Quotes about blow (1052 quotes, page 5)

“All I can say is this: either every single member of that army had been promised a blow job of the Gods as soon as they got their queen back, or the Greeks invented brainwashing. (On the Greeks and the Trojan War, 31 May 2004)”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

Fully Ramblomatic

God , War

“Twas thine own genius gave the final blow,
And help'd to plant the wound that laid thee low:
So the struck eagle, stretch'd upon the plain,
No more through rolling clouds to soar again,
View'd his own feather on the fatal dart,
And wing'd the shaft that quiver'd in his heart.”

George Gordon Byron English Bards and Scotch Reviewers

Source: English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809), Line 826. A number of authors have addressed this common motif of an eagle shot with an eagle-feather arrow

Heart

“The most beautiful conception of immortality of which I know, and certainly one that by contrast shows the utter vulgarity of Christian ideas, is set forth in Pindar's second Olympian: after three or six lives in which a man has lived with strict justice and perfect integrity, he passes beyond the tower of Cronus to the fair realm that cannot be reached by land or sea, where gentle breezes from a placid ocean blow forever on the fields of asphodel. For a description, see Pindar. If the beauty of great poetry can commend a religion, here you have it.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"Afterthoughts on Afterlife", Instauration magazine (August 1980)
1970s, 1980s

Religion , Justice , Beauty , Idea

“Camilo (Cienfuegos) was the subject of a thousand anecdotes; he created them naturally wherever he went. To his ease of manner, always appreciated by the people, he added a personality that naturally and almost unconsciously put the stamp of Camilo on everything connected with him. Few men have succeeded in leaving on every action such a distinctive personal mark. As Fidel has said, he did not have culture from books; he had the natural intelligence of the people, who had chosen him out of thousands for a privileged position on account of the audacity of his blows, his tenacity, his intelligence, and unequalled devotion. Camilo practiced loyalty like a religion.”

Ernesto Che Guevara book Guerrilla Warfare

Dedication, to Camilo Cienfuegos
Guerrilla Warfare (1961)

Men , People , Books , Religion

“Action is transitory—a step, a blow—
The motion of a muscle—this way or that—
'Tis done; and in the after-vacancy
We wonder at ourselves like men betrayed.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

The White Doe of Rylstone, l. 1 (1807).

Men , Way

“The thunder rolls,
And the lightnin' strikes.
Another love grows cold
On a sleepless night.
As the storm blows on
Out of control,
Deep in her heart
The thunder rolls.”

Garth Brooks (1962) American country music artist

The Thunder Rolls, written by G. Brooks and Pat Alger
Song lyrics, No Fences (1990)

Love , Heart , Night

“I'm not sure what this means and if it can be replicated, but we did something very unique and none of it was planned. There wasn't a $20 million marketing budget designed to make this; it just happened. The audience took the movie for its own and decided to make it an event, and that's pretty awesome. And by the way, there were people who liked the movie so much they were defending the film against people who were thrashing it. Completely mind-blowing. I've never had that happen, either.”

Anthony C. Ferrante American film director

'Sharknado' Director on Secrets, Sequels and Success of the Social Media Sensation http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/sharknado-director-secrets-sequels-success-social-media-sensation-584636 (July 12, 2013)

People , Way

“Under our constitutional system, courts stand against any winds that blow as havens of refuge for those who might otherwise suffer because they are helpless, weak, outnumbered, or because they are non-conforming victims of prejudice and public excitement…No higher duty, or more solemn responsibility rests upon this Court than that of translating into living law and maintaining this constitutional shield deliberately planned and inscribed for the benefit of every human being subject to our Constitution — of whatever race, creed, or persuasion.”

Hugo Black (1886–1971) U.S. Supreme Court justice

Writing for the court, Chambers v. Florida, 309 U.S. 227 (1940).

Law , Suffering

“I've found him to be a disappointment. Wonderful speech in Egypt, and good intentions aside, foreign policy needs to be firmly grounded in reality, and understanding of a sort of chaos theory…[that is to say] it needs to be part good intention, part political intelligence, and part political savvy and knowledge of international interests and national burdens. President Obama has been extremely short-sighted in this sense, and if he fails, it will be a tragic blow for peaceniks and multilateralists the world over, and a manna from heaven for the Republican party.”

Munir Butt (1940–2015) British diplomat

Source: Foreign Affairs. 2009

World , Disappointment , Intelligence , Understanding

“This hand, to tyrants ever sworn the foe,
For Freedom only deals the deadly blow;
Then sheathes in calm repose the vengeful blade,
For gentle peace in Freedom’s hallowed shade.”

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)

Written in an Album (1842)l compare: "Manus haec inimica tyrannis / Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem", Algernon Sidney, From the Life and Memoirs of Algernon Sidney.

Peace , Freedom

“I, who am dead, have ways of knowing
Of the crop of death that the quick are sowing.
I, who was Pompey, cry it aloud
From the dark of death, from the wind blowing.

I, who was Pompey, once was proud,
Now I lie in the sand without a shroud;
I cry to Caesar out of my pain,
"Caesar beware, your death is vowed."”

John Masefield (1878–1967) English poet and writer

King Cole and Other Poems (1926), " The Rider at the Gate http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1251.html"

Death , Pain , Lie , Way

“The winds were blowing from west to east, pushing Abby’s boat toward the rocks as Abby struggled with the autopilots below. If Wild Eyes reached those islands, she wouldn’t run aground, keel in the sand. She would be smashed into pieces.”

