Quotes about brook
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“He murmurs near the running brooks
A music sweeter than their own.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Stanza 10.
A Poet's Epitaph (1799)

“Like gladiator games and pyramid building, opera has always been a gloriously money-losing proposition. It is the most extravagant of arts, requiring the constant support of kings, dictators, plutocrats, and town councils. Box-office success is no solution. San Francisco Opera loses money at every sold-out performance. Sane business practices simply don’t suffice. Composer Richard Wagner’s patron, King Ludwig II of Bavaria, was the ideal operatic angel — very rich and certifiably insane. Mel Brooks’ shyster producer Max Bialystock need not have mounted Springtime for Hitler to score a surefire loss. Aida would have done just fine.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

"Drama at the Opera House," http://www.danagioia.net/essays/eoperahouse.htm San Francisco Magazine (September 2001) Essays

Money, Art, Angels, Game

“What about that? It's John Brooks! It's John Brooks!”

Ian Darke (1950) British association football and boxing commentator

Ghana v. United States http://www.listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=gQC2SusDfIw (16 June 2014). 2010s, 2014, 2014 FIFA World Cup Context: Zusi to take it, and there! It's there! What about that? It's John Brooks! It's John Brooks! For the USA! Have they stolen it? Quite incredible, he couldn't even have dreamt that.

“It is so hard to forget what it is worse than useless to remember! If I am to be a thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain-brooks, the Parnassian streams, and not the town-sewers.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)
Context: It is so hard to forget what it is worse than useless to remember! If I am to be a thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain-brooks, the Parnassian streams, and not the town-sewers. There is inspiration, that gossip which comes to the ear of the attentive mind from the courts of heaven. There is the profane and stale revelation of the bar-room and the police court. The same ear is fitted to receive both communications. Only the character of the hearer determines to which it shall be open, and to which closed. I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality.

Mountain, Forgetting

“Imagine if all of life were determined by majority rule. Every meal would be a pizza. Every pair of pants, even those in a Brooks Brothers suit, would be stone-washed denim. Celebrity diet and exercise books would be the only thing on the shelves at the library. And — since women are a majority of the population — we'd all be married to Mel Gibson.”

P. J. O'Rourke book Parliament of Whores

Parliament of Whores (1991)

Life, Women, Books, Exercises

“This was no playhouse but a house in earnest.
Your destination and your destiny's
A brook that was the water of the house,
Cold as a spring as yet so near its source,
Too lofty and original to rage.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Directive (1947)
Context: p>This was no playhouse but a house in earnest.
Your destination and your destiny's
A brook that was the water of the house,
Cold as a spring as yet so near its source,
Too lofty and original to rage.(We know the valley streams that when aroused
Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.)</p

Spring, Water, Rage, Housing

“The noblest of men and friends has left the world, — Phillips Brooks.”

Lucy Larcom (1824–1893) American teacher, poet, author

Journal entry (20 February 1893), Ch. 12 : Last Years.
Lucy Larcom : Life, Letters, and Diary (1895)
Context: The noblest of men and friends has left the world, — Phillips Brooks. One month ago this morning he breathed his last. He, with whom it was impossible to associate the idea of death; — was? — is so, still! — the most living man I ever knew — physically, mentally, spiritually. It is almost like taking the sun out of the sky. He was such an illumination, such a warmth, such an inspiration! And he let us all come so near him, — just as Christ does!
I felt that I knew Christ personally through him. He always spoke of Him as his dearest friend, and he always lived in perfect, loving allegiance to God in Him. Now I know him as I know Christ, — as a spirit only, and his sudden withdrawal is only an ascension to Him, in the immortal life. Shut into my sick-room, I have seen none of the gloom of the burial; I know him alive, with Christ, from the dead, forevermore. Where he is, life must be. He lived only in realities here, and he is entering into the heart of them now. "What a new splendor in heaven!" was my first thought of him, after one natural burst of sorrow. What great services he has found! How gloriously life, with its immortal opportunities, must be opening to him! He, — one week here, — the next there, — and seen no more here again. The very suddenness of his going makes the other life seem the real one, rather than this. And a man like this is the best proof God ever gives human beings of their own immortality.

Men, World

“What strength belongs to every plant and animal in nature. The tree or the brook has no duplicity, no pretentiousness, no show. It is, with all its might and main, what it is, and makes one and the same impression and effect at all times.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

The Natural History of Intellect (1893)
Context: What strength belongs to every plant and animal in nature. The tree or the brook has no duplicity, no pretentiousness, no show. It is, with all its might and main, what it is, and makes one and the same impression and effect at all times. All the thoughts of a turtle are turtles, and of a rabbit, rabbits. But a man is broken and dissipated by the giddiness of his will; he does not throw himself into his judgments; his genius leads him one way but 't is likely his trade or politics in quite another.

