Quotes about blow
page 7

“When the morning breezes blow toward the town at sunrise, if they bring with them mists from marshes and, mingled with the mist, the poisonous breath of the creatures of the marshes to be wafted into the bodies of the inhabitants, they will make the site unhealthy.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book I, Chapter IV "The Site of a City" Sec. 1

“A French writer has paid the English a very well deserved compliment. He says that they never commit a useless crime. When they hire a man to assassinate an Irish patriot, when they blow a Sepoy from the mouth of a cannon, when they produce a famine in one of their dependencies, they have always an ulterior motive.”

Patrick Pearse (1879–1916) Irish revolutionary, shot by the British Army in 1916

The Murder Machine

Motivation, Dependency

“Let Saigons be bygones / Don't you blow this world in two.”

Kinky Friedman (1944) Singer, songwriter, novelist, humorist, politician

"We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to You", Sold American (1973)

World

“Two evils, monstrous either one apart,
Possessed me, and were long and loath at going:
A cry of Absence, Absence, in the heart,
And in the wood the furious winter blowing.”

John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974) American poet

"Winter Remembered", line 1.
Chills and Fevers (1924)

Winter, Evil, Heart, Cry

“The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail — its roof may shake — the wind may blow through it — the storm may enter — the rain may enter — but the King of England cannot enter — all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!”

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (1708–1778) British politician

Speech on the Excise Bill, House of Commons (March 1763), quoted in Lord Brougham, Historical Sketches of Statesmen Who Flourished in the Time of George III (1855), I, p. 42. repeated by Brennan, J., MILLER v. UNITED STATES, 357 U.S. 301 (1958) http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=357&invol=301 repeated by Alfred Denning, Baron Denning, Southam v Smout [1964] 1 QB 308 at 320.

“And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim religious light.
There let the pealing organ blow,
To the full-voiced choir below,
In service high, and anthems clear
As may, with sweetness, through mine ear
Dissolve me into ecstasies,
And bring all heaven before mine eyes.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

Source: Il Penseroso (1631), Line 159

Light

“The Hindu was taxed to the extent of half the produce of his land, and had to pay duties on all his buffaloes, goats, and other milk-cattle. The taxes were to be levied equally on rich and poor, at so much per acre, so much per animal. Any collectors or officers taking bribes were summarily dismissed and heavily punished with sticks, pincers, the rack, imprisonment and chains. The new rules were strictly carried out, so that one revenue officer would string together 20 Hindu notables and enforce payment by blows. No gold or silver, not even the betelnut, so cheering and stimulative to pleasure, was to be seen in a Hindu house, and the wives of the impoverished native officials were reduced to taking service in Muslim families. Revenue officers came to be regarded as more deadly than the plague; and to be a government clerk was disgrace worse than death, in so much that no Hindu would marry his daughter to such a man. … [These edicts] were so strictly carried out that the chaukidars and khuts and muqad-dims were not able to ride on horseback, to find weapon, to wear fine clothes, or to indulge in betel.. …. No Hindu could hold up his head. ….. Blows, confinement in the stocks, imprisonment and chains were all employed to enforce payment.”

Stanley Lane-Poole (1854–1931) British orientalist

Lane Poole : Medieval India, quoted from B.R. Ambedkar, Pakistan or The Partition of India (1946)

Death, Pleasure, Family, Animals

“With every citizen watching for an opportunity to strike a blow for freedom, the force of Communism can be halted, smothered, and then eliminated. This is our task. Without our tolerance and help the Communist empire would never have become the second strongest power in the earth. Now we have the job of dismantling it.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

Communication, Freedom, Help

“That is also how Mahmud of Ghazni could enslave 500,000 “beautiful men and women” in Waihind after he had killed 15,000 fighting men in a “splendid action” in November 1001 C. E. Utbi informs us that Jaipal, the Hindu Shahiya king of Kabul, “his children and grandchildren, his nephews, and the chief men of his tribe, and his relatives, were taken prisoners, and being strongly bound with ropes, were carried before the Sultan (Mahmud) like common evil-doers… Some had their arms forcibly tied behind their backs, some were seized by the cheek, some were driven by blows on their neck.””

Jayapala (964–1001) Ruler of the Kabal Shabi

In every campaign of Mahmud large-scale massacres preceded enslavement.
Utbi, E.D., II, 26. Minhaj, 607, n., 5. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 3

Women, Men, Children, Beauty

“In spring's own country, where the gardens blow,
You faded, tender rose! For hours now past,
Like butterflies departing, on you're cast
The worms of memories to work you woe.”

Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855) Polish national poet, dramatist, essayist, publicist, translator, professor of Slavic literature, and polit…

"The Grave of the Countess Potocki" http://daisy.htmlplanet.com/amick.htm Crimean Sonnets

Spring, Memory, Past, Country

“I knew that the moment the great governing spirit strikes the blow to divide all humanity into just two opposing factions, I would be on the side of the common people.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

As quoted in Becoming Che : Guevara's Second and Final Trip through Latin America (2005) by Carlos "Calica" Ferrer, as translated by Sarah L. Smith (2006), p. 170

People

“Man's quest for knowledge is an expanding series whose limit is infinity, but philosophy seeks to attain that limit at one blow, by a short circuit providing the certainty of complete and inalterable truth. Science meanwhile advances at its gradual pace, often slowing to a crawl, and for periods it even walks in place, but eventually it reaches the various ultimate trenches dug by philosophical thought, and, quite heedless of the fact that it is not supposed to be able to cross those final barriers to the intellect, goes right on.”

Stanisław Lem book His Master's Voice

Source: His Master's Voice (1968), Ch. 2

Truth, Knowledge, Science

“Thrice venomed is the wound when 'tis Love's hand
Inflicts the blow.”