Abby Sunderland (1993) Camera Assistant, Inspirational Speaker and Sailor

Source: Unsinkable: A Young Woman's Courageous Battle on the High Seas (2011), p. 111

“Yon deep bark goes
Where Traffic blows
From lands of sun to lands of snows;—
Yon happier one,
Its course is run
From lands of snow to lands of sun.”

Thomas Buchanan Read (1822–1872) American artist

Drifting.

Sun

“Wherever waves can roll, and winds can blow.”

Charles Churchill (satirist) (1731–1764) British poet

The Farewell (1764), line 38; comparable with: "Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam", Lord Byron, The Corsair, canto i. stanza 1

“You don’t have to always fight. Be a girl. Show him that he’s a man, and it’s a good thing energetically to do. … [Their insecurity] depends on how many blow jobs you give them.”

Gwyneth Paltrow (1972) American actress, singer, and food writer

In an interview with Howard Stern. http://www.thesuperficial.com/gwyneth-paltrow-brad-pitt-jay-z-beyonce-ben-affleck-blowjobs-howard-stern-interview-01-2015 (January 15, 2015)

Girl , Fight , Dependency

“The diseases which are hard to cure in neighborhoods… are catarrh, hoarseness, coughs, pleurisy, consumption, spitting of blood, and all others that are cured not by lowering the system but by building it up. They are hard to cure, first, because they are originally due to chills; secondly, because the patient's system being already exhausted by disease, the air there, which is in constant agitation owing to winds and therefore deteriorated, takes all the sap of life out of their diseased bodies and leaves them more meager every day. On the other hand, a mild, thick air, without drafts and not constantly blowing back and forth, builds up their frames by its unwavering steadiness, and so strengthens and restores people who are afflicted with these diseases.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book I, Chapter VI, Sec. 3

Life , People , Disease , Affliction

“We have dealt a serious blow to Al Qaeda in recent years, but they're not defeated, and they'll strike us again, if they can. Iran remains the chief state sponsor of terrorism and is on the path to acquiring nuclear weapons.”

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

2000s, 2008, (2008)

“Forced in January 1973 by American pressure to to accept a cease-fire agreement that left well over 100,000 North Vietnamese troops inside South Vietnam and free access for tens of thousands more, South Vietnamese leaders surely had reason to believe that if their enemy seriously violated the agreement, the United States would interfere. Yet that was not to be. In the face of that grave psychological blow for the South Vietnamese, it required no military genius to assure South Vietnam's eventual military defeat.”

William Westmoreland book A Soldier Reports

Source: A Soldier Reports (1976), p. 405-406.

“The Saudis are brought [to Iraq] in order to carry out bombings. Either they strap on explosives belts and blow up in public places, or else they drive a car, crash into some place, and blow it up.”

Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud (1933–2012) Saudi Arabian former crown prince

Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abd Al-Aziz to Saudi Preachers: Saudis Who Go to Iraq Are Used for Suicide Bombings http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/1496.htm, video clip http://switch5.castup.net/frames/20041020_MemriTV_Popup/video_480x360.asp?ai=214&ar=1996wmv&ak=null, June 2007

Cars

“There is a scale in the meaning of the word socialist. In France it means about the same thing as a communist, when one uses plain language. When one uses the language of Monsieur Drumont, it means a Jew. In England a socialist is equal to a French conservative republican. In America it means a thief. In Germany it means an ingenious individual of restricted financial resources, who generally fails to blow up some important personage with wet dynamite. In Italy a socialist is an anarchist pure and simple, who wishes to destroy everything existing for the sake of dividing a wealth which does not exist at all. It also means a young man who orders a glass of water and a toothpick at a cafe, and is able to talk politics for a considerable time on this slender nourishment.”

Francis Marion Crawford (1854–1909) Novelist, short story writer, essayist (1854-1909)

Marzio's Crucifix (1887)

Water , Time , Wealth

“Into this Universe, and Why not knowing
Nor Whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing;
And out of it, as Wind along the Waste,
I know not Whither, willy-nilly blowing.”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)

Universe , Water

“Living on silence,
Living by the book.
You get it to a science
Of living on one good look.
So put out all the fires
And blow away the smoke.
I'm getting pretty tired
Of living on hope.”

Aimee Mann (1960) American indie rock singer-songwriter (born 1960)

"What About Love"
Song lyrics, Welcome Home (1986)

Books , Hope , Silence , Science

“I have grown weary of the winds of heaven.
I will not be a reed to hold the sound
Of whatsoever breath the gods may blow,
Turning my torment into music for them.
They gave me life; the gift was bountiful,
I lived with the swift singing strength of fire,
Seeking for beauty as a flame for fuel —
Beauty in all things and in every hour.
The gods have given life — I gave them song;
The debt is paid and now I turn to go.”

Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) American writer and poet

"Sappho (Rivers to the Sea)"
Rivers to the Sea (1915)

Life , God , Beauty , Music

“We may lose the vote today, and the result may deal this party a grave blow. It may not be possible to prevent it, but there are some of us, I think many of us, who will not accept that this blow need be mortal: who will not believe that such an end is inevitable. There are some of us who will fight, and fight, and fight again, to save the party we love. We will fight, and fight, and fight again, to bring back sanity and honesty and dignity, so that our party – with its great past – may retain its glory and its greatness.”

Hugh Gaitskell (1906–1963) British politician

Speech at the Labour Party conference (5 October 1960) in opposition to a motion endorsing unilateral nuclear disarmament.

