Quotes about bone
page 4

Grant Morrison photo

“Most human lives are forgotten after four generations. We build our splendid houses on the edge of the abyss then distract and dazzle ourselves with entertainers and sex while we slowly at first, then more rapidly, spin around the ever-thirsty plughole in the middle. My treasured possessions -- all the silly little mementoes and toys and special books I’ve carried with me for decades -- will wind up on flea market tables or rot on garbage heaps. Someone else will inhabit the rooms that were mine. Everything that was important to me will mean nothing to the countless generations that follow our own. In the grand sprawl of it all, I have no significance at all. I don’t believe a giant gaseous pensioner will reward or censure me when my body stops working and I don’t believe individual consciousness survives for long after brain death so I lack the consolations of religion. I wanted Annihilator to peek into that implacable moment where everything we are comes to an end so I had to follow the Black Brick Road all the way down and seriously consider the abject pointlessness of all human endeavours. I found these contemplations thrilling and I was drawn to research pure nihilism, which led me to Ray Brassier’s Nihil Unbound and back to Ligotti. I have a fundamentally optimistic and positive view of human existence and the future and I think it’s important to face intelligent, well-argued challenges to that view on a regular basis. While I agree with Ligotti that the universe is, on the face of it, a blind emergent process, driven by chance over billions of years of trial and error to ultimately produce creatures capable of little more than flamboyant expressions of the agonizing awareness of their own imminent deaths, I don’t share his slightly huffy disappointment at this state of affairs. If the universe is intrinsically meaningless, if the mindless re-arrangement of atomic debris into temporarily arising then dissipating forms has no point, I can only ask, why do I see meaning everywhere, why can I find a point in everything? Why do other human beings like me seem to see meaning in everything too? If the sun is only an apocalyptic series of hydrogen fusion reactions, why does it look like an angel and inspire poetry? Why does the flesh and fur-covered bone and jelly of my cat’s face melt my heart? Is all that surging, roaring incandescent meaning inside me, or is it out there? “Meaning” to me is equivalent to “Magic.” The more significance we bring to things, even to the smallest and least important things, the more special, the more “magical” they seem to become. For all that materialistic science and existential philosophy tells us we live in a chaotic, meaningless universe, the evidence of my senses and the accounts of other human beings seem to indicate that, in fact, the whole universe and everything in it explodes second-to-second with beauty, horror, grandeur and significance when and wherever it comes into contact with consciousness. Therefore, it’s completely down to us to revel in our ability to make meaning, or not. Ligotti, like many extreme Buddhist philosophers, starts from the position that life is an agonizing, heartbreaking grave-bound veil of tears. This seems to be a somewhat hyperbolic view of human life; as far as I can see most of us round here muddle through ignoring death until it comes in close and life’s mostly all right with just enough significant episodes of sheer joy and connection and just enough sh-tty episodes of pain or fear. The notion that the whole span of our lives is no more than some dreadful rehearsal for hell may resonate with the deeply sensitive among us but by and large life is pretty okay generally for most of us. And for some, especially in the developed countries, “okay” equals luxurious. To focus on the moments of pain and fear we all experience and then to pretend they represent the totality of our conscious experience seems to me a little effete and indulgent. Most people don’t get to be born at all, ever. To see in that radiant impossibility only pointlessness, to see our experience as malignantly useless, as Ligotti does, seems to me a bit camp.”

Grant Morrison (1960) writer

2014
http://www.blastr.com/2014-9-12/grant-morrisons-big-talk-getting-deep-writer-annihilator-multiversity
On life

Steve Kilbey photo
Czeslaw Milosz photo

“I liked beaches, swimming pools, and clinics
for there they were the bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh.
I pitied them and myself, but this will not protect me.
The word and the thought are over.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

"They Will Place There Telescreens" (1964), trans. Czesŀaw Miŀosz
Bobo's Metamorphosis (1965)

Cormac McCarthy photo
Alex Salmond photo

“You are the blood of our blood and the bone of our bone.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Scotland and Northern Ireland (June 18, 2007)

Elton John photo
Ilana Mercer photo

“Metaphorically speaking, free African-American politicians and activists are boiling the bones of their enslaved ancestors to make soup. The suffering of slaves is being exploited posthumously to shape discourse in politically advantageous ways.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"What Cultural Marxist Would Say About Looting, http://www.wnd.com/2017/09/what-cultural-marxists-would-say-about-looting/" WND.COM, September 14, 2017
2010s, 2017

Thomas Wolsey photo

“I am come to leave my bones among you.”

