Quotes about breast
page 3

“In one point, and that too of more importance than is generally attached to it, the puritans of the two epochs bear a critical resemblance, namely, their hostility to rural and athletic sports: to those sports, which string the nerves and strengthen the frame, which excite an emulation in deeds of hardihood and valour, and which imperceptibly instill honour, generosity, and a love of glory, into the mind of the clown. Men thus formed are pupils unfit for the puritanical school; therefore it is, that the sect are incessantly labouring to eradicate, fibre by fibre, the last poor remains of English manners. And, sorry I am to tell you, that they meet with but too many abettors, where they ought to meet with resolute foes. Their pretexts are plausible: gentleness and humanity are the cant of the day. Weak men are imposed on, and wise men want the courage to resist. Instead of preserving those assemblages and those sports, in which the nobleman mixed with his peasants, which made the poor man proud of his inferiority, and created in his breast a personal affection for his lord, too many of the rulers of this land are now hunting the common people from every scene of diversion, and driving them to a club or a conventicle, at the former of which they suck in the delicious rudiments of earthly equality, and, at the latter, the no less delicious doctrine, that there is no lawful king but King Jesus.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

Political Register (27 February 1802).

Love, Men, Hostility, People

“Riches, glory, power are mere smoke, vanity! The rich man will find a richer than himself; the greater glory of another will eclipse a man who is famous; a strong man will be conquered by a stronger. But can Cæsar himself, can any god even, experience greater delight or be happier than a simple mortal at the moment when at his breast there is breathing another dear breast, or when he kisses beloved lips? Hence love makes us equal to the gods, O Lygia.”

Henryk Sienkiewicz book Quo Vadis

Marcus Vinicius to Lygia, in Ch. 2
Quo Vadis (1895)

Love, God, Kiss, Strong

“Fear is the foundation of most governments; but it is so sordid and brutal a passion, and renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable, that Americans will not be likely to approve of any political institution which is founded on it.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

1770s, Thoughts on Government (1776)

Men, Stupidity, Fear, Passion

“Miss Twye was soaping her breasts in the bath
When she heard behind her a meaning laugh
And to her amazement she discovered
A wicked man in the bathroom cupboard.”

Gavin Ewart (1916–1995) English poet

"Miss Twye", line 1, from Poems and Songs (1939)

“What happened to [Claudia] Winkleman’s breasts? Put on some weight, girlie.”

Toby Young (1963) British journalist

Twitter

“The spirit of religious persecution is not the special failing of any particular faith, but springs eternal in the human breast.”

Dion Fortune (1890–1946) British occultist and author

Dion Fortune, quoted in British esotericist and Fortune biographer Gareth Knight's Experience of the Inner Worlds

Faith, Spring

“The death clock is ticking slowly in our breast, and each drop of blood measures its time, and our life is a lingering fever.”

Georg Büchner Leonce and Lena

Act II.
Leonce and Lena (1838)

Life, Death, Time

“On the breast of that huge Mississippi of falsehood called History, a foam-bell more or less is no consequence.”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

Literary Influence of Academies, p. 69
Essays in Criticism (1865)

History

“Your joy is only moment’s exhalation,
at most a blink of eye is your dejection.
As sweetly falls your silent sleep’s protection
you sink in soft earth’s breast, like wheat’s oblation.

Thus Beauty, whose completed germination
was hindered by unfinished life’s perfection,
will in your dying see a resurrection –
a thousand-fold its great reanimation.

For when you’re in your grave you’re handed over
to probing roots of lilac and of lime tree,
to buds the sap is drawn above the clover

aflame to burst in summer’s honeyed finery
of blossomed trees, and so your radiant dreaming
will sweet fulfilment find in springtime’s teeming.”

Kaarlo Sarkia (1902–1945) Finnish poet

Life, Beauty, Dreams, Sleep

“Anarchism is the purity of rebellion. A pig who struggles wildly and rends the air with his cries while he is held to be slaughtered, and a baby who kicks and screams when, wanting warmth and his mother's breast, he is made to wait in the cold—these are two samples of natural rebellion. Natural rebellion always inspires either deep sympathy and identification with the rebelling creature, or a stiffening of the heart and an activation of aggressive-defensive mechanisms to silence an accusing truth. This truth is that each living being is an end in itself; that nothing gives a being the right to make another a mere instrument of his purposes.”

Giovanni Baldelli (1914–1986) Anarchist theorist

Source: Social Anarchism (1971), p. 1

Truth, Nature, Silence, Waiting

“O how I feel, just as I pluck the flower
And stick it to my breast — words can't reveal;
But there are souls that in this lovely hour
Know all I mean, and feel whate'er I feel.”

John Clare (1793–1864) English poet

"Nature"
Poems Chiefly from Manuscript

Love, Feeling, Soul, Flowers

“As when a rose, ere-while of bloom so gay,
Thrown from the careless virgin's breast away,
Lies faded on the plain, the living red,
The snowy white, and all its fragrance fled;
So from her cheeks the roses died away,
And pale in death the beauteous Inez lay.”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Assim como a bonina, que cortada
Antes do tempo foi, cândida e bela,
Sendo das mãos lascivas maltratada
Da menina que a trouxe na capela,
O cheiro traz perdido e a cor murchada:
Tal está morta a pálida donzela,
Secas do rosto as rosas, e perdida
A branca e viva cor, co'a doce vida.
Stanza 134 (tr. William Julius Mickle)
Epic poetry, Os Lusíadas (1572), Canto III

Death

“I hope that there is no jealousy, or even ground of jealousy, on the part of the Americans, but that they know that when their rights come to be discussed here the greatest attention will be paid to their interests. They have long been acquainted with the habits of this country, and with the mode of administering justice here : until within these few years their causes used to come over here to be discussed, and I never heard that the decisions in our Courts ever awakened the least jealousy in the breasts of the inhabitants of that country.”

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron

Wilson v. Marryat (1798), 8 T. R. 44.

Jealousy, Justice, Hope, Decision

“I think the circle is very abstract. I could make up stories of what the circle means to men, but I don't know if it is that conscious. I think it was a form, a vehicle. I don't think I had a sexual anthropomorphic, or geometric meaning. It wasn't a breast and it wasn't a circle representing life and eternity…. I remember always working with contradiction and contradictory forms which is my idea also in life. The whole absurdity of life, everything for me has always been opposite. Nothing has ever been in the middle. When I gave you my autobiography, my life never had anything normal or in the center. It was always extremes.”

Eva Hesse (1936–1970) German-born American sculptor

[Johnson, Ellen Halda, American Artists on Art: From 1940 to 1980, August 1, 1982, Westview Press, ISBN 0064301125, p. 192]

Life, Men, Idea, Thinking

“Man was born to die. What did it mean? Hanging around and waiting. Waiting for the ‘A train.’ Waiting for a pair of big breasts on some August night in a Vegas hotel room. Waiting for the mouse to sing. Waiting for the snake to grow wings. Hanging around.”

