

The same is true of any attempt to describe the way in which the collectible object participates in (I use this word as a felicitous shorthand for the complex of ideas involved in what I called "representing and preserving the meaning-making quotidian" above) the library as living archive. An interview with Michael Joyce and review of Liam’s Going at Trace Online Writing Centre Archive (2 December 2002) http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk/review/index.cfm?article=33

Life, World, Fear, Beauty

“The afternoon is too tempting to be denied. It isn’t Paradise here, or even close, but the mimosa is in bloom and the air from the sea is cool and pleasant. On days like this I think of poor old Magnus Stepney’s evolving Green God, harking us all up to Eden. The Green God’s voice is faint enough that few of us hear it clearly, and that’s our tragedy, I suppose, as a species—but I hear it very distinctly just now. It asks me to step into the sunshine, and I mean to do its bidding.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America

Source: Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (2009), p. 413 (closing words)

God, Thinking, Sea

“Nikoros, your job this afternoon is to say yes to anything that comes out of my mouth. The more you rehearse this, the sooner it’ll become a smooth mechanical process allowing no time for painful reflection. Can you practice for me?”
“Yes.”

Scott Lynch book The Republic of Thieves

“You’re a natural.”
Source: The Republic of Thieves (2013), Chapter 5 “The Five-Year Game: Starting Position” section 7 (p. 275)

Pain, Nature, Time

“It is very hard to write this way, beginning things backward, and the author hopes the reader will realize this and not grudge this little word of explanation. I know I would be very glad to read anything the reader ever wrote, and I hope the reader will make the same sort of allowances. If any of the readers would care to send me anything they ever wrote, for criticism or advice, I am always at the Café du Dôme any afternoon, talking about Art with Harold Stearns and Sinclair Lewis, and the reader can bring his stuff along with him, or he can send it to me care of my bank, if I have a bank.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Torrents of Spring

Part 2, Ch. 5
Harold Stearns was a once-well-known New York writer and intellectual whom Hemingway knew when they were both living in Paris.
The Torrents of Spring (1926)

Hope, Art, Way, Reading

“A woman. Alive. In the daylight.
He stood, mouth partly open, gaping at the woman. She was young, he could see now as she came closer; probably in her twenties. She wore a wrinkled and dirty white dress. She was very tan, her hair was red. In the dead silence of the afternoon Neville thought he heard the crunch of her shoes in the long grass.
I’ve gone mad. The words presented themselves abruptly. He felt less shock at that possibility than he did at the notion that she was real. He had, in fact, been vaguely preparing himself for just such a delusion. It seemed feasible. The man who died of thirst saw mirages of lakes. Why shouldn’t a man who thirsted for companionship see a woman walking in the sun?”

Richard Matheson book I Am Legend

Source: I Am Legend (1954), Ch. 15

Shoe, Silence, Grass, Sun

“You misunderstood my words when I said that Michelangelo was a stupid artist... Because I have drunk from another source and a new and marvelous thirst burns my lips – how can I still believe in such artists?! I know what you are thinking when you ask me: 'isn't David a superman? This is how I used to feel, this is what I used to think. The majority of the world's great spirits thought it so.... but now a new air has entered my soul, a new song has reached my ears and the whole world appears totally changed – the autumn afternoon has arrived, the long shadows, the clear air, the serene sky –, in a word: Zarathustra has arrived, do you understand??.... It is only with Nietzsche that I can say I have begun a real life.”

Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) Italian artist

Quote from De Chirico's letter to Mr. Fritz Gartz, Florence, undated, c. 5 Jan. 1911; from LETTERS BY GIORGIO DE CHIRICO, GEMMA DE CHIRICO AND ALBERTO DE CHIRICO TO FRITZ GARTZ, MILAN-FLORENCE, 1908-1911 http://www.fondazionedechirico.org/wp-content/uploads/559-567Metafisica7_8.pdf, p. 564 1908 - 1920

Life, Stupidity, World, Feeling

“One day in the afternoon of the world, glum death will come and sit in you, and when you get up to walk, you will be as glum as death, but if you're lucky, this will only make the fun better and the love greater.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

"One Day in the Afternoon of the World" (1964)

Love, Death, World

“The man who comes home exhausted because he has been taught to believe without question that his male identity is based on nine-to-five loyalty and the giving of his best energies to the corporation has made a decision about his sexuality. He sacrifices his corpus to the corporation. His chosen method of expending energy and structuring time disallows afternoon dalliance with his wife or lover.”

Sam Keen (1931) author, professor, and philosopher

Source: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 101

Home, Lovers, Question, Decision

“His name was William Saroyan. He was the first writer I fell in love with, boyishly in love. I was held by his unaffected voice, his sentimentality, his defiant individualism. I found myself in the stories he told… I learned from Saroyan that you do not have to live in some great city — in New York or Paris — in order to write… When I was a student at Stanford, a generation ago, the name of William Saroyan was never mentioned by any professor in the English Department. William Saroyan apparently was not considered a major American talent. Instead, we undergraduates set about the business of psychoanalyzing Hamlet and deconstructing Lolita. In my mind Saroyan belongs with John Steinbeck, a fellow small town Californian and of the same generation. He belongs with Thornton Wilder, with those writers whose aching love of America was formed by the Depression and the shadow of war. … Saroyan's prose is as plain as it is strong. He talks about the pleasure of drinking water from a hose on a summer afternoon in California's Central Valley, and he holds you with the pure line. My favorite is his novel The Human Comedy… In 1943, The Human Comedy became an MGM movie starring Mickey Rooney, but I always imagined Homer Macaulay as a darker, more soulful boy, someone who looked very much like a young William Saroyan…”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

"Time Of Our Lives" (26 May 1997) http://www.cilicia.com/armo22_william_saroyan_6.html

Love, War, Pleasure, Soul

“I’ve read Rudin before, but that was fifteen years ago in university. Rereading it now, lying all bandaged up, sipping my whiskey in bed in the afternoon, I felt new sympathy for the protagonist Rudin. I almost never identify with anybody in Dostoyevsky, but the characters in Turgenev’s old-fashioned novels are such victims of circumstance, I jump right in. I have a thing about losers. Flaws in oneself open you up to others flaws. Not that Dostoyevsky’s characters don’t generate pathos, but they’re flawed in a way that don’t come across as faults.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), Chapter Fifteen: Whiskey, Torture, Turgenoev

Way, Lying, Fashion, Universe

“Have you heard
It was on the news
Your child can read you like a bedtime story
Like a magazine
Like a has-been out to grass
Like afternoon T. V.
Why is my life going by so fast?”

