Quotes about breast
page 4

Mehdi Akhavan-Sales photo
Thomas Gray photo

“Daughter of Jove, relentless power,
Thou tamer of the human breast,
Whose iron scourge and tort'ring hour
The bad affright, afflict the best!”

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) English poet, historian

Hymn to Adversity http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=otad, St. 1 (1742)

Camille Paglia photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“Deceit is this world's passport: who would dare,
However pure the breast, to lay it bare?”

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

Title poem
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

Eddie Izzard photo
Leon Fleisher photo
Kate Bush photo

“Leave the breast
And then the nest
And then regret you ever left.”

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

Song lyrics, Never for Ever (1980)

Jozef Israëls photo

“.. but I must have it back [a sketch of mother with child at the breast] very soon, because I become attached to it... Such a sketch is a part of my life; it always stays. I use it ten or twenty times... It is a foundation on which I build.”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in Dutch (citaat van Jozef Israëls, in het Nederlands): ..maar, ik moet ze [een schets van moeder met kind aan de borst] heel gauw terug hebben, want ik hecht eraan.. .Zoo'n schets is een deel van mijn leven; die blijft altijd. Die gebruik ik tien, twintig maal.. .'t Is een basis, waar ik op bouw.
Quoted by N.H. Wolf, in 'Bij onze Nederlandsche kunstenaars. IV. - Jozef Israëls, Grootmeester der Nederlandsche Schilders', in Wereldkroniek, 8 Feb. 1902
Wolf wanted to lent the sketch to have a good photo taken of it for his article about Israëls
Quotes of Jozef Israels, after 1900

“Having breast cancer is massive amounts of no fun. First they mutilate you; then they poison you; then they burn you. I have been on blind dates better than that.”

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.

“In the nine heavens are eight Paradises;
Where is the ninth one? In the human breast.
Only the blessed dwell in th' Paradises,
But blessedness dwells in the human breast.”

William R. Alger (1822–1905) American clergyman and poet

"The Ninth Paradise", p. 223.
Poetry of the Orient, 1865 edition

Auguste Rodin photo

“The landscape painter, perhaps, goes even further. It is not only in living beings that he sees the reflection of the universal soul; it is in the trees, the bushes, the valleys, the hills. What to other men is only wood and earth appears to the great landscapist like the face of a great being. Corot saw kindness abroad in the trunks of the trees, in the grass of the fields, in the mirroring water of the lakes. But there Millet read suffering and resignation.
Everywhere the great artist hears spirit answer to his spirit. Where, then, can you find a more religious man?
Does not the sculptor perform his act of adoration when he perceives the majestic character of the forms that he studies? — when, from the midst of fleeting lines, he knows how to extricate the eternal type of each being? — when he seems to discern in the very breast of the divinity the immutable models on which all living creatures are moulded? Study, for example, the masterpieces of the Egyptian sculptors, either human or animal figures, and tell me if the accentuation of the essential lines does not produce the effect of a sacred hymn. Every artist who has the gift of generalizing forms, that is to say, of accenting their logic without depriving them of their living reality, provokes the same religious emotion; for he communicates to us the thrill he himself felt before the immortal verities.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Art, 1912, Ch. Mystery in Art

Anthony Burgess photo

“God, say some philosophers, manifests himself in the sublunary world in particular beauties, truths and acts of benevolence; properly, the values should be conjoined to shadow their identity in the godhead, but this happens so infrequently that one must suppose divinity condones a kind of diabolic fracture or else, and perhaps my book is already giving some hint of this, he demonstrates his ineffable freedom through contriving at times a wanton inconsistency. If this is so, we need not wonder at Messalina’s failure to match her beauty with a love of truth and goodness. She was a chronic liar and she was thoroughly bad. But her beauty, we are told, was a miracle. The symmetry of her body obeyed all the golden rules of the mystical architects, her skin was without even the most minuscule flaw and it glowed as though gold had been inlaid behind translucent ivory, her breasts were full and yet pertly disdained earth’s pull, the nipples nearly always erect, and visibly so beneath her byssinos, as in a state of perpetual sexual excitation, the areolas delicately pigmented to a kind of russet. The sight of her weaving bare white arms was enough, it is said, to make a man grit his teeth with desire to be encircled by them; the smooth plain of her back, tapering to slenderness only to expand lusciously to the opulence of her perfect buttocks, demanded unending caresses.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Kingdom of the Wicked (1985)