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

(3rd August 1822) Sketches from Drawings by Mr. Dagley. Sketch the Second. Love touching the Horns of a Snail, which is shrinking from his hand.
The London Literary Gazette, 1821-1822

Love

“… to blow you Scotch beggars back to your native mountains.”

Guy Fawkes (1570–1606) English member of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605

Remark as quoted in "Gunpowder Treason and Plot" (1976) by Cyril Northcote Parkinson. It was said in response to one of the lords of the King's Privy Chamber, who had asked what Fawkes intended to do with such a large amount of gunpowder.

Mountain

“Life is a voyage. The winds of life come strong
From every point; yet each will speed thy course along,
If thou with steady hand when tempests blow
Canst keep thy course aright and never once let go.”

Theodore Chickering Williams (1855–1915) American hymnwriter

The Voyage of Life, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Life, Strong, Speed

“What though the spicy breezes
Blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle;
Though every prospect pleases,
And only man is vile.”

Reginald Heber (1783–1826) English clergyman

Missionary Hymn ("Java" in one version); reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 487.
Hymns

“Since 9/11, I’ve spent way too much of my time in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Syria and Libya, and the U. S. approach in dealing with those security problems has been to rely on the military toolbox and blow things up. We’ve seen that that’s a very expensive toolbox, and I think we’ve underinvested in the women’s empowerment toolbox and the education toolbox, which are also imperfect but are also powerful tools to bring about change.”

Nicholas D. Kristof (1959) journalist, author, columnist

[Removing the Barriers for Women Around the Globe], The New York Times (30 September 2018)

Women, Education, Way, Problem

“But it is human beings collectively, not a small number of elites working in secret, who can decide what kind of world we want to live in. Promoting the human capacity to reason and make decisions: that is the purpose of whistle-blowing, of activism, of political journalism. And that’s what is happening now, thanks to the revelations brought about by Edward Snowden.”

Glenn Greenwald book No Place to Hide

Penguin Books 2015 edition, page 253.
No Place to Hide (2014)

Secret, World, Decision

“I was wise to quit writing for the Sun back in January, 1941, for it was obvious by then that Roosevelt would horn into the war soon or late, and I knew by bitter experience in the last war that I'd be throttled at once. Since then I have thought out many likely articles, but not one of them has been printable. In these days, indeed, my very vocabulary is prohibited. I couldn't so much as mention Roosevelt or Churchill or any of the other frauds without having to face a savage official onslaught, with all blows directed below the belt. The common notion that free speech prevails in the United States always makes me laugh.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

April 1, 1945
1940s–present, The Diary of H.L. Mencken (1989)

War, Fraud, Sun

“A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained weddingveil and some in headgear of cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or saber done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses’ ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse’s whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen’s faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Source: Blood Meridian (1985), Chapter IV

Death, Men, Dreams, Color

“If you want to take drugs and drink alcohol and smoke, that's your business. But if you want me to pay for it when you get sick, that's my business. If we're going to have universal health care, why don't we have universal auto care? I mean, if you run your car into a tree, the government buys you a new car. You back into somebody in the parking lot and scratch it. Hey, that's OK. The government will fix it. You blow up your engine 'cause you forgot to change the oil. That's OK. The government will fix it. Why don't we have universal house care? See, if you've ever owned a house and rented it out to somebody else, you will understand. How many know what I'm talking about? Renters just don't look at it the same way owners do, do they? And when it's your responsibility to take care of your health, you'll take care of it.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Garden of Eden

Health, Alcohol, Cars, Way

“Later in the evening when the sun is sinking low
All day I been waiting for the whistle to blow
Sitting in a teepee built right on the tracks
Rolling them bones until the foreman comes back
Pick up you belongings boys and scatter about
We've got an off-schedule train comin' two miles out”

Chuck Berry (1926–2017) American rock-and-roll musician

"Let It Rock" (1960)
Song lyrics

Boy, Waiting, Sun, Training

“Sooth't were a pleasant life to lead,
With nothing in the world to do
But just to blow a shepherd's reed,
The silent season thro'
And just to drive a flock to feed,—
Sheep—quiet, fond and few!”

Samuel Laman Blanchard (1804–1845) British author and journalist

"Dolce far Niente", Stanza 1, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Life, World, Season

“In the case of their purely concocted grand theory of pre-Muslim persecution of Buddhism by Hindus, we see our leftist historians throw all standards of source criticism to the wind. Such is their eagerness to uphold this convenient hypothesis, and their care not to endanger what little supportive testimony there is. After all, from the millennia of pre-Muslim religious pluralism in India, there are not even five testimonies of such persecution, so these few should be scrupulously kept away from criticism…. The allegation is simply repeated, and amplified, in all secularist history-books….. Incidentally, Hsuen Tsang's statement that his patron, king Harsha, worshipped both Buddha and the Hindu goods, is always carefully kept out of secularists' invocations of Hsuen Tsang's authority, as it is one more blow to the myth of Hindu-Buddhist struggle.”

Harsha of Kashmir

Koenraad Elst 1991: Ayodhya and after: issues before Hindu society.

Books, History, Support

“You've got to kill the terrorists before the killing stops and I am for the President—chase them all over the world, if it takes ten years, blow them all away in the name of the Lord.”

Jerry Falwell (1933–2007) American evangelical pastor, televangelist, and conservative political commentator

CNN Debate http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0410/24/le.01.html with Jesse Jackson (24 October 2004)

World

“Trust to HIM. There are days in which the sun is not seen—when a lurid darkness brings a second night over the earth. It matters not. The great luminary is always there. There may be clouds before his face, but the winds will blow them away. The man or the people that trust in God will find a lake for every See-wise.”

