Quotes about brood (136 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“The new kind of music seems to create not from the heart but from the head. Its composers think rather than feel. They have not the capacity to make their works exalt - they meditate, protest, analyze, reason, calculate and brood, but they do not exalt.”

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

Music , Feeling , Thinking , Heart

“Of all the creatures that were made he [man] is the most detestable. Of the entire brood he is the only one — the solitary one — that possesses malice. That is the basest of all instincts, passions, vices — the most hateful…He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain…Also — in all the list he is the only creature that has a nasty mind.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Vol. II, p. 7
Mark Twain's Autobiography (1924)

Pain , Hate , Sport , Passion

“I sat brooding intensely on the atrocities perpetrated on Hinduism and its dark and deadly future if left to face Islam outside and Gandhi inside, and (…) decided all of a sudden to take the extreme step against Gandhi.”

Nathuram Godse (1910–1949) Assassin of Mahatma Gandhi

Nathuram Godse: Why I Assassinated Gandhi (1993)

Future

“Stop moping, sule," galladon said with a grunt."It doesn't suit you-it takes a fine sense of pessimism to brood with any sort of respectability.”

Brandon Sanderson Elantris

Source: Elantris

Sense

“Hester, in the dark conclusion of Hawthorne's brooding novel, reassumes the Puritan mantle…. Hawthorne thus captures the catch-22 of feminism: the very woman who is able to envision a new order of living is, by the same token, unable, since the passion that enables her also adulterates her in the eyes of the Puritans. Released from goodness, she is imprisoned in badness, within the framework of the puritanical order. But her mind is free to question the order.”

Carol Gilligan (1936) American feminist, ethicist, and psychologist

Source: Joining the Resistance

Question , Passion

“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Variant: If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster. Časopis LIFE, január 1984

“I feel sorry for players who are always lying awake at night, brooding over their games.”

Magnus Carlsen (1990) Norwegian chess player

ChessBase.com - Magnus Carlsen on his chess career, 15 March 2010 http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=6187

Feeling , Game , Lying , Night

“There are moments in history when brooding tragedy and its dark shadows can be lightened by recalling great moments of the past.”

Indíra Gándhí (1917–1984) Indian politician and Prime Minister

Letter to Richard Nixon (December 15, 1971) http://www.thehindu.com/thehindu/mag/2005/07/03/stories/2005070300090100.htm.

History , Past

“Truth is the precious harvest of the earth.
But once, when harvest waved upon a land,
The noisome cankerworm and caterpillar,
Locusts, and all the swarming foul-born broods,
Fastened upon it with swift, greedy jaws,
And turned the harvest into pestilence,
Until men said, What profits it to sow?”

George Eliot book Felix Holt, the Radical

Verse heading up the start of Chapter 11 (at page 111)
Felix Holt, the Radical (1866)

Men , Truth

“The empire of Saturnus is gone by;
Lord of the secret birth of things is he;
Within the lap of earth, and in the depths
Of the imagination dominates;
And his are all things that eschew the light.
The time is o'er of brooding and contrivance,
For Jupiter, the lustrous, lordeth now,
And the dark work, complete of preparation,
He draws by force into the realm of light.
Now must we hasten on to action, ere
The scheme, and most auspicious positure
Parts o'er my head, and takes once more its flight,
For the heavens journey still, and adjourn not.”

Friedrich Schiller Wallenstein

Act I, sc. i
Wallenstein (1798), Part II - Wallensteins Tod (The Death of Wallenstein)

Secret , Imagination , Birth , Light

“As for New England as a seat of weirdness—a little historic reflection will show why it is more naturally redolent of the bizarre & the sinister than any other part of America. It was here that the most gloomy-minded of all the colonists settled; & here that the dark moods & cryptic hills pressed closest. An abnormal Puritan psychology led to all kinds of repression, furtiveness, & grotesque hidden crime, while the long winters & backwoods isolation fostered monstrous secrets which never came to light. To me there is nothing more fraught with mystery & terror than a remote Massachusetts farmhouse against a lonely hill. Where else could an outbreak like the Salem witchcraft have occurred? Rhode Island does not share these tenedencies—its history & settlement being different from those of other parts of New England—but just across the line in the old Bay State the macabre broods at its strongest.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Elizabeth Toldridge (9 October 1931), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 423
Non-Fiction, Letters

Secret , History , Mood , Nature

“Yes, I'm a hermit. Mostly I brood," Mad Rogan said. "Also, I'm very good at wallowing in self-pity. I spend my days steeped in melancholy, looking out the window. Occasionally a single tear quietly rolls down my cheek.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Burn for Me

Tear , Madness

“Did you really think I was too fragile to know what Deryn was?"