Roger Waters (1943) English songwriter, bassist, and lyricist of Pink Floyd

"Hello (I Love You)" was a created as a musical collaboration between Howard Shore and Waters for the film The Last Mimzy (2007). At PR-inside http://www.pr-inside.com/waters-records-film-tune-with-oscar-winning-r37315.htm, Waters is quoted as saying: "I think together we've come up with a song that captures the themes of the movie — the clash between humanity's best and worst instincts, and how a child's innocence can win the day." Video and full lyrics online http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eK6FY4Hykc

Life, Grass, Reading

“The more I thought it over, Kemp, the more I realised what a helpless absurdity an Invisible Man was—in a cold and dirty climate and a crowded civilised city. Before I made this mad experiment I had dreamt of a thousand advantages. That afternoon it seemed all disappointment. I went over the heads of the things a man reckons desirable. No doubt invisibility made it possible to get them, but it made it impossible to enjoy them when they are got. Ambition—what is the good of pride of place when you cannot appear there? What is the good of the love of woman when her name must needs be Delilah? I have no taste for politics, for the blackguardisms of fame, for philanthropy, for sport. What was I to do? And for this I had become a wrapped-up mystery, a swathed and bandaged caricature of a man!”

H. G. Wells book The Invisible Man

Source: The Invisible Man (1897), Chapter 23: In Drury Lane

Love, Disappointment, Sport, Appearance

“… nothing was easy, least of all surviving Sunday afternoons without love.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Living to Tell the Tale

Living to Tell the Tale (2002)

Love

“And in a real sense this afternoon, we can say that our feet are tired, but our souls are rested. They told us we wouldn’t get here. And there were those who said that we would get here only over their dead bodies, (but all the world today knows that we are here and we are standing before the forces of power in the state of Alabama saying, "We ain’t goin’ let nobody turn us around."”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, How Long, Not Long (1965)

World, Soul, Sense, Dead

“The whole afternoon was spent rejoicing as the demonstration spread across the city; no one walked alone for all San Juan was a single family.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

"The Abolition of Slavery in Puerto Rico" (1893)

Family

“And this afternoon, I have a message for the Iraqi people: You will not have to fear the rule of Saddam Hussein ever again. All Iraqis who take the side of freedom have taken the winning side. The goals of our coalition are the same as your goals — sovereignty for your country, dignity for your great culture, and for every Iraqi citizen, the opportunity for a better life.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2003, Remarks on the Capture of Saddam Hussein (December 2003)

Life, People, Fear, Freedom

“I was informed this afternoon by the distinguished Secretary of the Treasury that his preliminary estimates indicate that our balance of payments deficit has been reduced from $2.8 billion in 1964 to $1.3 billion, or less, in 1965. This achievement has been made possible by the patriotic voluntary cooperation of businessmen and bankers working with your government. We must now work together with increased urgency to wipe out this balance of payments deficit altogether in the next year. And as our economy surges toward new heights we must increase our vigilance against the inflation which raises the cost of living and which lowers the savings of every family in this land. It is essential, to prevent inflation, that we ask both labor and business to exercise price and wage restraint, and I do so again tonight. I believe it desirable, because of increased military expenditures, that you temporarily restore the automobile and certain telephone excise tax reductions made effective only 12 days ago. Without raising taxes—or even increasing the total tax bill paid—we should move to improve our withholding system so that Americans can more realistically pay as they go, speed up the collection of corporate taxes, and make other necessary simplifications of the tax structure at an early date.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Family, Exercises, Business, Speed

“.. the light suggests no particular time of day or night [in the paintings of Paul Cézanne ]; it is not appropriated from morning or afternoon, sunlight or shadow.”

Clyfford Still (1904–1980) American artist

1950s
Source: Abstract Expressionism, Davind Anfam, Thames and Hudson Ltd London, 1990; p. 145

Light, Time, Painting, Night

“I never saw the sea.
I don't know if it's pretty,
I don't know if it's rough.
The sea doesn't matter to me.I saw the lake.
Yes, the lake.
The lake is large and also calm.The rain of colors
from the exploding afternoon
makes the lake shimmer
makes it a lake painted
by every color.
I never saw the sea.
I saw the lake ...”

Carlos Drummond de Andrade (1902–1987) Brazilian poet

Eu não vi o mar.
Não sei se o mar é bonito.
Não sei se ele é bravo.
O mar não me importa.Eu vi a lagoa.
A lagoa, sim.
A lagoa é grande
e calma também.Na chuva de cores
da tarde que explode,
a lagoa brilha.
A lagoa se pinta
de todas as cores.
Eu não vi o mar.
Eu vi a lagoa...

"Lagoa" ["Lake"]
Alguma Poesia [Some Poetry] (1930)

Color, Painting, Sea

“It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"
Harmonium (1923)

“I've never been one for late nights, which is why I have always preferred making films to theatre. A play takes over your life: you start to feel sick at lunchtime and by mid-afternoon you're wishing for a bomb scare so the whole thing will be called off. Of course, if the evening goes well and you get the applause then it's wonderful. We're a strange bunch, we actors.”

Charles Dance

Charles Dance's diary http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/esmagazine/charles-dances-diary-6407964.html (June 3, 2011)

Life, Feeling, Night

“Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine.”

Alexander Smith (1829–1867) Scottish poet and essayist

Dreamthorp: Essays written in the Country (1863).

Time

“On the artist, Charley Patton, who changed him: What happened was I was going out on a Saturday night, so I went into my mam’s bedroom, she’s got a double mirror, really kitsch 50s. So I’m in there, doing that, and she’s got an old alarm clock where the radio comes on, but she never learned how to do it properly. And it came on. […] I remember it was ten past three in the afternoon and it was winter, it was getting dark, and it was when the BBC had just started doing Telstar live things from America. It was some station in Memphis - one of those classic names, ‘RK 51’ or whatever. […] On it came and there’s this record. The satellite thing was a bit cloudy and it was a 78 record and there was compression on the radio, so it was this strange kind of musical blur with this voice coming through: Charley Patton. […] On that night I told the bass player of one of the local bands that I’d heard this record and it sounded weird, it sounded like a violin. He said, ‘No, it’s not a violin, it’s a slide guitar.’ I thought, ‘What’s one of them?”

Chris Rea (1951) English singer-songwriter

2017

Music, Learning, Winter, Change

“Sept. 6th, 1822, looking S. E. – 12 to 1 o'clock, fresh and bright, between showers – much the look of rain all the morning, but very fine and grand all the afternoon and evening.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Constable's inscription at the back of a cloud study, 6 September 1822, as quoted in Constable, Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams, Tate Gallery Publications, London 1993, p. 233
1820s

“…we must think and act not only for the moment but for our time. I am reminded of the story of the great French Marshal Lyautey, who once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slow-growing and would not reach maturity for a hundred years. The Marshal replied, 'In that case, there is no time to lose, plant it this afternoon.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

"Address in Berkeley at the University of California (109)" (23 March 1962) http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx 1963

Thinking, Tree, Time

“Egyptologists say they have no idea what Khufu was doing when he was not building pyramids, since he left no inscriptions describing his daily activities, and they would give a good deal to know. Then they say he had six wives and a harem full of concubines. They do not seem to make the connection, but you get it and I get it. We do not need any hieroglyphics to inform us that Khufu dropped around occasionally to see how things were getting along and to tell the ladies how many cubic yards of limestone he had laid that afternoon.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part I: It Seems There Were Two Egyptians, Cheops, or Khufu

Idea

“To cut with a sharp knife a bright green watermelon on a big scarlet plate of a summer afternoon. Ah, is this not happiness?”