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American author

The Lake Gun http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2328/2328-h/2328-h.htm (1851)

God, People, Sun, Night

“I want to tell you how I got to be a statistician. I was, of course, born in England and in 1939… when war broke out in September of that year, although I was close to getting a degree in Chemistry, I abandoned that and joined the Army. They put me in the Engineers (and when I see a bridge I still catch myself calculating where I would put the charges to blow it up).
Before I could actually do any of that I was moved to a highly secret experimental station in the south of England. At the time they were bombing London every night and our job was to help to find out what to do if, one night, they used poisonous gas.
Some of England's best scientists were there. There were a lot of experiments with small animals, I was a lab assistant making biochemical determinations, my boss was a professor of physiology dressed up as a colonel, and I was dressed up as a staff sergeant.
The results I was getting were very variable and I told my colonel that what we really needed was a statistician.
He said "we can't get one, what do you know about it?"”

George E. P. Box (1919–2013) British statistician

I said "Nothing, I once tried to read a book about it by someone called R. A. Fisher but I didn't understand it". He said "You've read the book so you better do it", so I said, "Yes sir"
An Accidental Statistician, 2010

War, Secret, Books, Understanding

“For he has seen a road by healing waters
Hushed into wintry slate against the sand,
And spoken there with the wind's elfin daughters,
And mingled in their dusty saraband.

He has known winds that blow from blossomy closes,
Rich with the fruity smell of summertide,
And kissed warm faery lips… Now he reposes,
While we are not quite certain he has died.”

Donald Davidson (1893–1968) American poet, essayist, critic and author

A Dead Romanticist

Kiss, Daughters

“I do not tolerate the so-called "cultic" (or ego-made, and ego-reinforcing) approach to Me. I do not tolerate the seeking ego's "cult" of the "man in the middle". I am not a self-deluded ego-man—making much of himself, and looking to include everyone-and-everything around himself for the sake of social and political power. To be the "man in the middle" is to be in a Man-made trap, an absurd mummery of "cultic" devices that enshrines and perpetuates the ego-"I" in one and all. Therefore, I do not make or tolerate the religion-making "cult" of ego-Man. I do not tolerate the inevitable abuses of religion, of Spirituality, of Truth Itself, and of My own Person (even in bodily human Form) that are made (in endless blows and mockeries) by ego-based mankind when the Great Esoteric Truth of devotion to the Adept-Realizer is not rightly understood and rightly practiced.”

Adi Da Samraj (1939–2008) American writer

http://www.adidam.org/teaching/first_word/complete_text.html

Truth, Religion, Personality

“I hate her," I said, and waited for the blow to fall. But Doctor Nolan only smiled at me as if something had pleased her very, very much and said, "I suppose you do.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch. 16

Hate, Smile, Waiting

“Like a led victim, to my death I'll go,
And, dying, bless the hand that gave the blow.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

Act II, scene 1.
The Spanish Friar (1681)

Death

“While a scrutiny of the individual record of the big-mouth secularists may be useful as long as this debate remains as nasty as it is now, it is the issue- centered criticism which will blow the secularists' authority away very soon.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

1990s, Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)

“Rev. Dr. Thomas (delivered Mackenzie's eulogy) – “stood four square, to all the winds that blow.” (Buckingham and Ross 1892, p. 643, Tennyson’s Ode to the Death of the Duke of Wellington)”

Alexander Mackenzie (1822–1892) 2nd Prime Minister of Canada

His Character

Death

“All day the heat had been barely supportable but at evening a breeze arose in the West, blowing from the heart of the setting sun and from the ocean, which lay unseen, unheard behind the scrubby foothills. It shook the rusty fringes of palm-leaf and swelled the dry sounds of summer, the frog-voices, the grating cicadas, and the ever present pulse of music from the neighbouring native huts.”

Evelyn Waugh book The Loved One

First lines
The Loved One (1948)

Music, Support, Sun, Heart

“So live, my boys, as brave men; and if fortune is adverse, front its blows with brave hearts.”
Quocirca vivite fortes, fortiaque adversis opponite pectora rebus

Horace book Satires

Book II, Satire II, Line 135-136 (trans. E. C. Wickham)
Satires (c. 35 BC and 30 BC)

Men, Boy, Heart

“They beat us, they beat us, they made us do their BLOW!”

Sam Kinison (1953–1992) American comedian

A captive in a "Drug War" POW camp, Leader of the Banned.

“The sixth pre-Christian century—the miraculous century of Buddha, Confucius and Lâo-Tse, of the Ionian philosophers and Pythagoras—was a turning point for the human species. A March breeze seemed to blow across the planet from China to Samos, stirring man into awareness, like the breath of Adam's nostrils. In the Ionian school of philosophy, rational thought was emerging from the mythological dream-world. …which, within the next two thousand years, would transform the species more radically than the previous two hundred thousand had done.”

Arthur Koestler (1905–1983) Hungarian-British author and journalist

The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe (1959)

World, School, Dreams

“In the last fifteen days of the war, my Fifth and Seventh Air Forces flew 6,732 sorties against Kyushu alone. Thus, with a deafening roar of blasting bombs, Kenney's Far East air forces culminated their blows against Japan. During the last seven and a half months of the war, their planes destroyed 2,846,932 tons of shipping and 1,375 enemy aircraft, dropped 100,000 tons of bombs, and flew over 150,00 sorties.”

Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) U.S. Army general of the army, field marshal of the Army of the Philippines

Source: Reminiscences (1964), p. 265

War

“Oh and the waves are going out
Oh and the waves are coming in
Out of the corner of my eye
I think I see you standing outside
But it's just your shirt
Hanging on the washing line
Waving it's arm as the wind blows by
And it looks so alive
Nice and white
Just like it's climbed right out
of my washing machine…”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Aerial (2005), A Sea of Honey (Disc 1)

Thinking

“An oak is not felled by a single blow of the axe.”

Giovanni Boccaccio book The Decameron

Per lo primo colpo non cade la quercia.
Seventh Day, Ninth Story (tr. J. M. Rigg)
The Decameron (c. 1350)

“A buzzard took the monkey for a ride in the air
The monkey thought that everything was on the square
The buzzard tried to throw the monkey off his back
But the monkey grabbed his neck and said — "Now listen, Jack…"
"Straighten up and fly right
Straighten up and fly right
Straighten up and fly right
Cool down, papa, don't you blow your top."”

Nat King Cole (1919–1965) American singer and jazz pianist

"Straighten Up And Fly Right" (1937) written with Irving Mills.

Flying

“Delay in vengeance gives a heavier blow.”

John Ford (dramatist) 'Tis Pity She's a Whore

Act III, sc. iii.
'Tis Pity She's a Whore (1629-33?)

“Although there are those among us now who have been granted the gift of being able to glimpse patterns of the future, probabilities tossed like dice on the uneven blanket of space and time, even these gifted ones know that no single future has been preordained for us or our posterity. Events are fluid. The future is like smoke from a burning forest, waiting for the wind of specific events and personal courage to blow the sparks and embers of reality this way or that.”

Dan Simmons book The Rise of Endymion

Source: The Rise of Endymion (1997), Chapter 25 (pp. 535-536)

Way, Courage, Reality, Time

“We are permitted to ride, providing we sit in a position ruinous to the horse; providing we wear a riding-habit long enough to hide the obscene human foot, weighed down by ten pounds of gravel to cheat the wind in its free blowing, so running the risk of disabling ourselves completely should accident throw us from the saddle. Think how we swim! We must even wear clothing in the water, and run the gauntlet of derision, if we dare battle in the surf minus stockings!”

Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) American anarchist writer and feminist

Sex Slavery (1890)

Thinking, Water, Horse, Cheating

“Never a man unblemished virtue shows,
Save when he is the butt of fortune's blows.”

Francesco Berni (1497–1535) Italian poet

Non si conosce la virtu perfetta,
Se non quando fortuna ne saetta.
XXXI, 32
Rifacimento of Orlando Innamorato

“[The] Third (problem with Darwinism), which I think is overwhelming, and just sort of blows the whole theory of Random Mutation out of the water, is, at least, let me say, raises big questions, that is. Assuming it all did happen by Random Mutation and Natural Selection, where did the laws of gravity come from. Where did the laws of thermodynamics come from? Where did the laws of motion and, of heat come from? Where, I guess that's the same as thermodynamics. Where did all these laws, that make it possible for the universe to function, where did they all come from? Why isn't all just chaos and everything collapsing in on itself and killing everything?”

Ben Stein (1944) actor, writer, commentator, lawyer, teacher, humorist

The Search for Truth, God and Braver Scientists in 'Expelled', 'Expelled' Press Conference Transcript, 27 March 2008, 2008-04-18 http://www.coloradoconfidential.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=3463,

Law, Question, Nature, Problem

“He reduced everything to politics; he was also unalterably of the Left. His line may have been unpopular or unfashionable, but he followed it unhesitatingly; in fact it was an obsession. He could not blow his nose without moralising on conditions in the handkerchief industry.”

Cyril Connolly (1903–1974) British author

On his friend, George Orwell, in The Sunday Times (1968-09-29); reprinted in The Evening Colonnade (New York, 1973)

“Being wrong is a blow to the proud human ego.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

God doesn't believe in atheists (2002)

“There are probably no creatures that require more the protective Divine word against the presumption of man than the animals, which, like man, have sensations and instincts, but whose body and powers are nevertheless subservient to man. In relation to them man so easily forgets that injured animal muscle twitches just like human muscle, that the maltreated nerves of an animal sicken like human nerves, that the animal being is just as sensitive to cuts, blows and beating as man. Thus man becomes the torturer of the animal soul, which has been subjected to him only for the fulfilment of humane and wise purposes; sometimes out of self-interest, at other times in order to satisfy a whim, sometimes out of thoughtlessness—yes, even for the satisfaction of crude satanic desire.”

Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808–1888) Jewish theologian, germany 19th century

Horeb: A Philosophy of Jewish Laws and Observances, translated by Isidor Grunfeld, London: Soncino Press, 1968, vol. II https://books.google.it/books?id=tEIIAAAAIAAJ, p. 292, sec. 415.

Soul, Time, Animals, Forgetting

“Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows,
While proudly riding o'er the azure realm
In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes;
Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm;
Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway,
That, hushed in grim repose, expects his evening prey.”

Thomas Gray The Bard

II. 2. lines 71-76
The Bard (1757)

Pleasure, Youth

“For some moments after silence had come like a poultice to heal the blows of sound, all that occupied his mind was the thought of what pests the gentler sex were when they got hold of a telephone. The instrument seemed to go to their heads like a drug. Connie Keeble, for instance. Nice sensible woman when you talked to her face to face, never tried to collar the conversation and all that, but the moment she got on the telephone, it was gab, gab, gab, and all about nothing.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Pigs Have Wings

Pigs Have Wings (1952)

Sex, Silence

“Copernicus published his manuscript in 1543 just in time for the council of Trent. So you're a church father and what this new system of Copernicus is saying is this: The Earth moves, although the Bible says it doesn't. It's no longer at the center of God's universe, although the Bible says it is. It's a planet, so heaven and Earth are no longer separate. And Aristotle was wrong, although church authority depends on him being right. You're a church father and you pick up this subversive, heretical, revolutionary piece of lunacy and you start foaming at the mouth, right? Wrong. When the council finally got around to reading Copernicus they were delighted. His new system had made calendar reform more precise. And the business of it turning every basic belief about the universe on its head? A mere fairytale since from the church's viewpoint he was talking nonsense. Astronomy drew lines and circles in the sky but they weren't really there, they're a mathematical convenience for measuring or teaching astronomy. While the Copernicus system might well have been brilliant mathematics, no one thought for a minute that he was actually suggesting the earth was whizzing around the sun. That kind of talk would blow holes in everything.”

