Quotes about brook (119 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Believe me, I know what it's like to feel all alone… the worst kind of loneliness in the world is isolation that comes from being misunderstood, it can make people lose their grasp on reality. - Sienna Brooks”

Dan Brown book Inferno

Source: Inferno

People , World , Feeling , Reality

“And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. I would not change it.”

William Shakespeare As You Like It

Source: As You Like It

Life , Books , Tree , Change

“He went on to speak of the manner in which slavery was treated by the Constitution. The word 'slave' is no where used; the supply of slaves was to be prohibited after 1808; they stopped the spread of it in the territories; seven of the states abolished it. He argued very conclusively that it was then regarded as an evil which would eventually be got rid of, and that they desired, once rid of it, to have nothing in the constitution to remind them of it. The Republicans go back to first principles and deal with it as a wrong. Mason, of Va., said openly that the framers of our government were anti-slavery. Hammond of S. C., said 'Washington set this evil example'. Bully Brooks said: 'At the time the Constitution was formed, no one supposed slavery would last till now.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

We stick to the policy of our fathers.
1860s, Speech at Hartford (1860)

Evil , Time

“He went on to speak of the manner in which slavery was treated by the Constitution. The word 'slave' is no where used; the supply of slaves was to be prohibited after 1808; they stopped the spread of it in the territories; seven of the states abolished it. He argued very conclusively that it was then regarded as an evil which would eventually be got rid of, and that they desired, once rid of it, to have nothing in the constitution to remind them of it. The Republicans go back to first principles and deal with it as a wrong. Mason, of Va., said openly that the framers of our government were anti-slavery. Hammond of S.C., said 'Washington set this evil example'. Bully Brooks said: 'At the time the Constitution was formed, no one supposed slavery would last till now.'”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

We stick to the policy of our fathers.
1860s, Speech at Hartford (1860)

Evil , Time

“Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

First lines.
Source: Middlemarch (1871)

Beauty

“John Brooke is acting dreadfully, and Meg likes it!”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

“Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,
With silken lines, and silver hooks.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

The Bait, stanza 1

For Him , For Boyfriend , Love , Pleasure

“Terrible thing to live in fear. Brooks Hatlen knew it. Knew it all too well. All I want is to be back where things make sense. Where I won't have to be afraid all the time.”

Stephen King book Different Seasons

Source: Different Seasons

Fear , Sense , Time

“Nothing activates adrenaline production like pain. - Dr. Sienna Brooks”

Dan Brown book Inferno

Source: Inferno

Pain

“What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Education

“I've sucked way too much cement for this year. Bad juju rising off them city sidewalks. I need to babble with a brook or two, inhale starlight, make friends with some trees.”

Tom Robbins Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates

Source: Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates

Way , Tree

“The marriage of David Brooks and the Democratic Leadership Council makes perfect sense. It's repugnant and the kind of thing one should shield young children from knowing about, but it makes perfect sense. Both prefer a policy of being "cautious soldiers," "incrementalists" who shun upheavals and vote the status quo, although they subscribe to this policy for different reasons. Brooks worships the status quo because he has no penis and wants to spend the rest of his life buying periwinkle bath towels without troubling interruptions of conscience. The DLC, a nonprofit created in the mid-1980s to help big business have a say in the Democratic Party platform, supports the status quo because they are paid agents of the commercial interests that define it. Moreover, Brooks and the DLC have this in common: While they both frown on the open flag-waving and ostentatious religiosity of the talk-radio right-wing as being gauche and in bad form, they're only truly offended by people of their own background who happen to be idealistic. Hence the recurring backlash by both against the various angry electoral challenges to the establishment of the Democratic Party.”

Matt Taibbi (1970) author and journalist

"David Brooks and the DLC: Best Friends Forever?", AlterNet (3 August 2006) http://web.archive.org/web/20060808224928/http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/39862/

Life , Marriage , Children , People

“It must be the brook
Can trust itself to go by contraries
The way I can with you — and you with me —
Because we’re — we’re — I don’t know
What we are.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

"West-running Brook
1920s

Way

“This is the archetypal suburban-conservative nightmare — anonymous hordes of leftist boat-rockers viciously assaulting the champion of the decent people, who is just a really nice guy given to tending his lawn and minding his own business. Being "nice" is a central part of the Brooks yuppie's guilt-proofing self-image rationale; so long as you're the kind of guy who lets people merge on highways, stands politely in line at Starbucks, doesn't put garish Christmas decorations on his lawn and pays his taxes, you're not really doing anything wrong. It gets a little tiring after a while, hearing people who vote for wars tell you how nice they are.”

Matt Taibbi (1970) author and journalist

"David Brooks and the DLC: Best Friends Forever?", AlterNet (3 August 2006)

War , People , Guy , Business

“In a dream I saw Jesus and My God Pan sitting together in the heart of the forest.
They laughed at each other's speech, with the brook that ran near them, and the laughter of Jesus was the merrier. And they conversed long.”

Khalil Gibran book Jesus, The Son of Man

Sarkis an old Greek Shepherd, called the madman: Jesus and Pan
Jesus, The Son of Man (1928)

God , Dreams , Laughter , Heart

“Men in the mass never brook the destructive discussion of their fundamental beliefs, and that impatience is naturally most evident in those societies in which men in the mass are most influential. Democracy and free speech are not facets of one gem; democracy and free speech are eternal enemies.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

1940s–present, Introduction to Nietzsche's The Antichrist

Men , Democracy , Nature

“O, to have the soul bathed all day long in this thought, " as the pebble in the willow brook " until the words come like the tears, because the heart is full, and we cannot help it; to feel, in the darkest hour, that there is an unseen Spectator whose eyes rest on us like morning on the flowers; and that in the severest sorrow, we can sink into a presence full of love and sympathy, deeper than ever breathed from earth or sky or loving hearts— a presence in which all fears and anxieties melt away as ice-crystals in the warm ocean. This is heaven.”

