Quotes about carpet

A collection of quotes on the topic of carpet, carpeting, likeness, time.

Quotes about carpet

“As he came into the window
It was the sound of a crescendo
He came in her apartment
He left the blood stains on the carpet
She ran underneath the table
He could see she was unable
So she ran into the bedroom
She was struck down, it was her doom.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Bad (1987)

“Swords flashed like lightning amid the blackness of clouds, and fountains of blood flowed like the fall of setting stars. The friends of God defeated their obstinate opponents, and quickly put them to a complete rout. Noon had not arrived when the Musulmans had wreaked their vengeance on the infidel enemies of Allah, killing 15,000 of them, spreading them like a carpet over the ground, and making them food for beasts and birds of prey… The enemy of God, Jaipal, and his children and grandchildren,… were taken prisoners, and being strongly bound with ropes, were carried before the Sultan, like as evildoers, on whose faces the fumes of infidelity are evident, who are covered with the vapours of misfortune, will be bound and carried to Hell. Some had their arms forcibly tied behind their backs, some were seized by the cheek, some were driven by blows on the neck. The necklace was taken off the neck of Jaipal, - composed of large pearls and shining gems and rubies set in gold, of which the value was two hundred thousand dinars; and twice that value was obtained from necks of those of his relatives who were taken prisoners, or slain, and had become the food of the mouths of hyenas and vultures. Allah also bestowed upon his friends such an amount of booty as was beyond all bounds and all calculation, including five hundred thousand slaves, beautiful men and women. The Sultan returned with his followers to his camp, having plundered immensely, by Allah's aid, having obtained the victory, and thankful to Allah… This splendid and celebrated action took place on Thursday, the 8th of Muharram, 392 H., 27th November, 1001 AD.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

About the defeat of Jaipal. Tarikh Yamini (Kitabu-l Yamini) by Al Utbi, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. p. 27 Also quoted (in part) in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.
Quotes from Tarikh Yamini (Kitabu-l Yamini) by Al Utbi

Women, Men, God, Children

“An orange on the table
Your robe on the carpet
And you in my bed
Sweet present of the present
Coolness of the night
Warmth of my life.”

Jacques Prevért (1900–1977) French poet, screenwriter

Alicante

Life, Night

“It was all very well for an Englishman like Mr. Fogg to make the tour of the world with a carpet-bag; a lady could not be expected to travel comfortably under such conditions.”

Jules Verne book Around the World in Eighty Days

Qu'un Anglais comme lui fît le tour du monde un sac à la main, passe encore; mais une femme ne pouvait entreprendre une pareille traversée dans ces conditions.
Source: Around the World in Eighty Days (1873), Ch. XX: In Which Fix Comes Face to Face with Phileas Fogg

World, Travel

“To a disciple who was forever complaining about others the Master said, "If it is peace you want, seek to change yourself, not other people. It is easier to protect your feet with slippers than to carpet the whole of the earth."”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Transformation
One Minute Wisdom (1989)

People, Peace, Change

“Normally its narrow streets were crowded with stalls, and people from all over the Carpet. They'd all be trying to cheat one another in that open-and-above-board way known as 'doing business.”

Terry Pratchett book The Carpet People

The Carpet People (1971; 1992)

People, Way, Business, Cheating

“There are two words I hate and despise and don’t want to hear: red carpet and iconic.”

Caroline, Princess of Hanover (1957) Princess of Monaco

Hate

“And as Paul said these things to himself, a wave of sadness washed over them as though they’d been written in sand. He was understanding now that no man could live without roots—roots in a patch of desert, a red clay field, a mountain slope, a rocky coast, a city street. In black loan, in mud or sand or rock or asphalt or carpet, every man had his roots down deep—in home.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Player Piano

Source: Player Piano (1952), Chapter 23 (p. 227)

Sadness, Home, Mountain, Understanding

“All shuffle there; all cough in ink;
All wear the carpet with their shoes;
All think what other people think;
All know the man their neighbour knows.
Lord, what would they say
Did their Catullus walk that way?”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

The Scholars http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1682/, st. 2 The Wild Swans at Coole (1919)

People, Shoe, Way, Thinking

“What would Deftmenes be if we went around obeying orders all the time?'
'They might be ruling the Carpet,' said Pismire.
'Ha!' said Brocando, 'but the trouble about obeying orders is, it becomes a habit. And then everything depends on who's giving the orders.”