Love , Thinking , Past , Fight

“Whenever a man and a woman come to words or blows, fools are quick to attribute it to the differences between the sexes. The sexes differ much less than they wish to believe, and such differences as are real tend less to promote strife than to prevent it.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

Volume 2, Ch. 23
Fiction, The Book of the Short Sun (1999–2001)

Fools , Sex

“My ears open nasals! beware! such joy is yours o my people to sense see ear scent drink everything everything everything taratatatatata the machineguns shouting twisting under a thousand bites slaps traaktraak cudgellings whippings pic pac POUMTOUMB juggling clowns’ jump in full sky height 200 meters it's the gunshooting Downwards guffaws of swamps laughter buffalos chariots stings prancing of horses ammunition-wagons flue flac zang chaak chaak rearings pirouettes patatraak bespatterings manesneighings i i i i i i i medley tinklings three bulgarian batallions on the move crook- craak (double bar slowly) Choumi Maritza o Karvavena officers' shouts copper plates knocking against each other pam ici (vite) pac over there BOUM-pam-pam-pam here there there farther all around very high look-out goddamnit on the head chaak marvelous! flames flames flames flames flames flames flames crawl from forts over there Choukri Pacha telephone orders to 27 forts in turkish German hello Ibrahim! Rudolf hello! hello! actors roles blowing-echoes odor-hay-mud-manure I can't feel my frozen feet stale odor rotting gongs flutes clarinets pipes everywhere up down birds twitter beatitude shade greenness cipcip ip-zzip herds pastures dong-dong-dong-ding-bééé Orchestra”

Luigi Russolo (1885–1947) Electronic music pioneer and Futurist painter

Source: 1910's, The Art of Noise', 1913, p. 8

People , Feeling , Drink , Bird

“.. the wind of 'art brut' blows on writing as well as on other avenues of artistic creation.”

Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985) sculptor from France

Quote in the text of Jean Dubuffet, 'Project pour un petit texte liminaire introduisant les publications de 'L'art brut dans l'écrire', 1969 (1969), published in Le Langage de la rupture', Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1978
1960-70's

Art

“Misunderstood ain’t got to be explained but you don’t understand me so let me explain, stood in the heat the flame the snow, please slow down hurricane, the wind blows my dreads swang, he had hair like wool like Wayne uhh, droppin ashes in da bible I shake them out and they fall on da rifle, scary hale Mary no tale fairy all really very extraordinary.”

Lil Wayne (1982) American rapper, singer, record executive and businessman

Misunderstood/Don't Get It
Official Mix tapes, The Leak (2007)

Understanding

“As for the piano, I was left to my own devices practically from the age of twelve. As is frequently the case in teachers' families, our parents were so busy with their pupils (literally from morning until late at night) that they hardly had any time for their own children. And that, in spite of the fact that with the favourable prejudice common to all parents, they had a very high opinion of my gifts. (I myself had a much more sober attitude. I was always aware of a great many faults although at times I felt that I had in me something "not quite usual".) But I won't speak of this. As a pianist, I am known. My good and bad points are known and nobody can be interested in my "prehistoric period". I will only say that because of this early "independence" I did a lot of silly things which I could have easily avoided if I had been under the vigilant eye of an experienced and intelligent teacher for another three or four years. I lacked what is known as a "school". I lacked discipline. But it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good; my enforced independence compelled me, though sometimes by very devious ways, to achieve a great deal on my own and even my failures and errors subsequently proved more than once to be useful and educational, and in an occupation such as learning to master an art, where if not all, then almost all depends on individuality, the only sound foundation will always be the knowledge gained as the result of personal effort and personal experience.”

Heinrich Neuhaus (1888–1964) Soviet musician

The Art of Piano Playing (1958), Ch. 1. The Artistic Image of a Musical Composition

Children , Age , Education , School

“A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there? So small as to be negligible, even if a tornado were to blow through enough junkyards to fill the whole Universe.”

Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) British astronomer

Arguing that living organisms could not have arisen by chance alone.
The Intelligent Universe (1983), p. 19

Universe , Chance , Flying

“Can you imagine me coming to this country to blow up a post office? I told them, "My bombs are my books."”

Carlos Fuentes (1928–2012) Mexican writer

About being denied a visa to the United States in the early 1960s after he praised the Cuban Revolution; as quoted by Anne-Marie O'Connor, "Novelist Carlos Fuentes confronts mortality and his country's future", http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-fuentes-profile-2006,0,4464743.story Los Angeles Times, 26 April 2006

Books , Imagination , Country

“The blossoms of the apricot
blow from the east to the west,
And I have tried to keep them from falling.”

Ezra Pound The Cantos

Canto XIII
The Cantos

“The bulls snorted and spurted from their mouths devouring flames, like a perforated crucible when the leather bellows of the smith, sometimes ceasing, sometimes blowing hard, have made a blaze and the fire leaps up from below with a terrific roar. The deadly heat assailed [Jason] on all sides with the force of lightning. But he was protected by Medea's magic.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book III. Jason and Medea, Lines 1299–1305

“I've waited for a thousand years / For you to come and blow me out my mind
The world around us makes me feel so small
If you can't hear me call / Then I can't say, Lyla / Heaven help you catch me if I fall”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

Lyla
Don't Believe the Truth (2005)

World , Feeling , Waiting , Help

“He grunted with satisfaction. The feel of the hilt cheered him and gave him a glow of confidence. Whatever webs of conspiracy were drawn about him, whatever trickery and treachery ensnared him, this knife was real. The great muscles of his right arm swelled in anticipation of murderous blows.”