Edward Thomson (1810–1870) American bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 432.

Love , Fear , Feeling , Soul

“It makes no difference abroad,
The seasons fit the same,
The mornings blossom into noons,
And split their pods of flame.

Wild-flowers kindle in the woods,
The brooks brag all the day;
No blackbird bates his jargoning
For passing Calvary.

Auto-da-fé and judgment
Are nothing to the bee;
His separation from his rose
To him seems misery.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Nature, p. 120
Collected Poems (1993)

Flowers , Bee , Season

“I dreamed a place where I have come to dwell
Cold Mountain says it all
Monkeys scream, the valley fog is cold
My door blends with the color of the peaks
I gather leaves and thatch a hut among the pines
Dig a pond and lead a trickle from the brook
Long ago I left the world behind
Eating ferns I pass the years in peace”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

World , Peace , Dreams , Color

“More generally (and this applies to Christianity no less than to Islam), what is really pernicious is the practice of teaching children that faith itself is a virtue. Faith is an evil precisely because it requires no justification and brooks no argument. Teaching children that unquestioned faith is a virtue primes them - given certain other ingredients that are not hard to come by - to grow up into potentially lethal weapons for future jihads or crusades.”

Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion

Source: The God Delusion (2006), pp. 347-348 of the Black Swan paperback edition of 2007

Children , Faith , Evil , Future

“You have Mel Brooks and your Marx Brothers and your Larry David. So it's affected it enormously and really not at all. I don't think I've ever done anything comedically where the joke of it had to do with Judaism and Jewishness, but there's definitely a proud tradition of comedy in the Jews.”

Andy Samberg (1978) American comedian

Quoted in Monica Kim, "Andy Samberg on SNL, his hair and other things not in a box," http://www.northbynorthwestern.com/2008/04/9035/andy-samberg-on-snl-his-hair-and-other-things-not-in-a-box/ NorthbyNorthwestern.com (April 16, 2008).

Thinking

“I wandered by the brookside,
I wandered by the mill;
I could not hear the brook flow,
The noisy wheel was still.”

Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron Houghton (1809–1885) British politician and poet

The Brookside.

“With ordinary men the moments which are united in a close continuity out of the original discrete multiplicity are very few, and the course of their lives resembles a little brook, whereas with the genius it is more like a mighty river into which all the little rivulets flow from afar; that is to say, the universal comprehension of genius vibrates to no experience in which all the individual moments have not been gathered up and stored.”

Otto Weininger book Sex and Character

Source: Sex and Character (1903), p. 124.

Men , Universe

“Life is never like a canal, flowing gently through a straightforward and predictable channel. It is more like a mountain brook, zigging and zagging, tearing things up, sometimes going almost dormant before taking an unexpected and turbulent turn.”

Glen Cook book Soldiers Live

Source: Soldiers Live (2000), Chapter 80, “The Taglian Territories: In Camp” (p. 620)

Life , Mountain , Tear

“They're Crips and Bloods in Brooks Brothers suits.”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

On US Republicans and Democrats.
Harvard interview (February 2004)

“In circumstances where the uninstructed and incurious eye can perceive neither novelty nor beauty, he who is imbued with a taste for natural science will everywhere discover an inexhaustible mine of pleasure and instruction, and new and stupendous proofs of the power and goodness of the Eternal! For every rock in the desert, every boulder on the plain, every pebble by the brook-side, every grain of sand on the sea-shore, is fraught with lessons of wisdom to the mind which is fitted to receive and comprehend their sublime import.
"From millions take thy choice,
In all that lives a guide to God is given;
Ever thou hear'st some guardian angel's voice,
When nature speaks of heaven!"”

Gideon Mantell (1790–1852) British scientist and obstetrician

Thoughts on a Pebble, or, A First Lesson in Geology (1849)

Wisdom , God , Pleasure , Beauty

“Susan Brooks was one of those girls who never say anything unless called upon, the ones the teachers always have to ask to speak up, please. A very studious, very serious girl. A rather pretty but not terribly bright girl -- the kind who isn't allowed to give up and take the general or the commercial courses, because she had a terribly bright older brother or older sister, and the teachers expect comparable things from her. In fine, one of those girls who are holding the dirty end of the stick with as much good grace and manners as they can muster. Usually they marry truck drivers and move to the West Coast, where they have kitchen nooks with Formica counters -- and they write letters to the Folks Back East as seldom as they can get away with. They make quiet, successful lives for themselves and grow prettier as the shadow of the bright older brother or sister falls away from them.”

Stephen King book Rage

Rage (1977)

Girl , Sister , Teachers , Success

“Thine eyes are springs in whose serene
And silent waters heaven is seen;
Their lashes are the herbs that look
On their young figures in the brook.”

William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) American romantic poet and journalist

Oh Fairest of the Rural Maids http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16341/16341-h/16341-h.htm#page91 (1820)

Spring , Water

“Of all the indignities to have been visited upon Dracula during the past century (including being the "inspiration" for a cereal and a Sesame Street character, and being lampooned by Mel Brooks), none is more unsettling than what has happened to the world's most famous vampire in Dracula 2000. Dimension Films, the exploitation division of Miramax, decided that, with their two horror franchises currently on hold (the Scream and Halloween films), they would turn their attention in another direction. So they sunk their greedy fangs into the most venerable monster they could find and sucked him dry.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/movies/d/dracula2000.html of Dracula 2000 (2000).
One-star reviews

World , Past

“Memory is a net; one finds it full of fish when he takes it from the brook; but a dozen miles of water have run through it without sticking.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

Fish , Water , Memory

“.. on the banks of a very picturesque mountain stream that pours out its crystalline water in four or five waterfalls into the Dussel brook... Oh, in this cave, at this crystal flood, I often felt myself so well! Sensations frequently welled up in my bosom at this blessed place that ennoble the soul and make pour out joyful tombs; [they] give the heart impressions that neither greatness or honor can steal from us. An indomitable longing came to me, to learn more and more about these enchanting shades of beautiful and holy nature, and to transfer them on the canvas with my brush.”

