Quotes about bone

A collection of quotes on the topic of bone, likeness, time, body.

Quotes about bone

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

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

Death, Fate, Imagination, Sense

“I think you can love a person too much.

You put someone up on a pedestal, and all of a sudden, from that perspective, you notice what's wrong - a hair out of place, a run in a stocking, a broken bone. You spend all your time and energy making it right, and all the while, you are falling apart yourself. You don't even realize what you look like, how far you've deteriorated, because you only have eyes for someone else.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

Love, Thinking, Time, Personality

“To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

"In Blackwater Woods"
American Primitive (1983)
Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1

Sad, Heartbreaking, Relationship, Love

“Gathering is peculiar, because you see nothing but what you're looking for. If you're picking raspberries, you see only what's red, and if you're looking for bones you see only the white. No matter where you go, the only thing you see is bones.”

Tove Jansson book The Summer Book

Source: The Summer Book

“I am always trying to convey something that can’t be conveyed, to explain something which is inexplicable, to tell about something I have in my bones, something which can be expressed only in the bones.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

“Ye are Blood of my Blood, and Bone of my Bone,
I give ye my Body, that we Two might be One.
I give ye my Spirit, 'til our Life shall be Done.”

Diana Gabaldon book Outlander

Source: Outlander

Life

“I want to go to sleep and not wake up, but I don't want to die. I want to eat like a normal person eats, but I need to see my bones or I will hate myself even more and I might cut my heart out or take every pill that was ever made.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

Hate, Sleep, Heart, Personality

“I blame science! I blame technology! Domin! Myself! All of us! We, we are at fault! For the sake of our megalomania, for the sake of somebody's profits, for the sake of progress, I don't know, for the sake of some tremendous something we have murdered humanity! So now you can crash under the weight of all your greatness! No Genghis Khan has ever erected such an enormous tomb from human bones!”

Karel Čapek R.U.R.

R.U.R. (1920)

Science

“The salary simply means becoming dependent on someone's pocket. Like a good dog who waits for his master to throw the bone at him, after having eaten all the meat.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Dependency, Waiting, Dogs

“We are the dead. Our only true life is in the future. We shall take part in it as handfuls of dust and splinters of bone. But how far away that future may be, there is no knowing.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Life, Future, Parting, Dead

“He stood up straight and looked the world squarely in the fields and hills. To add weight to his words he stuck the rabbit bone in his hair. He spread his arm out wide. "I will go mad!" he annouced.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Omnibus

World, Madness

“At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.”

Sylvia Plath Ariel

Source: Ariel

“I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don't want virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Hate

“I could feel the winter shaking my bones and banging my teeth together.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Feeling, Winter

“We are not trapped or locked up in these bones. No, no. We are free to change. And love changes us. And if we can love one another, we can break open the sky.”

Walter Mosley book Blue Light

Source: Blue Light

Love, Change

“Nature is part our humanity, and without some awareness and experience of that divine mystery man ceases to be man. When the Pleiades and the wind in the grass are no longer a part of the human spirit, a part of very flesh and bone, man becomes, as it were, a kind of cosmic outlaw, having neither the completeness and integrity of the animal nor the birthright of a true humanity.”

Henry Beston (1888–1968) American writer

Source: The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod

Nature, Grass, Animals, Parting

“The old pain had started up again, throbbing in my chest, stomach, bones. It wasn't healthy to be encased in a body for so long. How humans can stand it without going completely mad, I'll never know.†
† Then again… maybe that explains a lot.”

Jonathan Stroud book The Amulet of Samarkand

The Amulet of Samarkand (2003)

Pain, Madness

“It may be said, indeed, that without bones and muscles and the other parts of the body I cannot execute my purposes. But to say that I do as I do because of them, and that this is the way in which the mind acts, and not from the choice of the best, is a very careless and idle mode of speaking. I wonder that they cannot distinguish the cause from the condition, which the many, feeling about in the dark, are always mistaking and misnaming.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Way, Feeling, Parting

“I eat only white foods: eggs, sugar, grated bones, the fat of dead animals; veal, salt, coconut, chicken cooked in white water; fruit mold, rice, turnips; camphorated sausage, dough, cheese (white), cotton salad, and certain fish (skinless).”