James Burke (science historian) (1936) British broadcaster, science historian, author, and television producer

The Day the Universe Changed (1985)

God, Mathematics, Business, Fairytale

“I stare at this ceaseless, rushing crowd and imagine a time a hundred years from now. In a hundred years everybody here - me included - will have disappeared from the face of the earth and turned into ashes or dust. A weird thought, but everything in front of me starts to seem unreal, like a gust of wind could blow it all away”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002), Chapter Seven

Imagination, Time

“The wild sea roars and lashes the granite cliffs below,
And round the misty islets the loud strong tempests blow.”

Mary Howitt (1799–1888) English poet, and author

The Sea-Fowler, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Strong, Sea

“Sure I'll miss it. But I'm not enough of a lunkhead to think I could go on forever. Tunney, Dempsey and Bob Jones missed the action of their games for a while, but not for long. I guess the tough part will be when the bunch blow in and I'll be up there in the stands looking on. But on the other hand I won't be dragging those aching dogs and bum legs over those hard diamonds. I can do what I want now. I'll stay and loaf here until April and then head North again. But I'll take the trip in one jump—not twenty.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

As quoted in "Babe Ruth, Idle First time In 23 Years, Blames His Legs" by Grantland Rice, in The Baltimore Sun (February 19, 1936), p. 14

Dogs, Game, Thinking, Parting

“Now there was one of these Essens, whose name was Manahem, who had this testimony, that he not only conducted his life after an excellent manner, but had the foreknowledge of future events given him by God also. This man once saw Herod when he was a child, and going to school, and saluted him as king of the Jews; but he, thinking that either he did not know him, or that he was in jest, put him in mind that he was but a private man; but Manahem smiled to himself, and clapped him on his backside with his hand, and said," However that be, thou wilt be king, and wilt begin thy reign happily, for God finds thee worthy of it. And do thou remember the blows that Manahem hath given thee, as being a signal of the change of thy fortune. And truly this will be the best reasoning for thee, that thou love justice [towards men], and piety towards God, and clemency towards thy citizens; yet do I know how thy whole conduct will be, that thou wilt not be such a one, for thou wilt excel all men in happiness, and obtain an everlasting reputation, but wilt forget piety and righteousness; and these crimes will not be concealed from God, at the conclusion of thy life, when thou wilt find that he will be mindful of them, and punish time for them." Now at that time Herod did not at all attend to what Manahem said, as having no hopes of such advancement; but a little afterward, when he was so fortunate as to be advanced to the dignity of king, and was in the height of his dominion, he sent for Manahem, and asked him how long he should reign. Manahem did not tell him the full length of his reign; wherefore, upon that silence of his, he asked him further, whether he should reign ten years or not? He replied, "Yes, twenty, nay, thirty years;" but did not assign the just determinate limit of his reign. Herod was satisfied with these replies, and gave Manahem his hand, and dismissed him; and from that time he continued to honor all the Essens. We have thought it proper to relate these facts to our readers, how strange soever they be, and to declare what hath happened among us, because many of these Essens have, by their excellent virtue, been thought worthy of this knowledge of Divine revelations.”

Josephus on the Essenes

AJ 15.11.4-5
Antiquities of the Jews

Love, Life, Men, God

“However we may receive blows, and however knocked about we may be, the Soul is there and is never injured. We are that Infinite.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Soul

“I would rather blow a guy in the bathroom at White Castle in between sliders…because I'm romantic!”

Kathy Griffin (1960) American actress and comedian

Straight To Hell (2007)

Guy

“Let's get this straight: he didn't really cry but his chin would begin to wobble all over the place and tears would fill his eyes and he'd have to hold himself rigid to make it all stop. But he couldn't always make it stop. Then the fight with Bobo Kelton happened and changed everything. That was when he vowed not to cry anymore. Not during the fight but afterward. And it wasn't even a fight but one sweet and beautiful blow that sent Bobo to the floor. The surprise and shock on Bobo's fight had been terrific to see.”

Robert Cormier book The Rag and Bone Shop

Source: The Rag and Bone Shop (2000), p. 23

Beauty, Tear, Change, Fight

“A young man who had been troubling society with impalpable doctrines of a new civilization which he called "the Kingdom of Heaven" had been put out of the way; and I can imagine that believer in material power murmuring as he went homeward, "it will all blow over now." Yes. The wind from the Kingdom of Heaven has blown over the world, and shall blow for centuries yet.”