Harvey Fierstein photo
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury photo

“Half a century ago, the first feeling of all Englishmen was for England. Now, the sympathies of a powerful party are instinctively given to whatever is against England. It may be Boers or Baboos, or Russians or Affghans, or only French speculators – the treatment these all receive in their controversies with England is the same: whatever else my fail them, they can always count on the sympathies of the political a party from whom during the last half century the rulers of England have been mainly chosen…It is striking, though by no means a solitary indication of how low, in the present temper of English politics, our sympathy with our own countrymen has fallen. Of course, we shall be told that a conscience of exalted sensibility, which is the special attribute of the Liberal party, has enabled them to discover, what English statesmen had never discovered before, that the cause to which our countrymen are opposed is generally the just one…For ourselves, we are rather disposed to think that patriotism has become in some breasts so very reasonable an emotion, because it is ceasing to be an emotion at all; and that these superior scruples, to which our fathers were insensible, and which always make the balance of justice lean to the side of abandoning either our territory or our countrymen, indicate that the national impulses which used to make Englishmen cling together in face of every external trouble are beginning to disappear.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

‘Disintegration’, Quarterly Review, no. 312; October 1883, reprinted in Paul Smith (ed.), Lord Salisbury on Politics. A selection from his articles in the Quaterly Review, 1860-1883 (Cambridge University Press, 1972), pp. 342-343
1880s

Arundhati Roy photo

“To the Kathakali Man these stories are his children and his childhood. He has grown up within them. They are the house he was raised in, the meadows he played in. They are his windows and his way of seeing. So when he tells a story, he handles it as he would a child of his own. He teases it. He punishes it. He sends it up like a bubble. He wrestles it to the ground and lets it go again. He laughs at it because he loves it. He can fly you across whole worlds in minutes, he can stop for hours to examine a wilting leaf. Or play with a sleeping monkey's tail. He can turn effortlessly from the carnage of war into the felicity of a woman washing her hair in a mountain stream. From the crafty ebullience of a rakshasa with a new idea into a gossipy Malayali with a scandal to spread. From the sensuousness of a woman with a baby at her breast into the seductive mischief of Krishna's smile. He can reveal the nugget of sorrow that happiness contains. The hidden fish of shame in a sea of glory.
He tells stories of the gods, but his yarn is spun from the ungodly, human heart.
The Kathakali Man is the most beautiful of men. Because his body is his soul. His only instrument. From the age of three he has been planed and polished, pared down, harnessed wholly to the task of story-telling. He has magic in him, this man within the painted mark and swirling skirts.
But these days he has become unviable. Unfeasible. Condemned goods. His children deride him. They long to be everything that he is not. He has watched them grow up to become clerks and bus conductors. Class IV non-gazetted officers. With unions of their own.
But he himself, left dangling somewhere between heaven and earth, cannot do what they do. He cannot slide down the aisles of buses, counting change and selling tickets. He cannot answer bells that summon him. He cannot stoop behind trays of tea and Marie biscuits.
In despair he turns to tourism. He enters the market. He hawks the only thing he owns. The stories that his body can tell.
He becomes a Regional Flavour.”

page 230-231.
The God of Small Things (1997)

William Alexander photo
Charles Kingsley photo

“Would that we two were lying
Beneath the churchyard sod,
With our limbs at rest in the green earth's breast,
And our souls at home with God.”

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) English clergyman, historian and novelist

The Saint's Tragedy (1848), Act ii, scene ix, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Attributed

Herb Caen photo

“Martinis are like breasts, one isn't enough, and three is too many.”