Erik Satie (1866–1925) French composer and pianist

Quoted by Rollo H. Myers (1968). Erik Satie, p.135. New York: Dover.
See also Socrate for the context of this quote.
General quotes

Food, Fish, Water, Animals

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

Robert A. Heinlein Time Enough for Love

Time Enough for Love (1973)

Problem, Change, Fight, Cooking

“I'll give you an example — in Russia most of the hospitals don't have any pain medicine, they don't have any money. So if you're with kids with cancer, they can have metastases to the bone; which some say is the worst pain a human can experience. So a mother can be in a room with a child who hasn't stopped screaming in five months. …85% of the time I walk in there as a clown they'll stop screaming.”

Patch Adams (1945) Physician, activist, diplomat, author

As quoted in "Entrevista com o médico americano P. Adams" in Roda Viva - Entrevista (13 November 2007)

Money, Pain, Time

“Opinion in all parts of the world would agree that Rachmaninoff is the most complete of living masters of the instrument; his technique is comprehensive, and he is, of course, musical to his bone's marrow. Most important of all, he is a composer, and for this reason he is able to approach a work as none of his pianist contemporaries can approach one – that is, from the inside, as an organic and felt creative process.”

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) Russian composer, pianist, and conductor

Neville Cardus The Delights of Music (London: Victor Gollancz, 1966) p. 90.
Criticism

World, Music, Parting

“Ashoka’s emblem of the Amlaki will be seen on the cornices of the Institute, and towering above all is the symbol of thunderbolt. It was the RishiDadhichi, the pure and blameless, who offered his life that the divine weapon, the thunderbolt, might be fashioned out of his bones to smite evil and exalt righteousness. It is but half of the Amlaki that we can offer now. But the past shall be reborn in a yet nobler future. We stand here today and resume work tomorrow, so that by the efforts of our lives and our unshaken faith in the future we may all help to build the greater India yet to be.”

Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858–1937) Bengali polymath, physicist, biologist, botanist and archaeologist

Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose in Vijayaprasara

Life, Faith, Fashion, Effort

“By not first explaining the bones, anatomists delay the inexperienced student and, because of the difficulty of the subject, deter him from a very worthy examination of the works of God.”

Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564) early anatomist

De fabrica, quoted in O'Malley 1964, p. 150

God

“I don’t get why they call it heartbreak. It feels like every other bone in my body is broken too. ”

Jared Leto (1971) American actor and musician

Feeling

“I am a Russian, Russian, Russian, to the marrow of my bones.”

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) Russian composer

quoted in Geoffrey Hindley, The Larousse Encyclopedia of Music (1982) ISBN 0896731014

“The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones.”

William Shakespeare Julius Caesar

Source: Julius Caesar

Men, Evil

“We are only lightly covered with buttoned cloth; and beneath these pavements are shells, bones and silence.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Source: The Waves

Silence, Clothes

“Never tire yourself more than necessary, even if you have to found a culture on the fatigue of your bones.”

Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French-Occitanian poet, playwright, actor and theatre director

Ci-Gît (1947).

“Witches aren’t like that. We live in harmony with the great cycles of Nature, and do no harm to anyone, and it’s wicked of them to say we don’t. We ought to fill their bones with hot lead.”

Terry Pratchett book Wyrd Sisters

Source: Wyrd Sisters

Nature

“Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts.”

Robert Fulghum book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Source: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (1986)
Context: Yelling at living things does tend to kill the spirit in them. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts.

Heart

“Somewhere in his body--perhaps in the marrow of his bones--he would continue to feel her absence.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Source: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: 24 Stories

Feeling

“Now that my ladder’s gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

The Circus Animals' Desertion, III
Last Poems (1936-1939)

Lie, Heart

“I tried to allow my children to take risks, to test themselves. Better broken bones than broken spirit.”

Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy (1890–1995) American philanthropist and mother of John F. Kennedy

Children

“[She] was made up of skin and bones and hate and crazy, and hate and crazy don't weigh anything.”