Barend Cornelis Koekkoek (1803–1862) painter from the Northern Netherlands

(original Dutch, citaat van B.C. Koekkoek:) ..aan den oever van eenen hoogst schilderachtigen bergstroom die zijn kristallijnen vocht door vier of vijf watervalletjes in de Dusselbeek uitstort.. .Oh, in deze grot, bij dezen kristallen vloed, gevoelde ik mij dikwijls zo wel! Gewaarwordingen, die den ziel veredelen, vreugdentranen uit het oog doen vloeijen, het hart indrukken geven, die grootheid noch eer ons kunnen ontvreemden, welden vaak in dit zalige oord in mijn boezem op. Een ontembare zucht greep mij aan, om die tooverachtige schakeringen der schoone en heilige natuur meer en meer te leren kennen, en die door mijn penseel op het doek over te brengen.
he frequently visited this location along the Düssel stream, as Koekoek's quote illustrates
Source: Herinneringen aan en Mededeelingen van…' (1841), p. 37-38

Beauty , Soul , Mountain , Nature

“Meadows trim, with daisies pied,
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide;
Towers and balements it sees
Bosomed high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies,
The cynosure of neighboring eyes.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

Source: L'Allegro (1631), Line 75

Beauty , Tree

“Friends — They are like air bubbles on water, hastening to flow together. History tells of Orestes and Pylades, Damon and Pythias, but why should not we put to shame those old reserved worthies by a community of such? Constantly, as it were through a remote skylight, I have glimpses of a serene friendship-land, and know the better why brooks murmur and violets grow. This conjunction of souls, like waves which met and break, subsides also backward over things, and gives all a fresh aspect. I would live henceforth with some gentle soul such a life as may be conceived, double for variety, single for harmony — two, only that we might admire at our oneness — one, because indivisible. Such community to be a pledge of holy living. How could aught unworthy be admitted into our society? To listen with one ear to each summer sound, to behold with one eye each summer scene, our visual rays so to meet and mingle with the object as to be one bent and doubled; with two tongues to be wearied, and thought to spring ceaselessly from a double fountain.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

January 26, 1840
Journals (1838-1859)

Life , Friendship , Soul , History

“My early feeling that scientific truths are to the Christian religion much what brooks and rivers are to the ocean, has become my most vital conviction. Tempted as I was to drift with the tempest of passion, I had made shipwreck in these latter years, had not in my heaviest hours the Mercy of God, through your instrumentality, kept me always on the right path.”

Robert Mayer (1814–1878) German physicist

December 31 1851, as translated by Kneller, Karl Alois. 1911. pp. 18. Christianity and the Leaders of Modern Science https://archive.org/stream/christianitylead00kneluoft#page/18/mode/2up. London.

God , Truth , Religion , Feeling

“When Henry Mulcahy, a middle-aged instructor of literature at Jocelyn College, Jocelyn, Pennsylvania, unfolded the President's letter and became aware of its contents, he gave a sudden sharp cry of impatience and irritation, as if such interruptions could positively be brooked no longer.”

Mary McCarthy book The Groves of Academe

Source: The Groves of Academe (1952), Ch. I, p. 293, first lines of novel

Age , Literature , Cry

“Feminism, for all its boasts, has not found a single major female painter or sculptor to add to the canon. It did revive the reputations of many minor women, like Frida Kahlo or Romaine Brooks. Mary Cassatt, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Helen Frankenthaler were already known and did not need rediscovery. Artemisia Gentileschi was simply a polished, competent painter in a Baroque style created by men.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "The New Sexism: Liberating Art and Beauty", p. 115

Women , Men

“The situation changed visibly when sentimental reasons and long-term political aims gave way to a stern, ruthless nationalist ideology which would brook no compromise. Hitler had categorically demanded the Anschluss in "Mein Kampf"…. As early as 1923 Hitler had decide that, if necessary, the National-Socialists must take over the government in Austria by force.”

Kurt Schuschnigg (1897–1977) Chancellor of Austria

Source: The Brutal Takeover: The Austrian ex-Chancellor’s account of the Anschluss of Austria by Hitler, 1971, p. 39

Way , Change

“I am a bird from mountains you don't know.
My throat feels itchy—so I start to chirp
when sings the morning wind among the leaves,
when dreams the moon at midnight in the blue.
Perched on a branch, the bird longs for its brook—
it will break into song and not know why.
Its ditties cannot make the fruits grow ripe;
its carols cannot help the flowers bloom.
It's profitless to sing, and yet the bird
will burst its throat and heart to sing its best.”

Xuân Diệu (1916–1985) Vietnamese poet

"Foreword to a book of poems", in An Anthology of Vietnamese Poems, trans. Huỳnh Sanh Thông (Yale University Press, 1996), <small>ISBN 978-0300064100</small>

Dreams , Feeling , Mountain , Flowers

“[I]f knowing is work, exclusively work, then the one who knows, knows only the fruit of his own, subjective activity, and nothing else. There is nothing in his knowing that is not the fruit of his own efforts; there is nothing "received" in it. […]
It is the mark of "absolute activity" (which Goethe said "makes one bankrupt, in the end"); the hard quality of not-being-able-to-receive; a stoniness of heart, that will not brook any resistance — as expressed once, most radically, in the following terrifying statement: "Every action makes sense, even criminal acts … all passivity is senseless."”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

The Goethe quote is from his Maximen und Reflexionen, ed. Günther Müller (Stuttgart, 1943), no. 1415. The other quote is from Hermann Rauschning's Conversations with Hitler (Gespräche mit Hitler, 1940).
Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), Leisure, the Basis of Culture, p. 14