Herb Caen (1916–1997) American newspaper columnist

Cockburn, Alexander. "Breasts, Martinis and Hitchens". http://www.counterpunch.org/2003/05/06/breasts-martinis-and-hitchens/ Counterpunch.org, May 6, 2003.
Attributed

Thomas Hood photo

“She stood breast-high amid the corn
Clasped by the golden light of morn,
Like the sweetheart of the sun,
Who many a glowing kiss had won.”

Ruth; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
20th century

Stéphane Mallarmé photo
Henry Moore photo
Philip José Farmer photo
Bellamy Young photo
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot photo

“We should be breast-feeding children up to 2 or 3 years of age.”

James W. Prescott (1930) American psychologist

as quoted by Penelope Moffet, "Sensory Stimuli Vital for Young, Speaker Says" Los Angeles Times (Mar 25, 1986)

Subh-i-Azal photo
George W. Bush photo
Arthur Hugh Clough photo
Park Benjamin, Sr. photo
Salvador Dalí photo
Rush Limbaugh photo

“You find yourself staring, looking at, casually glancing at a woman, but you know that it's now socially taboo. You shouldn't be doing it. And you think everybody is noticing you doing it and condemning you in their minds. You shouldn't — so you walk up to the woman and say, "Will you please ask your breasts to stop staring at my eyes?"”

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

Libs Want Men to Stop Looking at Women
The Rush Limbaugh Show
2013-12-09
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/12/09/libs_want_men_to_stop_looking_at_women, quoted in * The Rush Limbaugh Guide To Sexual Harassment
Media Matters for America
2013-12-09
http://mediamatters.org/video/2013/12/09/the-rush-limbaugh-guide-to-sexual-harassment/197197

John Ogilby photo

“Loud Threatnings make men stubborn, but kind Words
Pierce gentle Breasts sooner than sharpest Swords.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

Fab. LXV: Of the Sun and Wind, Moral
The Fables of Aesop (2nd ed. 1668)

George William Curtis photo
Felix Adler photo
Mayim Bialik photo

“A word in season spoken
May calm the troubled breast.”

Charles Jefferys (1807–1865) British music publisher

A Word in Season, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Daniel Webster photo
Katherine Heigl photo
Sören Kierkegaard photo
Ono no Komachi photo

“You do not come
On this moonless night.
I wake wanting you.
My breasts heave and blaze.
My heart burns up.”

Ono no Komachi (825–900) Japanese poet

Source: Kenneth Rexroth's translations, One Hundred More Poems from the Japanese (1976), p. 34

James Gates Percival photo

“On thy fair bosom, silver lake,
The wild swan spreads his snowy sail,
And round his breast the ripples break
As down he bears before the gale.”

James Gates Percival (1795–1856) American geologis, poet, and surgeon

To Seneca Lake, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Torquato Tasso photo

“For shield and mail are less secure defence
To the bare breast than holy innocence.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Difesa miglior, ch'usbergo e scudo,
È la santa innocenza al petto ignudo.
Canto VIII, stanza 41 (tr. Alex. Cuningham Robertson)
Variant translation: Better defence than shield or breastplate, is holy innocence to the naked breast!
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Khalil Gibran photo
Pliny the Younger photo

“I am sensible how much nobler it is to place the reward of virtue in the silent approbation of one's own breast than in the applause of the world. Glory ought to be the consequence, not the motive of our actions.”
Meminimus quanto maiore animo honestatis fructus in conscientia quam in fama reponatur. Sequi enim gloria, non appeti debet.

Pliny the Younger (61–113) Roman writer

Letter 8, 14.
Letters, Book I

Robert Hall photo
Thomas Jefferson photo
George Meredith photo

“Into the breast that gives the rose,
Shall I with shuddering fall?”

George Meredith (1828–1909) British novelist and poet of the Victorian era

Ode to the Spirit of Earth in Autumn http://www.globusz.com/ebooks/MeredithPoems1/00000087.htm, st. 13 (1862).