Thomas Wolsey (1473–1530) English political figure and cardinal

To the Abbot of Leicester, knowing that he was dying. http://www.tudorplace.com.ar/Bios/ThomasWolsey(Cardinal).htm

Isa Boletini photo

“"When the spring comes, we will manure the plains of Kosova with the bones of Serbs, for we Albanians have suffered too much to forget." — Isa Boletini, Albanian leader 1913”

Isa Boletini (1864–1916) Kosovo Albanian guerilla leader

Paulin Kola: The search for Greater Albania http://books.google.com/books?id=W_LV5RJe_EkC&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=we+will+manure+the+plains+of+Kosovo+with+the+bones+of+Serbs,+for+we+Albanians+have+suffered+too+much+to+forget&source=bl&ots=MQwaOkg9JX&sig=3qDh_Av_qyDDgBO5XebnB9jTJ5I&hl=en&ei=XIWhTZ6MC4Tusgbwk7XyAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false. Hurst, London 2003, , S. 4. Page 1.

“Chaco unquestionably had coyotes in town; coyote bones are common in the archeological sites of the inner city.”

Dan Flores (1948) American historian

p, 125
Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History (2016)

Booth Tarkington photo
George Eliot photo
Mirkka Rekola photo
Honoré de Balzac photo

“Love in the abstract is not enough for a great man in poverty; he has need of its utmost devotion… She who is really a wife, one in heart, flesh, and bone, must follow wherever he leads, in whom her life, her strength, her pride, and happiness are centered.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

L'amour abstrait ne suffit pas à un homme pauvre et grand, il en veut tous les dévouements... La véritable épouse en cœur, en chair et en os, se laisse traîner là où va celui en qui réside sa vie, sa force, sa gloire, son bonheur.
The Wild Ass’s Skin (1831), Part II: A Woman Without a Heart

J. Michael Straczynski photo
Eugene V. Debs photo
Bill Mollison photo
Paul Klee photo
W. H. Auden photo
Cesare Pavese photo
Luís de Camões photo

“The last words which I uttered on board of the vessel were those of Scipio—'Ungrateful country! thou shalt not even possess my bones'.”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

As derradeiras palavras que na náu disse foram as de Scipião Africano: Ingrata patria, non possidebis ossa mea!
Letter written from India (1553) to a friend at Lisbon, as quoted in Poems, from the Portuguese of Luis de Camoens (1808) by Percy Smythe, pp. 16–17
Letters

John Heywood photo

“It will not out of the flesh that is bred in the bone.”

John Heywood (1497–1580) English writer known for plays, poems and a collection of proverbs

Part II, chapter 8.
Proverbs (1546), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Mikha'il Na'ima photo
Richard Cobden photo
William Gibson photo
Frederick Douglass photo
DMX (rapper) photo

“Give a dog a bone, leave a dog alone. Let a dog roam and he'll find his way home.”

DMX (rapper) (1970) American rapper and actor from New York

"Ruff Ryders' Anthem" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpHtEa2II_s (1998), It's Dark and Hell Is Hot
1990s

“I bleed my bones, their marrow to bestow
Upon that God who knows what I would know.”

"The Marrow," ll. 23-24
The Far Field (1964)

Bawa Muhaiyaddeen photo
Artimus Pyle photo
William Jennings Bryan photo

“Why, these men would destroy the Bible on evidence that would not convict a habitual criminal of a misdemeanor. They found a tooth in a sand pit in Nebraska with no other bones about it, and from that one tooth decided that it was the remains of the missing link. They have queer ideas about age too. They find a fossil and when they are asked how old it is they say they can't tell without knowing what rock it was in, and when they are asked how old the rock is they say they can't tell unless they know how old the fossil is.”

William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925) United States Secretary of State

As quoted in "Osborn States the Case For Evolution", in The New York Times (12 Jul 1925), p. XX1; the tooth was misidentified as anthropoid by Osborn, who over-zealously proposed Nebraska Man in 1922; the tooth was shortly thereafter found to be that of a peccary (a Pliocene pig) when further bones were found. A retraction was made in 1927, correcting the scientific blunder.