Terry Pratchett book The Carpet People

The Carpet People (1971; 1992)

Time, Dependency

“The man changed position, turned his back on the wardrobe blocking the door and let his right arm slide down toward the side on which the dog is lying. A minute later, he was awake. He was thirsty. He turned on his bedside light, got up, shuffled his feet into the slippers which were, as always, providing a pillow for the dog's head, and went into the kitchen. Death followed him. The man filled a glass with water and drank it. At this point, the dog appeared, slaked his thirst in the water-dish next to the back door and then looked up at his master. I suppose you want to go out, said the cellist. He opened the door and waited until the animal came back. A little water remained in his glass. Death looked at it and made an effort to imagine what it must be like to feel thirsty, but failed. She would have been equally incapable of imagining it when she'd had to make people die of thirst in the desert, but at the time she hadn't even tried. The dog returned, wagging his tail. Let's go back to sleep, said the man. They went into the bedroom again, the dog turned around twice, then curled up into a ball. The man drew the sheet up to his neck, coughed twice and soon afterward was asleep again. Sitting in her corner, death was watching. Much later, the dog got up from the carpet and jumped onto the sofa. For the first time in her life, death knew what it felt like to have a dog on her lap.”

José Saramago book Death with Interruptions

Source: Death with Interruptions (2005), p. 172

Life, Death, People, Dogs

“I just stepped out of the dark, still forest and found myself on a rising hill. In front of me I saw a valley, surrounded by fertile hills, in which a town stood and the newly covered slate roof of the tower glowed in the evening light. Through the richly-flowered, carpeted meadow the river meandered... And behind the hills lay the mountains.... cliff after cliff rose far out into the horizon... Filled with soaring joy I stood there a long time and looked at the beautiful area..”

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) Swedish painter

Quote from Friedrich's Diary-note, 1803; as cited by C. D. Eberlein in C. D. Friedrich - Bekenntnisse, pp. 72-73; translated and quoted by Linda Siegel in Caspar David Friedrich and the Age of German Romanticism, Boston Branden Press Publishers, 1978, p. 45
1794 - 1840

Beauty, Mountain, Flowers, Light

“In the world's audience hall, the simple blade of grass sits on the same carpet with the sunbeams, and the stars of midnight.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

74 The Gardener http://www.spiritualbee.com/love-poems-by-tagore/ (1915)

World, Star, Grass

“But, suppose, besides, that the making of the new machinery affords employment to a greater number of mechanics, can that be called compensation to the carpet makers, thrown on the streets?”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Vol. I, Ch. 15, Section 6, pg. 479.
(Buch I) (1867)

“YOU BASTARD! Come to my carpet shop.”

Omid Djalili (1965) Iranian-British stand-up comedian

No Agenda (2007)

“Drunkards vaunt their bravery when you speak of war.
But in the blaze of battle they scatter like mice.
I'm astonished by the man who wants purity
And yet trembles when the harshness of polishing begin…
When a man beats a carpet again and again
It's not the carpet he's attacking, but the dirt in it.”

Rumi Masnavi

Mathnawi
Teachings of Rumi (1999)
Context: "There's no courage", The Prophet said, "before the war has begun."
Drunkards vaunt their bravery when you speak of war.
But in the blaze of battle they scatter like mice.
I'm astonished by the man who wants purity
And yet trembles when the harshness of polishing begin...
When a man beats a carpet again and again
It's not the carpet he's attacking, but the dirt in it.

War

“[after one of his dogs urinated in the bedroom] Who pissed!!? Who pissed on my fucking carpet!?! That bastard fucking dog man. I'm going to throw you in the pool! Get the fuck out of my house! Why do they do it Sharon? Whats the deal man? It's a fucking terrorist man! It's fucking part of Bin Laden's gang! Fucking Ali Baba used to go work on this rug.”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

The Osbournes television show

Dogs, Housing, Parting

“(I) thank you for what you tell us about what is wrong in the Church, for helping us not to sweep it under the carpet, and for the voice you have given to the abuse victims," the pope said.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

2020s, 2021
Source: Quoted in Pope thanks journalists for helping expose Church sex scandals. Reuters 13 November 2021

Help

“But why diminish your soul being run-of-the-mill at something? Mediocrity: now there is ugliness for you. Mediocrity's a hairball coughed up on the Persian carpet of Creation.”

Tom Robbins Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

Source: Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

Soul

“Some people need a red carpet rolled out in front of them in order to walk forward into friendship. They can't see the tiny outstretched hands all around them, everywhere, like leaves on trees.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

Friendship, People, Tree

“What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.”

Woody Allen Without Feathers

"Selections from the Allen Notebooks".
Without Feathers (1975)

“To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Beauty, Peaceful, Grass

“I sleep with my feet on moss carpets, my branches in the cotton of the clouds.”