Robert E. Howard book The Hour of the Dragon

The Hour of the Dragon (1935-1936)

Feeling , Confidence

“You have no lease of your lives, and death is not bound to give you warning before it gives you that deadly blow that will send you to everlasting misery or everlasting felicity.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

The Hypocrite Detected, Anatomized

Death

“Is ill-language a justification for blows?”

John Pratt (1657–1725) English judge and politician

Case of Hugh Reason and another (1722), 16 How. St. Tr. 44; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 147.

“I'll pick up your hand and slowly blow your little mind
'Cause I made my mind up you're going to be mine.”

Donovan (1946) Scottish singer, songwriter and guitarist

"Sunshine Superman"
Sunshine Superman (1966)

“A great storm destroys much that is precious, but it may also clear the air and blow down trees which might have been obscuring the view and making our life stuffy, and reveal in our estate possibilities of development that we had not thought of.”

John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician

"A University's Bequest to Youth" (10 October 1936)
Canadian Occasions (1940)

Life , Tree

“And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don’t know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.”

Robert W. Service (1874–1958) Canadian poet

The Shooting of Dan McGrew http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/biography/service_r_w/dan_mcgrew.html (1907), The Cremation of Sam McGee http://www.wordinfo.info/words/index/info/view_unit/2640/?letter=C&spage=26

“Humanity will have to extricate itself from the bags created by false moralists, according to whom we taste happiness and then pass judgment on it, as if it were a piece of fruit. But I maintain that even for a piece of fruit we can do something to help it taste good. This is even truer of marriage and every other human relationship; these things are not meant to be tasted or passively accepted; they must be made. A relationship is not like a bit of shade where one is comfortable or uncomfortable depending on the weather and the way the wind is blowing. On the contrary, it is a place of miracles, where the magician makes the rain and the good weather.”

Alain (1868–1951) French philosopher

On Private Life
Alain On Happiness (1928)

Marriage , Way , Help , Dependency

“In France, a chemist named Pilatre de Rozier tested the flammability of hydrogen by gulping a mouthful and blowing across an open flame, proving at a stroke that hydrogen is indeed explosively combustible and that eyebrows are not necessarily a permanent feature of one's face.”

Bill Bryson book A Short History of Nearly Everything

Page 53
A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003)

“As far as culture and politics are concerned, the important theme is long-attention-span vs. short-attention-span thinking. I'm sure that your readers can think of any number of ways in which having a longer attention span can be useful. But I'll name one. Bankers with long attention spans don't lend money to people who can't pay it back. If we had more bankers who adopted a long-term view of their responsibilities, we might not be in the middle of a financial crisis that is blowing away 150-year-old investment banks.”

Neal Stephenson (1959) American science fiction writer

In response to whether Anathem "reflects today's culture or politics," from an interview published Sept. 22, 2008 by MIT News http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/stephenson-qa-0922.html

Money , People , Way , Thinking

“This [covariance] is something that is not in the habit of thinking of most amateur investors. They look at their investments one at a time, and they don't, you always have to go back and say, what's the covariance? That's what really matters for what happen to your portfolio. Because when you invest in a lot of companies that are all the same, you're asking for trouble, because the whole thing is going to either blow up or succeed. And you can't live like that. You have to be looking for low covariance.”

Robert J. Shiller (1946) American economist

Robert Shiller. Chalk Talk - Covariance, Financial Markets (Coursera) https://www.coursera.org/learn/financial-markets-global/lecture/41Ujc/chalk-talk-covariance.

Thinking , Time

“This is love, moving to where the money is, and all the while a volcano or an ex-girlfriend might blow the whole thing to hell, as the Americans say. As everybody says.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Adverbs (2006), Arguably

Love , Money , Hell

“I am the heartbreak over fallen things,
The sudden gentleness that stays the blow,
And I am in the kiss that foemen give
Pausing in battle, and in the tears that fall
Over the vanquished foe, and in the highest;
Among the Danaan gods, I am the last
Council of mercy in their hearts where they
Mete justice from a thousand starry thrones.”

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

By Still Waters (1906)

God , Justice , Kiss , Tear

“He [Bhagwan Dass] wasn't the least bit interested in all of the extraordinary dramas that I had collected … He was the first person I couldn't seduce into being interested in all this. He just didn't care.
And yet, I never felt so profound an intimacy with another being. It was as if he were inside of my heart. And what started to blow my mind was that everywhere we went, he was at home.”

Ram Dass book Be Here Now

Be Here Now (1971)

Home , Heart , Personality

“Perhaps the most dangerous element that was picked out of the Muslim tradition and changed and transformed in the hands of these young men who perpetrated Sept. 11 is this idea of committing suicide. They call it martyrdom, of course. Suicide is firmly rejected in Islam as an act of worship. In the tradition, generally, to die in battle for a larger purpose -- that is, for the sake of the community at large -- is a noble thing to do. Self-sacrifice yourself as you defend the community -- that is a traditional thing, and that has a traditional meaning of "jihad." But what is non-traditional, what is new is this idea that jihad is almost like an act of private worship. You become closer to God by blowing yourself up in such a way. You, privately, irrespective of what effect it has on everyone else…. For these young men, that is the new idea of jihad. This idea of jihad allows you to lose all the old distinctions between combatants and non-combatants, between just and unjust wars, between the rules of engagement of different types. All of that is gone, because now the act of martyrdom is an act of worship… in and of itself. It's like going on the pilgrimage. It's like paying your alms, which every Muslim has to do. It's like praying in the direction of Mecca, and so on and so forth. It is an individual act of worship. That's terrifying, and that's new. That's an entirely new idea, which these young men have taken out, developed.”