Bill Clinton photo
Alan Greenspan photo

“Treasury Secretary Brady didn't like the Fed either. He and the president were friends and had a lot in common-both were wealthy, Yale educated patricians and members of Skull and Bones.”

Alan Greenspan (1926) 13th Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the United States

Source: 2000s, The Age of Turbulence (2008), Chapter Five, "Black Monday", p. 119.

Charles Lyell photo
Henry Adams photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Hector Berlioz photo

“Poor devils! Where do these unfortunate creatures come from? On what butcher's block will they meet their end? What reward does municipal munificence allot them for thus cleaning (or dirtying) the pavements of Paris? At what age are they sent to the glue factory? What becomes of their bones (their skin is good for nothing)?”

Hector Berlioz (1803–1869) French Romantic composer

Pauvres diables!... D'où sortent ces malheureux êtres ?... À quel Montfaucon vont-ils mourir ?... Que leur octroie la munificence municipale pour nettoyer (ou salir) ainsi le pavé de Paris ?... À quel âge les envoie-t-on à l'équarrissage ?... Que fait-on de leurs os ? (leur peau n'est bonne à rien.)
Les Grotesques de la Musique (Paris: A. Bourdilliat, 1859) p. 89; Alastair Bruce (trans.) The Musical Madhouse (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2003) pp. 54-56.
Of critics

Muhammad photo
Nina Turner photo

“This is the tragedy: Consciousness has forced us into the paradoxical position of striving to be unself-conscious of what we are—hunks of spoiling flesh on disintegrating bones.”

Thomas Ligotti (1953) American horror author

The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror (2010)

“In consequence of the great fear which fell upon Jaipál, who confessed he had seen death before the appointed time, he sent a deputation to the Amír soliciting peace, on the promise of his paying down a sum of money, and offering to obey any order he might receive respecting his elephants and his country. The Amir Subuktigín consented on account of mercy he felt towards those who were his vassals, or for some other reason which seemed expedient to him. But the Sultán Yamínu-d daula Mahmúd addressed the messengers in a harsh voice, and refused to abstain from battle, until he should obtain a complete victory suited to his zeal for the honour of Islám and the Musulmáns, and one which he was confident God would grant to his arms. So they returned, and Jaipál being in great alarm, again sent the most humble supplications that the battle might cease saying, "You have seen the impetuosity of the Hindus and their indifference to death, whenever any calamity befalls them, as at this moment. If therefore, you refuse to grant peace in the hope of obtaining plunder, tribute, elephants and prisoners, then there is no alternative for us but to mount the horse of stern determination, destroy our property, take out the eyes of our elephants, cast our children into fire, and rush out on each other with sword and spear, so that all that will be left to you to conquer and seize is stones and dirt, dead bodies, and scattered bones."”

Sabuktigin (942–997) Founder of the Ghaznavid Empire

Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, Volume II, pp. 20-21. Translation of Tarikh-i-Yamini of al-Utbi.

Jay Leno photo
Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi photo

“History knew a midnight, which we may estimate at about the year 1000 A. D., when the human race lost the arts and sciences even to the memory. The last twilight of paganism was gone, and yet the new day had not begun. Whatever was left of culture in the world was found only in the Saracens, and a Pope eager to learn studied in disguise in their unversities, and so became the wonder of the West. At last Christendom, tired of praying to the dead bones of the martyrs, flocked to the tomb of the Saviour Himself, only to find for a second time that the grave was empty and that Christ was risen from the dead. Then mankind too rose from the dead. It returned to the activities and the business of life; there was a feverish revival in the arts and in the crafts. The cities flourished, a new citizenry was founded. Cimabue rediscovered the extinct art of painting; Dante, that of poetry. Then it was, also, that great courageous spirits like Abelard and Saint Thomas Aquinas dared to introduce into Catholicism the concepts of Aristotelian logic, and thus founded scholastic philosophy. But when the Church took the sciences under her wing, she demanded that the forms in which they moved be subjected to the same unconditioned faith in authority as were her own laws. And so it happened that scholasticism, far from freeing the human spirit, enchained it for many centuries to come, until the very possibility of free scientific research came to be doubted. At last, however, here too daylight broke, and mankind, reassured, determined to take advantage of its gifts and to create a knowledge of nature based on independent thought. The dawn of the day in history is know as the Renaissance or the Revival of Learning.”

Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi (1804–1851) German mathematician

"Über Descartes Leben und seine Methode die Vernunft Richtig zu Leiten und die Wahrheit in den Wissenschaften zu Suchen," "About Descartes' Life and Method of Reason.." (Jan 3, 1846) C. G. J. Jacobi's Gesammelte werke Vol. 7 https://books.google.com/books?id=_09tAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA309 p.309, as quoted by Tobias Dantzig, Number: The Language of Science (1930).

Anna Quindlen photo
Clifford D. Simak photo
Mark Burns (televangelist) photo

“In reference to dealing with black issues and dealing with issues that plague those minority communities, Donald Trump doesn't have a racist bone in his body. I know what real racism is. And Donald Trump is so far from it. Talking to him and his wonderful wife and his children is like hanging out with some friends of mine that are black … He's just that kind of a person. He is not uneasy around you. He's very relaxed… When Donald Trump talks about 'the blacks' he's talking about the blacks, the group as a whole. He's talking about the groups… No, it doesn't bother me, because I know Donald Trump. I know who he is. I know he is not at all speaking in any derogatory sense at all. He's simply talking to that ethnic group, the blacks or the whites… Even with a sitting black President, the racial tension in this country is at an all-time high. And I believe it's led by the Democratic party and led by President Barack Obama, and obviously Secretary Clinton desires to continue that torch, which I believe will lead us more and more into economic destruction, especially for minorities in this country… I have not experienced racist tension from Donald Trump. I'm from the South. Literally right over the next county, there are active KKK groups that parade their rebel flag on a daily basis… This is in 2016. Right now, today, with a sitting black President. So I know what real racism looks like. And it is not Donald Trump… Does he want it (ex-KKK leaders endorsement)? He said, 'No, I don't want it, I don't accept it.' … He doesn't stand for any hate groups, whether it be a Christian hate group or an Islam hate group. He's already stated this. Mr. Trump has already stated that there was a technical issue in the earpiece. I'm in television; I own a TV studio. I do know how technical issues can cause you to miss out on what someone is saying.”

Mark Burns (televangelist) (1979) Christian pastor and founder of the NOW Television Network

Interview, New York Daily News, 15 May 2016 http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/meet-female-muslim-mexican-american-trump-supporters-article-1.2637077

Kent Hovind photo
GG Allin photo

“GG Allin: I've seen people in my audience leave with broken bones, broken arms. I've seen them leave on strechers. I've seen rapes before me.”

GG Allin (1956–1993) American singer-songwriter

GG Allin on The Jerry Springer Show, May 5. 1993.
On The Jerry Springer Show

Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke photo
Washington Irving photo
Anne Sexton photo
Tecumseh photo

“The Muscogee was once a mighty people. The Georgians trembled at your war-whoop, and the maidens of my tribe, on the distant lakes, sung the prowess of your warriors and sighed for their embraces. Now your very blood is white; your tomahawks have no edge; your bows and arrows were buried with your fathers. Oh! Muscogees, brethren of my mother, brush from your eyelids the sleep of slavery; once more strike for vengeance; once more for your country. The spirits of the mighty dead complain. Their tears drop from the weeping skies. Let the white race perish! They seize your land, they corrupt your women, they trample on your dead! Back! whence they came, upon a trail of blood, they must be driven! Back! back — ay, into the great water whose accursed waves brought them to our shores! Burn their dwellings! Destroy their stock! Slay their wives and children! The red man owns the country, and the pale-face must never enjoy it! War now! War forever! War upon the living! War upon the dead! Dig their very corpses from the graves! Our country must give no rest to the white man's bones.”

Tecumseh (1768–1813) Native American leader of the Shawnee

Speech to the Creek people, quoted in Great Speeches by Native Americans by Robert Blaisdel. This quote appeared in J. F H. Claiborne, Life and Times of Gen. Sam Dale, the Mississippi Partisan (Harper, New York, 1860). However, historian John Sugden writes, "Claiborne's description of Tecumseh at Tuckabatchie in the alleged autobiography of the Fontiersman, Samuel Dale, however, is fraudulent. … Although they adopt the style of the first person, as in conventional autobiography, the passages dealing with Tecumseh were largely based upon published sources, including McKenney, Pickett and Drake's Life of Tecumseh. The story is cast in the exaggerated and sensational language of the dime novelist, with embellishments more likely supplied by Claiborne than Dale, and the speech put into Tecumseh's mouth is not only unhistorical (it has the British in Detroit!) but similar to ones the author concocted for other Indians in different circumstances." Sugden also finds it "unreliable" and "bogus." Sugden, John. "Early Pan-Indianism; Tecumseh’s Tour of the Indian Country, 1811-1812." American Indian Quarterly 10, no. 4 (1986): 273–304. doi:10.2307/1183838.
Misattributed, "Let the White Race Perish" (October 1811)