Nature, Tree, Time, Animals

“Not "brook" [in German: Bach], but "sea" should he [Johann Sebastian Bach] be called because of his infinite, inexhaustible richness in tone combinations and harmonies.”

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770–1827) German Romantic composer

Sea

“Let us not be afraid to express the passionate concern everyone of us feels about present housing conditions. … This is a problem which brooks no escape, no evasion. It is no use talking about a free market: the provision of decent housing for all is a clear and inescapable obligation of government.”

Harold Wilson (1916–1995) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to a Labour rally in Wembley Pool (12 September 1964), quoted in The Times (14 September 1964), p. 6
Leader of the Opposition

Feeling, Problem, Passion, Housing

“The motives of people like Dalrymple, those who wilfully set out to deny the facts of the destruction of the Hindu civilisation of India, are the opposite. Their denial of the large-scale destruction and denigration of Hindu religion and culture by the Muslim raiders, invaders and conquerors of India is motivated by the deep-seated political aim of the Independence movement to brook no divide between Hindu and Muslim. It was for its time and for all time a noble aim. That was one of the things V. S. Naipaul said to the BJP gathering--that the project of Nehru and Gandhi to avoid going into the import of that history was in itself positively motivated. There is never any justification for one community in India to conduct a pogrom against another. Not then, not now. But surely the construction of history should be truthful. Suppression can only exacerbate the anger.”

William Dalrymple (1965) author and historian

Farrukh Dhondy, Does Willy Get It Wilfully Wrong?, Outlook India, https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/does-willy-get-it-wilfully-wrong/223746 About William Dalrymple

People, Truth, Religion, History

“The Indo-Aryan influence, whether due to actual settlement, acculturation, or, if one prefers, the substitution of Indo-Aryan names for local ones, was powerful enough from early on to replace local names, in spite of the well-known conservatism of river-names. This is especially surprising in the area once occupied by the Indus civilization, where one would have expected the survival of earlier names, as has been the case in Europe and the Near East. At the least, one would expect a palimpsest, as found in New England, with the name of the State of Massachussetts next to the Charles River formerly called the Massachussetts River, and such new adaptations as Stony Brook, Muddy Creek, Red River, etc. next to the adaptations of Indian names such as the Mississippi and the Missouri. The failure to preserve old hydronomes even in the Indus Valley (with a few exceptions noted above) indicates the extent of the social and political collapse experienced by the local population.”

Michael Witzel (1943) German-American philologist

p 107
Early Indian history: Linguistic and textual parametres

Failure

“This leads to the conclusion that the Indo-Aryan influence, … was powerful enough from early on to replace local names, in spite of the well-known conservatism of river names. This is especially surprising in the area once occupied by the Indus Civilisation where one would have expected the survival of older names, as has been the case in Europe and the Near East. At the least, one would expect a palimpsest, as found in New England with the name of the state of Massachussetts next to the Charles river, formerly called the Massachussetts river, and such new adaptations as Stony Brook, Muddy Creek, Red River, etc., next to the adaptations of Indian names such as the Mississippi and the Missouri.”

Michael Witzel (1943) German-American philologist

Early Indian history: Linguistic and textual parametres

“Today, we are all saddened by the loss of Brooke Astor, a quintessential New Yorker and one of the great philanthropists of our time. Tens of thousands of New Yorkers were the beneficiaries of Mrs Astor’s good will and kind nature, many unaware of the origins of the donations. Her contributions reached a wide variety of causes; The New York Public Library, and the entire city, would not be what they are today without her gracious support.”

Brooke Astor (1902–2007) Socialite, writer, Philanthropist

Michael Bloomberg, New York City mayor Brooke Astor, First Lady of New York, dies at 105 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article2257401.ece Times Online (August 14, 2007)

Support, Nature, Loss, Time

“But an old man of venerable look
(Standing upon the shore amongst the crowds)
His eyes fixed upon us (on ship-board), shook
His head three times, overcast with sorrow's clouds:
And (straining his voice more, than well could brook
His aged lungs: it rattled in our shrouds)
Out of a science, practice did attest,
Let fly these words from an oraculous breast:O glory of commanding! O vain thirst
Of that same empty nothing we call fame!”

Luís de Camões Os Lusíadas

Stanzas 94–95 (tr. Richard Fanshawe); the Old Man of Restelo.
Epic poetry, Os Lusíadas (1572), Canto IV
Original: (pt) Mas um velho d'aspeito venerando,
Que ficava nas praias, entre a gente,
Postos em nós os olhos, meneando
Três vezes a cabeça, descontente,
A voz pesada um pouco alevantando,
Que nós no mar ouvimos claramente,
C'um saber só de experiências feito,
Tais palavras tirou do experto peito:Ó glória de mandar! Ó vã cobiça
Desta vaidade, a quem chamamos Fama!O glory of commanding! O vain thirst
Of that same empty nothing we call fame!