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

"Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/faith/interviews/makiya.html, PBS Frontline (2002)

Men , God , War , Way

“When the Father would give men the light of the knowledge of His glory, how does He proceed? To what does He turn men's gaze? Not to His mighty works; not to creative or providential wonders; not to geological or astronomical facts; not to the data on which Paley and Bell and other admirable writers build up their argument from design; not to the still greater wonder of mind, but to " the face of Jesus Christ," that face that was more marred than any man's; that endured the ruffian blows; down which the blood drops trickled; that looked down on a mocking crowd from an ignominious cross.”

John Hall (1829–1898) Presbyterian pastor from Northern Ireland in New York, died 1898

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 70.

Men , Knowledge , Light , Christ

“Death loves a shining mark, a signal blow.”

Edward Young Night-Thoughts

Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night V, Line 1011.

Love , Death

“Once a fight has started, if you get involved in thinking about what to do, you will be cut down by your opponent with the very next blow.”

Yagyū Munenori (1571–1646) samurai and daimyo of the early Edo period

A Hereditary Book on the Art of War (1632)

Thinking , Fight

“We are sleeping on a volcano… A wind of revolution blows, the storm is on the horizon.”

Alexis De Tocqueville (1805–1859) French political thinker and historian

Original text: Nous dormons sur un volcan… Ne voyez-vous pas que la terre commence à trembler. Le vent de la révolte souffle, la tempête est à l’horizon.
Speaking in the Chamber of Deputies just prior to to outbreak of revolution in Europe (1848).
1840s

Sleep

“You can always tell an old battlefield where many men have lost their lives. The next spring the grass comes up greener and more luxuriant than on the surrounding countryside; the poppies are redder, the corn-flowers more blue. They grow over the field and down the sides of the shell holes and lean, almost touching, across the abandoned trenches in a mass of color that ripples all day in the direction that the wind blows. They take the pits and scars out of the torn land and make it a sweet, sloping surface again. Take a wood, now, or a ravine: In a year's time you could never guess the things which had taken place there.”

William March book Company K

Company K (1933)

Men , Color , Spring , Flowers

“It was so much like having sex with the wind. It complicated things and blew away and softly separated and slid back around him. The wire was about pain too: it would always be there, jutting into his feet, the weight of the bar, the dryness of the throat, the throb of his arms, but the joy was losing the pain so that it no longer mattered. So too with his breathing. He wanted his breath to enter the wire so that he was nothing. This sense of losing himself. Every nerve. Every cuticle. He hit it on the towers. The logic became unfixed. It was the point where there was no time. The wind was blowing and his body could have experienced it years in advance.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Let the Great World Spin (2009), The Ringing Grooves of Change

Pain , Sex , Sense , Time

“Twas on a lofty vase's side,
Where China's gayest art had dyed
The azure flowers, that blow;
Demurest of the tabby kind,
The pensive Selima reclined,
Gazed on the lake below.”

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) English poet, historian

St. 1
On the Death of a Favourite Cat http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?textodfc (1747)

Art , Flowers

“Assigning human personalities to animals is the chief trait of the pet owner—the doting dog-lover with his baby talk, the smug stay-at-home with a fat lump of fur on her lap who says, "Me, I'm a cat person," and the granny who puts her nose against the tin cage and makes kissing noises at her parakeet. Their affection is often tinged with a sense of superiority. Deer and duck hunters never talk this way about their prey, though big game hunters— Hemingway is the classic example — often sentimentalize the creatures they blow to bits and then lovingly stuff to hang on the wall.”

Paul Theroux (1941) American travel writer and novelist

Living With Geese.

Dogs , Way , Home , Game

“When asked what he would take to let a man give him a blow on the head, he said, "A helmet."”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Diogenes, 6.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 6: The Cynics

“Since the passing of Victoria the Great there had been an accumulating uneasiness in the national life. It was as if some compact and dignified paper-weight had been lifted from people's ideas, and as if at once they had begun to blow about anyhow.”

H. G. Wells book The Soul of a Bishop

The Soul of a Bishop (1917)

Life , People , Idea

“The end of the negotiations is a blow to the cause of the wider European unity for which we have been striving. We are a part of Europe, by geography, history, culture, tradition and civilization … There have been times in the history of Europe when it has been only too plain how European we are; and there have been many millions of people who have been grateful for it. I say to my colleagues: they should have no fear. We in Britain are not going to turn out backs on the mainland of Europe or the countries of the Community.”

Edward Heath (1916–2005) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1970–1974)

Speech at European conference after France vetoed the British application to join the EEC (28 January 1963), quoted in Edward Heath, The Course of My Life (Hodder and Stoughton, 1998), p. 235.
Lord Privy Seal

People , Fear , History , Communication

“Men build scales, but the gods blow upon the lighter pan.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

Volume 1: Nightside the Long Sun (1993), Ch. 1
Fiction, The Book of the Long Sun (1993–1996)

Men , God

“I was total trailer trash, babe. I can’t remember any real tornadoes, although there were a couple of times when we had to tie our bicycles to trees to keep them from blowing away.”

Cameron Richardson (1979) American actress

Maxim Magazine

Tree , Time

“In the face of real danger Elak forgot the gods and drew his rapier. Prayers, he had found, would not halt a dagger's blow or a strangler's hands.”