Jin Shengtan (1610–1661) Chinese writer

"Thirty-three Happy Moments"

Summer, Happiness

“I told you about my Mexican baby-sitter when I was three. I think I was in love with that little Mexican girl, she was wonderful, she really made me happy! She used to suck me to sleep for my nap every afternoon. I loved it!”

David Berg (1919–1994) Children of God founder

My Childhood Sex!—Doin' What Comes Naturally

Love, Girl, Thinking, Sleep

“Never to have lived is best. And the second best/is to grow old with the morning into/afternoon, and then to evening, when sundry shadows and gestures marry/like the vanished divisions of a shut fan.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

St Cyril Road Sequence
St Cyril Road and Other Poems (2005)

“We can teach no virtues we do not practice," occurred to me this afternoon; for without learning by experience how a virtue is acquired, how can we teach any one to acquire it? I thought of this in connection with the experience of undutiful children. By the working of this natural cause, they will not make their own children dutiful. Read in Luke of the angel which appeared to Christ in Gethsemane, strengthening Him. We all see this angel when we say truly, "Thy will, not mine, be done.”

Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910) American abolitionist, social activist, and poet

22 August 1875.
The Walk With God (1919)

Children, Angels, Nature, Learning

“This country is not the free-trading nation it once was. We have become too lazy, and too fat on our successes in previous generations, companies who could be contributing to our national prosperity - but choose not to because it might be too difficult or too time-consuming or because they can't play golf on a Friday afternoon - we've got to be saying to them if you want to share in the prosperity of our country you have a duty to contribute to the prosperity of our country.”

Liam Fox (1961) British Conservative politician

At a Conservative Way Forward event. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/uk-business-is-too-lazy-and-fat-and-prefers-to-play-golf-says-liam-fox-tbqpt5r97 (September 10, 2016) 2016

Time, Success, Country

“And I hope that you die
And your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand o'er your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Source: Song lyrics, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963), Masters of War

Hope, Dead

“Narrated Anas bin Malik: The Prophet said, "A single endeavor (of fighting) in Allah's Cause in the forenoon or in the afternoon is better than the world and whatever is in it."”

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

[4, 52, 50]
Sunni Hadith

World, Fight

“And I remembered the inside of that apartment, how it smelled of mice and dust, and the old women who sat in the lobby on hot afternoons, and the old woman with the pretty legs. Then there was the elevator man, a broken man from Milwaukee, who seemed to sneer every time you called your floor, as though you were such a fool for choosing that particular floor, the elevator man who always had a tray of sandwiches in the elevator, and a pulp magazine.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Women, Fools, Time

“The unknown mountain nests in the inhospitable interior of southern Calabria are usually connected only by a mule track with the railway that runs close to the coast: whoever wants to go there has to walk on foot if he has no donkey at his disposal. I think back to that warm afternoon in the month of May when we the four of us, after a long, tiring ride in the harsh sun, packed with the heavy burden of our backpacks, sweat-dripping and a little gasping, entered the city gate of Palizzi..”

M. C. Escher (1898–1972) Dutch graphic artist

version in original Dutch (origineel citaat van M.C. Escher, in het Nederlands): De onbekende bergnesten in het onherbergzame binnenland van Zuid-Calabrië zijn meestal slechts door een muilezelpad met den spoorweg, die vlak langs de kust loopt, verbonden: wie er heen wil, dient te voet te gaan zoo hij geen ezel tot zijn beschikking heeft. Ik denk terug aan dien warmen namiddag in de maand Mei toen wij met ons vieren, na een lange, vermoeiende tocht in de barre zon, bepakt met de zware last onzer rugzakken, zweetdruppelend en een beetje hijgend de stadspoort van Palizzi binnentraden.. Quote from Escher's article about his Calabria trip, in the Dutch magazine 'De Groene Amsterdammer', 23 April, 1932, p 18 – No 2864 (translation of museum 'Escher in the Palais', the Hague) In the following Autumn and Winter Escher used the many sketches and photos from this trip to make series of woodcuts and lithography https://www.escherinhetpaleis.nl/story-of-escher/from-photo-to-fantasy/?lang=en 1940's

Mountain, Thinking, Sun

“Like all weddings it had left the strange feeling of futility, the slight sense of depression that comes to English people who have tried, from their strong sense of tradition, to be festive and sentimental and in high spirits too early in the day. The frame of mind supposed to be appropriate to an afternoon wedding can only be genuinely experienced by an Englishman at two o'clock in the morning.”

Ada Leverson (1862–1933) British writer

Source: Love's Shadow (1908), Chapter xxiv.

People, Feeling, Sense, Wedding

“Your Excellency's favor of the 22d was delivered to me this afternoon. I am happy to find you have wrote so fully to Congress, upon the disagreeable consequences that may follow from starving the Quarter master's department at this critical season. I wish it may have the desired effect, and rouse their attention; but I must confess I am afraid the stupor is so great, that nothing can alarm their fears, or pro mote a spirit of industry.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (24 April 1779)

Fear, Season, Happiness

“Good afternoon. I would like to take the next few moments to address the two investigations that the Justice Department has been conducting in Ferguson, Missouri, these last several months. The matter that we are here to discuss is significant not only because of the conclusions the Department of Justice is announcing today, but also because of the broader conversations and the initiatives that those conversations have inspired across the country on the local and national level. Those initiatives have included extensive and vital efforts to examine the causes of misunderstanding and mistrust between law enforcement officers and the communities they serve; to support and strengthen our public safety institutions as a whole; and to rebuild confidence wherever it has eroded.”

Eric Holder (1951) 82nd Attorney General of the United States

2010s, Update on Investigations in Ferguson (2015)

Justice, Law, Confidence, Communication

“All the world seems in tune
On a spring afternoon,
When we're poisoning pigeons in the park.
Every Sunday you'll see
My sweetheart and me,
As we poison the pigeons in the park.”