Charles Bukowski book Pulp

Pulp (1994)

Singing, Waiting, Training, Night

“[Aphrodite] set out, and after searching up and down Olympus for her boy, found him far away in the fruit-laden orchard of Zeus. With him was Ganymede, whose beauty had so captivated Zeus that he took him up to heaven to live with the immortals. The two lads, who had much in common, were playing with golden knuckle-bones. Eros, the greedy boy, was standing there with a whole handful of them clutched to his breast and a happy flush mantling his cheeks. Near by sat Ganymede, hunched up, silent and disconsolate, with only two left. He threw these for what they were worth in quick succession and was furious when Eros laughed. Of course he lost them both immediately – they joined the rest. So he went off in despair with empty hands and did not notice the goddess's approach. Aphrodite came up to her boy, took his chin in her hand, and said: 'Why this triumphant smile, you rascal?”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

I do believe you won the game unfairly by cheating a beginner…
Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book III. Jason and Medea

Happiness, Smile, Beauty, Search

“I'm a short woman with a pretty good body and large breasts — that's not what I think of as sexy.”

Adrienne Barbeau (1945) actress from the United States

[ISBN 0786716371, There Are Worse Things I Could Do, Barbeau, Adrienne, 118, 2006, Carroll & Graf]

Thinking

“Oh, who—reposed on some fond breast,
Love's own delicious place of rest—
Reading faith in the watching eyes,
Feeling the heart beat with its sighs,
Could know regrets, or doubts, or cares,
That we had bound our fate with theirs!”

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

The Sisters from The London Literary Gazette: 13th March 1824 Metrical Tales - Tale III.
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Love, Fate, Faith, Feeling

“Many of the narratives can only tend to excite ideas the worst calculated for a female breast: Every thing is called plainly and roundly by its name; and the annals of a Brothel would scarcely furnish a greater choice of indecent expressions. Yet this is the Book, which young Women are recommended to study.”

Matthew Lewis (writer) book The Monk

Page 259.
The Monk (1796)

Women, Books, Idea, Study

“We do not know nature; causes hidden in her breast might have produced everything. In your turn, observe the polyp of Trembley: does it not contain in itself the causes which bring about regeneration? Why then would it be absurd to think that there are physical causes by reason of which everything has been made, and to which the whole chain of this vast universe is so necessarily bound and held that, nothing which happens, could have failed to happen,—causes, of which we are so invincibly ignorant that we have had recourse to a God, who, as some aver, is not so much as a logical entity? Thus to destroy chance is not to prove the existence of a supreme being, since there may be some other thing which is neither chance nor God—I mean, nature. It follows that the study of nature can make only unbelievers; and the way of thinking of all its more successful investigators proves this.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

As quoted by Julien Offray de La Mettrie, Man a Machine (1747) Tr. Gertrude Carman Bussey https://books.google.com/books?id=GKYLAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA125 (1912) Pensées Philosophiques (1746)

God, Way, Nature, Thinking

“Twas now the month in which the world began
(If March beheld the first created man):
And since the vernal equinox, the Sun,
In Aries, twelve degrees, or more, had run;
When casting up his eyes against the light,
Both month, and day, and hour, he measur'd right;
And told more truly than th' Ephemeris:
For Art may err, but Nature cannot miss.
Thus numbering times and seasons in his breast,
His second crowing the third hour confess'd.”

John Dryden book Fables, Ancient and Modern

The Cock and the Fox line 445 - 457.
Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700)

World, Art, Nature, Light

“Why should I be my aunt,
or me, or anyone?
What similarities
boots, hands, the family voice
I felt in my throat, or even
the National Geographic
and those awful hanging breasts
held us all together
or made us all just one?”

Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979) American poet

Poem: In the Waiting Room

Family

“We loved in infinite spaces, forgetting here
The breasts that were lit with life and the lips so near;
Till the wizard willows waved in the wind and drew
Me away from the fulness of love and down to you.”

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

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

Love, Life, Forgetting

“We watched her breathing through the night,
Her breathing soft and low,
As in her breast the wave of life
Kept heaving to and fro.”

Thomas Hood The Death-Bed

The Death-Bed; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
20th century

Life, Night

“Mary Magdalene beat her breasts and sobbed,
His dear disciple, stone-faced, stared.
His mother stood apart. No other looked
into her secret eyes. Nobody dared.
— 1940-1943”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

Magdalena struggled, cried and moaned. Piter sank into the stone trance... Only there, where Mother stood alone, None has dared cast a single glance. Translated by Tanya Karshtedt (1996) http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/akhmatova/akhmatova_ind.html Mary Magdalene beat her breast and sobbed, The beloved disciple turned to stone, But where the silent Mother stood, there No one glanced and no one would have dared. Translated by Judith Hemschemeyer Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), Crucifixion

Secret

“The Sultan himself joined in the pursuit, and went after them as far as the fort called Bhimnagar [Nagarkot, modern Kangra], which is very strong, situated on the promontory of a lofty hill, in the midst of impassable waters. The kings of Hind, the chiefs of that country, and rich devotees, used to amass their treasures and precious jewels, and send them time after time to be presented to the large idol that they might receive a reward for their good deeds and draw near to their God. So the Sultan advanced near to this crow's fruit, ^ and this accumulation of years, which had attained such an amount that the backs of camels would not carry it, nor vessels contain it, nor writers hands record it, nor the imagination of an arithmetician conceive it. The Sultan brought his forces under the fort and surrounded it, and prepared to attack the garrison vigorously, boldly, and wisely. When the defenders saw the hills covered with the armies of plunderers, and the arrows ascending towards them like flaming sparks of fire, great fear came upon them, and, calling out for mercy, they opened the gates, and fell on the earth, like sparrows before a hawk, or rain before lightning. Thus did God grant an easy conquest of this fort to the Sultan, and bestowed on him as plunder the products of mines and seas, the ornaments of heads and breasts, to his heart's content. … After this he returned to Ghazna in triumph; and, on his arrival there, he ordered the court-yard of his palace to be covered with a carpet, on which he displayed jewels and unbored pearls and rubies, shining like sparks, or like wine congealed with ice, and emeralds like fresh sprigs of myrtle, and diamonds in size and weight like pomegranates. Then ambassadors from foreign countries, including the envoy from Tagh^n Khan, king of Turkistin, assembled to see the wealth which they had never yet even read of in books of the ancients, and which had never been accumulated by kings of Persia or of Rum, or even by Karun, who had only to express a wish and Grod granted it.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

About the capture of Bhimnagar, Tarikh Yamini (Kitabu-l Yamini) by Al Utbi, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. p. 34-35 Also quoted in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.
Quotes (971 CE to 1013 CE)

God, Books, Fear, Imagination

“I studied the swell of her enormous breasts and I said: "Baby you're so far ahead it's beautiful"”

Vivian Stanshall (1943–1995) English musician, artist and author

Big Shot
Others
Source: http://lyrics.wikia.com/wiki/The_Bonzo_Dog_Doo-Dah_Band:Big_Shot

Beauty, Study, Baby

“When the afiairs of this tract was settled, the royal army marched, in the year 592 h., (1196 a. d.) "towards Galewar (Gwalior), and invested that fort, which is the pearl of the necklace of the castles of Hind, the summit of which the nimble-footed wind from below cannot reach, and on the bastion of which the rapid clouds have never cast their shade, and which the swift imagination has never surmounted, and at the height of which the celestial sphere is dazzled."…In compliance with the divine injunction of holy war, they drew out the bloodthirsty sword before the faces of the enemies of religion…Solankh Pal who had raised the standard of infidelity, and perdition, and prided himself on his countless army and elephants, and who expanded the fist^ of oppression from the hiding place of deceit, and who had lighted the flame of turbulence and rebellion, and who had fixed the root of sedition and enmity firm in his heart, and in the courtyard of whose breast the shrub of tyranny and commotion had shot forth its branches, when he saw the power and majesty of the army of Islam," he became alarmed and dispirited. " Wherever he looked, he saw the road of flight blocked up."”