"Fragile?" Volger looked about. "I hadn't thought so, but now I find you brooding in a bathroom. This doesn't speak well of your sturdiness.”

Scott Westerfeld book Goliath

Source: Goliath

Thinking

“In hatred as in love, we grow like the thing we brood upon. What we loathe, we graft into our very soul.”

Mary Renault book The Mask of Apollo

Source: The Mask of Apollo (1966)

Love , Soul

“Sydney Katherine Sage,” he said, his green eyes full of love and earnestness. “Would you do a brooding, deadbeat Moroi the honor of being his wife?”

Richelle Mead book Silver Shadows

Source: Silver Shadows

Love

“The town kept its secrets, and the Marsten House brooded over it like a ruined king.”

Stephen King book 'Salem's Lot

Source: 'Salem's Lot

Secret , Housing

“Then he [The Star Child] waited, marshaling his thoughts and brooding over his still untested powers. For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something.”

Arthur C. Clarke book 2001: A Space Odyssey

Source: 2001: A Space Odyssey

World , Star , Thinking , Waiting

“I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, your loveliness and the hour of my death. O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

To Fanny Brawne (July 25, 1819)
Letters (1817–1820)

Death

“… too much brooding, not enough doing.”

Timothy Findley (1930–2002) Canadian writer

“Why couldn't Jesus command us to obsess over everything, to try to control and manipulate people, to try not to breathe at all, or to pay attention, stomp away to brood when people annoy us, and then eat a big bag of Hershey's Kisses in bed?”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

People , Kiss

“In his face there came to be a brooding peace that is seen most often in the faces of the very sorrowful or the very wise. But still he wandered through the streets of the town, always silent and alone.”

Carson McCullers book The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Source: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Peace

“Women were supposed to be the enigmas, but men? Moody, brooding bastards, the lot of them. A woman with PMS had nothing on a man. Where women might get hormonal once a month, men suffered their own brand of PMS on a daily basis.
- Faith”

Maya Banks (1964) Author

Source: Sweet Surrender

Women , Men , Faith , Suffering

“To ponder is not to brood or grieve or even meditate. It is to wonder at a deep level.”

Robert Fulghum (1937) American writer

Source: It Was on Fire When I Lay Down on It

“There's a special quality to the loneliness of dusk, a melancholy more brooding even than the night's.”

Ed Gorman (1941–2016) American writer

Source: Everybody's Somebody's Fool

Loneliness , Night

“Ah," said the jailer, "do not always brood over what is impossible, or you will be mad in a fortnight.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

Madness

“I have important business to get to. I plan to sulk all afternoon, followed, perhaps, by an evening of Byronic brooding and a nighttime of dissipation.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Business

“Sex is like a drink, it's bad to start brooding about it too early in the day.”

Margaret Atwood book Oryx and Crake

Source: Oryx and Crake

Sex , Drink

“Loneliness will sit over our roofs with brooding wings.”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Source: Dracula

Loneliness

“Oh, man. You’re him. The cute and brooding vampire boyfriend.”
“She said I was cute and brooding?” I asked. “Never mind. Why can’t I reach her? Where is she?”

Richelle Mead book Silver Shadows

Source: Silver Shadows

“She brooded and bit her rich lips: my soul began its first sink into her, deep, heady, lost; like drowning in a witches' brew, Keltic, sorcerous, starlike.”

Jack Kerouac book Maggie Cassidy

Source: Maggie Cassidy

Soul

“We have bigger things to brood on and enormous reasons for wallowing in terminal craziness until we finally hit bottom.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

“You can not make yourself whole again by brooding one hundred percent of the time on the darkness of the world. We are the light of the world.”

Ivan Van Sertima (1935–2009) British Africanist in New Jersey

World , Light , Time

“Lately you are brooding too much about rights. Give up this dangerous habit.”

Rohinton Mistry A Fine Balance

Source: A Fine Balance

“Society and conversation, therefore, are the most powerful remedies for restoring the mind to its tranquillity, if, at any time, it has unfortunately lost it; as well as the best preservatives of that equal and happy temper, which is so necessary to self-satisfaction and enjoyment. Men of retirement and speculation, who are apt to sit brooding at home over either grief or resentment, though they may often have more humanity, more generosity, and a nicer sense of honour, yet seldom possess that equality of temper which is so common among men of the world.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Section I, Chap. III.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Part I

Men , World , Home , Sense

“Incense smokes, and love takes care,
In her blue bed the virgin died;
The fire broods, the day falls,
The Angel, sisters, knocks on the door.”