Sense , Effort , Heart

“We might add now that we do have an authoritative account of why the United States bombed Serbia in 1999. It comes from Strobe Talbott, now the director of the Brookings Institution, but in 1999 he was in charge of the State Department-Pentagon team that supervised the diplomacy in the affair. He wrote the introduction to a recent book by his Director of Communications, John Norris, which presents the position of the Clinton administration at the time of the bombing. Norris writes that "it was Yugoslavia's resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform - not the plight of Kosovar Albanians - that best explains NATO's war". In brief, they were resisting absorption into the U. S. dominated international socioeconomic system. Talbott adds that thanks to John Norris, anyone interested in the war in Kosovo "will know … how events looked and felt at the time to those of us who were involved" in the war, actually directing it. This authoritative explanation will come as no surprise at all to students of international affairs who are more interested in fact than rhetoric. And it will also come as no surprise, to those familiar with intellectual life, that the attack continues to be hailed as a grand achievement of humanitarian intervention, despite massive Western documentation to the contrary, and now an explicit denial at the highest level; which will change nothing, it's not the way intellectual life works.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Talk at the Englert Theatre in Iowa, April 10, 2006 http://www.greenteaphd.com/greenteablog/?p=252
Quotes 2000s, 2006

Life , War , Books , Way

“Heaven & earth never agreed better to frame a place for man's habitation; were it fully manured and inhabited by industrious people. Here are mountaines, hils, plaines, valleyes, rivers, and brookes, all running most pleasantly into a faire Bay, compassed but for the mouth, with fruitfull and delightsome land.”

John Smith (explorer) (1580–1631) Admiral of New England, was an English soldier, explorer, and author

Describing the countryside around Chesapeake Bay (1606); reported in The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England & The Summer Isles (1907), vol. 2, pp. 44–45.

People , Mountain

“I have all my life been an indweller of the town, and I frankly confess, for a constant residence, I like it better than all the pastoral charms that ever made the morality of an essay, or gave grace to poetry; still there is that about the country to which the heart always turns with a feeling of freshness and renovation. The moonlight walk through the green wood, would come back upon the memory with a spell which would not belong to a lamp-lighted ramble. The green-leaf would give its freshness, the wild-flower its sweetness; on the ear would arise the murmur of the wind in the boughs — or the song of the brook singing like a child for very gladness.”

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

Literary Remains

Life , Feeling , Flowers , Light

“[Description of Britain] Its plains are spacious, its hills are pleasantly situated, adapted for superior tillage, and its mountains are admirably calculated for the alternate pasturage of cattle, where flowers of various colours, trodden by the feet of man, give it the appearance of a lovely picture. It is decked, like a man's chosen bride, with divers jewels, with lucid fountains and abundant brooks wandering over the snow white sands; with transparent rivers, flowing in gentle murmurs, and offering a sweet pledge of slumber to those who recline upon their banks, whilst it is irrigated by abundant lakes, which pour forth cool torrents of refreshing water.”
[Descriptio Britanniae] Campis late pansis collibusque amoeno situ locatis, praepollenti culturae aptis, montibus alternandis animalium pastibus maxime covenientibus, quorum diversorum colorum flores humanis gressibus pulsati non indecentem ceu picturam eisdem imprimebant, electa veluti sponsa monilibus diversis ornata, fontibus lucidis crebris undis niveas veluti glareas pellentibus, pernitidisque rivis leni murmure serpentibus ipsorumque in ripis accubantibus suavis soporis pignus praetendentibus, et lacubus frigidum aquae torrentem vivae exundantibus irrigua.

Gildas De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae

Section 3.
De Excidio Britanniae (On the Ruin of Britain)

Love , Mountain , Flowers , Water

“He existed in all the many dimensions of the multiverse. Yet he, in common with all others, was bound by the dimension of Time. He had cast off the chains of space but was tied, as perhaps all denizens of the multiverse would always be, by the imperturbable prowl of Time, which brooked no halt, which condoned no tampering with its movement, whether to slow it or to speed it.
Time, the changer, could not be changed. Space, perhaps, the material environment, could be conquered. Time, never.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Source: The Sundered Worlds (1965), Chapter 15 (p. 290)

Change , Time , Speed

“Comrades and friends! for ours is strength
Has brooked the test of woes;
O worse-scarred hearts! these wounds at length
The Gods will heal, like those.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book I, p. 12

God , Heart

“About the hill lay other islands small,
Where other rocks, crags, cliffs, and mountains stood,
The Isles Fortunate these elder time did call,
To which high Heaven they reigned so kind and good,
And of his blessings rich so liberal,
That without tillage earth gives corn for food,
And grapes that swell with sweet and precious wine
There without pruning yields the fertile vine.The olive fat there ever buds and flowers,
The honey-drops from hollow oaks distil,
The falling brook her silver streams downpours
With gentle murmur from their native hill,
The western blast tempereth with dews and showers
The sunny rays, lest heat the blossoms kill,
The fields Elysian, as fond heathen sain,
Were there, where souls of men in bliss remain.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Ecco altre isole insieme, altre pendíci
Scoprian alfin men erte ed elevate.
Ed eran queste l'isole felici;
Così le nominò la prisca etate,
A cui tanto stimava i Cieli amici,
Che credea volontarie, e non arate
Quì partorir le terre, e in più graditi
Frutti, non culte, germogliar le viti.<p>Quì non fallaci mai fiorir gli olivi,
E 'l mel dicea stillar dall'elci cave:
E scender giù da lor montagne i rivi
Con acque dolci, e mormorio soave:
E zefiri e rugiade i raggj estivi
Temprarvi sì, che nullo ardor v'è grave:
E quì gli Elisj campi, e le famose
Stanze delle beate anime pose.
Canto XV, stanzas 35–36 (tr. Fairfax)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Men , Food , Soul , Mountain

“I had a screenplay once where I was 90 pages in and I knew it was all over. I knew it was a disaster. And it was driving me crazy because the studio had gone down a path with me, so there was no getting out and I didn’t know how to go past these 90 pages. And then it all worked out—and the change which made it from absolute despair that there was no way to save it to it all working out was minute. But, but key. INTERVIEWER: Which screenplay was that? JAMES L. BROOKS: Uh, it was Terms of Endearment.”