Muhammad of Ghor (1160–1206) Ghurid Sultan

He therefore " sued for pardon, and placed the ring of servitude in his ear," and agreed to pay tribute...
About the capture of Gwalior. Hasan Nizami. Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 227-228 Also quoted in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.

War, Religion, Imagination, Light

“And then I asked him with my eyes to ask again (yes),
And then he asked me would I (yes, yes).
I put my arms around him (yes),
And drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts,
And his heart was going like mad.
Yes, I said yes, I will, yes.”

Amber (1970) Dutch born German singer, songwriter, label owner and executive producer

"Yes", from Naked; inspired by Molly Bloom's soliloquy in James Joyce's Ulysses (2002). Live performance http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htbsGpcc0Fw

Feeling, Heart, Madness

“We’re best at the long high throws. Like when you take four or five steps and rip it— It’s almost like a shotput approach, the steps, four or five quick, one over the other, kind of sideways-like—and then you slash away with that fucker, it’s such a violent act, throwing that white thing, you’re first cradling it to your breast and then you whip that fucker as hard as you can while keeping it level, keeping it straight, but otherwise with everything you can send with it you whip that fucker like it had blades on it and you wanted it to cut straight through the paperblue sky like a screen, rip through it and have it be blood and back space beyond.”

Dave Eggers (1970) memoirist, novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher

A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius (2000)

“Because their possessions were great, the appeasers had much to lose should the Red flag fly over Westminster. That was why they had felt threatened by the hunger riots of 1932. It was also the driving force behind their exorbitant fear and distrust of the new Russia. They had seen a strong Germany as a buffer against Bolshevism, had thought their security would be strengthened if they sidled up to the fierce, virile Third Reich. Nazi coarseness, anti-Semitism, the Reich's darker underside, were rationalized; time, they assured one another, would blur the jagged edges of Nazi Germany. So, with their eyes open, they sought accommodation with a criminal regime, turned a blind eye to its iniquities, ignored its frequent resort to murder and torture, submitted to extortion, humiliation, and abuse until, having sold out all who had sought to stand shoulder to shoulder with Britain and keep the bridge against the new barbarism, they led England herself into the cold damp shadow of the gallows, friendless save for the demoralized republic across the Channel. Their end came when the House of Commons, in a revolt of conscience, wrenched power from them and summoned to the colors the one man who had foretold that all had passed, who had tried, year after year, alone and mocked, to prevent the war by urging the only policy which would have done the job. And now, in the desperate spring of 1940, with the reins of power at last now firm in his grasp, he resolved to lead Britain and her fading empire in one last great struggle worthy of all they had been and meant, to arm the nation, not only with weapons but also with the mace of honor, creating in every English breast a soul beneath the ribs of death.”

William Manchester (1922–2004) (April 1, 1922 – June 1, 2004) American author, journalist and historian

Source: The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone 1932-1940 (1988), p. 688-689

Death, Hunger, War, Fear

“But there is a Pope in the breast of each of us whom is hard to silence. Long ago a lady said to me, when I asked her the composers she liked: “Dvorak.” I said before I could stop myself: “Dvorak!” How many times, and with what shame, I’ve remembered it. And now I like Dvorak…”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“Speaking of Books”, p. 220
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Silence, Time

“…her breasts swam towards me like two pink-nosed fish and she let me hold them.”

Philip Roth book Goodbye, Columbus

Source: Goodbye, Columbus (1959), Chapter 2

Fish

“I began to draw from plant life and found the flat leaf forms were easier to do than thighs and breasts. I wanted to flatten. The plant drawings from that time until now have always been linear. They are exact observations of the form of the leaf or flower of fruit seen. Nothing is changed or added, no surface marking. They are not an approximation of the thing seen nor are they a personal expression or an abstraction. They are an impersonal observation of the form. When I applied the procedure to other things such as the vaulting of Notre Dame [church in Paris] or a patch of tar on the road, the subject of the drawings and the subsequent paintings were not recognizable even though they were exact copies of the thing seen. I wanted to use things that had no pictorial use.”

Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015) American painter, sculptor, and printmaker

Source: 1969 - 1980, In: "Ellsworth Kelly: Works on Paper," 1987, pp. 25-26 : 'Notes from 1969'

Life, Flowers, Change, Time

“Looking carefully, one discovers at last that this gorgeous combination of all the hues of Paradise contains or hides a Last Judgment [....]

To the Virgin and her suppliants, as to us, who though outcasts in other churches can still hope in hers, the Last Judgment was not a symbol of God's justice or man's corruption but of her own infinite mercy. The Trinity judged, through Christ;— Christ loved and pardoned, through her. She wielded the last and highest power on earth and in hell. In the glow and beauty of her nature, the light of her Son's infinite love shone as the sunlight through the glass, turning the Last Judgement itself into the highest proof of her divine and supreme authority. The rudest ruffian of the middle-ages, when he looked at this Last Judgment, laughed, for what was the Last Judgment to her! An ornament, a play-thing, a pleasure! a jewelled decoration which she wore on her breast! Her chief joy was to pardon; her eternal instinct was to love; her deepest passion was pity! On her imperial heart the flames of hell showed only the opaline colors of heaven. Christ the Trinity might judge as much as he pleased, but Christ the Mother would rescue; and her servants could look boldly into the flames.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Love, God, Pleasure, Age

“Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little Tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.”

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) English poet, historian

St. 15 Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=elcc (written 1750, publ. 1751)

Country

“O wondrous sphinx! within thy marble breast
What undreamed secrets lie concealed!
Hast thou no pity for my wild unrest
My maddening longing for the unrevealed?”

Clara Jessup Moore (1824–1899) American writer and philanthropist

Death

Lie, Secret

“Celestial choir! enthron'd in realms of light, Columbia's scenes of glorious toils I write. While freedom's cause her anxious breast alarms, She flashes dreadful in refulgent arms.”