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

The Economics of Ireland and the Policy of the British Government (1921)

World, Way, Imagination

“Nor is this kind of Texture peculiar to Cork onely; for upon examination with my Microscope, I have found that the pith of an Elder, or almost any other Tree, the inner pulp or pith of the Cany hollow stalks of several other Vegetables: as of Fennel, Carrets, Daucus, Bur-docks, Teasels, Fearn, some kinds of Reeds &c., have much such a kind of Schematisme, as I have lately shewn that of Cork, save onely that here the pores are rang'd the long-ways, or the same ways with the length of the Cane, whereas in Cork they are transverse.
The pith also that fills that part of the stalk of a Feather that is above the Quil, has much such a kind of texture, save onely that which way foever I set this light substance, the pores seem'd to be cut transversly, so that I guess this pith which fills the Feather, not to consist of abundance of long pores separated with Diaphragms, as Cork does, but to be a kind of solid or hardned froth, or a congeries of very small bubbles consolidated in that form, into a pretty stiff as well as tough concrete, and that each Cavern, Bubble, or Cell, is distinctly separate from any of the rest, without any kind of hole in the encompassing films, so that I could no more blow through a piece of this kinde of substance, then I could through a piece of Cork, or the found pith of an Elder.”

Robert Hooke book Micrographia

Micrographia (1667) p. 115

Way, Tree, Light, Parting

“I would not care whether truth is pleasant or unpleasant, and in consonance with or opposed to current views. I would not mind in the least whether truth is, or is not, a blow to the glory of my country. If necessary, I shall bear in patience the ridicule and slander of friends and society for the sake of preaching truth. But still I shall seek truth, understand truth, and accept truth. This should be the firm resolve of a historian.”

Jadunath Sarkar (1870–1958) Indian historian

Quoted in Meenakshi Jain, "Flawed Narratives – History in the old NCERT Textbooks" http://hindureview.com/2001/02/22/flawed-narratives-history-old-ncert-textbooks/, And Quoted in R.C. Majumdar, The History and Culture of the Indian People, Vol. 7, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay, 1984, pp. xiii (quoted from a Presidential speech given at a historical conference in Bengal, 1915)

Truth, Understanding, Patience, Country

“The filibuster of federal district and circuit judges cannot stand. … It's bad for the institution. It's wrong. It's not supportable under the Constitution. And if they insist on persisting with these filibusters, I'm perfectly prepared to blow the place up. No problem.”

Trent Lott (1941) United States Senator from Mississippi

On filibustering, as quoted in The Clarion-Ledger (23 May 2003), "Lott aims to change filibuster rules" http://orig.clarionledger.com/news/0305/23/m05.html 2000s

Support, Problem

“War's Over, We Won (No Thanks to Barack Obama) … If Barack Obama had gotten his way, Iraq would now be in the hands of Islamists, and America’s image would have suffered a crushing blow. He voted to cut off funding for the troops, just when they needed it most, and still refuses to admit he was wrong. Well, he was wrong, and George W. Bush deserves credit for refusing to back down when all around him were losing heart.”

Charles Foster Johnson (1953) American musician

November 14, 2008 http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/31910_Wars_Over_We_Won_(No_Thanks_to_Barack_Obama)&only http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/31937_Victory_in_Iraq_Day&only

War, Way, Suffering, Heart

“If they turn on their radars we're going to blow up their goddamn SAMs [surface-to- air missiles]. They know we own their country. We own their airspace…We dictate the way they live and talk. And that’s what’s great about America right now. It’s a good thing, especially when there’s a lot of oil out there we need.”

William R. Looney III (1949) 28th Commander, Air Education and Training Command, Randolph Air Force Base, Texas

Comments about the bombing of Iraq in the late 1990s, which he directed. Interview Washington Post (August 30, 1999); quoted in Rogue State, William Blum, Common Courage Press, 2005, p. 159.

Way, Country

“I don't duel, boy. I kill as a soldier kills, which is as a butcher kills, as quickly, efficiently, and with as least risk to myself as I can arrange. If I decide you die, you will die when I choose, where I choose, by what means I choose, and you will never see the blow coming. (…) I don't duel. But if you seek to die like a bludgeoned steer, cross me again.”

Lois McMaster Bujold The Curse of Chalion

The Curse of Chalion (2000)

Boy

“Beyond the tragic blows and the brooding over violence,
beyond the labour over errors and repenting over deeds,
beyond the evenings without dialogues and the nights
full of suspicion,
beyond the days in which the happy ones revel
in their narrow happiness –
is it possible that to give blows to one another is the only reality?”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

Chorus

Error, Reality, Night, Happiness

“Just as a vessel caught by the Pleiads on the foaming deep and kept safe only by its anxious helmsman’s care cleaves unharmed the sea that contending winds make boisterous, so Pollux warily watches the blows.”
Spumanti qualis in alto Pliade capta ratis, trepidi quam sola magistri cura tenet, rapidum ventis certantibus aequor intemerata secat, Pollux sic providus ictus servat.

Gaius Valerius Flaccus book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica, Book IV, Lines 268–272

Sea

“There is a garden in her face
Where roses and white lilies blow;
A heavenly paradise is that place,
Wherein all pleasant fruits do grow;
There cherries grow that none may buy,
Till Cherry-Ripe themselves do cry.”

Thomas Campion (1567–1620) English composer, poet and physician

Cherry Ripe http://www.bartleby.com/106/91.html

For Her, Cry

“Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

Song of a Man who has Come Through (1917)

“When you strike a blow, do not let your mind dally on it, not concerning yourself with whether or not it is a telling blow; you should strike again and again, over and over, even four or five times. The thing is not to let your opponent even raise his head.”

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

A Hereditary Book on the Art of War (1632)

Time

“I have been afraid of putting air in a tire ever since I saw a tractor tire blow up and throw Newt Hardbine's father over the top of the Standard Oil sign. I'm not lying. He got stuck up there. About nineteen people congregated during the time it took for Norman Strick to walk up to the Courthouse and blow the whistle for the volunteer fire department. They eventually did come with the ladder and haul him down, and he wasn't dead but lost his hearing and in many other ways was never the same afterward. They said he overfilled the tire.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Bean Trees

The Bean Trees (1988).