Henry Kuttner (1915–1958) American author

Short fiction, The Spawn Of Dagon (1938)

God

“Give me the avowed, the erect, the manly foe,
Bold I can meet,—perhaps may turn his blow!
But of all plagues, good Heaven, thy wrath can send,
Save, save, oh save me from the candid friend!”

George Canning (1770–1827) British statesman and politician

New Morality. Compare: "Defend me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies", attributed to Maréchal Villars, when taking leave of Louis XIV.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“When I was fourteen or fifteen […] the Yom Kippur service ended in an unforgettable way, for Schechter, who always put great effort into the blowing of the shofar—he would go red in the face with exertion—produced a long, seemingly endless note of unearthly beauty, and then dropped dead before us on the bema, the raised platform where he would sing. I had the feeling that God had killed Schechter, sent a thunderbolt, stricken him. The shock of this for everyone was tempered by the reflection that if there was ever a moment in which a soul was pure, forgiven, relieved of all sin, it was at this moment, when the shofar was blown in conclusion of the fast […].”

Oliver Sacks book Uncle Tungsten

Source: Uncle Tungsten (2001), p. 177

God , Beauty , Way , Feeling

“Some guys they just give up living,
And start dying little by little, piece by piece.
Some guys come home from work and wash up
And go racin' in the street.Tonight, tonight the strip's just right.
I wanna blow 'em all out of their seats.
Calling out around the world, we're going racin' in the street.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Racing in the Street"
Song lyrics, Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978)

World , Guy , Home

“What is the fear of the "gay agenda" that has so upset people? Do people think that if gay people are given a place at the table, they'll be so convincing we'll all end up blowing them? What is the issue? "You know, I'm straight, but you've made such a convincing argument…"”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

Stand-up performance at RIT (2005)

People , Fear , Thinking

“.. And his painting is like the wind, like a breeze blowing the paint across the canvas, so unreal, so loose and far away from the worldly life.”

Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet

Life , Painting

“Perhaps you have heard that Baroness Werefkin died in February. It was a great blow to me. Yes, indeed, sooner or later we have to pay for our mistakes once made. And often so severely.”

Alexej von Jawlensky (1864–1941) Russian painter

Quote of Jawlensky's letter, 12 June, 1938 to P. Willibrord Verkade, as cited in Leben und Werk, 1860- 1938, Bernd Fäthke, Prestel Verlag, 1980, ISBN 9783791308869, as cited on http://www.fembio.org/english/biography.php/woman/biography/marianne-werefkin/#literatur on the website Fembio, by Luise F. Pusch - transl. Joey Horsley, p. 19
1936 - 1941

“Often we were joined by Maurice Princet. Although very young, he held an important post in an insurance company which he owed to his knowledge of mathematics. But outside his profession it was as an artist that he thought of mathematics, as a specialist in aesthetics that he evoked continuities in n dimensions. He liked to interest painters in the new visions of space that had been opened up by Victor Schlegel and several others. He succeeded. After having heard him by chance, Henri Matisse was caught reading an essay on hyperspace. Oh! it was only a potboiler [un ouvrage de vulgarisation]! but at least that shows that for the great 'fauve' the days of the painter who knows nothing, who runs towards a pretty subject with his beard blowing in the wind, was passed.”

Jean Metzinger (1883–1956) French painter

Cubism was born

Mathematics , Knowledge , Chance , Reading

“The wind in which the dead leaves blow.
Here I inhale profounder strength
And as I am, I speak and move
And things are as I think they are
And say they are on the blue guitar.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

The Man With the Blue Guitar (1937)

Thinking , Dead

“Most of the people who get sent to die in wars are young men who've got a lot of energy and would probably rather, in a better world, be putting that energy into copulation rather than going over there and blowing some other young man's guts out.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

"The Craft" - interview with Daniel Whiston, Engine Comics (January 2005)

Men , War , People , World

“Billy Bennett – I speak of the artist – was forthright, bawdy, and wholesome…[His] grossness had that gusto about it which is like a high wind blowing over a noisome place.”

Billy Bennett (1887–1942) British comedian

James Agate Immoment Toys (New York, [1945] 1969) p. 225.
Criticism

“She (Monica Lewinsky) is the kinda girl who'll blow a guy and call you and tell you all about it.”

Kathy Griffin (1960) American actress and comedian

Hot Cup Of Talk (1998)

Guy , Girl

“It was as if all the meritocratic fantasies of every 1960s educationalist had come true and all Harold Wilson’s children had been let in at the gate … Small, vaguely deformed undergraduates would scuttle across the quad as if carrying mobile homes on their backs. Replete with acne and anoraks, they would peer up through thick pebble-glasses, pausing only to blow their noses.”

Toby Young (1963) British journalist

The Oxford Myth (1988)
Source: Toby Young quotes on breasts, eugenics and working-class people, Belam, Martin, 2018-01-03, The Guardian, 2018-01-03, en-GB, 0261-3077 http://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/jan/03/toby-young-quotes-on-breasts-eugenics-and-working-class-people,

Children , Home

“Mr. Duff Cooper, landing at New York, cools his mind by blowing off about a forthcoming revolt of the German Army and a return to monarchy in Germany, a Holy Roman Empire, I suppose, leading that new Crusade of which the Pope has been talking about recent against anti-God Russia. But quite a lot of radical people in the world, in spite of the folly, stupidity and brutality of the Stalin–Molotov attack on Finland, are averse from this idea of a religious war against Socialism and Atheism.”