Phillis Wheatley (1753–1784) American poet

1770s, To His Excellency, George Washington (1775)

Freedom, Light

“If ever there was a hard-headed and not a soft-hearted Sovereign it was she; if ever there was a place where there was little of that romantic sentiment of going abroad to do right and justice to other people, I think it was in that Tudor breast of our 'Good Queen Bess,' as well call her. … When I see the accounts of what passed when the [Dutch] envoys came to Queen Elizabeth and asked for aid, how she is huckstering for money while they are begging for help to their religion,—I declare that, with all my principles of non-intervention, I am almost ashamed of old Queen Bess. And then there were Burleigh, Walsingham, and the rest, who were, if possible, harder and more difficult to deal with than their mistress. Why, they carried out in its unvarnished selfishness a national British policy; they had no other idea of a policy but a national British policy, and they carried it out with a degree of selfishness amounting to downright avarice.”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech in Rochdale (23 November 1864), quoted in John Bright and J. E. Thorold Rogers (eds.), Speeches on Questions of Public Policy by Richard Cobden, M.P. Volume II (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1908), pp. 484-5.
1860s

Money, People, Religion, Justice

“I heard nothing from his excellence [Mr. Keiller bought a picture of 1000 pond and sent Israëls the money but no word about the picture]... I am sure he will be satisfied by it when he hears it is good. I have some practice in those matters of amateurs. The best pictures are the worst for them naturally. They have not the tools to understand it, but when they hear other saying it is fine, they make a high breast saying 'I' ordered that picture..”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

Quote in a letter from The Hague, 19 Feb. 1886, to collector / friend Dr. John Forbes White in Aberdeen; as cited in Jozef Israëls, 1824 – 1911, ed. Dieuwertje Dekkers; Waanders, Zwolle 1999, Bijlage 2., p. 363
Quotes of Jozef Israels, 1871 - 1900

Money, Understanding, Nature

“My conscience is my crown,
Contented thoughts my rest;
My heart is happy in itself,
My bliss is in my breast.

Enough I reckon wealth;
A mean the surest lot,
That lies too high for base contempt,
Too low for envy's shot.”

Robert Southwell (1561–1595) English Jesuit

Source: Content and Rich, Line 9; p. 57.

Happiness, Heart, Envy, Wealth

“Nurse: Ker… Kru… Crutchoffski, breast conservation? How are we feeling?
Sydney: A bit like an endangered wetland.”

Alison Bechdel book Dykes to Watch Out For

#416, "The Basic Anxiety" (2003), collected in Invasion of the DTWOF (2005).
Dykes to Watch Out For

Feeling

“He does not come.
Tonight in the dark of the moon
I wake wanting him.
My breasts heave and blaze.
My heart chars.”

Ono no Komachi (825–900) Japanese poet

Source: Kenneth Rexroth's translations, Women Poets of Japan (1982), p. 15

Heart

“She has great breasts," the Colonel said without looking up from the whale.
"DO NOT OBJECTIFY WOMEN'S BODIES!" Alaska shouted.
Now he looked up. "Sorry. Perky breasts.”

John Green book Looking for Alaska

"That's not any better!"
Chip "the Colonel" Martin and Alaska Young, pp. 59-60
Looking for Alaska (2005)

Women

“I was introduced to the great philosophical systems of the past to which the Western universities have given their blessing, arranging and classifying them with the delicate care lavished on museum pieces. When once these systems were so handled, it was natural that they should be regarded as monuments of human intellection. And monuments, because they mark achievements at their particular point in history, soon become conservative in the impression which they make on posterity. I was introduced to Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Marx and other immortals, to whom I should like to refer as the university philosophers. But these titans were expounded in such a way that a student from a colony could easily find his breast agitated by Conflicting attitudes. These attitudes can have effects which spread out over a whole society, should such a student finally pursue a political life. A colonial student does not by origin belong to the intellectual history in which the university philosophers are such impressive landmarks. The colonial student can be so seduced by these attempts to give a philosophical account of the universe, that surrenders his whole personality to them. When he does this, he loses sight of the fundamental social fact that he is a colonial subject. In this way, he omits to draw from his education and from the concern displayed by the great philosophers for human problems, anything which he might relate to the very real problem of colonial domination, which, as it happens, conditions the immediate life of every colonized African. With single-minded devotion, the colonial student meanders through the intricacies of the philosophical systems. And yet these systems did aim at providing a philosophical account ofthe world in the circumstances and conditions of their time. For even philosophical systems are facts of history. By the time, however, that they come to be accepted in the universities for exposition, they have lost the vital power which they had at their first statement, they have shed their dynamism and polemic reference. This is a result of the academic treatment which they are given. The academic treatment is the result of an attitude to philosophical systems as though there was nothing to them hut statements standing in logical relation to one another. This defective approach to scholarship was suffered hy different categories of colonial student. Many of them had heen handpicked and, so to say, carried certificates ofworthiness with them. These were considered fit to become enlightened servants of the colonial administration. The process by which this category of student became fit usually started at an early age, for not infrequently they had lost contact early in life with their traditional background. By reason of their lack of contact with their own roots, they became prone to accept some theory of universalism, provided it was expressed in vague, mellifluous terms. Armed with their universalism, they carried away from their university courses an attitude entirely at variance with the concrete reality of their people and their struggle. When they came across doctrines of a combative nature, like those of Marxism, they reduced them to arid abstractions, to common-room subtleties. In this way, through the good graces oftheir colonialist patrons, these students, now competent in the art of forming not a concrete environmental view of social political problems, but an abstract, 'liberal' outlook, began to fulfil the hopes and expectations oftheir guides and guardians.”

Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972) Pan Africanist and First Prime Minister and President of Ghana

Source: Consciencism (1964), Introduction, pp. 2-4.

Life, People, Age, World

“I am sure every Englishman who has a heart in his breast and a feeling of justice in his mind, sympathizes with those unfortunate Danes (cheers), and wishes that this country could have been able to draw the sword successfully in their defence (continued cheers); but I am satisfied that those who reflect on the season of the year when that war broke out, on the means which this country could have applied for deciding in one sense that issue, I am satisfied that those who make these reflections will think that we acted wisely in not embarking in that dispute. (Cheers.) To have sent a fleet in midwinter to the Baltic every sailor would tell you was an impossibility, but if it could have gone it would have been attended by no effectual result. Ships sailing on the sea cannot stop armies on land, and to have attempted to stop the progress of an army by sending a fleet to the Baltic would have been attempting to do that which it was not possible to accomplish. (Hear, hear.) If England could have sent an army, and although we all know how admirable that army is on the peace establishment, we must acknowledge that we have no means of sending out a force at all equal to cope with the 300,000 or 400,000 men whom the 30,000,000 or 40,000,000 of Germany could have pitted against us, and that such an attempt would only have insured a disgraceful discomfiture—not to the army, indeed, but to the Government which sent out an inferior force and expected it to cope successfully with a force so vastly superior. (Cheers.) … we did not think that the Danish cause would be considered as sufficiently British, and as sufficiently bearing on the interests and the security and the honour of England, as to make it justifiable to ask the country to make those exertions which such a war would render necessary.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Speech at Tiverton (23 August 1864) on the Second Schleswig War, quoted in ‘Lord Palmerston At Tiverton’, The Times (24 August 1864), p. 9.
1860s

Men, War, Peace, Justice

“I want to bring down civilization. It's really clear that civilization is killing the planet. I’m interested in living in a world that has more wild salmon every year than the year before. A world that has more migratory songbirds every year than the year before. A world that has less dioxins and flame retardants in mothers' breast milk. A world not being destroyed. A world where krill populations aren’t collapsing. A world where there are not dead zones in the oceans. A world not being systematically dismantled. I want to live in a world that is not being killed. I will do whatever it takes to get there.”