Tom Lehrer (1928) American singer-songwriter and mathematician

"Poisoning Pigeons in the Park"
An Evening (Wasted) With Tom Lehrer (1959)

World, Spring

“Afternoon with Q. [Quappi, his second wife] on foot, looking for butter and coals – in vain.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

Beckman's Diary, 1 June 1943, Amsterdam; as cited on: 'Arts in exile' http://kuenste-im-exil.de 1940s

“Between going and staying the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.
All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can't be touched.
Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.
Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.
The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.
I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.
The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

Between Going and Staying

Love, Books, World, Light

“During my high school years, a boy from my neighborhood named Malcolm chose me to be his friend for a season. His elbow nudged my book in the public library one Saturday afternoon as he sprawled forward across the table feigning some condition—boredom, I suppose. His voice was like shadow—as whispery and as indistinct as shadow, due to an adolescent change. “Do you want to wrestle?” he asked. I have never met anyone since who speaks as Malcolm spoke: He daydreamed; he pronounced strategies out loud (as I raked elm leaves from our lawn and piled them in the curb)—about how he would befriend this boy or that boy, never anyone I knew; Malcolm went to a different high school. “First,” he said, “I will tease him about his freckles. Then I will tease him about his laugh—how his laugh sounds a little like a whinny sometimes. I won’t go too far. You should see how his wrist pivots as he dribbles down the court. “He’s got these little curls above his sideburns. I wish I had those.””

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

(He would catch me up on the way to the library.) “What are you reading? We read that last year. Not really a war story, though, is it? Want to go eat French toast?”
Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography (2013)

War, Books, School, Way

“It was during that same week that I was up there [In Seattle rehearsing with Pearl Jam]. Day four maybe, or day five, they did a Temple [of the Dog] rehearsal after our afternoon rehearsal. I got to watch these songs, and watch how Chris [Cornell] was working, and watch Matt [Cameron] play drums. It got to "Hunger Strike" - I was sitting in the corner, putting duck tape on a little African drum. About two-thirds of the way though, he was having to cut off the one line, and start the other. I'm not now, and certainly wasn't then, self-assured or cocky, but I could hear what he was trying to do, so I walked up to the mic - which I'm really surprised I did - and sang the other part, "Going hungry, going hungry." The next time I was up, he asked if I'd record it - so it was just me and Chris in the same studio that we made [1991's] Ten record. I really like hearing that song. I feel like I could be real proud of it - because one, I didn't write it, and two, it was such a nice way to be ushered onto vinyl for the first time. I'm indebted to Chris time eternal for being invited onto that track.”

Eddie Vedder (1964) musician, songwriter, member of Pearl Jam

Hunger, Dogs, Way, Feeling

“The quiet of this afternoon is strange, haunting, awful;
Hear that buzzing in the hot grass, coming from live things; and those crows' cries from somewhere;
There is a sluggish, sad brook near here, too.
The bird is gone now, so graceful, fair as it was,
And the sky has nothing but the brightness of air in it.
The clean color of air.
The sun makes it be afternoon here;…”

Eli Siegel (1902–1978) Latvian-American poet, philosopher

Extract from the title poem Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana [Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana: Poems, Defintion Press, (1957)]

Sadness, Color, Bird, Grass

“Mr. Cannon has told how he put through an appropriation for the entertainment of Prince Henry of Prussia when that foreign visitor came over years ago. He prearranged with Oscar W. Underwood, then in the House, that he would propose the appropriation late in the afternoon, when the House attendance was slim. Mr. Underwood, representing objecting Democrats, was to kick strenuously for a time about the cost of entertaining the prince; then Underwood was reluctantly to withdraw his opposition, the chances being no other Democrat would take it up. The 'Swapping of tobacco' across the aisles worked and the appropriation went through.”

Joseph Gurney Cannon (1836–1926) American politician

Reported in The Sun, Baltimore, Maryland (March 4, 1923); Congressional Record (March 4, 1923), vol. 64, p. 5714.
About

Chance, Time, Housing

“I do recall one particular night shoot… We were called to the set at four o'clock in the afternoon. As usual, nothing was ready. They'd built a set of Tiberius's grotto, on three acres, and were assembling all of the extras and background. The producers worriedly asked if I would go into Peter's trailer (he was playing Tiberius) and go through the lines with him, which we did few times.
And then he told me the most remarkable story – whether it is true or not I have no idea – about his grave-robbing Etruscan tombs. He said the best way to find Etruscan jewellery and artefacts was to find the drains in the tombs, and very gingerly sift through them with your fingers because, as the bodies decompose, all of the artifacts deposit themselves into the channels. The thought of Peter O'Toole on his hands and knees in an Etruscan catacomb makes for a lovely image.
We spent hours and hours in this trailer. He was smoking … it certainly wasn't tobacco. By the time we got onto the set, 12 hours had passed. We couldn't believe our eyes: the set was covered with people engaging in every sexual perversion in the book. We were totally bemused.
Peter would start off his speech, "Rome was but a city…" then pause, look around, and say to me: "Are they doing the Irish jig over there?"”

Malcolm McDowell (1943) English actor

I'd look over and there would be two dwarves and an amputee dancing around some girls splayed out on a giant dildo. This went on quite a few times. As quoted in "Malcolm McDowell on Peter O'Toole: Caligula, catacombs and chicken gizzards" https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2013/dec/17/malcolm-mcdowell-peter-otoole-caligula-graves, The Guardian (17 December, 2013)

Love, People, Books, Way

“For me, I can still say music is God, music is the face of God. That's everybody, that's the hearts of men. And that's important to me. But that's not the way everybody sees it. And, of course, what happened in interviews, especially in collective interviews, was that people would ask me questions and I would talk about development and ideals, about which I already have talked too much this afternoon, and these questions would be posed to the other musicians and they would say, "We don't want to feel that way at all, we're not into that."”

John McLaughlin (1942) guitarist, founder of the Mahavishnu Orchestra

On the visionary differences between McLaughlin and amongst other members of the Mahavishnu Orchestra, as quoted in Fripp, Robert. "Coffee and Chocolates for Two Guitars". Musician No. 45, July 1982. https://www.elephant-talk.com/wiki/Interview_with_John_McLaughlin_by_Robert_Fripp_in_Musician

Men, God, People, Music

“When I was at school, on certain afternoons we all had to do what was called Labour — weeding, sweeping, sawing logs for the boiler-room, that sort of thing; but if you had a chit from Matron you were let off to spend the afternoon messing about in the Art Room. Labour or Art. And you've got a chit for life? Where did you get it? What is an artist? For every thousand people there's nine hundred doing the work, ninety doing well, nine doing good, and one lucky bastard who's the artist.”

Tom Stoppard Travesties

Carr, Act I
Travesties (1974)

Life, People, School, Art

“To find the directions and quarters of the winds your method of procedure should be as follows. In the middle of the city place a marble amussium, laying it true by the level, or else let the spot be made so true by means of rule and level that no amussium is necessary. In the very center of that spot set up a bronze gnomon or "shadow tracker." At about the fifth hour in the morning, take the end of the shadow cast by this gnomon, and mark it with a point. Then, opening your compasses to this point which marks the length of the gnomon's shadow, describe a circle from the center. In the afternoon watch the shadow of your gnomon as it lengthens, and when it once more touches the circumference of this circle and the shadow in the afternoon is equal in length to that of the morning, mark it with a point. From these two points describe with your compasses intersecting arcs and through their intersection and the centre let a line be drawn to the circumference of the circle to give us the quarters of south and north…. and thus we have designed a figure equally apportioned among the eight winds.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book I, Chapter VI, Sec. 5-7

“You’re frightfully BBC in your language this afternoon, Albert,’ said Tuppance, with some exasperation.
Albert looked slightly taken aback and reverted to a more natural form of speech.
‘I was listening to a very interesting talk on pond life last night,’ he explained.”