Stuart Merrill (1863–1915) American poet, who wrote mostly in the French language

Fume l'encens, veille l'amour,
Dans son lit bleu la vierge est morte;
Couve le feu, tombe le jour,
L'Ange, mes soeurs, frappe à la porte.
"La Mystérieuse Chanson"

Love , Angels , Sister

“His aunt drily remarked that, at this rate, he would soon get through all the sights; but she could not guess — having lived always in Washington — how little the sights of Washington had to do with its interest.

The boy could not have told her; he was nowhere near an understanding of himself. The more he was educated, the less he understood. Slavery struck him in the face; it was a nightmare; a horror; a crime; the sum of all wickedness! Contact made it only more repulsive. He wanted to escape, like the negroes, to free soil. Slave States were dirty, unkempt, poverty-stricken, ignorant, vicious! He had not a thought but repulsion for it; and yet the picture had another side. The May sunshine and shadow had something to do with it; the thickness of foliage and the heavy smells had more; the sense of atmosphere, almost new, had perhaps as much again; and the brooding indolence of a warm climate and a negro population hung in the atmosphere heavier than the catalpas. The impression was not simple, but the boy liked it: distinctly it remained on his mind as an attraction, almost obscuring Quincy itself. The want of barriers, of pavements, of forms; the looseness, the laziness; the indolent Southern drawl; the pigs in the streets; the negro babies and their mothers with bandanas; the freedom, openness, swagger, of nature and man, soothed his Johnson blood.”

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

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Education , Boy , Understanding , Nature

“well boss
mehitabel the cat
has reappeared in her old
haunts with a
flock of kittens

archy she said to me
yesterday
the life of a female
artist is continually
hampered what in hell
have i done to deserve
all these kittens
i look back on my life
and it seems to me to be
just one damned kitten
after another
i am a dancer archy
and my only prayer
is to be allowed
to give my best to my art
but just as i feel
that i am succeeding
in my life work
along comes another batch
of these damned kittens
it is not archy
that i am shy on mother love
god knows i care for
the sweet little things
curse them
but am i never to be allowed
to live my own life
i have purposely avoided
matrimony in the interests
of the higher life
but i might just
as well have been a domestic
slave for all the freedom
i have gained
i hope none of them
gets run over by
an automobile
my heart would bleed
if anything happened
to them and i found it out
but it isn t fair archy
it isn t fair
these damned tom cats have all
the fun and freedom
if i was like some of these
green eyed feline vamps i know
i would simply walk out on the
bunch of them and
let them shift for themselves
but i am not that kind
archy i am full of mother love
my kindness has always
been my curse
a tender heart is the cross i bear
self sacrifice always and forever
is my motto damn them
i will make a home
for the sweet innocent
little things
unless of course providence
in his wisdom should remove
them they are living
just now in an abandoned
garbage can just behind
a made over stable in greenwich
village and if it rained
into the can before i could
get back and rescue them
i am afraid the little
dears might drown
it makes me shudder just
to think of it
of course if i were a family cat
they would probably
be drowned anyhow
sometimes i think
the kinder thing would be
for me to carry the
sweet little things
over to the river
and drop them in myself
but a mother s love archy
is so unreasonable
something always prevents me
these terrible
conflicts are always
presenting themselves
to the artist
the eternal struggle
between art and life archy
is something fierce
yes something fierce
my what a dramatic
life i have lived
one moment up the next
moment down again
but always gay archy always gay
and always the lady too
in spite of hell
well boss it will
be interesting to note
just how mehitabel
works out her present problem
a dark mystery still broods
over the manner
in which the former
family of three kittens
disappeared
one day she was talking to me
of the kittens
and the next day when i asked
her about them
she said innocently
what kittens
interrogation point
and that was all
i could ever get out
of her on the subject
we had a heavy rain
right after she spoke to me
but probably that garbage can
leaks so the kittens
have not yet
been drowned”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

mehitabel and her kittens http://donmarquis.com/reading-room/kittens/
archy and mehitabel (1927)

Love , Life , Wisdom , God

“The 2nd of April (1891) at 9:45 a. m. Max Ernst had his first contact with the sensible world, when he came out of the egg which his mother had laid in an eagle's nest and which the bird had brooded for seven years.”

Max Ernst (1891–1976) German painter, sculptor and graphic artist

Quote in 'Some Data on the Youth of M. E., As Told by Himself', in the View (April 1942); also quoted in Max Ernst and Alchemy (2001) by M. E. Warlick, p. 10
1936 - 1950

World , Bird

“I don't know what this so-called pure gospel is. Was the preaching of John the Baptist pure? He did not say only, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!" (Matthew 3:2). He also "rebuked [Herod]… for all the evils which Herod had done" (Luke 3:19). He was beheaded because he didn't confine himself to abstract teaching. Jesus did not preach only the "pure" Sermon on the Mount, but also what some actual church leaders would have called a negative sermon: "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!… Serpents, brood of vipers!" (Matthew 23:27,33). It is for such "impure" preaching that He was crucified. The Pharisees would not have bothered about the Sermon on the Mount.”