Derrick Jensen (1960) American environmentalist

Interview with No Compromise, 2005. http://www.nocompromise.org/issues/26jensen.html

World, Dead

“About a hundred and ninety-four feet away from our house [Gorky was born in Armenia] on the road to the spring, my father had a little garden with a few apple trees which had retired from giving fruit. There was a ground constantly in shade where grew incalculable amounts of wild carrots, and porcupines had made their nests. There was a blue rock half buried in the black earth with a few patches of moss placed here and there like fallen clouds. But from where came all the shadows in constant battle like the lancers of w:Paolo Ucello's painting? This garden was identified as the Garden of Wish Fulfilment and often I had seen my mother and other village women opening their bosoms and taking out their soft breasts in their hands to rub them on the rock. Above this all stood an enormous tree all bleached under the sun, the rain, the cold, and deprived of leaves. This was the Holy Tree. I myself don't know why this tree was holy but I had witnessed many people, whoever did pass by, that would tear voluntarily a strip of their clothes and attach this to the tree. Thus through many years of the same ac, like a veritable parade of banners under the pressure of wind all these personal inscriptions of signatures, very softly to my innocent ear used to give echo to the sh-h—h-sh—h of silver leaves of the poplars.”

Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) Armenian-American painter

Source: posthumous, Astract Expressionist Painting in America, p. 124, (in Gorky Memorial Exhibition, Schwabacher pp. 22,23

Women, People, Spring, Tear

“My paint is like a rocket, which describes its own space. I try to make the impossible possible. What is happening I cannot foresee, it is a surprise. Painting, like passion, is an emotion full of truth and rings a living sound, like the roar coming from the lion's breast.”

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

Karel Appel's excerpt', c. 1953

Truth, Passion, Painting

“When the voices of children are heard on the green
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast
And everything else is still.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Nurse's Song, st. 1
1780s, Songs of Innocence (1789–1790)

Children, Heart

“My friend Mercedes Pena made me get in touch with my emotions just before I had a breast cut off. Just as I suspected, they were awful. "How do you Latinas do this—all the time in touch with your emotions?" I asked her. "That's why we take siestas," she replied.”

Molly Ivins (1944–2007) American journalist

Time Magazine, Who Needs Breasts, Anyway? http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1001832-1,00.html, Feb. 18, 2002. Retrieved February 1, 2007.

Time

“My heart stopped, my breast frozen, my lips and eyes barred. Still in the world, but not of the world. Here, yet already departed.”

Adam Mickiewicz book Dziady

Serce ustało pierś już lodowata, ścięły się usta i oczy zawarły; Na świecie jeszcze, lecz już nie dla świata. Cóż to za człowiek - Umarły Part one. Dziady (Forefathers' Eve) http://www.ap.krakow.pl/nkja/literature/polpoet/mic_fore.htm

World, Heart

“Cheerful at morn, he wakes from short repose,
Breasts the keen air, and carols as he goes.”

Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774) Irish physician and writer

Source: The Traveller (1764), Line 185.

“Your breath upon the wind shall surely lodge within some breast. Ask not whose breast it is. See only that the breath itself be pure.”

Mikha'il Na'ima book The Book of Mirdad

The Book of Mirdad (1948)

“Him here he found preparing for the field
His bow, his breast-plate, and his glittering shield:
Whilst beauteous Helen 'mongst her maids in state
Their several works and tasks disposing sate.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

Book IV
Homer His Iliads Translated (1660)

“I first drew in New England's air, and from her hardy breast
Sucked in the tyrant-hating milk that will not let me rest.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

"On the Capture of Certain Fugitive Slaves Near Washington" (1845)

Hate

“Beside
The grim old sea-king sits his bride,
A sun-land blossom, rudely torn
From tropic forests to be worn
Above as stern a breast as e'er
Stood king at sea or anywhere.”

Joaquin Miller (1837–1913) American judge

III, p. 22.
The Ship in the Desert (1875)

Sun, Sea

“Tis strange with how much power and pride
The softness is of love allied;
How much of power to force the breast
To be in outward show at rest,—
How much of pride that never eye
May look upon its agony!
Ah! little will the lip reveal
Of all the burning heart can feel.”

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

Canto IV
The Troubadour (1825)

Love, Feeling, Heart

“Love, that liveth and reigneth in my thought,
That built his seat within my captive breast;
Clad in the arms wherein with me he fought,
Oft in my face he doth his banner rest.”

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516–1547) English Earl

"Complaint of a Lover Rebuked", line 1

Love

“Dread deities, the giant powers that warred on men
Grow tender brothers and gay children once again;
Fades every hate away before the Mother's breast
Where all the exiles of the heart return to rest.”

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

By Still Waters (1906)

Men, Hate, War, Children

“I'm writing it in breast milk.”

Gina Barberi

Radio From Hell (January 19, 2006)

“Today these taboos and terrors still linger, many of them, in the form of conventions of morality, uneasy strivings of conscience, doubts and desperations of religion; but ultimately Man will emerge from all these things, FREE—familiar, that is, with them all, making use of all, allowing generously for the values of all, but hampered and bound by NONE. He will realize the inner meaning of the creeds and rituals of the ancient religions, and will hail with joy the fulfilment of their far prophecy down the ages—finding after all the long-expected Saviour of the world within his own breast, and Paradise in the disclosure there of the everlasting peace of the soul.”

Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) British poet and academic

Pagan and Christian Creeds (1920)