Barry Lyga (1971) American writer

Source: I Hunt Killers

Hate

“Sticks and stones will break your bones, but failure will get you killed.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Narcissus in Chains

Source: Narcissus in Chains

Failure

“There's a monster in our wood. She'll get you if you're not good. Drag you under leaves and sticks. Punish you for all your tricks. Anest of hair and gnawed bone. You are never, ever coming… home.”

Holly Black book The Darkest Part of the Forest

Source: The Darkest Part of the Forest

Home

“As if you could pick in love, as if it were not a lightning bolt that splits your bones and leaves you staked out in the middle of the courtyard. (…) You don't pick out the rain that soaks you to the skin when you come out of a concert.”

Julio Cortázar book Hopscotch

Source: Hopscotch

Love

“Philosophy is an amazing tissue of really fine thinking and incredible, puerile mistakes. It's like one of those rubber 'bones' they give dogs to chew, damned good for the mind's teeth, but as food - no bloody good at all.”

Olaf Stapledon book Odd John

Source: Odd John

Food, Dogs, Thinking

“A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog when you are just as hungry as the dog.”

Jack London (1876–1916) American author, journalist, and social activist

"Confession" in Complete Works of Jack London, Delphi Classics, 2013
Variant: Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.

Dogs

“Do let's pretend that I'm a hungry hyena, and you're a bone!”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

“May today there be peace within.

May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.

May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.

May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you.

May you be content knowing you are a child of God.

Let this presence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love.

It is there for each and every one of us.”

Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) Roman Catholic saint

Love, God, Peace, Faith

“Everytime I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Reading

“Sometimes I can feel my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), p. 113

Feeling

“Her eyes are pure stars, and her fingers, if they touch you, freeze you to the bone.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando

Star

“Sanguine chuckled. "I like you, boy. You got optimism in these bones. I like you so much that I ain't gonna tell you what I did to poor old Jethro, the first Jethro, may he rest in peace, may they someday find his head.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: The Maleficent Seven: From the World of Skulduggery Pleasant

Peace, Boy, Optimism

“Books must be treated with respect, we feel that in our bones, because words have power. Bring enough words together they can bend space and time.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Books, Feeling, Time

“What I have since realized is that if people expect you to be brave, sometimes you pretend that you are, even when you are frightened down to your very bones.”

Sharon Creech Walk Two Moons

Source: Walk Two Moons

People

“Through all this horror my cat stalked unperturbed. Once I saw him monstrously perched atop a mountain of bones, and wondered at the secrets that might lie behind his yellow eyes.”

H.P. Lovecraft book The Rats in the Walls

Source: The Rats in the Walls

Lie, Secret, Mountain, Cats

“She led the way. Eyeless sockets of the dead seemed to stare at them as they passed.
"These are cool," Dan decided. "Maybe I could-"
"No, Dan," Amy said. "You can't collect human bones."
"Awww.”

Rick Riordan The Maze of Bones

Source: The Maze of Bones

Way, Dead

“And softness came from the starlight and filled me full to the bone.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

“By Him in Whose Hand my soul is I was about to order for collecting fire-wood (fuel) and then order Someone to pronounce the Adhan for the prayer and then order someone to lead the prayer then I would go from behind and burn the houses of men who did not present themselves for the (compulsory congregational) prayer. By Him, in Whose Hands my soul is, if anyone of them had known that he would get a bone covered with good meat or two (small) pieces of meat present in between two ribs, he would have turned up for the 'Isha' prayer.”

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

Sahih Bukhari Volume 001, Book 011, Hadith Number 617.
Sunni Hadith

Men, Soul, Housing

“Calculations are to the economic science what bones are to the human body. Without them it will always be a vague and confused science, at the mercy of error and prejudice.”

François Quesnay (1694–1774) French economist

François Quesnay in letter to Mirabeau (Archives Nationales, Ms. 779, 4 bis, p.2 note); as cited in: Richard Van Den Berg and Albert Steenge. "Tableaux and Systèmes. Early French Contributions to Linear Production Models." Cahiers d'économie Politique/Papers in Political Economy 2 (2016): 11-30.