John Ogilby photo

“Wilt thou, dear daughter, grant me one request,
Or still old grudges foster in thy breast,
Because thou Troy, and I the Grecians aid?”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

Book XIV
Homer His Iliads Translated (1660)

Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Torquato Tasso photo

“My torments easy, full of sweet delight,
If this I could obtain,—that breast to breast
Thy bosom might receive my yielded sprite.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

O fortunati miei dolci martiri!
S'impetrerò che giunto seno a seno,
L'anima mia nella tua bocca io spiri.
Canto II, stanza 35 (tr. Fairfax)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

J.M. Coetzee photo
Torquato Tasso photo

“Armida smiles to hear, but keeps her gaze
fixed on herself, love's labours to behold.
Her locks she braided and their wanton ways
in lovely order marshalled and controlled.
She wound the curls of her fine strands with sprays
of flowers, like enamel worked on gold,
and made the stranger rose join with her pale
breast's native lily, and composed her veil.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Ride Armida a quel dir: ma non che cesse
Dal vagheggiarsi, o da' suoi bei lavori.
Poichè intrecciò le chiome, e che ripresse
Con ordin vago i lor lascivi errori,
Torse in anella i crin minuti, e in esse,
Quasi smalto su l'or, consparse i fiori:
E nel bel sen le peregrine rose
Giunse ai nativi giglj, e 'l vel compose.
Canto XVI, stanza 23 (tr. Wickert)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Loreena McKennitt photo
Calvin Coolidge photo

“It was here that I first saw the light of day; here I received my bride, here my dead lie pillowed on the loving breast of our eternal hills.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Vermont is a State I Love (1928)

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Pierre-Auguste Renoir photo

“I would never have taken up painting if women did not have breasts.”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French painter and sculptor

Tibballs Geoff, ‎Geoff Tibballs (2012) The Mammoth Book of Comic Quotes, p. 80
undated quotes

Muhammad Iqbál photo
Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
John Bright photo

“You say the right hon. baronet [Peel] is a traitor. It would ill become me to attempt his defence after the speech which he delivered last night—a speech, I will venture to say, more powerful and more to be admired than any speech which has been delivered within the memory of any man in this House. I watched the right hon. baronet as he went home last night, and for the first time I envied him his feelings. That speech was circulated by scores of thousands throughout the kingdom and throughout the world; and wherever a man is to be found who loves justice, and wherever there is a labourer whom you have trampled under foot, that speech will bring joy to the heart of the one, and hope to the breast of the other. You chose the right hon. baronet—why? Because he was the ablest man of your party. You always said so, and you will not deny it now. Why was he the ablest? Because he had great experience, profound attainments, and an honest regard for the good of the country. You placed him in office. When a man is in office he is not the same man as when in opposition. The present generation, or posterity, does not deal as mildly with men in government as with those in opposition. There are such things as the responsibilities of office. Look at the population of Lancashire and Yorkshire, and there is not a man among you who would have the valour to take office and raise the standard of Protection, and cry, "Down with the Anti-Corn Law League, and Protection for ever!" There is not a man in your ranks who would dare to sit on that bench as the Prime Minister of England pledged to maintain the existing law. The right hon. baronet took the only, the truest course—he resigned. He told you by that act: "I will no longer do your work. I will not defend your cause. The experience I have had since I came into office renders it impossible for me at once to maintain office and the Corn Laws."”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

The right hon. baronet resigned—he was then no longer your Minister. He came back to office as the Minister of his Sovereign and of the people.
Speech in the House of Commons (17 February 1846), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), p. 148.
1840s

Madonna photo
Aldous Huxley photo
Lily Tomlin photo
Chuck Palahniuk photo
Chuck Palahniuk photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Peter Greenaway photo
Edmund Waller photo

“The yielding marble of her snowy breast.”

Edmund Waller (1606–1687) English poet and politician

On a Lady passing through a Crowd of People; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Philip Roth photo
George William Curtis photo