Anaïs Nin book Under a Glass Bell

Source: Under a Glass Bell

Sleep

“Heaven opened and the water hammered down, reviving the reluctant old well, greenmossing the pigless pigsty, carpet bombing still, tea-colored puddles the way memory bombs still, tea-colored minds.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

Color, Way, Water, Memory

“Ever since we had arrived in the United States, my classmates kept asking me about magic carpets.
- They don't exist-I always said. I was wrong. Magic carpets do exist. But they are called library cards.”

Firoozeh Dumas (1965) Iranian-American memoirist

Source: Laughing Without an Accent: Adventures of an Iranian American, at Home and Abroad

“All of us have moments in out lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…

Children, Courage, Housing

“‎There's no way to cheat a sensualist like me, somebody who can die laughing for hours over the pattern of the carpet in a hotel lobby.”

Anne Rice book Memnoch the Devil

Source: Memnoch the Devil

Way, Cheating

“Did you see a doctor? (Syn)
Yeah. It’ll heal. (Cruel)
Did your mom say anything? (Syn)
Clean the blood out of the carpet before it sets. What could she say? Better me than her. (Cruel)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of the Night

Moms

“We do not just risk repeating history if we sweep it under the carpet, we also risk being myopic about our present.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (1977) Nigerian writer

History

“The oversized chairs are white; the walls, covered with occasional landscape paintings, are white; and the plush carpet is the whitest of all. I'm insanely glad I didn't bring a cup of grape juice with me.”

Wendy Mass (1967) American children's writer

Painting

“I am so sorry. I wish you knew even one tenth of one percent of how sorry I am…. It was my fault. Can I kill myself here, or should I do it outside, so the mess on your carpet doesn't upset your mother?”

Laurie Halse Anderson (1961) American children's writer

Source: Twisted

“To treat a person like a carpet, it is necessary that one do the walking, and one allow himself to be walked on.
--Shin'a'in saying”

Mercedes Lackey book Owlflight

Source: Owlflight

Personality

“Really, these wizards! You'd think no one had ever had a cold before! Well, what is it?" she asked, hobbling through the bedroom door onto the filthy carpet.
"I'm dying of boredom," Howl said pathetically. "Or maybe just dying.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Howl's Moving Castle

Source: Howl's Moving Castle

Thinking

“Yes, the stories are dangerous, she was right. A book is a magic carpet that flies you off elsewhere. A book is a door. You open it. You step through. Do you come back?”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Books

“A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way.”

Caroline Gordon (1895–1981) Novelist, literary critic

Books, World, Way

“Even more blood welled up and spilled down his arm, splattering onto the ground.
“Camille’s carpet,” Magnus protested.
“It’s blood,” said Will. “She ought to be thrilled.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

“Lispers are among the best grads of the Sweep-It-Under-Someone-Else's-Carpet School of Simulated Simplicity. [ Was that sufficiently incendiary?]”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[1992Jan10.201804.11926@netlabs.com, 1992]
Usenet postings, 1992

School

“Beneath the crisp and wintry carpet hid
A million buds but stay their blossoming
And trustful birds have built their nests amid
The shuddering boughs, and only wait to sing
Till one soft shower from the south shall bid
And hither tempt the pilgrim steps of Spring.”

Robert Seymour Bridges (1844–1930) British writer

The Growth of Love http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=6639&poem=510395, Sonnet 6 (1876). Poetry

Spring, Bird, Singing, Waiting

“Fifty three per cent children in India face sexual abuse – both boys and girls – but we still feel uncomfortable talking about it. We are still hypocrites when it comes to issues like child abuse, sex or for that matter homosexuality. It is high time that we brought the issue from under the carpet.”

Rahul Bose (1967) Indian actor

Times of India, September 26, 2009, " Rahul Bose: We are all hypocrites http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/bollywood/news-interviews/Rahul-Bose-We-are-all-hypocrites-/articleshow/5056023.cms"

Children, Sex, Feeling, Girl

“Logic is a carpet laid over an abyss.”

O.B. Hardison Jr. (1927–1990)

From Hardison's spy novel "The Last Drop" Quoted in "Classical, Renaissance, and Postmodern Acts of the Imagination" by Arthur Kinney http://books.google.com/books?id=NpNOU3kJAD0C&pg=PA17&lpg=PA17&source=web&ots=vhkDdUq2Dy&sig=MCZnorjkogp_lJn5rupUacGII5I

“Time past on as lightly as he always steps over flowers, Brussels carpets, marble terraces, green turfs, or whatever simile may best express a path without an impediment.”