Error, Science

“A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

St. 1 In The Seven Woods (1904), Adam's Curse http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1431/

World, Weather

“Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.”

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

Funeral Blues (1936)

Dogs, Silence

“I have the hatred of apartheid in my bones…”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) British philologist and author, creator of classic fantasy works

Valedictory address to the University of Oxford (1959)

“I'm not a Starfleet commander, or T. J. Hooker. I don't live on Starship NCC-170… [some audience members say "1"], or own a phaser. I don't know anybody named Bones, Sulu, or Spock [picture of Dr. Benjamin Spock is shown on screen behind him]. And no, I've never had green alien sex, but I'm sure it'd be quite an evening. [Pomp and Circumstance begins playing. ] I speak English and French, not Klingon! I drink Labatt's, not Romulan Ale! And when someone says to me 'live long and prosper', I seriously mean it when I say, 'get a life'. My doctor's name is not McCoy, it's Ginsberg [nude picture of Dr. Ginsberg shown on screen]. And tribbles were puppets, not real animals. PUPPETS! And when I speak, I never, ever talk like Every. Word. Is. Its. Own. Sentence. I live in California, but I was raised in Montreal. And I believe in Priceline. com, where you never have to pay full price for airline tickets, hotels, and car rentals! I've appeared on stage at Stratford, at Carnegie Hall, Albert Hall, and the Monkland Theatre in NDG. And, yes, I've gone where no man has gone before, but… I was in Mexico and her father gave me permission! My name is William Shatner, and I am Canadian!”

William Shatner (1931) Canadian actor, musician, recording artist, author, and film director

From a Just for Laughs appearance in a parody of the popular Molson "I Am Canadian" commercials (21 July 2007) http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1648058156561008324&q=i+am+canadian.

Life, Sex, Cars, Drink

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones.”

William Shakespeare Julius Caesar

Antony, Act III, scene ii.
Julius Caesar (1599)

Men, Evil

“Good frend for Jesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased heare
Blese be the man that spares these stones
And curst be he that moves my bones”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Shakespeare's epitaph

“My temptation is quiet.
Here at life’s end
Neither loose imagination,
Nor the mill of the mind
Consuming its rag and bone,
Can make the truth known.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

An Acre of Grass http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1438/, st. 2 Last Poems (1936-1939)

Life, Truth, Imagination

“I lift barbell plates. I eat T-bone steaks. I'm sweeter than a German chocolate cake. How much more of me can you take?”

Billy Graham (wrestler) (1943–2023) American professional wrestler, american football player, bodybuilder

Billy Graham, Tangled Ropes: Superstar Billy Graham (2006)

“O time, swift robber of all created things, how many kings, how many nations hast thou undone, and how many changes of states and of various events have happened since the wondrous forms of this fish perished here in this cavernous and winding recess. Now destroyed by time thou liest patiently in this confined space with bones stripped and bare; serving as a support and prop for the superimposed mountain.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

Mountain, Support, Fish, Change

“Roughneck and rudeness, We should be using, On the ones who practice wicked charms, For the sword and the stone, Bad to the bone, Battle’s not over, Even when it's won, And when a child is born into this world, It has no concept, Of the tone the skin is living in.”

Neneh Cherry (1964) Swedish singer-songwriter

Unsourced

World

“If the excrement of an elephant should be smeared on skin in which lice appear and left until it dries upon the skin, the lice will not remain on it but will depart immediately. If the fat of an elephant is smeared with it, it is said to cure the pain of one who suffers a headache; it is even said that if an ounce of elephant bone is drunk with ten ounces of wild mountain mint from something which a leper first touched, it does the most for a headache.”

Albertus Magnus (1206–1280) Dominican friar

Twenty-Six Books on Animals [De animalibus libri XXVI]; cited in: Plinio Prioreschi (1996) A History of Medicine: Medieval Medicine. p. 94.

Pain, Mountain, Suffering, Appearance

“One thing I truly knew — knew it in the pit of my stomach, in the center of my bones, knew it from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet, knew it deep in my empty chest — was how love gave someone the power to break you.
I had been broken beyond repair.”