Richard Wurmbrand (1909–2001) Romanian Christian minister of Jewish descent

Source: Tortured For Christ (1967), p. 75.

Evil

“When awful darkness and silence reign
Over the great Gromboolian plain,
Through the long, long wintry nights.
When the angry breakers roar
As they beat on the rocky shore;—
When Storm-clouds brood on the towering heights
Of the Hills of the Chankly Bore”

Edward Lear (1812–1888) British artist, illustrator, author and poet

The Dong with the Luminous Nose http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/ll/dln.html, st. 1 (1877).

Silence , Night

“The nursery of brooding Pelicans,
The dormitory of their dead, had vanish'd,
And all the minor spots of rock and verdure,
The abodes of happy millions, were no more.”

James Montgomery (1771–1854) British editor, hymn writer, and poet

Canto VI, line 74.
The Pelican Island (1827)

Dead , Happiness

“The cruel man is of misanthropic temperament, and is a man of moods, oscillating from quiet brooding to sudden explosions. If a man like this does not fight this unhappy provision of his soul during his youth, under no circumstances could he avoid becoming furious - and foolish. There are those who would leave it up to God, but to ensure justice on the earth, and not fob it off to the Divinity, it is mandatory that people know both virtue and its benefits, since the virtues lead to unity among them, not the war of all against all. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to conserve them, and show that crime can only return misfortunes and destruction, including of the criminal himself. Who is the last victim of his crimes.”

Frederick II of Prussia book Anti-Machiavel

Source: Anti-Machiavel, Chapter VIII

God , War , People , Youth

“I like the evening in India, the one magic moment when the sun balances on the rim of the world, and the hush descends, and ten thousand civil servants drift homeward on a river of bicycles, brooding on the Lord Krishna and the cost of living.”

James Cameron (journalist) (1911–1985) British journalist

The News Chronicle, February 22, 1957.

World , Sun

“As in hunting, so in hawking, the sportsmen had their peculiar impressions, and therefore the tyro in the art of falconry is recommended to learn the following arrangement of terms as they were to be applied to the different kinds of birds assembled in companies. A sege of herons, and of bitterns; an herd of swans, of cranes, and of curlews; a dopping of sheldrakes; a spring of teels; a covert of cootes; a gaggle of geese; a badelynge of ducks; a sord or sute of mallards; a muster of peacoccks; a nye of pheasants; a bevy of quails; a covey of partridges; a congregation of plovers; a flight of doves; a dule of turtles; a walk of snipes; a fall of woodcocks; a brood of hens; a building of rooks; a murmuration of starlings; an exaltation of larks; a flight of swallows; a host of sparrows; a watch of nightingales; and a charm of goldfinches.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 37
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Collective nouns

Art , Spring , Bird , Learning

“Of history and its consequences it may be said: "Those who can, gloat; those who can't, brood." Englishmen are born gloaters; Irishmen born brooders.”

Conor Cruise O'Brien (1917–2008) Irish politician

To Katanga and Back: a UN Case History (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1962) p. 31

History

“The human race, in its intellectual life, is organized like the bees: the masculine soul is a worker, sexually atrophied, and essentially dedicated to impersonal and universal arts; the feminine is a queen, infinitely fertile, omnipresent in its brooding industry, but passive and abounding in intuitions without method and passions without justice.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress (1905-1906), Vol. II, Reason in Society

Life , Justice , Art , Soul

“A couple things that we do know about theropods—the ones that most closely related to birds—is that they brooded their nests. If you go deeper in the tree, what you see is that for sauropods, we have no direct evidence that they returned to the nest after the eggs were laid. Most of the evidence for that comes from an excavation in Argentina called Auca Mahuevo. What’s thought with sauropods is that they’d just lay a bunch of eggs and leave them alone—the turtle model. Few of those would ever reach adulthood.”

Mark Norell (1957) American paleontologist

As quoted in "How Dinosaurs Loved: An Interview with Dr. Mark Norell on Dino Relations" http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/t-rexxx-how-dinosaurs-lived-loved-and-tasted-q-a-with-dr-mark-norell-american-museum-of-natural-history, Vice (March 20, 2012)

Bird , Tree , Adulthood

“Brood less, smile more and serve all.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

Smile

“Withdrawn and ruinous it broods in umbra: the immemorial masonry: the towers, the tracks. Is all corroding? No. Through an avenue of spires a zephyr floats; a bird whistles; a freshet bears away from a choked river.”