H. G. Wells (1866–1946) English writer

The Rights of Man, or what are we fighting for? (1940)

God , War , People , Stupidity

“The Rumsfeld-Cheney axis has self-destructed right in front of our eyes, along with the once-proud Perle-Wolfowitz bund that is turning to wax. They somehow managed to blow it all, like a gang of kids on a looting spree, between January and July, or even less. It is genuinely incredible. The U. S. Treasury is empty, we are losing that stupid, fraudulent chickencrap War in Iraq, and every country in the world except a handful of Corrupt Brits despises us. We are losers, and that is the one unforgiveable sin in America.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

2000s, Welcome to the Big Darkness (2003)

War , Stupidity , World , Country

“I am just thinking how unfair it is of you to quote their own words. It is a low blow to use what ExxonMobil has actually said against them. I mean, that is kind of a cheap shot, don't you think?”

Joe Barton (1949) United States congressional representative from Texas

Committee on Energy of Commerce Hearing: Gasoline: Supply, Price, and Specifications https://house.resource.org/109/org.c-span.192444-1.pdf, May 10, 2006
to Representative Anna Eshoo, on her citing ExxonMobil officials saying they don't want to build any new refineries in North America

Quotes , Thinking

“I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of need to blow some steam off?”

Rush Limbaugh (1951) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, author, and television personality

Stated about Abu Ghraib (May 4, 2004), quoted in — [Stanford, David, Doonesbury.com's The War in Quotes, Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2008, 77, 16900868M, 0740772317, 9780740772313, 2008024621]

People , Time

“We are so bound together that no man can labor for himself alone. Each blow he strikes in his own behalf helps to mold the Universe.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

"On Getting on in the World".
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Universe , Help

“Tara: Sweetie, you wouldn't blow off a class if your head was on fire.”

Amber Benson (1977) actress from the United States

Forever [5.17]
Willow & Tara (2000-2002)

“I should dearly love that the world should be ever so little better for my presence. Even on this small stage we have our two sides, and something might be done by throwing all one's weight on the scale of breadth, tolerance, charity, temperance, peace, and kindliness to man and beast. We can't all strike very big blows, and even the little ones count for something.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Stark Munro Letters

The Stark Munro Letters (1894)

Love , World , Peace

“On the Coast of Coromandel
Where the early pumpkins blow,
In the middle of the woods
Lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò.
Two old chairs, and half a candle,—
One old jug without a handle,—
These were all his worldly goods.”

Edward Lear (1812–1888) British artist, illustrator, author and poet

St. 1.
The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bongy-Bò http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/ll/ybb.html (1877)

“And in the ghostly palm-trees the sleepy tune
Of the quiet voice calling me, the long low croon
Of the steady Trade Winds blowing.”

John Masefield (1878–1967) English poet and writer

Salt-Water Ballads (1902), "Trade Winds"

Tree

“The czech skull is impervious to reason, but it is scuceptible to blows.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

“Later came 'the hour of solitude'. Inside my tiny bedroom-studio, I began my forty days in the desert; I do not know if they are over yet. With a desperate, feverish rage I took formal experimentation to maniacal levels. Each canvas was a battlefield where wounds multiplied ad infinitum. And then came the surprise. All that frenetic movement, all that gesticulation, all that unending dynamism, by dint of the scratches, blows, scars, divisions and subdivisions…. suddenly took a qualitative leap. My eye no longer perceived differences. Everything congealed in a uniform mass. What had been ardent ebullition transformed itself into static silence. It was like a great lesson in humility for the pride of my unbridled quest.”

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) Catalan painter, sculptor and art theorist

1945 - 1970, A Report on the Wall' 1970

Solitude , Silence , Rage

“The devils of past religions have always, at least in part, had animal characteristics, evidence of man's constant need to deny that he too is an animal, for to do so would serve a mighty blow to his impoverished ego.”

Anton LaVey book The Satanic Bible

The Satanic Bible (1969)

Religion , Past , Animals , Parting

“Muslims still take their religion too seriously, whereas we have the good sense to blow it off. Catholics don’t follow the Pope. In overwhelming numbers they divorce, they have pre-marital sex, they masturbate. And unlike the Koran, no one here seriously considers following the Bible literally. Guys don't look over their fence on Sunday morning and see a neighbor mowing the lawn and think, "Working on Sunday? I really should kill him."… But, before I conclude, it should in fairness be noted that, in speaking of Muslims, we realize that of course the vast majority are law-abiding, loving people who just want to be left alone to subjugate their women in peace.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

"The South Park Mohammad controversy" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUEaMA4gRIk
Real Time with Bill Maher

Love , Women , People , Peace

“My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns;
Love is the fire and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals;
The metal in this furnace wrought are men's defiled souls.”

Robert Southwell (1561–1595) English Jesuit

"The Burning Babe", line 9; pp. 98-9.

Love , Men , Justice , Soul

“I cannot analyse my heart, though it then stood still within me. But the thing that swayed me to my purpose was not altogether the thought that Captain Claret was about to degrade me, and that I had taken an oath with my soul that he should not. No, I felt my man's manhood so bottomless within me, that no word, no blow, no scourge of Captain Claret could cut me deep enough for that. I but swung to an instinct in me — the instinct diffused through all animated nature, the same that prompts even a worm to turn under the heel. Locking souls-with him, I meant to drag Captain Claret from this earthly tribunal of his to that of Jehovah and let Him decide between us. No other way could I escape the scourge.”