James L. Brooks (1940) American director, producer and screenwriter

In the documentary Dreams on Spec

Way , Change , Past , Despair

“I have been depressed for days. Profoundly sad and solemn. I think the time is coming for struggle and uncertainty. It comes into every serious and beautiful life. I knew all along that it had to come. I've been expecting it. I am not afraid of it. I know it will mature and help me develop. But everything seems so serious and so hard, serious and sad to me. I walk through this huge city [Paris]. I look into a thousand thousand eyes. But I almost never find a soul there... And beneath it all flows the Styx [the Seine], deep and slow, knowing nothing of these brooks and wells of ours. I am sad. And all around me ate the heavy, pregnant, perfumed breezes of spring..”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

excerpt of her Journal, Paris 1897; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 195
1897

Life , Sadness , Beauty , Soul

“Standing, with reluctant feet,
Where the brook and river meet,
Womanhood and childhood fleet!”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

Maidenhood http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/longfellow/12212, st. 3 (1842).

Childhood

“Four years ago almost all of the applauded and selling art was New York School painting. It was preponderant in most galleries, which were uninclined to show anything new. The publications which praised it praised it indiscriminately and were uninterested in new developments. Much of the painting was by the "second generation" many of them epigones. Pollock was dead. Kline and Brooks had painted their last good paintings in 1956 and 1957. Guston's paintings had become soft and gray — his best ones are those around 1954 and 1955. Motherwell's and De Kooning's paintings were somewhat vague. None of these artists were criticized. In 1959 Newman's work was all right, and Rothko's was even better than before. Presumably, though none were shown in New York, Clyfford Still's paintings were all right. This lackadaisical situation was thought perfect. The lesser lights and some of their admirers were incongruously dogmatic : this painting was not only doing well but was the only art for the time. They thought it was a style. By now, it is.”

Donald Judd (1928–1994) artist

Donald Judd, in: Arts Yearbook. (1964) p. 23
1960s

School , Art , Light , Time

“Duluth! The word fell upon my ear with a peculiar and indescribable charm, like the gentle murmur of a low fountain stealing forth in the midst of roses, or the soft sweet accent of an angel’s whisper in the bright, joyous dream of sleeping innocence. ’T was the name for which my soul had panted for years, as the hart panteth for the water-brooks.”

J. Proctor Knott (1830–1911) American politician

Speech on the St. Croix and Bayfield Railroad Bill, Jan. 27, 1871; Knott made this satirical speech, sometimes titled as Duluth! or The Untold Delights of Duluth, while serving in the United States House of Representatives; the speech lampooned Western boosterism by portraying Duluth, Minnesota, in fantastical and glowing language.

Dreams , Angels , Soul , Sleep

“Thompson landed again. Glenn and I got out of the aircraft, took out the guns. Hugh walked over to this lieutenant [Brooks], and I could tell they were in a shouting match. I thought they were going to get in a fist fight. He told me later what they said. Thompson: 'Let's get these people out of this bunker and get 'em out of here.' Brooks: 'We'll get 'em out with hand grenades.' Thompson: 'I can do better than that. Keep your people in place. My guns are on you.”

Hugh Thompson, Jr. (1943–2006) United States helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War

Hugh was outranked, so this was not good to do, but that's how committed he was to stopping it.
Thompson's gunner, Spec. Lawrence Colburn http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacificnw/2002/0310/cover.html
Quotes of others about Thompson

People , Fight

“Brzeska and Brooke were among those she knew
And she lived long enough to meet Lawrences, too,
D. H. and T. E. – she who'd known R. L. S.,
Talked to Hardy of Kim, and to Kipling of Tess!”

William Plomer (1903–1973) South African-British writer

"Slightly Foxed", line 33.
The Dorking Thigh, and Other Satires

“Brook Taylor… in his Methodus Incrementorum Directa et Inversa (1715), sought to clarify the ideas of the calculus but limited himself to algebraic functions and algebraic differential equations. …Taylor's exposition, based on what we would call finite differences, failed to obtain many backers because it was arithmetical in nature when the British were trying to tie the calculus to geometry or to the physical notion of velocity.”

Morris Kline (1908–1992) American mathematician

Source: Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972), p. 427

Idea , Nature

“My dad was undeniably famous when I was a kid — he was on Wogan and Clive James and the radio every week, but as far as I was concerned he wasn’t famous enough. My best friend was Ben Brooke-Taylor. His dad Tim was in The Goodies — that was famous.”

Giles Coren (1969) British food critic, television presenter and novelist

Jewish Chronicle, 23 February 2007 http://website.thejc.com/home.aspx?AId50455&ATypeId1&searchtrue2&srchstrGiles%20Coren&srchtxt0&srchhead1&srchauthor0&srchsandp0&scsrch0

“When Sulla died in the year [78 B. C. ], the oligarchy which he had restored ruled with absolute sway over the Roman state; but, as it had been established by force, it still needed force to maintain its ground against its numerous secret and open foes. it was opposed not by any single party with objects clearly expressed and under leaders distinctly acknowledged, but by a mass of multifarious elements, ranging themselves doubtless under the general name of the popular party, but in reality opposing the Sullan organization of the commonwealth on very various grounds and with very different designs…There were… the numerous and important classes whom the sullan restoration had left unsatisfied, or whom the political or private interest it had directly injured. Among those who for such reasons belonged to the opposition ranked the dense and prosperous population of the region between the Po and the Alps, which naturally regarded the bestowal of Latin rights in [89 B. C. ] as merely an installment of the full Roman franchise, and so afforded a ready soil for agitation. To this category belonged also the freedman, influential in numbers and wealth, and specially dangerous through their aggregation in the capital, who could not brook their having been reduced by the restoration to their earlier, practically useless, suffrage. In the same position stood, moreover, the great capitalists, who maintained a cautious silence, but still as before preserved their tenacity of resentment and their equal tenacity of power. The populace of the capital, which recognized true freedom in free bread-corn, was likewise discontented. Still deeper exasperation prevailed among the burgess bodies affected by the Sullan confiscations - whether they, like those of Pompeii, lived on their property curtailed by the Sullan colonists, within the same ring-wall with the latter, and at perpetual variance with them; or, like the Arrentines and Volaterrans, retained actual possession of their territory, but had the Damocles' sword of confiscation suspended over them by the Roman people..”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 4, Part: 1. Translated by W.P. Dickson.
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 1