Mervyn Peake (1911–1968) English writer, artist, poet and illustrator

Source: Gormenghast (1950), Chapter 1, section 1 (p. 399)

Bird

“Vast wings above the lambent waters brood
Of sullen day.”

James Joyce book Pomes Penyeach

Flood, p. 16
Pomes Penyeach (1927)

Water

“The remedy for weakness is not brooding over weakness, but thinking of strength. Teach men of strength that is already within them.”

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

Call to the Nation

Men , Thinking

“When I first heard the songs of Mario Ruiz Armengol I responded in awe at the totality of their musical expression. Mario's harmonic sense was one that I had never encountered in most Latin music; melodies which in themselves were distinctive and lingered in your mind after only one hearing; profound emotional content without being hyper-romantic in conception. Some of them seemed almost brooding in character, filled with a feeling of melancholia and reflecting the depth of his personality.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

From the liner notes for Cal Tjader Plays the Contemporary Music of Mexico and Brazil (September 1962)

Music , Feeling , Sense , Personality

“It seems to him that he extends backwards (or is it forwards?) without beginning (or is it end?) and he can't just now remember whether the great tales and plots which he supposes he knows and forever broods on lie in the to-come or lie dead in the has-been. But then suppose that's how secrets are kept, and age-long tales remembered, and unbreakable curses made too.”

John Crowley (1942) American writer

Bk. 1, Ch. 4
Little, Big: or, The Fairies' Parliament (1981)

Lie , Secret , Age , Dead

“Anti-Semitic publications have existed in Germany for centuries. A book I had, written by Dr. Martin Luther, was, for instance, confiscated. Dr. Martin Luther would very probably sit in my place in the defendants' dock today, if this book had been taken into consideration by the Prosecution. In this book The Jews and Their Lies, Dr. Martin Luther writes that the Jews are a serpent's brood and one should burn down their synagogues and destroy them…”

Julius Streicher (1885–1946) German politician

Quoted in "The Destruction of the European Jews: Third Edition" - by Raul Hilberg - History - 2003

Books

“Now he was in a holding pen with various members of the Kuala Lumpur criminal fraternity and they scared him […] They ranged from a Chinese gang member, whose dragon tattoo foraged up his arm and curled around his neck, to a large, [sic] Indian man with a jet-black moustache and pocked-marked face, brooding in a corner. The majority of his cellmates appeared from their accents to be Indonesians, part of the large contingent of illegal immigrant sin Malaysia. […] At least, he thought, the government should be proud that their efforts to integrate the various races in Malaysia into a cohesive society were bearing such fruit. It was a very multi-racial group that was penned in together.”

Shamini Flint book Inspector Singh Investigates: A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder

Inspector Singh Investigates: A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder, Cap 8

Effort , Appearance , Tattoo , Parting

“Well before James Joyce, Conrad was forging a vocabulary for the contemporary soul. This book grants us another opportunity to brood over a notable literary martyrdom.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

review in the London Independent newspaper of Joseph Conrad: A Biography by Jeffrey Meyers
People, Joseph Conrad

Books , Soul

“As he went through the half-darkness of the lamp-lit streets, deserted almost entirely at this hour, he brooded over his hard luck. What chance had he ever been given? Raught, for that matter, like many another in case like his, was far from grasping fully how bad his luck had been, how little the chance that life had offered. Neglect and harshness had marked him in infancy; there had been nothing at any time to tell against the effect of them. But in all of the past that he remembered and could understand there had been more than enough to be stored up as matter for savage resentment, for the soul-sick criminal's conviction that he owes the world no more than such repayment as he can make in its own coin.”

Edmund Clerihew Bentley book Trent's Own Case

Source: Trent's Own Case (1936), Chapter XVII: "Fine Body of Men"

Life , World , Soul , Understanding

“Nabby Adams, supine on the bed, grunted. It was four o’clock in the morning and he did not want to be talking. He had had a confused coloured dream about Bombay, shot with sharp pangs of unpaid bills. Over it all had brooded thirst, thirst for a warmish bottle of Tiger beer. Or Anchor. Or Carlsberg. He said, 'Did you bring any beer back with you?”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Time for a Tiger (1956)

Dreams , Beer

“Tumult, weeping, many new ghosts.
Heartbroken, aging, alone, I sing
To myself. Ragged mist settles
In the spreading dusk. Snow skurries
In the coiling wind. The wineglass
Is spilled. The bottle is empty.
The fire has gone out in the stove.
Everywhere men speak in whispers.
I brood on the uselessness of letters.”