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

Other Gift Books

Flowers, Time, Past

“My love! My lover! Beloved Friend!
Grab this wondrous, fleeting moment,
Drink it inside me,
Let’s drink it together to the end!
[…]
And upon returning, love…
Taking mysterious paths along the meadows
On grassy carpets on the forest floor,
We will make a star of our two shadows.”

Florbela Espanca (1894–1930) Portuguese poet

Meu amor! Meu amante! Meu amigo!
Colhe a hora que passa, hora divina,
Bebe-a dentro de mim, bebe-a comigo!
Sinto-me alegre e forte! Sou menina!
[...]
E à volta, Amor... tornemos, nas alfombras
Dos caminhos selvagens e escuros,
Num astro só as nossas duas sombras!...
Quoted in Florbela Espanca (1995), p. 81
Translated by John D. Godinho
The Flowering Heath (1931), "Passeio ao Campo"

Love, Star, Lovers, Drink

“As much valour is to be found in feasting as in fighting, and some of our city captains and carpet knights will make this good, and prove it.”

Robert Burton book The Anatomy of Melancholy

Section 2, member 2, subsection 2.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part I

Fight

“It just never occurred to me that the real distance I would have to cross would be in my own mind. In that respect, I had flown half a million miles before I moved an inch, and these three volumes are just the rattling the side of my cot made when I climbed over, on the first stage of that long, momentous journey across the carpet, towards the light of the open door.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

closing lines, p. 249
Memoirs, May Week Was in June (1990)

Light

“He was a fool — a brilliant man and I loved his beard, and there was the mountain ax in his brain, and all the blood poured out, and he could not see the Mexican sun. Your people raised the ax, and the last blood of revolutionary mankind, his poor blood, ran into the carpet.”

Norman Mailer book Barbary Shore

Lannie Madison, on the assassination of Leon Trotsky, in Ch. 21
Barbary Shore (1951)

Love, People, Fools, Mountain

“To make you cry I’ll tell you about the twelve young impure men I saw executed at Dacca at the end of the Bangladesh war. They executed them on the field of Dacca stadium, with bayonet blows to the torso or abdomen, in the presence of twenty thousand faithful who applauded in the name of God from the bleachers. They thundered "Allah akbar, Allah akbar." Yes, I know: the ancient Romans, those ancient Romans of whom my culture is so proud, entertained themselves in the Coliseum by watching the deaths of Christians fed to the lions. I know, I know: in every country of Europe the Christians, those Christians whose contribution to the History of Thought I recognize despite my atheism, entertained themselves by watching the burning of heretics. But a lot of time has passed since then, we have become a little more civilized, and even the sons of Allah ought to have figured out by now that certain things are just not done. After the twelve impure young men they killed a little boy who had thrown himself at the executioners to save his brother who had been condemned to death. They smashed his head with their combat boots. And if you don’t believe it, well, reread my report or the reports of the French and German journalists who, horrified as I was, were there with me. Or better: look at the photographs that one of them took. Anyway this isn’t even what I want to underline. It’s that, at the conclusion of the slaughter, the twenty thousand faithful (many of whom were women) left the bleachers and went down on the field. Not as a disorganized mob, no. In an orderly manner, with solemnity. They slowly formed a line and, again in the name of God, walked over the cadavers. All the while thundering Allah–akbar, Allah–akbar. They destroyed them like the Twin Towers of New York. They reduced them to a bleeding carpet of smashed bones.”

Oriana Fallaci (1929–2006) Italian writer

Rage and the Pride">

Death, Women, Men, God

“…in New Year's Eve, we look out over the surging throng of ecstatic celebrants, and the sea of humanity is blue. They're all wearing freebie hats from Nivea skin creme. No hats for the Knicks, Budweiser or I Heart [sic] New York. All Nivea skin creme. Countless hats of Nivea blue. I've heard of product placement, but this is carpet bombing.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/new-years-eve-2011 of New Year's Eve (7 December 2011) Reviews, One-star reviews

Heart, Sea

“I rang room service, and asked for a bottle of Perrier, because while I was asleep someone had come in and carpeted my throat.”

Alan Coren (1938–2007) humorist and writer from the United Kingdom

"The Night We Went To Epernay By Way Of Tours-sur-Marne".
The Sanity Inspector (1974)

“As if the butterfly, like the artist, were conscious of something not entirely congenial in the child's nature, it alternately sparkled and grew dim. At length it arose from the small hand of the infant with an airy motion that seemed to bear it upward without an effort, as if the ethereal instincts with which its master's spirit had endowed it impelled this fair vision involuntarily to a higher sphere. Had there been no obstruction, it might have soared into the sky and grown immortal. But its lustre gleamed upon the ceiling; the exquisite texture of its wings brushed against that earthly medium; and a sparkle or two, as of stardust, floated downward and lay glimmering on the carpet.”