Agatha Christie book N or M?

N or M? (1941)

Life, Nature, Night

“The first documentary I saw as a child was Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922) broadcast one Sunday afternoon. Nanook enchanted me by his courage to smile in a frozen wasteland, and by the simple fact that he wore a fur coat rather than a military uniform: this gentle hunter wasn’t a conqueror. Later, I understood how great Flaherty was: he told a timeless story without using commentary or pedagogues, and he didn’t interview Nanook like a celebrity or an aggressive talk-show host. He remained off-screen, observing and listening to create that exceptional complicity we feel in this documentary that eschews didacticism. The emotion of life found its counterpart in the emotion of art - a rare and precious achievement in a genre that is often limited to the emotion of the informational narrative.”

Damian Pettigrew Canadian filmmaker

On documentary influences, Sundance Channel Interview (July 2004)

Life, Smile, Art, Feeling

“When I was a small boy in Kansas, a friend of mine and I went fishing and as we sat there in the warmth of the summer afternoon on a river bank, we talked about what we wanted to do when we grew up. I told him that I wanted to be a real major league baseball player, a genuine professional like Honus Wagner. My friend said that he'd like to be President of the United States. Neither of us got our wish.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

As quoted in Baseball's Greatest Quotes (1992) by Paul Dickson; cited in "Game Day in the Majors" at the Library of Congress http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/robinson/jrgmday.html

Boy, Fish, Summer

“He looked around the landscape. Drenched in the golden haze of late afternoon it seemed wonderfully tranquil and beautiful, though permeated with a sense of remoteness and even melancholy, like a scene remembered from one’s youth.”

Jack Vance book Space Opera

Source: Space Opera (1965), Chapter 13 (p. 130)

Youth, Beauty, Sense

“If farming were to be organised like the stock market, a farmer would sell his farm in the morning when it was raining, only to buy it back in the afternoon when the sun came out.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

Attributed by [Will, Hutton, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/02/economics-economy-john-keynes, Will the real Keynes stand up, not this sad caricature?, Guardian, November 2, 2008, 2009-02-05] Actual quote: "the Stock Exchange revalues many investments every day and the revaluations give a frequent opportunity to the individual (though not to the community as a whole) to revise his commitments. It is as though a farmer, having tapped his barometer after breakfast, could decide to remove his capital from the farming business between 10 and 11 in the morning and reconsider whether he should return to it later in the week." The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1935), Ch. 12 http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/general-theory/ch12.htm Attributed

Sun

“From the kids on the neighborhood Stag Athletic Club baseball team on the Hill. We went to a movie one afternoon, and there was one of those yogi characters in the picture. Coming out of the joint, one of the kids looked at me, started laughing, and said: "Hey, Berra walks just like that yogi in the movie."”

Yogi Berra (1925–2015) American baseball player, manager, coach

I've been Yogi ever since. As quoted in "Yogi Credits Dickey For His Climb" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=ykIaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=tCMEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6640%2C6523488 by Harry Grayson, in The Hendersonville Times-News (Thursday, November 22, 1951), p. 8.

“…Upon this, Sher Shah turned again towards Kalinjar… The Raja of Kalinjar, Kirat Sing, did not come out to meet him. So he ordered the fort to be invested, and threw up mounds against it, and in a short time the mounds rose so high that they overtopped the fort. The men who were in the streets and houses were exposed, and the Afghans shot them with their arrows and muskets from off the mounds. The cause of this tedious mode of capturing the fort was this. Among the women of Raja Kirat Sing was a Patar slave-girl, that is a dancing-girl. The king had heard exceeding praise of her, and he considered how to get possession of her, for he feared lest if he stormed the fort, the Raja Kirat Sing would certainly make a jauhar, and would burn the girl…
“On Friday, the 9th of RabI’u-l awwal, 952 A. H., when one watch and two hours of the day was over, Sher Shah called for his breakfast, and ate with his ‘ulama and priests, without whom he never breakfasted. In the midst of breakfast, Shaikh NizAm said, ‘There is nothing equal to a religious war against the infidels. If you be slain you become a martyr, if you live you become a ghazi.’ When Sher Shah had finished eating his breakfast, he ordered Darya Khan to bring loaded shells, and went up to the top of a mound, and with his own hand shot off many arrows, and said, ‘Darya Khan comes not; he delays very long.’ But when they were at last brought, Sher Shah came down from the mound, and stood where they were placed. While the men were employed in discharging them, by the will of Allah Almighty, one shell full of gunpowder struck on the gate of the fort and broke, and came and fell where a great number of other shells were placed. Those which were loaded all began to explode. Shaikh Halil, Shaikh Nizam, and other learned men, and most of the others escaped and were not burnt, but they brought out Sher Shah partially burnt. A young princess who was standing by the rockets was burnt to death. When Sher Shah was carried into his tent, all his nobles assembled in darbAr; and he sent for ‘Isa Khan Hajib and Masnad Khan Kalkapur, the son-in-law of Isa Khan, and the paternal uncle of the author, to come into his tent, and ordered them to take the fort while he was yet alive. When ‘Isa Khan came out and told the chiefs that it was Sher Shah’s order that they should attack on every side and capture the fort, men came and swarmed out instantly on every side like ants and locusts; and by the time of afternoon prayers captured the fort, putting every one to the sword, and sending all the infidels to hell. About the hour of evening prayers, the intelligence of the victory reached Sher Shah, and marks of joy and pleasure appeared on his countenance. Raja Kirat Sing, with seventy men, remained in a house. Kutb Khan the whole night long watched the house in person lest the Raja should escape. Sher Shah said to his sons that none of his nobles need watch the house, so that the Raja escaped out of the house, and the labour and trouble of this long watching was lost. The next day at sunrise, however, they took the Raja alive…””

Sher Shah Suri (1486–1545) founder of Sur Empire in Northern India

Tarikh-i-Sher Shahi of Abbas Khan Sherwani in Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, Volume IV, pp. 407-09. Quoted in S.R.Goel, The Calcutta Quran Petition

Death, Women, Men, War

“I don't much care about tea-drinking in the afternoon; in the morning the stuff Jock brings to me in bed is like that Nepenthe which the wife of Thone gave to Jove-born Helena, but in the p. m. it always makes me think of Ganges mud in which crocodiles have been coupling.”