People , Secret , Nature , Reality

“Has not the famous political Fable of the Snake, with two Heads and one Body, some useful Instruction contained in it? She was going to a Brook to drink, and in her Way was to pass thro’ a Hedge, a Twig of which opposed her direct Course; one Head chose to go on the right side of the Twig, the other on the left, so that time was spent in the Contest, and, before the Decision was completed, the poor Snake died with thirst.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Queries and Remarks Respecting Alterations in the Constitution of Pennsylvania reported in Albert H. Smyth, ed., The Writings of Benjamin Franklin (1907), vol. 10, pp. 57–58.
Decade unclear

Way , Drink , Decision , Time

“The "great tradition" does not brook even the possibility of libidinal gratification between the pages as an end in itself, and FR Leavis's "eat up your broccoli" approach to fiction emphasises this junkfood/wholefood dichotomy.”

F. R. Leavis (1895–1978) British literary critic

Angela Carter Expletives Deleted: Selected Writings (London: Chatto & Windus, 1992) p. 9
Criticism

“As thou these ashes, little brook! will bear
Into the Avon, Avon to the tide
Of Severn, Severn to the narrow seas,
Into main ocean they, this deed accurst,
An emblem yields to friends and enemies
How the bold teacher's doctrine, sanctified
By truth, shall spread throughout the world dispersed.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Part II, No. 17 - Wicliffe. In obedience to the order of the Council of Constance (1415), the remains of Wickliffe were exhumed and burned to ashes, and these cast into the Swift, a neighbouring brook running hard by; and "thus this brook hath conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into the narrow seas, they into the main ocean. And thus the ashes of Wickliffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed all the world over", Thomas Fuller, Church History, section ii, book iv, paragraph 53; Compare also: "What Heraclitus would not laugh, or what Democritus would not weep?… For though they digged up his body, burned his bones, and drowned his ashes, yet the word of God and truth of his doctrine, with the fruit and success thereof, they could not burn", Fox, Book of Martyrs, vol. i. p. 606 (edition, 1611); "Some prophet of that day said,—
"'The Avon to the Severn runs, / The Severn to the sea; / And Wickliffe's dust shall spread abroad / Wide as the waters be'", Daniel Webster, Address before the Sons of New Hampshire (1849), and similarly quoted by the Rev. John Cumming in the Voices of the Dead.
Ecclesiastical Sonnets (1821)

Truth , World , Teachers , Sea

“I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers:
Of April, May, of June, and July flowers.
I sing of Maypoles, Hock-carts, wassails, wakes,
Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal cakes.”

Robert Herrick book Hesperides

"Argument of His Book".
Hesperides (1648)

Flowers , Bird , Singing

“T is the brook's motion,
Clear without strife,
Fleeing to ocean
After its life.”

John Sullivan Dwight (1813–1893) American minister

Stanza 5.
Rest

Life

“In the mean time I paid the strictest attention to my profession, and was so completely successful, that there was no patient of any consequence in Gottingen that I was not called in to; but as I was not allowed to make up prescriptions, not having taken my degree, and in order to avoid a heavy penalty, I was accompanied in my professional visits by Doctor Tolle, a man who knew the lectures of Schroder by heart, but did not understand them. I dictated to him what to prescribe, he took the fee, and was content. I had nothing but the honour, and plenty of good dinners. At last I took my degree as Doctor of Medicine, and resigned my patients to the care of Dr. Strohmeyer, which was the means of introducing him into practice. I left Gottingen full of honour, with tears in my eyes, at leaving behind me so many dear friends. Puffed up with pride, I arrived in Celle, but was received with coldness and pity. This was too much for mc; I could not brook the insult; but said to myself, "How can I expect to be otherwise received, when I consider my former conduct, and look back on the heedless manner in which I passed my boyish years?"”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

My consolation was, that "I should be soon as happy here as I was in Gottingen" in the choice of my friends.
My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Penalty , Understanding , Tear , Time

“The Semitic religions are not religions in the Eastern sense of the term. Their thrust is towards outward expansion, not towards inward exploration. In fact, in the Eastern sense, they are not spiritualities, but are what Marx calls ideologies, tailored for political expansion and imperialist aggression. The two systems —Eastern and Semitic— differ widely in their outlook, perspective and approach. The former speaks in the language of Self or Atma, the latter in the language of external Gods; the former speaks of the Law, the rita, the inner, spiritual and moral law of being and action, the latter speak of Commandments of an external being. The two differ also in their concept of the deity. The god of Semitic religions is “jealous”; he can brook no other gods. He is the sole Lord of the world; therefore, he marches at the head of an army of believers to lay claim to his domain. Those who oppose him are rebels.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Ramakrishna Mission. (1986). Ramakrishna Mission: In search of a new identity.

God , World , Religion , Law

“Ill habits gather by unseen degrees —
As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book XV, The Worship of Aesculapius (1700), lines 155–156.

Sea

“French music is really very sensory, and appeals to sense of smell, taste, touch. It can be languorous, and almost erotic. Russian music is very subjective, sometimes whiny, breast-beating 'Look how I suffer, look how I suffer!'. German music is, to use your word, metaphysical. It really asks those existential questions of 'How do I relate to the Universe?', 'Is there a heaven?', 'How am I like a brook, or a leaf on a tree?'. I know this was the music that most challenged Schnabel. He said Mozart was the most inaccessible of the great masters, because with the fewest number of notes, he accesses the deepest levels of human awareness and experience.”