Stephenie Meyer (1973) American author

Bella Swan, p. 219
Twilight series, New Moon (2006)

Love

“How grievously I was disappointed! …I found my philosopher altogether forsaking mind and any other principle of order, but having recourse to air, and ether, and water, and other eccentricities. I might compare him to a person that began by maintaining generally that mind is the cause of the actions of Socrates, but who, when endeavored to explain the causes of my several actions in detail, went on to show that I sit here because my body is made up of bones and muscles; and the bones he would say, are hard and have ligaments which divide them, and the muscles are elastic, and they cover the bones, which also have a covering or environment of flesh and skin which contains them; and as the bones are lifted at their joints by the contraction or relaxation of the muscles, I am able to bend my limbs, and this is why I an sitting here in a curved posture… and he would have a similar explanation of my talking to you, which he would attribute to sound, and air, and hearing, and he would assign ten thousand other causes of the same sort, forgetting to mention the true cause, which is that Athenians have thought fit to condemn me, and accordingly I have thought it better and more right to remain here and undergo my sentence; for I am inclined to think that these muscles and bones of mine would have gone off to Megara or Boeotia… if they had been guided only by their idea of what was best, and if I had not chosen as the better and nobler part… to undergo any punishment that the State inflicts.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Disappointment, Idea, Thinking, Water

“If you take as your pattern the wings of feathered birds, these are more powerful in structure of bone and sinew because they are penetrable, that is to say the feathers are separated from one another and the air passes through them. But the bat is aided by its membrane, which binds the whole together and is not penetrated by the air.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XVII Flight

Bird

“it wont be long now It won't be long
till earth is barren as the moon
and sapless as a mumbled bone”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

archy and mehitabel (1927), what the ants are saying

“Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.”

William Shakespeare The Tempest

Ariel, Act I, scene ii.
The Tempest (1611)

Suffering, Change, Sea

“The bones of the Dead will be seen to govern the fortunes of him who moves them.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

Of Dice
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XX Humorous Writings

Dead

“In a shared fish, there are no bones.”

Democritus Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of the atomic theory

Freeman (1948), p. 157

Fish

“As I saw that they were very friendly to us, and perceived that they could be much more easily converted to our holy faith by gentle means than by force, I presented them with some red caps, and strings of beads to wear upon the neck, and many other trifles of small value, wherewith they were much delighted, and became wonderfully attached to us. Afterwards they came swimming to the boats, bringing parrots, balls of cotton thread, javelins, and many other things which they exchanged for articles we gave them, such as glass beads, and hawk's bells; which trade was carried on with the utmost good will. But they seemed on the whole to me, to be a very poor people. They all go completely naked, even the women, though I saw but one girl. All whom I saw were young, not above thirty years of age, well made, with fine shapes and faces; their hair short, and coarse like that of a horse's tail, combed toward the forehead, except a small portion which they suffer to hang down behind, and never cut. Some paint themselves with black, which makes them appear like those of the Canaries, neither black nor white; others with white, others with red, and others with such colors as they can find. Some paint the face, and some the whole body; others only the eyes, and others the nose. Weapons they have none, nor are acquainted with them, for I showed them swords which they grasped by the blades, and cut themselves through ignorance. They have no iron, their javelins being without it, and nothing more than sticks, though some have fish-bones or other things at the ends. They are all of a good size and stature, and handsomely formed. I saw some with scars of wounds upon their bodies, and demanded by signs the of them; they answered me in the same way, that there came people from the other islands in the neighborhood who endeavored to make prisoners of them, and they defended themselves. I thought then, and still believe, that these were from the continent. It appears to me, that the people are ingenious, and would be good servants and I am of opinion that they would very readily become Christians, as they appear to have no religion. They very quickly learn such words as are spoken to them. If it please our Lord, I intend at my return to carry home six of them to your Highnesses, that they may learn our language. I saw no beasts in the island, nor any sort of animals except parrots.”