“The country does want rest, we all want rest. Our very civilization wants it — and we mean that it shall have it. It shall have rest — repose — refreshment of soul and re-invigoration of faculty. And that rest shall be of life and not of death. It shall not be a poison that pacifies restlessness in death, nor shall it be any kind of anodyne or patting or propping or bolstering — as if a man with a cancer in his breast would be well if he only said he was so and wore a clean shirt and kept his shoes tied. We want the rest of a real Union, not of a name, not of a great transparent sham, which good old gentlemen must coddle and pat and dandle, and declare wheedlingly is the dearest Union that ever was, SO it is; and naughty, ugly old fanatics shan't frighten the pretty precious — no, they sha'n't. Are we babies or men? This is not the Union our fathers framed — and when slavery says that it will tolerate a Union on condition that freedom holds its tongue and consents that the Constitution means first slavery at all costs and then liberty, if you can get it, it speaks plainly and manfully, and says what it means. There are not wanting men enough to fall on their knees and cry: 'Certainly, certainly, stay on those terms. Don't go out of the Union — please don't go out; we'll promise to take great care in future that you have everything you want. Hold our tongues? Certainly. These people who talk about liberty are only a few fanatics — they are tolerably educated, but most of 'em are crazy; we don't speak to them in the street; we don't ask them to dinner; really, they are of no account, and if you'll really consent to stay in the Union, we'll see if we can't turn Plymouth Rock into a lump of dough'. I don't believe the Southern gentlemen want to be fed on dough. I believe they see quite as clearly as we do that this is not the sentiment of the North, because they can read the election returns as well as we. The thoughtful men among them see and feel that there is a hearty abhorrence of slavery among us, and a hearty desire to prevent its increase and expansion, and a constantly deepening conviction that the two systems of society are incompatible. When they want to know the sentiment of the North, they do not open their ears to speeches, they open their eyes, and go and look in the ballot-box, and they see there a constantly growing resolution that the Union of the United States shall no longer be a pretty name for the extension of slavery and the subversion of the Constitution. Both parties stand front to front. Each claims that the other is aggressive, that its rights have been outraged, and that the Constitution is on its side. Who shall decide? Shall it be the Supreme Court? But that is only a co-ordinate branch of the government. Its right to decide is not mutually acknowledged. There is no universally recognized official expounder of the meaning of the Constitution. Such an instrument, written or unwritten, always means in a crisis what the people choose. The people of the United States will always interpret the Constitution for themselves, because that is the nature of popular governments, and because they have learned that judges are sometimes appointed to do partisan service.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Al Franken photo

“The first thing I want to do is apologize: to Leeann, to everyone else who was part of that tour, to everyone who has worked for me, to everyone I represent, and to everyone who counts on me to be an ally and supporter and champion of women. There's more I want to say, but the first and most important thing—and if it's the only thing you care to hear, that's fine—is: I'm sorry.
I respect women. I don't respect men who don't. And the fact that my own actions have given people a good reason to doubt that makes me feel ashamed.
But I want to say something else, too. Over the last few months, all of us—including and especially men who respect women—have been forced to take a good, hard look at our own actions and think (perhaps, shamefully, for the first time) about how those actions have affected women.
For instance, that picture [when Franken appears to grope the breasts of a sleeping Leeann Tweeden, while simultaneously smiling towards the photographer] I don't know what was in my head when I took that picture, and it doesn't matter. There's no excuse. I look at it now and I feel disgusted with myself. It isn't funny. It's completely inappropriate. It's obvious how Leeann would feel violated by that picture. And, what's more, I can see how millions of other women would feel violated by it—women who have had similar experiences in their own lives, women who fear having those experiences, women who look up to me, women who have counted on me.”

Al Franken (1951) American comedian and politician

November 2017 statement https://www.wdio.com/news/al-franken-statement-leeann-tweeden/4672510/ in response to allegations of sexual harassment and groping made by Leeann Tweeden against Franken.

Mahatma Gandhi photo

“It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our breasts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. Violence is any day preferable to impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Non-Violence in Peace and War p. 254 http://books.google.com/books?id=F3ofAAAAIAAJ&q=%22cloak+of%22&pg=PA254 (1948); also in Gandhi on Non-violence: Selected Texts from Mohandas K. Gandhi's Non-Violence in Peace and War (1965) edited by Thomas Merton; this has also appeared in paraphrased form as "if there is violence in our hearts."
1940s

Dashiell Hammett photo
Peter Greenaway photo
David Carter photo
John Donne photo

“The Sestos and Abydos of her breasts
Not of two lovers, but two loves the nests.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

No. 18, Love's Progress, line 61
Elegies

Kamala Surayya photo
Niccolo Machiavelli photo
Winston S. Churchill photo

“We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

"Fifty Years Hence", The Strand Magazine (December 1931).
The 1930s

Dana Gioia photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo

“Georgie Pringle: The word of the LORD came again unto me, saying, Son of man, there were two women, the daughters of one mother: And they committed whoredoms in Egypt; they committed whoredoms in their youth: there were their breasts pressed, and there they bruised the teats of their virginity.”