Age, World, Peace, Religion

“But now in this Valley of Humiliation poor Christian was hard put to it, for he had gone but a little way before he espied a foul Fiend coming over the field to meet him; his name is Apollyon. Then did Christian begin to be afraid, and to cast in his mind whether to go back, or to stand his ground. But he considered again, that he had no Armor for his back, and therefore thought that to turn the back to him might give him greater advantage with ease to pierce him with his Darts; therefore he resolved to venture, and stand his ground. For thought he, had I no more in mine eye than the saving of my life, 'twould be the best way to stand.
So he went on, and Apollyon met him. Now the Monster was hideous to behold, he was cloathed with scales like a Fish (and they are his pride) he had Wings like a Dragon, feet like a Bear, and out of his belly came Fire and Smoke, and his mouth was as the mouth of a Lion. When he was come up to Christian, he beheld him with a disdainful countenance, and thus began to question with him.
Apollyon: Whence come you, and whither are you bound?
Christian: I am come from the City of Destruction, which is the place of all evil, and am going to the City of Zion.
Apollyon: By this I perceive thou art one of my Subjects, for all that Country is mine; and I am the Prince and God of it. How is it then that thou hast run away from thy King? Were it not that I hope thou mayest do me more service, I would strike thee now at one blow to the ground.
Christian: I was born indeed in your Dominions, but your service was hard, and your wages such as a man could not live on, for the wages of Sin is death; therefore when I was come to years, I did as other considerate persons do, look out if perhaps I might mend my self.
Apollyon: There is no Prince that will thus lightly lose his Subjects, neither will I as yet lose thee. But since thou complainest of thy service and wages be content to go back; what our Country will afford, I do here promise to give thee.
Christian: But I have let myself to another, even to the King of Princes, and how can I with fairness go back with thee?
Apollyon: Thou hast done in this, according to the Proverb, Changed a bad for a worse: but it is ordinary for those that have professed themselves his Servants, after a while to give him the slip, and return again to me: do thou so to, and all shall be well.
Christian: I have given him my faith, and sworn my Allegiance to him; how then can I go back from this, and not be hanged as a Traitor?
Apollyon: Thou didst the same to me, and yet I am willing to pass by all, if now thou wilt yet turn again, and go back.
Christian: What I promised thee was in my nonage; and besides, I count that the Prince under whose Banner now I stand, is able to absolve me; yea, and to pardon also what I did as to my compliance with thee: and besides, (O thou destroying Apollyon) to speak truth, I like his Service, his Wages, his Servants, his Government, his Company, and Country better than thine: and, therefore, leave off to perswade me further, I am his Servant, and I will follow him.
Apollyon: Consider again when thou art in cool blood, what thou art like to meet with in the way that thou goest. Thou knowest that for the most part, his Servants come to an ill end, because they are transgressors against me, and my ways. How many of them have been put to shameful deaths! and besides, thou countest his service better than mine, whereas he never came yet from the place where he is, to deliver any that served him out of our hands; but as for me, how many times, as all the World very well knows, have I delivered, either by power or fraud, those that have faithfully served me, from him and his, though taken by them, and so I will deliver thee.
Christian: His forbearing at present to deliver them, is on purpose to try their love, whether they will cleave to him to the end: and as for the ill end thou sayest they come to, that is most glorious in their account. For for present deliverance, they do not much expect it; for they stay for their Glory, and then they shall have it, when their Prince comes in his, and the Glory of the Angels.
Apollyon: Thou hast already been unfaithful in thy service to him, and how doest thou think to receive wages of him?
Christian: Wherein, O Apollyon, have I been unfaithful to him?
Apollyon: Thou didst faint at first setting out, when thou wast almost choked in the Gulf of Dispond; thou didst attempt wrong ways to be rid of thy burden, whereas thou shouldest have stayed till thy Prince had taken it off: thou didst sinfully sleep and lose thy choice thing: thou wast also almost perswaded to go back, at the sight of the Lions; and when thou talkest of thy Journey, and of what thou hast heard, and seen, thou art inwardly desirous of vain-glory in all that thou sayest or doest.
Christian:All this is true, and much more, which thou hast left out; but the Prince whom I serve and honour, is merciful, and ready to forgive: but besides, these infirmities possessed me in thy Country, for there I suckt them in, and I have groaned under them, been sorry for them, and have obtained pardon of my Prince.
Apollyon: Then Apollyon broke out into a grievous rage, saying, I am an enemy to this Prince: I hate his Person, his Laws, and People: I am come out on purpose to withstand thee.
Christian: Apollyon beware what you do, for I am in the King's Highway, the way of Holiness, therefore take heed to your self.
Apollyon: Then Apollyon straddled quite over the whole breadth of the way, and said, I am void of fear in this matter, prepare thy self to die, for I swear by my Infernal Den, that thou shalt go no further, here will I spill thy soul; and with that, he threw a flaming Dart at his breast, but Christian had a Shield in his hand, with which he caught it, and so prevented the danger of that. Then did Christian draw, for he saw 'twas time to bestir him; and Apollyon as fast made at him, throwing Darts as thick as Hail; by the which, notwithstanding all that Christian could do to avoid it, Apollyon wounded him in his head, his hand and foot; this made Christian give a little back: Apollyon therefore followed his work amain, and Christian again took courage, and resisted as manfully as he could. This sore combat lasted for above half a day, even till Christian was almost quite spent. For you must know that Christian by reason of his wounds, must needs grow weaker and weaker.
Then Apollyon espying his opportunity, began to gather up close to Christian, and wrestling with him, gave him a dreadful fall; and with that, Christian's Sword flew out of his hand. Then said Apollyon, I am sure of thee now, and with that, he had almost prest him to death, so that Christian began to despair of life. But as God would have it, while Apollyon was fetching of his last blow, thereby to make a full end of this good Man, Christian nimbly reached out his hand for his Sword, and caught it, saying, Rejoice not against me, O mine Enemy! when I fall, I shall arise; and with that, gave him a deadly thrust, which made him give back, as one that had received his mortal wound: Christian perceiving that, made at him again, saying, Nay, in all these things we are more than Conquerors, through him that loved us. And with that, Apollyon spread forth his Dragon's wings, and sped him away, that Christian saw him no more….”

John Bunyan The Pilgrim's Progress

Source: The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), Part I, Ch. IX : Apollyon

Love, Life, Death, God

“They are always talking about the fire of hell, but no one has ever seen it, my friends. For hell is cold. It used to be that the nights weren't long enough to wear out your malice, and you got up each morning with your breasts still full of poison. But now the devil himself has withdrawn from you. Ah, how alone we are in evil, my brothers! The poor human race dreams from century to century of breaking that solitude — but it's no use! The devil, who can do so many things, will never succeed in founding a Church, a Church that will put in common both the merits of hell and the sin of all. From now until the end of the world, the sinner will have to sin alone, always alone — for just as we die alone, so also do we sin alone. The devil, you see, is the friend who never stays with us to the end.”

Georges Bernanos book Monsieur Ouine

The curé of Fenouille to his congregation, p. 171
Monsieur Ouine, 1943

World, Dreams, Hell, Solitude

“Once she kissed me with a jest,
Once with a tear —
O where's the heart was in my breast,
And the ring was in my ear?”

Eleanor Farjeon (1881–1965) English children's writer

Kentish Town
More Nursery Rhymes of London Town (1917)

Kiss, Tear, Heart

“Two hands upon the breast,
And labour’s done;
Two pale feet crossed in rest,
The race is won.”

Dinah Craik (1826–1887) English novelist and poet

Now and Afterwards; there exists a similar Russian proverb: "Two hands upon the breast, and labour is past".

“Brethren, we can rule our tempers, and we ought. Open the gospel, that most profound philosophy of the human soul, and yet most simple and practical directory of human duty; study it, fill your whole nature with its inspiration; set Christ before you; look upon His calm forehead and unstormed breast; think how He endured all contradiction of sinners, and endured them to the cross; and on the cross learn of Him then, for He was meek and lowly of heart.”

Henry Giles (1809–1882) Irish minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 376.

Soul, Nature, Thinking, Study

“Indeed how many were the seers and sages, poets and prophets - right from the Vedic age upto the modern times - who had fostered in the nation's breast the integrated and whole picture of Bharat as the Divine Mother. Bharat, in their eyes, was not a mere clod of clay. It was verily the Matrubhoomi, the Punyabhoomi, the Dharmabhoomi, the Devabhoomi, the Karmabhoomi - all sublimated into one single majestic figure of Bharat Mata. To Bankimchandra, She appeared as the triple manifestation of Saraswati, Lakshmi and Durga. Rabindranath Tagore visualised Her as Devi bhuvana-mana-mohini - the divine enchantress of the world. To Swami Vivekananda, She was the Mother of all the thirty-three crores of gods and goddesses - whose worship would gratify all those myriad deities. Guruji Golwalkar visualised Her as Trinity of Mata - the loving mother, Pita - the protecting father, and Guru - the elevating spiritual guide. The unity of Bharat is so basic to its nature, so sublime in its depths - in fact, an inseparable aspect of its national soul.”