Kyril Bonfiglioli (1928–1985) British art dealer

Source: The Mortdecai Trilogy, After You With The Pistol (1979), Ch. 5.

Drink, Thinking, Tea

“Dry your eyes and take your song out.
It's a newborn afternoon.
And if you can't recall the singer,
You can still recall the tune.Dry your eyes and play it slowly,
Like you're marching off to war.
Sing it like you know he'd want it,
Like we sang it once before.”

Neil Diamond (1941) American singer-songwriter

Dry Your Eyes, co-written with Robbie Robertson
Song lyrics, Beautiful Noise (1976)

War, Singing

“My room overlooks the park and yesterday during the afternoon I'd opened up all the blinds and taken back the curtains so I could look out over the park. Come nightfall, I was grooving to some rap record in my room, bopping around the room for maybe half an hour. I don't know what I was doing, just messing around…and at one stage I looked out of the window and there were about 200 people looking up, clapping, applauding my dancing. That was funny.”

The Edge (1961) Irish rock musician, guitar player of U2

On dancing

People, Dance

“Allah's Apostle [Muhammad (peace be upon him)] said, "The deeds of anyone of you will not save you (from the fire [of hell])." They asked, "Even you (will not be saved by your deeds), O Allah's Apostle?" He said, "No, even I (will not be saved) unless and until Allah bestows His mercy on me. Therefore, do good deeds properly, sincerely and moderately, and worship Allah in the forenoon and in the afternoon and during a part of the night, and always adopt a middle, moderate, regular course whereby you will reach your target (Paradise).”

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

.
Sunni Hadith

Peace, Hell, Parting, Sincerity

“I can understand companionship. I can understand bought sex in the afternoon, but I cannot understand the love affair.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

Quoted in profile by Martin Amis, "Mr. Vidal: Unpatriotic Gore" (1977) in The Moronic Inferno (1987)
1970s

Love, Sex, Understanding

“How did it happen that the Reverend Charles Dodgson, thirty years of age, lecturer on geometry at Christ Church, Oxford, hitherto remarkable chiefly for his precision, on a single July afternoon, while rowing up the Isis with a brother don and three little girls, parthenogenetically gave birth to one of the most famous stories of all time?”

Florence Becker Lennon

Page 23
The Life of Lewis Carroll (1962)

Age, Girl, Birth, Time

“Your letter became before I was up this morning – Yes nice to get. I recognize two of the drawings you speak of – Number one is the first of the dozen or more you speak of – number 2 came next The last – It didn't quite satisfy me so I tried again – the last one was so much worse than the one you like that I thought I had just about worn the idea out so quit... You ask me what I did with the rest of myself when I made number 2 -... I sat up almost all night one night this week and made the most infernally ugly little shape you ever saw – I wanted to break it when I got through – but didn't then next afternoon when I had time to look at it, it amused me so that I didn't – really its laughable – it's so ugly – and still some way it's quite beautiful – I don't know – I may break it up – or I may try to cast it just for fun – I have another idea that I'm in an awful stew to model – I am going to get a lot of patience so I can make all the little do-dangles I want to and won't have to break one up so I can make another – I want to make a big one..”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

Canyon, Texas, (September, 1916), p. 198
1915 - 1920, Letters to Anita Pollitzer' (1916)

Beauty, Way, Idea, Time

“Like a fool as I was, I suffered my sun to be high in the heavens and near afternoon before I ever took the gate by the end.”

Samuel Rutherford (1600–1661) Scottish Reformed theologian

Sketch of Life of Samuel Rutherford (Andrew Bonar)

Fools, Suffering, Sun

“On September 16, 1978, there was an eclipse of the moon in Riyadh. Late one afternoon it became visible: a dark shadow moving slowly across the face of the pale moon in the darkening blue sky. There was a frantic knocking on the door. When I opened it, our neighbor asked if we were safe. He said it was the Day of Judgement, when the Quran says the sun will rise from the west and the seas will flood, when all the dead will rise and Allah's angels will weigh our sins and virtue, expediting the good to Paradise and the bad to Hell. Though it was barely twilight, the muezzin suddenly called for prayer--not one mosque calling carefully after another, as they usually did, but all the mosques clamoring all at once, all over the city. There was shouting across the neighborhood. When I looked outside I saw people praying in the street.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Ch. 3

People, Angels, Hell, Sun

“Painting is the magic art, the fire set alight on the windows of the rich dwelling, as on those of the humble hovel, from the last rays of the setting sun, it is the long mark, the humid mark, the fluent and still mark that the dying wave etches on the hot sand, it is the darting of the immortal lizard on the rock burnt by the midday heat, it is the rainbow of conciliation, on sad May afternoons, after the storm has passed, down there, making a dark backdrop to the almond trees in flower, to the gardens with their washed colours, to the ploughmen's huts, smiling and tranquil, it is the livid cloud chased by the vehement blowing of Aeolus enraged, it is the nebulous disk of the fleeting moon behind the ripped-open funereal curtain of a disturbed sky in the deep of night, it is the blood of the bull stabbed in the arena, of the warrior fallen in the heat of battle, of Adonis' immaculate thigh wounded by the obstinate boar's curved tusk, it is the sail swollen with the winds of distant seas, it is the centuries-old tree browned in the autumn..”

Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) Italian artist

Quote from the first lines in De Cirico's essay 'Painting', 1938; from http://www.fondazionedechirico.org/wp-content/uploads/211_Painting_1938_Metaphysical_Art.pdf 'Painting', 1938 - G. de Chirico, presentation to the catalogue of his solo exhibition Mostra personale del pittore Giorgio de Chirico, Galleria Rotta, Genoa, May 1938], p. 211
1920s and later

Sadness, Smile, Art, Flowers

“A man who has to be punctually at a certain place at five o'clock has the whole afternoon from one to five ruined for him already.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 163

“We all know that the roots of injustice run deep. But violence cannot redress a solitary wrong, or remedy a single unfairness. Of course, all America is outraged at the assassination of an outstanding Negro leader who was at that meeting that afternoon in the White House in 1966. And America is also outraged at the looting and the burning that defiles our democracy. We just must put our shoulders together and put a stop to both. The time is here. Action must be now. So, I would appeal to my fellow Americans by saying, the only real road to progress for free people is through the process of law and that is the road that America will travel.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

"Remarks Upon Signing the Civil Rights Act.," April 11, 1968. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=28799&st=&st1=#axzz2gguIRFi1 1960s, Remarks on the Civil Rights Act (1968)