Leon Fleisher (1928) American conductor and pianist

Interview with pianist Leon Fleisher http://www.examiner.com/article/interview-with-pianist-leon-fleisher by Elijah Ho (October 1, 2014)

Music , Question , Sense , Tree

“The State is a jealous God and will brook no rivals. Its sovereignty must pervade everyone and all feeling must be run into the stereotyped forms of romantic patriotic militarism which is the traditional expression of the State herd-feeling.”

Randolph Bourne (1886–1918) American writer

¶23. Published under "Psychology of the State," The State https://mises.org/library/state (Tucson, Arizona: See Sharp Press, 1998), p. 14.
"The State" (1918)

God , Feeling

“Just keep following my tears, and the brook will take you in.”

Elfriede Jelinek book The Piano Teacher

p 44
The Piano Teacher (1988)

Tear

“As this brook not only washes off impurities, but overwhelms them, so that they can no longer be found, even so Thy Divine mercy, and the stream of my Saviour's blood, not only purge away, but extinguish my sins, sweeping them into the depths of the sea, where through all eternity they shall be remembered no more.”

Christian Scriver (1629–1693) German hymnwriter

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 83.

Sea

“[On David Cameron] When I heard this inherited multi-million ex-Etonian talking about a culture of entitlement, well, I'm sorry, but my irony meter went through the red and then exploded in a gale of bitter laughter. It actually went "HAA!" I was furious, because I've only just had a new irony metre installed after Rebekah Brooks complained about how she had been unfairly reported by the British press.”

Marcus Brigstocke (1973) comedian

The Now Show

Laughter

“With spots of sunny openings, and with nooks
To lie and read in, sloping into brooks.”

Leigh Hunt The Story of Rimini

The Story of Rimini

Lie , Reading

“Not curiosity, not vanity, not the consideration of expediency, not duty and conscientiousness, but an unquenchable, unhappy thirst that brooks no compromise leads us to truth.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) German philosopher

Nicht die Neugierde, nicht die Eitelkeit, nicht die Betrachtung der Nützlichkeit, nicht die Pflicht und Gewissenhaftigkeit, sondern ein unauslöschlicher, unglücklicher Durst, der sich auf keinen Vergleich einläßt, führt uns zur Wahrheit.
Nürnberg, Sep. 30, 1809; Schrieb's zum Andenken (written to remember)
Stammbuchblätter Hegels (Hegel's album sheets)
Briefe von und an Hegel, Volume 4, Part 1 http://buch.archinform.net/isbn/3-7873-0322-7.htm, Meiner Verlag, 1977, p. 168

Truth

“I have two thoughts [on the question of interviewer Joseph S. Trovato: 'Were the projects a good thing for American art?']. That practically all of the best painters of my generation developed on the projects such as Pollock, de Kooning, Brooks, Hague (sculptor), B. Greene, and Baziotes. I could go on and on. My second thought is that the reason it was good is that it had a broad base due to the economic situation we were in - the depression - and all kinds of art and styles, plus all degrees of talent were employed. Everybody was given an opportunity to prove himself. The many painters I mentioned above who have come such a long way is proof of this.”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

n.p.
1961 - 1980, Oral history interview with Philip Guston, 1965 January 29

Art , Way , Question

“She reaches under and grabs my peech and like, squeezes it and walks away. I run over to Brooke and go "Your mother just molested me. I could sue you and own this house!"”

Kathy Griffin (1960) American actress and comedian

Allegedly (2004)

Housing

“God's ways seem dark, but, soon or late,
They touch the shining hills of day;
The evil cannot brook delay,
The good can well afford to wait.”

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. 282

God , Way , Evil , Waiting

“So I ask each weepin' willow
And each brook along the way,
And each lad that comes a-whistlin' Tooralay
How are things in Glocca Morra
This fine day?”

Yip Harburg (1896–1981) American song lyricist

"How Are Things in Glocca Morra?"

Way

“And then she (Brooke Sheilds) says the ill-fated words "You have to put this in your act". And I said "What, I would never!"”

Kathy Griffin (1960) American actress and comedian

Because it's a private time!!
Allegedly (2004)

Fate , Time

“The quiet of this afternoon is strange, haunting, awful;
Hear that buzzing in the hot grass, coming from live things; and those crows' cries from somewhere;
There is a sluggish, sad brook near here, too.
The bird is gone now, so graceful, fair as it was,
And the sky has nothing but the brightness of air in it.
The clean color of air.
The sun makes it be afternoon here;…”

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

Extract from the title poem Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana [Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana: Poems, Defintion Press, (1957)]

Sadness , Color , Bird , Grass

“A child that knows nothing of God’s earth, of green fields, or sparkling brooks, of breezy hill and springy heather, and whose mind is stored with none of the beauties of nature, but knows only the drunkenness prevalent in the hideous slum it is forced to live in, and whose walks abroad have never extended beyond the corner public-house and the pawnshop, cannot be benefited by education. Such children grow up to depraved, and become a danger and terror to the State; wealth-destroyers instead of wealth-producers.”

William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme (1851–1925) English industrialist, philanthropist, and politician

"Land for House," 1898

God , Children , Education , Beauty

“The moon looks
On many brooks,
"The brook can see no moon but this."”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

While gazing on the Moon's Light.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“It rained. The procession of weary soldiers became a bedraggled train, despondent and muttering, marching with churning effort in a trough of liquid brown mud under a low, wretched sky. Yet the youth smiled, for he saw that the world was a world for him, though many discovered it to be made of oaths and walking sticks. He had rid himself of the red sickness of battle. The sultry nightmare was in the past. He had been an animal blistered and sweating in the heat and pain of war. He turned now with a lover's thirst to images of tranquil skies, fresh meadows, cool brooks — an existence of soft and eternal peace.
Over the river a golden ray of sun came through the hosts of leaden rain clouds.”