People, Way, Lying, Time

“It’s funny how one summer can change everything. It must be something about the heat and the smell of chlorine, fresh-cut grass and honeysuckle, asphalt sizzling after late-day thunderstorms, the steam rising while everything drips around it. Something about long, lazy days and whirring air conditioners and bright plastic flip-flops from the drugstore thwacking down the street. Something about fall being so close, another year, another Christmas, another beginning. So much in one summer, stirring up like the storms that crest at the end of each day, blowing out all the heat and dirt to leave everything gasping and cool. Everyone can reach back to one summer and lay a finger to it, finding the exact point when everything changed. That summer was mine.”

Sarah Dessen book That Summer

That Summer (1996)

Grass, Change, Christmas, Summer

“John F. Kennedy's death was as personal a body blow to most of the nation's young people. Why? It seems to me that the answer is simple: He was the symbol of the new generation grasping the tiller of the ship of state for the first time, and finding it exhilarating, exciting, challenging. He knew that there is an element of danger in accepting a challenge — in taking a risk that is beyond what is expected of you, beyond what you may expect of yourself.”

Leo Ryan book Understanding California Government and Politics

Understanding California Government and Politics (1966), Preface, p. v.

Death, People, Time, Personality

“I think, ofttimes, that lives of men may be
Likened to wandering winds that come and go
Not knowing whence they rise, whither they blow
O’er the vast globe, voiceful of grief or glee.”

Paul Hamilton Hayne (1830–1886) American editor and poet

A Comparison.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Men, Thinking

“Death is another milestone on their way.
With laughter on their lips and with winds blowing round them
They record simply
How this one excelled all others in making driving belts.”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

"The Funeral" (l. 1–4)

Death, Way, Laughter

“Khalji’s military exploits in the east also resulted in conversions to Islam. About the end of the twelfth or the beginning of the thirteenth century, he marched into Bihar and attacked the University centres of Nalanda, Vikramshila and Uddandapur, erecting a fortress at the site of Uddandapur or Odantapuri. The Buddhist monks in these places were massacred and the common people, deprived of their priests and teachers, turned some to Brahmanism and some to Islam. Buddhism did not die out immediately or completely in Bihar. But Bakhtiyar’s raid on Bihar did deliver a shattering blow to Buddhism and its lost followers were gained mainly by Islam.”

Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khalji Turkic military general of Qutb al-Din Aibak

Lal, K. S. (2012). Indian muslims: Who are they.

People, Teachers, Universe

“Thus, Statesman-like, I’ll saucily impose,
And, safe from Danger, valiantly advise;
Sheltered in Impotence, urge you to Blows,
And, being good for nothing else, be Wise.”

John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (1647–1680) English poet, and peer of the realm

The Maim'd Debauchee, ll. 41–44.
Other

“Ah, we fondly cherish
Faded things
That had better perish.
Memory clings
To each leaf it saves.
Chilly winds are blowing.
It will soon be snowing
On our graves.”

John Henry Boner (1845–1903) American writer

Gather Leaves and Grasses, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Memory

“I, proud of my rumour, for long I will talk
Of goddesses; and by picturings idolatrous,
From their shades unloose yet more of their girdles:
So when of grapes the clearness I've sucked,
To banish regret by my ruse disavowed,
Laughing, I lift the empty bunch to the sky,
Blowing into its luminous skins and athirst
To be drunk, till the evening I keep looking through.
Oh nymphs, we diverse MEMORIES refill.”

Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) French Symbolist poet

The Afternoon of a Faun (1876)

Memory

“I could develop finer and newer blowing techniques because of the power my lungs acquired through the physical exercises my father personally taught me when I was training to become a wrestler”

Hariprasad Chaurasia (1938) Indian bansuri player

My father's wrestling techniques made my lungs strong: Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia

Exercises, Personality, Training

“With that she dasht her on the lippes,
So dyed double red:
Hard was the heart that gave the blow,
Soft were those lips that bled.”

William Warner (1558–1609) English poet

Albion’s England (published 1612), Book viii. chap. xli. stanza 53.

Heart

“Due to external temptations, it is much easier in today’s consumer world to simply blow it out the expense column.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki (1947) American finance author , investor

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

World

“Over verdant lowlands cut by the deep streamwaters of the south hangs a peculiar gloom. Every eye is stifled by the clouds that block the sight of the sun, every voice is muffled like the chirps of fleeing birds, every quasi-movement sluggish. Children must not laugh, no attention must be drawn to the fact that a man exists, one must not provoke the powers with frivolity—do nothing but prowl along, furtively, lowly. Maybe the Godhead had not yet struck its final blow, an unexpiated sin might still fester somewhere, perhaps there still lurked worms that needed to be crushed.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part III: Fire in Copenhagen

Children, Bird, Sun

“Today, I saw a spark of decency. Let's blow on that spark and give it fuel.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, Earthborn (1995)

“Oh, my best part was in The Rainmaker (1956). It was my 15th movie and my first co-starring role. I played Katharine Hepburn's younger brother, and I won the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor. My competition that year included Anthony Quinn in Lust for Life, Karl Malden and Eli Wallach in Baby Doll and Herbert Lom in War and Peace. But the big blow came when I failed to get nominated for an Oscar. I was at Louella Parsons home, doing an interview, when the news came. It was a crushing blow to me that I wasn't nominated. Louella tried to console me, saying, You're young, you'll get lots of opportunities.”