H.V. Sheshadri (1926–2005) Indian writer

Source: The Tragic Story of Partition (1982), p.9

Love, God, Age, World

“Two souls alas! dwell in my breast.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Faust

Zwey Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust.
Outside the Gate of the Town
Faust, Part 1 (1808)

Soul

“Why like a tender girl dost thou complain!
That strives to reach the mother's breast in vain;
Mourns by her side, her knees embraces fast,
Hangs on her robes, and interrupts her haste;
Yet, when with fondness to her arms she's rais'd,
Still mourns and weeps, and will not be appeas'd!”

Thomas Yalden (1670–1736) English poet

"Patroclus's Request to Achilles for his Arms; Imitated from the Beginning of the Sixteenth Iliad of Homer", in Tonson's The Annual Miscellany for the Year 1694.

Girl

“The world doth ever change; there is no peace
Among the shallows of its storm-vexed breast;
With every breath the frothy waves increase,
They toss up mire and dirt, they cannot rest;
I thank Thee that within thy strong-built ark
My soul across the uncertain sea can sail,
And though the night of death be long and dark,
My hopes in Christ shall reach within the veil;
And to the promised haven steady steer,
Whose rest to those who love is ever near.”

Jones Very (1813–1880) American poet and essayist

From The Ark

Love, Death, World, Peace

“O holy trust! O endless sense of rest!
Like the beloved John
To lay his head upon the Saviour's breast,
And thus to journey on!”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow book The Seaside and the Fireside

"Hymn, For my Brother's Ordination", The Seaside and the Fireside (1850).

Sense

“I feel like I was particularly impressed by Richard Corben's work. But in general I would not say the underground made that big of an impression except for Corben… His science-fiction stories, those almost primitive black and white comics he did back then. I was very struck by the visceral punch they had, by the unusual artistic point of view. And also by the unabashed exaggeration. It's as if you wanted a woman to have big breasts, you drew it. There was something just so joyously excessive and erotic about his stuff, that I just ate it up.|Frank Miller }}”

Richard Corben (1940) American illustrator

Feeling, Science

“It was a summer evening; and the sea
Seem'd to rejoice in its tranquillity;
Rolling its gentle waters to the west,
Till the rich crimson blush'd upon their breast,
Uniting lovingly the wave and sky,
Like Hope content in its delight to die.”

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

The Golden Violet - The Child of the Sea
The Golden Violet (1827)

Hope, Water, Summer, Sea

“By some strange and sinister fatality the chosen victims at present are the most intelligent and friendly of our domestic favourites—the cats who purr in love and confidence as they sit beside us on the hearth; the dogs whose faithful hearts glow with an affection for us, truer and fonder than we may easily find in any human breast.”

Frances Power Cobbe (1822–1904) Irish writer, social reformer, anti-vivisection activist and leading suffragette

Source: The Modern Rack (1889), Ch. I: The Moral Aspects of Vivisection, p. 15

Love, Faith, Dogs, Confidence

“You can't sit down right,
Cause your jeans are too tight,
And you're lucky it's ladies night.
With your big empty purse,
Every week it gets worse,
At least your breasts cost more than hers.”

Amy Winehouse (1983–2011) English singer and songwriter

Fuck Me Pumps
Song lyrics, Frank (2003)

Night

“I got my wife breast implants for her birthday. I've never been a big fan of plastic surgery, but I gotta admit, I've had a lot of fun playing with these things. I haven't given them to her yet…[Audience cheers] I just keep 'em on my tour bus and just rub 'em in my face…I'm glad they clean up easy. [Audience groans] WHAT?! I'm just glad they are not made out of corduroy, that's all I'm saying! I'd have to have 'em Scotchgarded. [imitates spraying Scotchgard on implants] I find it a little ironic that the product that I use to keep from ruining my sofa should spill my drink on it is actually called…Scotch-guard. [Audience cheers] Sometimes, things just work out perfect, don't they? "Yeah, I'm looking for a product that'll protect my sofa should I spill my Scotch on it. What'd ya have?" [imitates clerk turning to look at stock] "We've got Scotch-guard." "Yeah, let's go with that. Do you have Vodka-guard? How about Sperm-guard?"”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

It's a busy couch.
Behavioral Problems

Birthday, Drink, Business, Perfection

“So much about today’s adult industry seems like an undeft parody of Hollywood and the nation writ large. The top performers are comic-book caricatures of sexual allure. The prosthetic breasts and lifted buttocks and (no kidding) artificial cheekbones are nothing more than accentuations of a mentality that yields huge liposuction and collagen industries. The gynecologically explicit sexuality of Jenna, Jasmin, et al. seems more than anything like a Mad magazine spoof of the “smoldering” sexuality of Sharon Stone and Madonna and so many other mainstream iconettes. Not to mention the fact that the adult industry takes many of the psychological deformities that Hollywood is famous for—the vanity, the vulgarity, the rank commercialism—and not only makes them overt and grotesque but seems then to revel in that grotesquerie.”

David Foster Wallace book Consider the Lobster

"Big Red Son", p.29-30
Consider the Lobster (2007)

Books, Madness

“She plunged into a sea of platitudes, and with the powerful breast stroke of a channel swimmer made her confident way towards the white cliffs of the obvious.”

W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British playwright, novelist, short story writer

Source: A Writer's Notebook (1946), p. 189

Way, Confidence, Sea

“Some friends of mine asked me if I wanted to go to a strip club, and I didn't… want to go. But I ended up going, 'cause—back me up on this, fellas—once you've seen one woman naked, you… wanna see the rest of 'em naked. It can be an old biker chick, you know they're gonna hang down to here. "Wanna see my titties!?" "Yeah, I do!" [cringes] "All right, that's enough, roll 'em back up!" [imitates her rolling her breasts back up and sealing them in place. ] The things that make you go [shudders]”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

They Call Me Tater Salad

“For they the mind of Christ discern
Who lean, like John, upon His breast.”

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892) American Quaker poet and advocate of the abolition of slavery

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 399

Christ

“I am lovely, O mortals, like a dream of stone;
And my breast, where everyone is bruised in his turn,
Has been made to awaken in poets a love
That is eternal and as silent as matter.I am throned in blue sky like a sphinx unbeknown;
My heart of snow is wed to the whiteness of swans;
I detest any movement displacing still lines,
And never do I weep and never laugh.”

Charles Baudelaire book Les Fleurs du mal

Je suis belle, ô mortels! comme un rêve de pierre, Et mon sein, où chacun s’est meurtri tour à tour, Est fait pour inspirer au poète un amour Eternel et muet ainsi que la matière.Je trône dans l’azur comme un sphinx incompris; J’unis un cœur de neige à la blancheur des cygnes; Je hais le mouvement qui déplace les lignes, Et jamais je ne pleure et jamais je ne ris. "La Beauté" [Beauty] http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/La_Beaut%C3%A9_%28Les_Fleurs_du_mal%29 Les fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) (1857)

Love, Dreams, Wedding, Heart

“High up among the branches of a mighty tree she hugged the shrieking infant to her bosom, and soon the instinct that was as dominant in this fierce female as it had been in the breast of his tender and beautiful mother — the instinct of mother love — reached out to the tiny man-child's half-formed understanding, and he became quiet.
Then hunger closed the gap between them, and the son of an English lord and an English lady nursed at the breast of Kala, the great ape.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 4 : The Apes

Love, Hunger, Beauty, Understanding

“For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

St. 2.
So, We'll Go No More A-Roving (1817)

Love, Soul, Heart

“My spirit longs for Thee,
Within my troubled breast,
Though I unworthy be
Of so divine a Guest.”