Du Fu (712–770) Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty

"Snow Storm" (对雪), as translated by Kenneth Rexroth in One Hundred Poems from the Chinese (1971), p. 6

Men , Age , Singing

“The Christian movement began with John the Baptist. … in his recorded teaching to the people there is not a word about the customary ritual of religion, about increased Sabbath observance, about stricter washings and sacrifices, or the ordinary exercises of piety. He spoke only of repentance, of ceasing from wrongdoing. He hailed the professional exponents of religion who came to hear him, as a brood of snakes wriggling away from the flames of the judgment. …The way to prepare for the Messianic era and to escape the wrath of the Messiah was to institute a brotherly life and to equalize social inequalities.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.2 The Social Aims of Jesus, p. 49-50

Life , People , Religion , Way

“He can neither read nor write and in him already there broods a taste for mindless violence. All history present in that visage, the child the father of the man.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Source: Blood Meridian (1985), Chapter I

History , Reading

“There is nothing perhaps so generally consoling to a man as a well-established grievance; a feeling of having been injured, on which his mind can brood from hour to hour, allowing him to plead his own cause in his own court, within his own heart, — and always to plead it successfully.”

Anthony Trollope book Orley Farm

Source: Orley Farm (1862), Ch. 8

Feeling , Heart

“Halfway up the slope, guarded by a group of tall, slim, cypress-trees, nestled a small strawberry-pink villa, like some exotic fruit lying in the greenery. The cypress-trees undulated gently in the breeze, as if they were busily painting the sky a still brighter blue for our arrival.
The villa was small and square, standing in its tiny garden with an air of pink-faced determination. Its shutters had been faded by the sun to a delicate creamy-green, cracked and bubbled in places. The garden, surrounded by tall fuschia hedges, had the flower beds worked in complicated geometrical patterns, marked with smooth white stones. The white cobbled paths, scarcely as wide as a rake's head, wound laboriously round beds hardly larger than a big straw hat, beds in the shape of stars, half-moons, triangles, and circles all overgrown with a shaggy tangle of flowers run wild. Roses dropped petals that seemed as big and smooth as saucers, flame-red, moon-white, glossy, and unwrinkled; marigolds like broods of shaggy suns stood watching their parent's progress through the sky. In the low growth the pansies pushed their velvety, innocent faces through the leaves, and the violets drooped sorrowfully under their heart-shaped leaves. The bougainvillaea that sprawled luxuriously over the tiny iron balcony was hung, as though for a carnival, with its lantern-shaped magenta flowers. In the darkness of the fuschia-hedge a thousand ballerina-like blooms quivered expectantly. The warm air was thick with the scent of a hundred dying flowers, and full of the gentle, soothing whisper and murmur of insects.”

Gerald Durrell book My Family and Other Animals

My Family and Other Animals (1956)

Star , Flowers , Lying , Parent

“The mind is still haunted with its old unconscious ways; it broods on lost authorities; and the yearning, the deep and hollowing yearning for divine volition and service is with us still.”

Julian Jaynes book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book II, Chapter 6, p. 313
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

Way

“We need to fully feel and express our emotions without worrying that they are likely to cause harm to another. But intensely and obsessively brooding on one's anger or resentment is not a good thing to do.”

Starhawk (1951) American author, activist and Neopagan

The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess (1979)

Feeling , Anger

“Endless brooding over a question undermines you as much as a dull pain.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

The New Gods (1969)

Pain , Question

“Exactly twenty-five years from 1 May 1950- the day President Truman authorized the first U. S. military assistance to Indochina- Saigon and the South Vietnamese government fell to the communist regime of North Vietnam, on 30 April 1975. Thus ended the longest conflict in American history. After every prolonged conflict in its experience, the United States has plunged into a period of assessment, trying to sift out the meaning of the memorable events of the recent past while searching for the key to a conflict-free future. This happened in the 1870s after our Civil War, in the 1920s after World War I, and for a relatively brief period in the late 1940s after World War II. But with the advent of the Cold War in 1947, followed by the Korean War in 1950- our first experience with limited war- we lived through over a quarter of a century during which the United States was continuously involved in some sort of emergency, contingency, or actual hostilities somewhere in the world. And so, after our agonizing experience in Vietnam, the first clear failure in our history, it is not surprising to find the United States of the 1970s and 1980s brooding over its frustrations and reevaluating its role in the world.”