People, Law, Travel, Democracy

“So it is in that spirit that I declare this afternoon to the people of Cuba that those who seek refuge here in America will find it. The dedication of America to our traditions as an asylum for the oppressed is going to be upheld. I have directed the Departments of State and Justice and Health, Education, and Welfare to immediately make all the necessary arrangements to permit those in Cuba who seek freedom to make an orderly entry into the United States of America. Our first concern will be with those Cubans who have been separated from their children and their parents and their husbands and their wives and that are now in this country. Our next concern is with those who are imprisoned for political reasons. And I will send to the Congress tomorrow a request for supplementary funds of $12,600,000 to carry forth the commitment that I am making today. I am asking the Department of State to seek through the Swiss government immediately the agreement of the Cuban government in a request to the President of the International Red Cross Committee. The request is for the assistance of the Committee in processing the movement of refugees from Cuba to Miami. Miami will serve as a port of entry and a temporary stopping place for refugees as they settle in other parts of this country. And to all the voluntary agencies in the United States, I appeal for their continuation and expansion of their magnificent work. Their help is needed in the reception and the settlement of those who choose to leave Cuba. The Federal Government will work closely with these agencies in their tasks of charity and brotherhood. I want all the people of this great land of ours to know of the really enormous contribution which the compassionate citizens of Florida have made to humanity and to decency. And all States in this Union can join with Florida now in extending the hand of helpfulness and humanity to our Cuban brothers. The lesson of our times is sharp and clear in this movement of people from one land to another. Once again, it stamps the mark of failure on a regime when many of its citizens voluntarily choose to leave the land of their birth for a more hopeful home in America. The future holds little hope for any government where the present holds no hope for the people. And so we Americans will welcome these Cuban people. For the tides of history run strong, and in another day they can return to their homeland to find it cleansed of terror and free from fear. Over my shoulders here you can see Ellis Island, whose vacant corridors echo today the joyous sound of long ago voices. And today we can all believe that the lamp of this grand old lady is brighter today; and the golden door that she guards gleams more brilliantly in the light of an increased liberty for the people from all the countries of the globe. Thank you very much.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, Remarks at the signing of the Immigration Bill (1965)

Children, People, Health, Education

“Life was about spending time together, about having the time to walk together holding hands, talking quietly as they watched the sun go down. It wasn't glamorous, but it was, in many ways, the best that life had to offer. Wasn't that how the old saying went? Who, on their deathbed, ever said they wished they had worked harder? Or spent less time enjoying a quiet afternoon? Or spent less time with their family?”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Lexie Darnell, Chapter 17, p. 269
2000s, True Believer (2005)

Life, Family, Way, Time

“I saw The Lonely Guy all by myself. It was one of those Saturday afternoons where the snow is coming down gray and mean, and you can't even get a decent recorded message on the answering machines of strangers … "Good luck," an usher told me. "You're going to need it." He was right … The Lonely Guy is the kind of movie that seems to have been made to play in empty theaters on overcast January afternoons … [It] is the kind of movie that inspires you to distract yourself by counting the commercial products visible on the screen, and speculating about whether their manufacturers paid fees to have them worked into the movie. I counted two Diet 7-Ups, two Tabs, and Steve Martin.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-lonely-guy-1984 of The Lonely Guy (1 January 1984) Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

Guy

“You know, friends, so many people have wished me congratulations on a 67-year career in baseball, and they've wished me a wonderful retirement with my family, and now, all I can do is tell you what I wish for you. May God give you, for every storm, a rainbow; for every tear, a smile; for every care, a promise; and a blessing in each trial. For every problem life seems, a faithful friend to share; for every sigh, a sweet song, and an answer for each prayer. You and I have been friends for a long time, but I know, in my heart, I've always needed you more than you've ever needed me, and I'll miss our time together more than I can say. But, you know what, there will be a new day, and, eventually, a new year, and when the upcoming winter gives way to spring, ooh, rest assured, once again, it will be time for Dodger baseball. So, this is Vin Scully wishing you a pleasant good afternoon, wherever you may be.”

Vin Scully (1927) American sports broadcaster

Scully's final sign-off as a Dodger broadcaster.

Life, God, People, Family

“In the afternoon he [ Johannes Bosboom ] took me to look for it [her first showed painting, ever]. There it was! I thought I was swimming! And next day, our lounge was full of people [at home, with her father], a friend of dad came in and he said: 'I have seen your painting. Very well, indeed. Do you know it just has been sold?' Suddenly it fell silent in the room. Daddy looked at me with surprised eyes. It was my declaration of independence.”

Marie Bilders-van Bosse (1837–1900) painter from the Netherlands

translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat van Maria Bilders-van Bosse, in Nederlands): 's Middags nam hij [ nl:Johannes Bosboom ] me mee, om ernaar te gaan kijken [haar eerst-getoonde schilderij]. Daar hing het! Ik dacht dat ik zwom! En den volgenden dag, de salon was bij ons [thuis bij haar vader] vol menschen, komt een vriend van papa binnen en zegt: 'Ik heb je schilderij gezien. Heel goed. Weet je dat het verkocht is?' Het was ineens stil in de kamer. Pappa keek me met een paar verbaasde ogen aan. Het was mijn onafhankelijkheidsverklaring.
Quote of Marie Bilders-van Bosse, c. Jan. 1875; as cited by Dutch writer Augusta de Wit, in 'Marie Philippine Bilders-van Bosse', in artmagazine 'De Gids', 1900, p. 513
Bosboom had organized that one of her early paintings was showed in the shop-window of art-dealer Goupil in The Hague; it became her first sale, to Dr. Blom Coster

People, Home, Painting

“Playing gay in the theater is more fulfilling than on film because you can create a whole character and a backstory and you get to chip away at something over a long period of time. When you’re acting on film you sort of have one afternoon in front of a crew to just do it. And you don’t want to then be too overt and like that stereotype. But when I was doing A Paris Letter with Josh [Radnor], I was playing someone overtly flamboyant from the ’60s seducing him, and if I did that on film, I think it would look like I was acting too hard. It’s one of the fun things one wants to do as an actor, to play the flamboyant gay guy. But when you are gay that ends up being offensive to people. Say I was asked to play a flamboyant steward in an Airplane!–type farce. It would be a difficult decision to say yes to that role at this point because a lot of people would accuse me of making a mockery of gay people.”

Neil Patrick Harris (1973) American actor and host

Out Magazine; September 2008.

People, Guy, Thinking, Decision

“What a bad day it was, the clouds were low and cloudy, the rain no fun, and the dark as it hit the late afternoon thick like someone who stops by your place and just won't leave. The day was canceled, almost, on account of the rain spilling itself over everything.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Adverbs (2006), Frigidly

“As far as I can remember, it was before my twelfth year that I was sketching cows in the mornings before and afternoons after school, and because my brothers were 4 and 6 years older than me – naturally I got from them my first teachings in drawing and later in painting.”