John Byrom (1692–1763) Poet, inventor of a shorthand system

"The Desponding Soul's Wish" (also called "My Spirit Longs For Thee")
Miscellaneous Poems (1773)

“Animals of the MONKEY class are furnished with hands instead of paws; their ears, eyes, eye-lids, lips, and breasts, are like those of mankind; their internal conformation also bears some distant likeness; and the whole offers a picture that may mortify the pride of such as make their persons the principal objects of their admiration.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

A Survey of the Wisdom of God in the Creation; Or A Compendium of Natural Philosophy New York: Bangs and T. Mason, 1823, Part the Second, Chapter I, volume 1, pages 147-148. Wesley Center Online http://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/a-compendium-of-natural-philosophy/chapter-1-of-beasts/ General sources

Distant, Animals, Personality

“O city ladies'
Your coats wrapped,
Your hips a possession
Your shoes arched
Your walk is sharp
Your breasts
Pertain to lingerie”

George Oppen (1908–1984) American poet

from "Discrete Series", 1934; New Collected Poems, New Directions, 2002, ISBN 0-811-21488-5

Shoe

“We used to think of cow's milk as a nearly perfect food. However, over the past several years, researchers have found new information that has caused many of us to change our opinion. This has provoked a lot of understandable controversy, but I have come to believe that cow's milk is not necessary for children. First, it turns out that the fat in cow's milk is not the kind of fat ("essential fatty acids") needed for brain development. Instead, milk fat is too rich in the saturated fats that promote artery blockages. Also, cow's milk can make it harder for a child to stay in iron balance. Milk is extremely low in iron and slows down iron absorption. It can also cause subtle blood loss in the digestive tract that causes the child to lose iron. … Some children have sensitivities to milk proteins, which show up as ear problems, respiratory problems, or skin conditions. Milk also has traces of antibiotics, estrogens, and other things a child does not need. There is, of course, nothing wrong with human breast milk — it is perfect for infants. For older children, there are many good soy and rice milk products and even nondairy "ice creams" that are well worth trying. If you are using cow's milk in your family, I would encourage you to give these alternatives a try.”

Benjamin Spock (1903–1998) American pediatrician and author of Baby and Child Care

Source: Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care (1945), Seventh edition (1998), p. 346

Children, Family, Food, Understanding

“Eleven dead bodies. One dead cat. No breasts.”

Joe Bob Briggs (1953) American film critic, writer, and actor; alter ego of John Bloom

This line is from a review http://www.joebobbriggs.com/drivein/1995/candyman2farewelltotheflesh.htm of Candyman II: Farewell To The Flesh Similar "summary" lines feature in many of the reviews. Repeated phrases

Cats, Dead

“"Who are you?" I asked the phantom,
"I am rest from Hate and Pride.
"I am friend to king and beggar,
"I am Alpha and Omega,
"I was councilor to Hagar
"But men call me suicide."
I was weary of tide breasting,
Weary of the world's behesting,
And I lusted for the resting
As a lover for his bride.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

The Tempter (1937)

Men, Hate, World, Lovers

“The thin-lipped armorer,
Hephaestos, hobbled away,
Thetis of the shining breasts
Cried out in dismay
At what the god had wrought
To please her son, the strong
Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles
Who would not live long.”

W. H. Auden book The Shield of Achilles

The Shield of Achilles (1952)

God, Strong, Heart

“London! hast thou accused me
Of breach of laws? the root of strife!
Within whose breast did boil to see,
So fervent hot, thy dissolute life.”

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516–1547) English Earl

"A Satire Against the Citizens of London", line 1

Life, Law

“How very desolate that breast must be,
Whose only joyance is in memory!
And what must woman suffer, thus betrayed?—
Her heart's most warm and precious feelings made
But things wherewith to wound: that heart—so weak,
So soft—laid open to the vulture's beak!”

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

Rosalie.
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Feeling, Suffering, Memory, Heart

“He who has love in his breast has ever the spurs at his flanks.”

Bernardo Dovizi (1470–1520) Italian cardinal and playwright

Act II, scene VII — (Samia).
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 264.
La Calandria (c. 1507)

Love

“It may be from some moral obliquity in myself, or from some strange disease; but for me, and I should think too for every human being in whose breast a human heart is beating, to know that one single creature is in that dreadful place would make a hell of heaven itself. And they have hearts in heaven, for they love there.”

James Anthony Froude book The Nemesis of Faith

Letter II
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)

Love, Disease, Hell, Thinking

“Scattered… over the breasts of the surrounding mountains there were heaps of hoary mist, in fantastic shapes… or cloud, hovering in the gold radiance of the upper atmosphere. …[I]t seemed almost as if mortal man might thus ascend into the heavenly regions. Earth was so mingled with sky… The great hills played a concert among themselves, each constituting a strain of airy sweetness.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

"Ethan Brand" (1850)

Mountain

“So, I thought, it's not working. So I threw my breasts out of the window of my Lamborghini, in my mind … no, I threw the breasts out of the window of my Ford Fiesta, in my mind. Actually, I threw them out over the handlebars of my bicycle [mouthing the words] in my mind. And they hit a small child, who ran, "Mum, mum, mum … I've been attacked by … jellyfish!"”

Eddie Izzard (1962) British stand-up comedian, actor and writer

Sexie (2003)

“Beware of averages. The average person has one breast and one testicle.”

Dixy Lee Ray (1914–1994) Seventh governor of Washington

October 1991, quoted in the Tri-City Herald, published in Kennewick, Washington. Former Gov. Dixy Lee Ray, speaking at a Forward Washington conference in Pasco, warned her audience against misuse of statistics. The Tri-City Herald quoted the always quotable Ray as saying: 'Beware of averages. The average person has one breast and one testicle.' — Jean Godden, " How Many Lawyers Do You Need To Fry Spam? http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19911009&slug=1309893", October 9, 1991, Seattle Times. Accessed 29 August 2012.

Personality

“My care is like my shadow in the sun,
Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,
Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done.
His too familiar care doth make me rue it.
No means I find to rid him from my breast,
Till by the end of things it be supprest.
Some gentler passion slide into my mind,
For I am soft and made of melting snow;
Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind.
Let me or float or sink, be high or low.
Or let me live with some more sweet content,
Or die and so forget what love ere meant.”

Elizabeth I of England On Monsieur's Departure

"On Monsieur's Departure" (February 1582).

Love, Passion, Sun, Flying

“Groundless superstition ill becomes an army; Valour is the only deity that rules in the warrior's breast.”
Deforme sub armis vana superstitio est: dea sola in pectore Virtus bellantum viget.

Silius Italicus Punica

Book V, lines 125–127
Punica

Quotes about breast page 3

Quotes about breast
page 3