Cristoforo Colombo (1451–1506) Explorer, navigator, and colonizer

12 October 1492; This entire passage is directly quoted from Columbus in the summary by Bartolomé de Las Casas
Journal of the First Voyage

Women, People, Age, Faith

“Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth.”

Peter Ustinov (1921–2004) English actor, writer, and dramatist

As quoted in The Book of Quotes (1979) by Barbara Rowes, p. 164

For Parents, Children, Parent

“Port-wine, he says, when rich and sound,
Warms his old bones like nectar:
And as the inns, where it is found,
Are his especial hunting-ground,
We call him the INN-SPECTRE.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Of "Inspector Kobold", a spectre
Canto 3, "Scarmoges"
Phantasmagoria (1869)

Wine

“The man of flesh and bone; the man who is born, suffers, and dies—above all, who dies; the man who eats and drinks and plays and sleeps and thinks and wills; the man who is seen and heard; the brother, the real brother.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913)

Drink, Thinking, Sleep, Suffering

“So we are alone in our blood and bones and our thoughts. It seems we are separate if we want to feel that way. And yet we can look out.”

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

Self and World (1957)

Way, Feeling

“Today, on this day of possibility, we stand in the shadow of a lanky, raw-boned man with little formal education who once took the stage at Old Main and told the nation that if anyone did not believe the American principles of freedom and equality, that those principles were timeless and all-inclusive, they should go rip that page out of the Declaration of Independence.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Knox College Commencement Address (4 June 2005) http://www.knox.edu/x9803.xml 2005

Education, Freedom

“People make a grievous error thinking that a list of facts is the truth. Facts are just the bare bones out of which truth is made.”

Shelby Foote (1916–2005) Novelist, historian

Interview for the Academy of Achievement, 1999

People, Truth, Error, Thinking

“Surely, God could have caused birds to fly with their bones made of solid gold, with their veins full of quicksilver, with their flesh heavier than lead, and with their wings exceedingly small. He did not, and that ought to show something. It is only in order to shield your ignorance that you put the Lord at every turn to the refuge of a miracle.”

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer

Notes in a copy of Jean-Baptiste Morin's "Famous and ancient problems of the earth's motion or rest, yet to be solved" (published 1631), as quoted in The Crime of Galileo (1976) by Giorgio De Santillana, p. 167
Other quotes

God, Bird, Flying

“What a weird experience I had had! At no time had I felt at home in the Communist party. I had always felt that the possibility was there, but always I was not quite sure of the motives of the people with whom I worked and they never seemed quite sure of mine. My comrades had known me, my family, my friends; they, God knows, had known my aching poverty. But they had never been able to conquer their fear of the individual way in which I acted and lived, an individuality which life had seared into my blood and bones.”

Richard Wright book Black Boy

Black Boy (1945)

Life, God, People, Fear

“But, dear, cling close to me; since you were gone,
My barren thoughts have chilled me to the bone.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Reconciliation http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1568/ The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910) Context: Some may have blamed you that you took away The verses that could move them on the day When, the ears being deafened, the sight of the eyes blind With lightning, you went from me, and I could find Nothing to make a song about but kings, Helmets, and swords, and half-forgotten things That were like memories of you--but now We'll out, for the world lives as long ago; And while we're in our laughing, weeping fit, Hurl helmets, crowns, and swords into the pit. But, dear, cling close to me; since you were gone, My barren thoughts have chilled me to the bone.

“A stroke with the edges, though made with ever so much force, seldom kills, as the vital parts of the body are defended both by the bones and armor; on the contrary a stab, though it penetrates but two inches, is generally fatal.”
Caesa enim, quouis impetu ueniat, non frequenter interficit, cum et armis uitalia defendantur et ossibus; at contra puncta duas uncias adacta mortalis est.

Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus book De re militari

Book 1
De Re Militari (also Epitoma Rei Militaris), Book I, "The Selection and Training of New Levies"

Parting

“He that sings a lasting song
Thinks in a marrow-bone.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

A Prayer For Old Age http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1423/, st. 1. A Full Moon in March (1935) Context: God guard me from those thoughts men think In the mind alone; He that sings a lasting song Thinks in a marrow-bone.

Thinking, Singing