Bruce Palmer Jr. (1913–2000) United States Army Chief of Staff

Source: The 25-Year War: America's Military Role in Vietnam (1984), p. vii

Hostility , War , World , History

“The great investors are almost entirely clueless as to what their supposed “employees,” the corporation managers are doing. The CEOs are almost entirely clueless as to what the branch and facility managers are doing. And the management of each facility are almost entirely clueless as to what is going on within the black box of the actual production process. In the light of this reality, Mises’ “entrepreneur”—so carefully and closely involved in the minutiae of choosing between technical possibilities of production, a brooding omnipresence guiding the efforts of every employee—is largely a construction of fantasy. It’s quite ironic, in fact, considering that Mises starts out the block quote above with the announcement that the entrepreneur is not omnipresent.”

Kevin Carson (1963) American academic

Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective (2008), Chapter 7
Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective (2008)

Quotes , Reality , Effort , Light

“When Bonaparte was to be dethroned, the Sovereigns of Europe called up their people to their aid; they invoked them in the sacred names of Freedom and National Independence; the cry went forth throughout Europe: and those, whom Subsidies had no power to buy, and Conscriptions no force to compel, roused by the magic sound of Constitutional Rights, started spontaneously into arms. The long-suffering Nations of Europe rose up as one man, and by an effort tremendous and wide spreading, like a great convulsion of nature, they hurled the conqueror from his throne. But promises made in days of distress, were forgotten in the hour of triumph…The rulers of mankind…had set free a gigantic spirit from its iron prison, but when that spirit had done their bidding, they shrunk back with alarm, from the vastness of that power, which they themselves had set into action, and modestly requested, it would go down again into its former dungeon. Hence, that gloomy discontent, that restless disquiet, that murmuring sullenness, which pervaded Europe after the overthrow of Bonaparte; and which were so unlike that joyful gladness, which might have been looked for, among men, who had just been released from the galling yoke of a foreign and a military tyrant. In 1820 the long brooding fire burst out into open flame; in Germany it was still kept down and smothered, but in Italy, in Spain, and in Portugal, it overpowered every resistance.”

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

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1830/mar/10/affairs-of-portugal in the House of Commons (10 March 1830).
1830s

Men , People , Nature , Effort

“To me, therefore, that Thracian Orpheus, that Theban, and that Methymnaean,--men, and yet unworthy of the name,--seem to have been deceivers, who, under the pretence of poetry corrupting human life, possessed by a spirit of artful sorcery for purposes of destruction, celebrating crimes in their orgies, and making human woes the materials of religious worship, were the first to entice men to idols; nay, to build up the stupidity of the nations with blocks of wood and stone,--that is, statues and images,--subjecting to the yoke of extremest bondage the truly noble freedom of those who lived as free citizens under heaven by their songs and incantations. But not such is my song, which has come to loose, and that speedily, the bitter bondage of tyrannizing demons; and leading us back to the mild and loving yoke of piety, recalls to heaven those that had been cast prostrate to the earth. It alone has tamed men, the most intractable of animals; the frivolous among them answering to the fowls of the air, deceivers to reptiles, the irascible to lions, the voluptuous to swine, the rapacious to wolves. The silly are stocks and stones, and still more senseless than stones is a man who is steeped in ignorance. As our witness, let us adduce the voice of prophecy accordant with truth, and bewailing those who are crushed in ignorance and folly: "For God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham;" and He, commiserating their great ignorance and hardness of heart who are petrified against the truth, has raised up a seed of piety, sensitive to virtue, of those stones--of the nations, that is, who trusted in stones. Again, therefore, some venomous and false hypocrites, who plotted against righteousness, he once called "a brood of vipers."”

Clement of Alexandria (150–215) Christian theologian

But if one of those serpents even is willing to repent, and follows the Word, he becomes a man of God.
Exhortation to the Heathen

Love , Life , Men , God

“There are passages in the Gospels that portray Jesus of Nazareth as narrowminded, vindictive, and even hypocritical. Jesus exhorted people to love their enemies and to pray for their persecutors (Matt. 5:44) and never to call others by demeaning or hurtful names (Matt. 5:22), yet he called his enemies a "brood of snakes" (Matt. 12:34), "sons of vipers" (Matt. 23:33), "blind fools" (Matt. 23:17). … How divine is the message that says for your finite failings you will be cast into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth”

John Shelby Spong (1931) American bishop

Matt. 25:30
Source: Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism (1991), p. 21

Love , People , Fools , Hurt

“The more that we learn about these animals the more we find that there is basically no difference between birds and their closely related dinosaur ancestors like velociraptor. Both have wishbones, brooded their nests, possess hollow bones, and were covered in feathers. If animals like velociraptor were alive today our first impression would be that they were just very unusual looking birds.”