Dennis Potter (1935–1994) English television dramatist, screenwriter and journalist

Pringle, "the class comic", has been asked to choose the bible reading for a secondary school class. He has a reputation for knowing "all the dirty bits in the bible off by heart," according to Nigel Barton's narration. The quote is from Ezekiel, chapter 23, verses 1-3.
Stand up, Nigel Barton (1965)

Dean Ornish photo

“In addition to preventing many chronic diseases … comprehensive lifestyle changes can often reverse the progression of these illnesses. … Changing lifestyle actually changes your genes—turning on genes that keep you healthy, and turning off genes that promote heart disease, prostate cancer, breast cancer, and diabetes—more than five hundred genes in only three months. People often say, “Oh, it's all in my genes. There's not much I can do about it.” But there is. Knowing that changing lifestyle changes our genes is often very motivating—not to blame, but to empower. … [Our approach is] not like there was one set of dietary recommendations for reversing heart disease, a different one for reversing diabetes, and yet another for changing your genes or lengthening your telomeres. In all of our studies, people were asked to consume a whole-foods, plant-based diet … It's as though your body knows how to personalize the medicine it needs if you give it the right raw materials in your diet and lifestyle. … And what's good for you is good for our planet. To the degree we transition toward a whole-foods, plant-based diet, it not only makes a difference in our own lives; it also makes a difference in the lives of many others across the globe.”

Dean Ornish (1953) American physician

Introduction https://books.google.it/books?id=KfeoBAAAQBAJ&pg=PP12 to Marco Borges, The 22-Day Revolution (New York: Penguin, 2015).

Luís de Camões photo

“Proud over the rest, with splendid wealth arrayed,
As crown to this wide empire, Europe's head,
Fair Lusitania smiles, the western bound,
Whose verdant breast the rolling waves surround.”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Eis aqui, quase cume da cabeça
De Europa toda, o Reino Lusitano,
Onde a terra se acaba e o mar começa.
Stanza 20, lines 1–3 (tr. William Julius Mickle)
Epic poetry, Os Lusíadas (1572), Canto III

Sally Struthers photo

“If a man is pictured chopping off a woman's breast, it only gets an R rating; but if, God forbid, a man is pictured kissing a woman's breast, it gets an X rating. Why is violence more acceptable than tenderness?”

Sally Struthers (1947) Actress, spokesperson, activist

Quoted in John Cook, Leslie Ann Gibson, The Book of Positive Quotations (2007) p. 103 http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_WsmIGNyFJ8C&pg=PA103&lpg=PA103&dq=%22If+a+man+is+pictured+chopping+off+a+woman's+breast,+it+only+gets+an+R+rating%22&source=bl&ots=TSvoWnCK-s&sig=zuUzVqr8hcmGK44rePU67_x9ppo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=6MkzT7nOGMrH0QWfqLmgAg&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22If%20a%20man%20is%20pictured%20chopping%20off%20a%20woman's%20breast%2C%20it%20only%20gets%20an%20R%20rating%22&f=false

Paul Ryan photo
Nathaniel Hawthorne photo
Richard K. Morgan photo
William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham photo
David Hume photo