Stephen Crane book The Red Badge of Courage

Source: The Red Badge of Courage (1895), Ch. 24

Pain , War , Youth , World

“Two words of such a book, though possessing no peculiar signification, if met with in the dullest sentence, are enough: they call up, what has been finely termed, the "lightning of the mind." We feel an instantaneous kindness and reverence towards an author (together with a high opinion of his discrimination) who cites as it were the very language of our dreams—the secret converse of our own invisible spirit. We are almost startled at its being made public, and fancy that we have been at some time overheard reading. He is forthwith admitted a member of our heart's privy council. His hard words and bad reasoning are forgiven: we shut our ears to his angular periods—remembering only that his habits and desires, his sympathies, perceptions and enjoyments, are under the same master-key as our own—that he has struck into the same path, drank at the same brook, mused upon the same bank, and plucked almost the same leaf with ourselves.”

Samuel Laman Blanchard (1804–1845) British author and journalist

"Quotations".
Sketches from Life (1846)

Secret , Books , Dreams , Feeling

“The sun was already a bright, running brook. From the gables of the houses hung sharp-pointed icicles, like gleaming crystal. From time to time one would break off with a snap, and crash at Rose-Anne's feet in shining shards. She progressed very slowly, afraid of falling, always seeking a hand-hold somewhere. Then she would be in soft snow again, which meant harder work but less fear of a slip and fall.”

Gabrielle Roy book The Tin Flute

Source: The Tin Flute (1945), P. 94

Fear , Time , Sun , Housing

“Brooks's Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.”

Fred Brooks (1931) American computer scientist

Page 25 (italics in source, bold added).
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering (1975, 1995)

Law

“Mine be a cot beside the hill;
A beehive's hum shall soothe my ear;
A willowy brook that turns a mill,
With many a fall, shall linger near.”

Samuel Rogers (1763–1855) British poet

A Wish (1834), l. 1-4.

“With whisper of her mellowing grain,
With treble of brook and bud and tree,
Earth joys for ever to sustain
The bass eternal of the sea.”

Roden Noel (1834–1894) English poet

"Beatrice", in Beatrice, and other Poems (1868).

Tree , Joy , Sea

“The theory of perspective was taught in painting schools from the sixteenth century onward according to principles laid down by the masters… However, their treatises on perspective had on the whole been precept, rule, and ad hoc procedure; they lacked a solid mathematical basis. In the period from 1500 to 1600 artists and subsequently mathematicians put the subject on a satisfactory deductive basis, and it passed from quasi-empirical art to a true science. Definitive works on perspective were written much later by eighteenth-century mathematicians Brook Taylor and J. H. Lambert.”

Morris Kline (1908–1992) American mathematician

Source: Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972), p. 183

School , Art , Mathematics , Science

“"The American man is a failure! You are all failures!" he said. "Has not my sister here more sense than my brother Brooks? Is not Bessie worth two of Bay? Wouldn't we all elect Mrs. Lodge Senator against Cabot? Would the President have a ghost of a chance if Mrs. Roosevelt ran against him? Do you want to stop at the Embassy, on your way home, and ask which would run it best — Herbert or his wife?" The men laughed a little — not much! Each probably made allowance for his own wife as an unusually superior woman. Some one afterwards remarked that these half-dozen women were not a fair average. Adams replied that the half-dozen men were above all possible average; he could not lay his hands on another half-dozen their equals.”

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

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Women , Men , Way , Home

“Mine be the breezy hill that skirts the down,
Where a green grassy turf is all I crave,
With here and there a violet bestrewn,
Fast by a brook or fountain’s murmuring wave;
And many an evening sun shine sweetly on my grave!”

James Beattie (1735–1803) Scottish poet, moralist and philosopher

Book ii. Stanza 17.
The Minstrel; or, The Progress of Genius (1771)

Sun

“Our life runs down in sending up the clock.
The brook runs down in sending up our life.
The sun runs down in sending up the brook.
And there is something sending up the sun.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

"West-running Brook
1920s

Life , Sun

“He paused a moment and then pointed to the brook. "You see that the water divides there and flows on each side of a great rock. Now, if we imagine the brook endowed with consciousness, no doubt the stream on the right of the rock will feel itself separate from the stream on the left, but to us they are plainly continuous and the same. So I suppose every life in the world flows from the same infinite source and finally returns to it and while feeling itself separate, because limited and partial, is really continuous and the same.”

John William Lloyd (1857–1940) American anarchist, sexologist, utopian theorist and author (1857-1940)

Source: The Natural Man (1902), p. 95

Life , World , Feeling , Imagination

“Bertie Brookes and I shared a common view that, beyond the practical activities of information provision, there could be discerned a more general science of information. He tended towards a mathematical formulation of this: I was more interested in its social aspects.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: A Long Search for Information (2004), p. 24-25.

Mathematics , Science

“Hearing has its own memory. It registers the dog whose sudden barking startled me as a child. The folk songs my nanny used to sing. The dadaism of a cabaret song from Berlin: ‘I tear out one of my eyelashes and stab you dead with it,’ innocently sung by my mother. Hitler conjuring up the Almighty. The crowing voice of little Goebbels. Alarm sirens, the roar of aircraft, the blast of bombs. Ljuba Welitsch being Salome. The sonorities of Edwin Fischer’s piano playing. María Casares as Lady Macbeth in Avignon. Ralph Kirkpatrick’s two Scarlatti recitals. Gré Brouwenstijn as Leonore in Fidelio. The epiphany of Ligeti’s Aventures et Nouvelles Aventures. The magic application of noise in Peter Brook’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. All sorts of laughter.”

Alfred Brendel (1931) Austrian pianist, poet, and author

quoted in Alan Rusbridger, "Music, Sense and Nonsense by Alfred Brendel review – a great pianist’s thoughts on his art", The Guardian, 24 September 2015

Dogs , Dreams , Tear , Laughter