Amy Hempel photo
Robert Graves photo
Halldór Laxness photo
Joanna Newsom photo
Ignatius of Loyola photo

“Rattle his bones over the stones!
He's only a pauper, whom nobody owns!”

Thomas Noel (poet) (1799–1861) English poet

The Pauper's Ride, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Rumi photo
Hans Arp photo
William L. Shirer photo
Halldór Laxness photo

“Sell the country, bury bones. What else?”

the unself-conscious policeman
Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

“"But, doctor, what will happen to my teeth and bones if I stop drinking milk?" Nothing. Nothing that wouldn't have happened anyway.”

Frank Oski (1932–1996) American pediatrician

Source: Don't Drink Your Milk! (1983), p. 50

Austen Chamberlain photo

“No British Government ever will and ever can risk the bones of a British grenadier.”

Austen Chamberlain (1863–1937) British politician

Letter to Sir Eyre Crowe (16 February 1925) on the Polish Corridor, quoted in Keith Middlemas and John Barnes, Baldwin: A Biography (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969), p. 356.
1920s

Max Beckmann photo

“Even our own cadaver-bones shall not hinder us from standing our ground until the very last, proud and tired in the face of the black wall that surrounds us.”

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

Beckman's Diary, 10 October 1943, Amsterdam; as cited on: 'Arts in exile' http://kuenste-im-exil.de
1940s

Gillian Anderson photo

“I have feminist bones and when I hear things or see people react to women in certain ways I have very little tolerance.”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

Celia Walden Glamour "I have a healthy appreciation of Ryan Gosling" http://www.gilliananderson.ws/transcripts/10_15/14glamour.shtml (August, 2014)
2010s

Stanisław Lem photo
David Brinkley photo

“[Bill Clinton] has not a creative bone in his body. Therefore he is a bore and will always be a bore.”

David Brinkley (1920–2003) American journalist

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1842&dat=19961118&id=jHw0AAAAIBAJ&sjid=AckEAAAAIBAJ&pg=1354,2780351

Noam Chomsky photo
Henry Fielding photo
Klaus Kinski photo
Frances Moore Lappé photo
Stanley Baldwin photo

“Those of us who love the country and country things feel in our bones the urbanisation of our land and the need that something should be done to preserve our birds and our flowers.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at the unveiling of the Hudson Memorial in Hyde Park (19 May 1925), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 129.
1925

“It's yet another mark of Auden's superiority that whereas his contemporaries could be didactic about what they had merely thought or read, Auden could be tentative about what he felt in his bones.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'On Auden's Death'
Essays and reviews, At the Pillars of Hercules (1979)

Harry Chapin photo
Anne Sexton photo

“The notion that you need animal food as protein is one of the great conspiracies of bullshit by the government. Did we not all grow up saying we had to have four glasses of whole milk a day for healthy bones? It’s ridiculous. It’s liquid cholesterol.”

"Steve Wynn: Viva Las Vegan", interview with the Las Vegas Weekly (4 November 2010) https://lasvegasweekly.com/dining/2010/nov/04/steve-wynn-viva-las-vegan/.

Joseph Arch photo
Mo Yan photo
Kris Roe photo
Sydney Smith photo

“"Heat, ma'am!" I said; "it was so dreadful here, that I found there was nothing left for it but to take off my flesh and sit in my bones."”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

Vol. I, p. 267
Lady Holland's Memoir (1855), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Sienna Guillory photo
H. G. Wells photo
Nick Cave photo

“The carny had a horse, all skin and bone,
A bow-backed nag, that he named "Sorrow",
Now it is buried in a shallow grave,
In the then parched meadow.”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Song lyrics, Your Funeral… My Trial (1986), The Carny

Gerard Manley Hopkins photo