Earl Holliman (1928) American actor

Well, I'm still waiting.
"Earl Holliman: actor with desire for variety" (1973)

Life, War, Peace, Home

“The Tippoo himself led the defenders north of the breach. The Tippoo had cursed Gudin for blowing the mines too early and thus wasting its terrible destructive power, but now he tried to revive the defense by his personal example. He stood in the front rank of his soldiers while behind him a succession of aides loaded jewel-encrusted hunting rifles. One by one the rifles were given to the Tippoo who aimed and fired, aimed and fired, and redcoat after redcoat was struck down.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Narrator, p. 351
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Tiger (1997)

Success, Personality

“All the sweetest winds they blow across the south”

Ryan Adams (1974) American alt-country/rock singer-songwriter

Oh My Sweet Carolina
29 (2005)

“One said of suicide, “As long as one has brains one should not blow them out.” And another answered, “But when one has ceased to have them, too often one cannot.””

F. H. Bradley (1846–1924) British philosopher

No. 48.
Aphorisms (1930)

Suicide

“You know, the media and the politicians would have us believe that there's something inherently immoral about terrorism. That is, they would have us believe that it's not immoral for us to destroy a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan with cruise missiles, but it is immoral for someone like Bin Laden to blow up a government building in Washington with a truck bomb. It's okay for us to take out an air-raid shelter full of women and children in Baghdad with a smart bomb, but it's cowardly and immoral for an Iraqi or Iranian agent to pop a vial of sarin in a New York subway tunnel. Really, what should we expect? They don't have aircraft carriers and cruise missiles and stealth bombers. So should we expect them to just sit there and take their punishment when we wage war on them? I think that it is the most reasonable thing in the world for them to hit back at us in the only way they can. It actually takes more courage to be a terrorist behind enemy lines than it does to push the firing button for a cruise missile a hundred miles away from your target. And yet we certainly will see Bill Clinton and every other Jew-serving politician in our government on television denouncing as a "cowardly act" the first terrorist bomb which goes off in the United States as a result of a war against Iraq. And don't be surprised when the FBI and the CIA announce that they have studied the evidence carefully and have determined that it was Iranian terrorists who built the bomb, so that the Jews will have an excuse for expanding the war to take out Iran as well as Iraq.”

William Luther Pierce (1933–2002) American white nationalist

Why War? (November 21, 1998) http://web.archive.org/web/20070324011124/http://www.natvan.com/pub/1998/112198.txt, American Dissident Voices Broadcast of November 21, 1998 http://archive.org/details/DrWilliamPierceAudioArchive308RadioBroadcasts 1990s, 1990

Women, War, Children, World

“If things blow up then that's awesome and if things don't, I still can live a normal life and be able to go to the grocery store without people following me.”

Skye Sweetnam (1988) Canadian singer-songwriter

On her career

Life, People

“There is always in the healthy mind an obscure prompting that religion teaches us rather to dig than to climb; that if we could once understand the common clay of earth we should understand everything. Similarly, we have the sentiment that if we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse. This is the great truth which has always lain at the back of baby-worship, and which will support it to the end.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Defendant

Source: The Defendant (1901), "A Defence of Baby-Worship"

Truth, Religion, Star, Understanding

“[Footnote:] Most people erroneously call this snake the Puff Adder, Beach Adder, or Blowing Viper. So, naturally, they kill it.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Hog-Nosed Snake
How to Become Extinct (1941)

People, Nature

“Sun-swept beaches with a light wind blowing
From the immense blue circle of the sea,
And the soft thunder where long waves whiten —
These were the same for Sappho as for me. Two thousand years — much has gone by forever,
Change takes the gods and ships and speech of men —
But here on the beaches that time passes over
The heart aches now as then.”

Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) American writer and poet

"The Unchanging"
Flame and Shadow (1920)

Men, God, Light, Change

“Stand still, you floods, do not deface
That image which you bear:
So votaries, from every place,
To you shall altars rear.

No winds but lovers' sighs blow here,
To trouble these glad streams,
On which no star from any sphere
Did ever dart such beams.”

Thomas Carew (1594–1640) English poet

"On Sight Of A Gentlewoman's Face In The Water".
Carew's Poems

Star, Lovers

“Sweet the rose which lives in Heaven,
Although on earth ’tis planted,
Where its honours blow,
While by earth’s slaves the leaves are riven
Which die the while they glow.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

Untitled (1810); titled "Love's Rose" by William Michael Rossetti in Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1870)

“A little longer yet — a little longer,
Shall violets bloom for thee, and sweet birds sing;
And the lime branches where soft winds are blowing,
Shall murmur the sweet promise of the Spring!”

Adelaide Anne Procter (1825–1864) English poet and songwriter

"A Little Longer".
Legends and Lyrics: A Book of Verses (1858)

Spring, Bird, Singing

“I mean (blowing lips), I mean he's going Mr Speaker, Mr Speaker, he's going troppo, he's going troppo, he's more to be pitied than despised, he's simply going troppo.”

Paul Keating (1944) Australian politician, 24th Prime Minister of Australia

In Parliament, circa 1992. Cited in Vulgar politics back in vogue http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2003/s1008343.htm, ABC PM, 11 December 2003.

“And you know the reason I really love the stars is that we cannot hurt them.
We can't burn them or melt them or make them overflow. We can't flood them or blow them up or turn them out.
But we are reaching for them.
We are reaching for them.”

Laurie Anderson (1947) American musician

"Another Day in America" (2010)
Homeland (2010)

Love, Star, Hurt

“The pleasure of their (the Imagist poetry is not the satisfaction of discovering little by little, but of seizing at a single blow, in the fullest vitality, the image, a fusion of reality in words.”

René Taupin (1905–1981) French academic

L'Influence du symbolism francais sur la poesie Americaine(de 1910 a 1920), Champion, Paris 1929 trans William Pratt and Anne Rich AMS , New York 1985 ISBN 9780404615796

Pleasure, Reality

Quotes about blow page 7

Quotes about blow
page 7