Herman Melville book White-Jacket

Source: White-Jacket (1850), Ch. 67

Way , Soul , Nature , Heart

“The Indian who was laid under a curse, that the wind should not blow on him, nor water flow to him, nor fire burn him, is a type of us all. The dearest events are summer-rain, and we the Para coats that shed every drop. Nothing is left us now but death. We look to that with a grim satisfaction, saying, there at least is reality that will not dodge us.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson book Experience

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Experience

Death , Reality , Water , Summer

“The beast is always doomed. It’s better to face the fact honestly and not pretty it up with a lot of lies about blowing off steam and reducing tensions and getting rid of this and that, acting out anxieties, moment of truth. Piddle. There’s an ancient word, I don’t know what language it is. Bazazz. All those arguments are a lot of bazazz. Unless you’re wiping out vermin or hunting for meat to eat, the man who kills animals does so because he likes to kill. And people who like to watch do so because they like to see things being killed.”

Avram Davidson (1923–1993) novelist

Source: Rogue Dragon (1965), Chapter XI (p. 137)

People , Truth , Animals

“There are two problems with Apple Pay — and both are problematic. The first is that not everyone has an [i]OS device, or one that supports it. And not everyone ever will, despite the wet dreams of the entire Dallas Cowboys team blowing Tim Cook nightly that dance in his head.”

Karl Denninger American businessman

Apple Pay: No, Not Everyone Wants It http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=229553 in The Market Ticker (1 November 2014)

Dreams , Support , Problem , Dance

“The Trail of Tears was where the Cherokee Indians were driven out of the Chattanooga area all the way to Oklahoma. … Evolution is responsible for what happened to the Indians. How any Indian can believe in evolution just blows my mind. … [The] evolution theory is what destroyed them.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution (1996)

Way , Tear

“I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind blows soft through the springing grass,
And the river floats like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—
I know what the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting—
I know why he beats his wing!

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,
But a plea that upward to Heaven he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings!”

Paul Laurence Dunbar Sympathy

Sympathy, in the 1913 collection of his work, The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar; the poem inspired the title of Maya Angelou's book, Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Pain , Feeling , Spring , Bird

“Some people do indeed say that Eratosthenes could not have inferred the true measure of the earth. Whether true or untrue, it cannot affect the truth of what I have written on the fixing of the quarters from which the different winds blow.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book I, Chapter VI, Sec. 11

People , Truth

“And when that foghorn blows,
I will be coming home,
When that foghorn blows,
I wanna hear it, I don't have to fear it,
And I wanna rock your gypsy soul,
Just like way back in the days of old,
And magnificently we will fold
Into the mystic.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Into the Mystic
Song lyrics, Moondance (1970)

Fear , Way , Home , Soul

“J. Lo's new song 'Jenny From the Block', all about Lopez' roots. About how she's still a neighborhood gal at heart. But folks from that street in New York, the Bronx section, sound more likely to give her a curb job than a blow job. Or, uh. A block party. […] Sorry about that slip-up there. I have no idea how that happened, but it won't happen again. And that's your news and the G Block as Fox reports this Monday, November the 4th, 2002.”

Shepard Smith (1964) television news anchor from the United States

"The G Block" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra7MTconlEE (November 4, 2002), Fox Report, Fox News. As quoted in "Trading places" https://web.archive.org/web/20140820072850/http://www.salon.com/2002/11/12/nptues_108/ (November 12, 2002), by Amy Reiter, Salon, Salon Media Group, Inc.
2000s

Idea , Heart

“[carving a sculpture in wood] is such a sensual pleasure when blow by blow the figure grows more and more from the trunk.”

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

in a letter to de:Gustav Schiefler from Dresden, 27 June, 1911; as quoted in German Expressionist Sculpture, ed. Stephanie Barron, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1983, p. 114
1905 - 1915

Pleasure

“Among the spiritual forces secretly working in the camp of Germany's enemies and their allies in this war, as in the last, stands Freemasonry, the danger of whose activities has been repeatedly stressed by the Fuehrer in his speeches. The present brochure, now made available to the German and European peoples in a 3rd edition, is intended to shed light on this enemy working in the shadows. Though an end has been put to the activities of Masonic organizations in most European countries, particular attention must still be paid to Freemasonry, and most particularly to its membership, as the implements of the political will of a supra-governmental power. The events of the summer of 1943 in Italy demonstrate once again the latent danger always represented by individual Freemasons, even after the destruction of their Masonic organizations. Although Freemasonry was prohibited in Italy as early as 1925, it has retained significant political influence in Italy through its membership, and has continued to exert that influence in secrecy. Freemasons thus stood in the first ranks of the Italian traitors who believed themselves capable of dealing Fascism a death blow at a critical juncture, shamelessly betraying the Italian nation. The intended object of the 3rd printing of this brochure is to provide a clearer knowledge of the danger of Masonic corruption, and to keep the will to self-defence alive.”

Ernst Kaltenbrunner (1903–1946) Austrian-born senior official of Nazi Germany executed for war crimes

Foreword in "Freemasonry: Ideology, Organization, and Policy," first published in 1944.

Death , War , People , Knowledge

“I argued that the human race should have known it was in for trouble, at least we in the United States should have, given how insane our way of life had become. Minor quit blowing into his harmonica long enough to say that John D. Rockefeller and the Bush family had made a deal with the Devil going back all the way to the 1900s.”

James Howard Kunstler book World Made By Hand

Source: World Made By Hand (2008), Chapter 38, p. 181

Life , Family , Way

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Quotes about blow
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