Mark Norell (1957) American paleontologist

As quoted in American Museum of Natural History "Velociraptor had feathers" ScienceDaily (September 20, 2007)

Bird , Learning , Animals

“There were worlds in the jewel. There was ancient Barsoom of my childhood fairy tales; there was Middle Earth with brooding castles and sentient forests. The jewel was a window on something unimaginable, a place where there were no questions and no emotions but a vast awareness.”

John Varley (1947) American science fiction author

"In the Bowl", The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (December 1975), reprinted in The Persistence of Vision (1978)

World , Question , Childhood

“Clouds boiled like a brooding frown in the west, and the sun drew fire from them as it sank burning and orange into their billowing embrace.”

Melinda M. Snodgrass (1951) American writer

Source: Queen's Gambit Declined (1989), Chapter 17 (p. 219)

Sun

“The Christian missionary orchestra in India after independence has continued to rise from one crescendo to another with the applause of the Nehruvian establishment manned by a brood of self-alienated Hindus spawned by missionary-macaulayite education. The only rift in the lute has been K. M. Panikkar’s Asia and Western Dominance published in 1953, the Report of the Christian Missionary Activities Committee Madhya Pradesh published in 1956, Om Prakash Tyagi’s Bill on Freedom of Religion introduced in the Lok Sabha in 1978, Arun Shourie’s Missionaries in India published in 1994 and the Maharashtra Freedom of Religion Bill introduced in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly by Mangal Prabhat Lodha, M. L. A. on 20 December 1996.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Vindicated by Time: The Niyogi Committee Report (1998)

Education , Religion , Freedom

“Ah! Five hundred years I have toiled to entice this creature, despairing, doubting, brooding by night, yet never abandoning hope that my calculations were accurate and my great talisman cogent. Then, when finally it appears, you fall upon it for no other reason than to sate your repulsive gluttony!”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

Source: Dying Earth (1950-1984), The Eyes of the Overworld (1966), Chapter 4, "The Sorcerer Pharesm"

Hope , Appearance , Despair , Night

“Now when the spirit in us wakes and broods,
Filled with home yearnings, drowsily it flings
From its deep heart high dreams and mystic moods,
Mixed with the memory of the loved earth things;
Clothing the vast with a familiar face;
Reaching its right hand forth to greet the starry race.”

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

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

Love , Dreams , Home , Mood

“Who shall count up the evil brood that is born from power - the pitiful fear, the madness, the despair, the overpowering craving for revenge, the treachery, the unmeasured cruelty?”

Auberon Herbert (1838–1906) British politician

Westminster Gazette (1893)

Fear , Revenge , Evil , Madness

“It was the calm and silent night!
Seven hundred years and fifty-three
Had Rome been growing up to might,
And now was queen of land and sea.
No sound was heard of clashing wars,
Peace brooded o’er the hushed domain;
Apollo, Pallas, Jove, and Mars
Held undisturbed their ancient reign
In the solemn midnight,
Centuries ago.”

Alfred Domett (1811–1887) Prime Minister of New Zealand

Christmas Hymn (1833), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

War , Peace , Sea , Night

“Meanwhile the dragon, seeing him clean gone,
Followed him not, but crying horribly,
Caught up within her jaws a block of stone
And ground it into powder, then turned she,
With cries that folk could hear far out at sea,
And reached the treasure set apart of old,
To brood above the hidden heaps of gold.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

The Earthly Paradise (1868-70), The Lady of the Land

Cry , Sea

“[Dissents are] appeals to the brooding spirit of the law, to the intelligence of another day.”

Charles Evans Hughes (1862–1948) American judge

Reported in "Keeping Politics out of the Court", The New York Times (December 9, 1984); quoted in The HarperCollins Dictionary of American Government and Politics (1992) by Jay M. Shafritz, p. 407

Law , Intelligence

“It is possible, after all, to 'fake' the 'realest' possible 'evidence' of heterosexuality: man or woman, one can participate in heterosexual marriage and even help produce a brood of spawn and still 'turn out' to have been 'living a lie,' to have been 'really' gay or lesbian all along. Precisely because there is no final 'proof' of heterosexuality, heterosexuality must constantly set about trying to prove itself, assert itself, insist on itself. Indeed, as Butler argues, heterosexuality as hegemonic institution is finally nothing more than its own repetitive self-insistence, nothing other than 'a constant and repeated effort to imitate its own idealizations' (Bodies 125). Or, as Janet E. Halley puts it in regard to legalistic constructions of heterosexuality, normative heterosexuality 'is a highly unstable, default characterization for people who have not marked themselves or been marked by other as homosexual.”

Calvin Thomas (critical theorist) (1956) American academic

As Halley continues: 'The resulting class of heterosexuals is a default class, home to those who have not fallen out of it.'
Source: Straight with a Twist (2000), p. 28.

Marriage , People , Lie , Home