Willem Maris (1844–1910) Dutch landscape painter of the Hague School (1844-1910)

translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018 version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Willem Maris: Voor zover ik mij herinneren kan, was ik voor mijn twaalfde jaar 's Morgens voor, en 's middags na schooltijd al in de weilanden aan 't teekenen van koeien en daar mijn broers 4 en 6 jaar ouder waren als ik - genoot ik natuurlijk van hen het eerste onderwijs in het teekenen en later in het schilderen. Quote of Willem Maris, in his letter in 1901; as cited in 'Zó Hollands - Het Hollandse landschap in de Nederlandse kunst sinds 1850', Antoon Erftemeijer https://www.franshalsmuseum.nl/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/zohollands_eindversie_def_1.pdf; Frans Hals museum | De Hallen, Haarlem 2011, p. 36

School, Nature, Drawing, Painting

“Q: What would you say to Bin Laden and George Bush?
A: I have to look at them as human beings. What one person had done for the world, is terrible, but for my perspective … if it was morning I would say "good morning" and if it was afternoon I would say, "good afternoon"
Q:That's all?
A: That's all. It is not my place to judge them.
Q: Thank you very much, Maharaji.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

"In Conversation", TV interview by Rajiv Mehrotra, Doordarshan Television News, India, 3 March 2006.
2000s

World, Personality

“The unremitting division of labour resulted in admirable levels of productivity. The company’s success appeared to bear out the principles of efficiency laid down at the turn of the twentieth century by the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who theorized that a society would grow wealthy to the extent that its members forfeited general knowledge in favour of fostering individual ability in narrowly constricted fields. In an ideal Paretan economy, jobs would be ever more finely subdivided to allow for the accumulation of complex skills, which would then be traded among workers. … But however great the economic advantages of segmenting the elements of an afternoon’s work into a range of forty-year-long careers, there was reason to wonder about the unintended side effects of doing so. In particular, one felt tempted to ask … how meaningful the lives might feel as a result.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009)

Feeling, Knowledge, Appearance, Success

“Punishment of cadets had been artfully crafted. In the early nineteenth century, West Point officials deemed manual labor an inappropriate punishment for a cadet: It would have been an ungentlemanly task for a future officer. But they could make him do something that was tiring, embarrassing, and, most excruciating, accomplished nothing. So cadets ever since have been awarded "Area tours," each representing an hour- two hours on Friday afternoon, and then three on Saturday- walking in our dress gray uniforms with rifles across the Area. As my bemused father explained to me, the Area does not make you smarter, braver, or more expert; even trench digging would offer some tangible benefit. At the academy, where we hoarded free minutes, walking the yard meant wasted hours.”

Stanley A. McChrystal (1954) American general

Source: My Share Of The Task (2013), p. 14-15

Future

“…And tell me what could be more humbling than to be lying in bed at two in the afternoon, without a shower in twelve days; to look across the room you live in and see in the corner a pile of pizza boxes; to be afraid of undrawing the curtains and opening the window, so removed from people so as not to even wonder who would care if you did or if you didn't do this or that; and to find that the day's only scintilla of hope flickers in the moment you reach for the television remote control.”

Zia Haider Rahman British novelist

In The Light of what We Know (2014)

People, Hope, Lying, Box

“Nature is what we see,
The Hill, the Afternoon—
Squirrel, Eclipse, the Bumble-bee,
Nay—Nature is Heaven.

Nature is what we hear,
The Bobolink, the Sea—
Thunder, the Cricket—
Nay,—Nature is Harmony.

Nature is what we know
But have no art to say,
So impotent our wisdom is
To Her simplicity.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Source: Collected Poems (1993), p. 268-269. The Single Hound.

Wisdom, Art, Nature, Bee

“Peter sighed. He turned the palms of his hands up as though to guess at rain. Anna knew him, theme and choreography. The sunshiny spring afternoon seeped through his fingers. He looked up at the witnessing heavens to keep what he could. He dropped his arms and let the rest go.”

Grace Paley (1922–2007) American writer and activist

"The Pale Pink Roast" (1959)

Spring

“I have read in the Book of Revelation the power of the word of testimony, but I never realised what power was in a martyr's testimony. If I had brought a ton of explosives and let them off in that Assembly it could not have had a greater effect. That vast Assembly erupted, and the books started to fly and the punches started to be thrown, and the kicking started, but I held my ground and maintained my testimony. THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EUROPE TODAY AND EUROPE IN REFORMATION TIMES. This afternoon I read again the story of Luther, at the Diet of Worms. Who presided over the Diet of Worms? The Emperor Charles, Head of the Holy Roman Empire. Who was he? He was a Habsburg. It is interesting to note that one of the men who attacked me is the last of the Habsburgs-Otto Habsburg, the Pretender to the Crown of Austria and Hungary. I said to myself, 'The Habsburgs are still lusting for Protestant blood. They are still the same as they were in the days of Luther.”

Ian Paisley (1926–2014) Politician and former church minister

The members of the Roman Catholic Party of Mr. Le Pen of which John Taylor is a member were round me battering away at me as hard as they could"
None Dare Call Him Antichrist Sermon, Martyrs' Memorial Free Presbyterian Church, October 16, 1988.

Men, Books, Time, Reading

“You know, several years ago, I was in New York City autographing the first book that I had written. And while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. The only question I heard from her was, "Are you Martin Luther King?"
And I was looking down writing, and I said yes. And the next minute I felt something beating on my chest. Before I knew it I had been stabbed by this demented woman. I was rushed to Harlem Hospital. It was a dark Saturday afternoon. And that blade had gone through, and the X-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. And once that's punctured, you drown in your own blood — that's the end of you.
It came out in the New York Times the next morning, that if I had sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheel chair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states, and the world, kind letters came in. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. I had received one from the President and the Vice-President. I've forgotten what those telegrams said. I'd received a visit and a letter from the Governor of New York, but I've forgotten what the letter said. But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I'll never forget it. It said simply, "Dear Dr. King: I am a ninth-grade student at the Whites Plains High School." She said, "While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I am a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I'm simply writing you to say that I'm so happy that you didn't sneeze."”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

And I want to say tonight, I want to say that I am happy that I didn't sneeze.
1960s, I've Been to the Mountaintop (1968)

Books, World, School, Girl

“By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems. But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs.
The current of his feeling failed: he became his admirers. Now he is scattered over a hundred cities
And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections;
To find his happiness in another kind of wood
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.”

W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet

Source: In Memory of W.B. Yeats (1939), Lines 10–23

Death, Feeling, Silence, Dead

“One afternoon in early January, the weather showed a lack of character. There was no frost nor wind: the trees in the garden did not stir.”

Brian W. Aldiss (1925–2017) British science fiction author

Report On Probability A (1968)

Tree, Weather

“It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Earthly Powers (1980)

Birthday

“Back then it was a very realistic thing for me. My own thing was, you know, wake up at 5 in the afternoon, it's dark out, hang out, maybe take a shower, then start drinking, start smoking pot, go out with friends, get wasted.”

Jack Osbourne (1985) Son of Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne

MTV.com Jack Talks About His Addiction and Recovery

Drink

“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

Quotes about afternoon page 3

Quotes about afternoon
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