““It happened that Mahmud had long been planning an expedition into Bhardana, and Gujarat, to destroy the idol temple of Somnat, a place of great sanctity to all Hindus. So as soon as he had returned to Ghazni from his Khurasan business, he issued a farman to the General of the army, ordering him to leave a confidential officer in charge of the fort of Kabuliz, and himself to join the court with his son Salar Mas‘ud…
“It is related in the Tarikh-i Mahmudi that the Sultan shortly after reached Ghazni, and laid down the image of Somnat at the threshold of the Mosque of Ghazni, so that the Musulmans might tread upon the breast of the idol on their way to and from their devotions. As soon as the unbelievers heard of this, they sent an embassy to Khwaja Hasan Maimandi, stating that the idol was of stone and useless to the Musulmans, and offered to give twice its weight in gold as a ransom, if it might be returned to them. Khwaja Hasan Maimandi represented to the Sultan that the unbelievers had offered twice the weight of the idol in gold, and had agreed to be subject to him. He added, that the best policy would be to take the gold and restore the image, thereby attaching die people to his Government. The Sultan yielded to the advice of the Khwaja, and the unbelievers paid the gold into the treasury.
“One day, when the Sultan was seated on his throne, the ambassadors of the unbelievers came, and humbly petitioned thus: ‘Oh, Lord of the world! we have paid the gold to your Government in ransom, but have not yet received our purchase, the idol Somnat.’ The Sultan was wroth at their words, and, falling into reflection, broke up the assembly and retired, with his dear Salar Mas‘ud, into his private apartments. He then asked his opinion as to whether the image ought to be restored, or not? Salar Mas‘ud, who was perfect in goodness, said quickly, ‘In the day of the resurrection, when the Almighty shall call for Ãzar, the idol-destroyer, and Mahmud, the idol-seller, Sire! what will you say?’ This speech deeply affected the Sultan, he was full of grief, and answered, ‘I have given my word; it will be a breach of promise.’ Salar Mas‘ud begged him to make over the idol to him, and tell the unbelievers to get it from him. The Sultan agreed; and Salar Mas‘ud took it to his house, and, breaking off its nose and ears, ground them to powder.
“When Khwaja Hasan introduced the unbelievers, and asked the Sultan to give orders to restore the image to them, his majesty replied that Salar Mas‘ud had carried it off to his house, and that he might send them to get it from him. Khwaja Hasan, bowing his head, repeated these words in Arabic, ‘No easy matter is it to recover anything which has fallen into the hands of a lion.’ He then told the unbelievers that the idol was with Salar Mas‘ud, and that they were at liberty to go and fetch it. So they went to Mas‘ud’s door and demanded their god.
“That prince commanded Malik Nekbakht to treat them courteously, and make them be seated; then to mix the dust of the nose and ears of the idol with sandal and the lime eaten with betel-nut, and present it to them. The unbelievers were delighted, and smeared themselves with sandal, and ate the betel-leaf. After a while they asked for the idol, when Salar Mas‘ud said he had given it to them. They inquired, with astonishment, what he meant by saying that they had received the idol? And Malik Nekbakht explained that it was mixed with the sandal and betel-lime. Some began to vomit, while others went weeping and lamenting to Khwaja Hasan Maimandi and told him what had occurred…”
“Afterwards the image of Somnat was divided into four parts, as is described in the Tawarikh-i-Mahmudi. Mahmud’s first exploit is said to have been conquering the Hindu rebels, destroying the forts and the idol temples of the Rai Ajipal (Jaipal), and subduing the country of India. His second, the expedition into Harradawa and Guzerat, the carrying off the idol of Somnat, and dividing it into four pieces, one of which he is reported to have placed on the threshold of the Imperial Palace, while he sent two others to Mecca and Medina respectively. Both these exploits were performed at the suggestion, and by the advice, of the General and Salar Mas‘ud; but India was conquered by the efforts of Salar Mas‘ud alone, and the idol of Somnat was broken in pieces by his sold advice, as has been related. Salar Sahu was Sultan of the army and General of the forces in Iran…”

Ghazi Saiyyad Salar Masud (1014) semi-legendary Muslim figure from India

Somnath (Gujarat), Mir‘at-i-Mas‘udi Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own historians, Vol. II. p. 524-547

Paula Modersohn-Becker photo
Ludovico Ariosto photo

“Love should make a churlish nature kind,
And not transform to rude a gentle breast.”

Canto XXXII, stanza 93 (tr. W. S. Rose)
Orlando Furioso (1532)