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

"The Artist of the Beautiful" (1844)

Nature, Effort

“They went on playing quietly and waiting for Sam (who had gone back to the bedroom to seek Tommy) and for their turns to see Mother. Bonnie meanwhile, with a rueful expression, was leaning out the front window, and presently she could not help interrupting them, 'Why is my name Mrs Cabbage, why not Mrs Garlic or Mrs Horse Manure?' They did not hear her, so intent were they, visiting each other and inquiring after the health of their respective new babies. They did not hear her complaining to Louie that, instead of being Mrs Grand Piano or Mrs Stair Carpet, they called her Garbage, 'Greta Garbage, Toni Toilet,' said she laughing sadly, 'because they always see me out there with the garbage can and the wet mop; association in children's naïve innocent minds you see!'
'Oh no, it isn't that, protested Louie, Garbage is just a funny word: they associate you with singing and dancing and all those costumes you have in your trunk!”

Christina Stead book The Man Who Loved Children

'Do you think so?' Bonnie was tempted to believe. 'Mrs Strip Tease?'
The Man Who Loved Children (1940)

Children, Health, Thinking, Singing

“The time will come, without my seeking it, that my words will almost serve as law. If I ask a certain thing, it will be done. If I don't want something, it will not be done. If I recommend a certain ambassador for a certain country, and then visit that country and that ambassador's office, he will greet me with the red carpet treatment.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

Statement of 1974-03-24, as quoted in Investigation of Korean-American Relations : Report of the Subcommittee on International Organizations of the Committee on International Relations, U.S. House Of Representatives (31 October 1978) http://www.allentwood.com/articles/conclufraser.html

Law, Time, Country

“Bullying behaviour can be communicated via text, mobile phones, internet, social networking sites, forums. But we can't limit it because these messages are then reinforced by television which glamorises yelling, swearing and vulgar behaviour as the way to walk the red carpet of acceptance.”

Louise Burfitt-Dons (1953) Activist, writer, blogger

Speech, Tackling Bullying Conference, London (2008-02-27)

Way, Communication

“Then you notice likkle carpet burn
My stomach drop and my guts churn
You shrug and it's the worst
Who truly stuck the knife in first?
I cheated myself like I knew I would
I told you I was trouble, you know that I'm no good
I cheated myself, like I knew I would
I told you I was trouble, yeah you know that I'm no good.”

Amy Winehouse (1983–2011) English singer and songwriter

You Know I'm No Good
Song lyrics, Back To Black (2006)

Cheating

“The antithesis of 10th St. Howard was, at first, like a pariah uptown. He was very midwestern and his gallery had wall-to-wall carpeting.”

Frank Gillette (1941) American artist

Frank Gillette, interview with Marita Sturken, Nov. 11, 1983, cited in: Afterimage, May 1984; About the arrival of Howard Wise in the art community

“The desire for security, very marked in women, draws the weaker among them to men who, by their strength or ability, seem to offer protection and support. In time of war they count a warrior's scalps; in time of peace they hunt for genius or wealth. To the man in love the giving of gifts is a way of asserting his power. The penguin and the banker offer pebbles of varying brilliance to their respective loved ones. The finch presents twigs and leaves to its mate as the young man presents woolen threads in the form of carpets and curtains to his fiancee. The swallow and the woman begin to thing of the nest the moment they have chosen their males.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Loving

Love, Women, Men, War

“She hurried at his words, beset with fears,
For there were sleeping dragons all around,
At glaring watch, perhaps, with ready spears —
Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found. —
In all the house was heard no human sound.
A chain-droop’d lamp was flickering by each door;
The arras, rich with horseman, hawk, and hound,
Flutter’d in the besieging wind’s uproar;
And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor.”

John Keats The Eve of St. Agnes

Stanza 40
Poems (1820), The Eve of St. Agnes

Fear, Way, Sleep, Housing

“In 2014, one of the key agendas of the BJP’s election campaign was highlighting the dismal management of the Indian economy, ironically under an ‘economist’ prime minister and a ‘know-it-all’ finance minister. We all knew that the economy was in the doldrums but since we were not in government, we naturally did not have the complete details of the state of the economy. But, what we saw when we formed the government left us shocked! The state of the economy was much worse than expected. Things were terrible. Even the budget figures were suspicious. When all of this came to light, we had two options – to be driven by Rajneeti (political considerations) or be guided by Rashtraneeti (putting the interests of India First)… Rajneeti, or playing politics on the state of the economy in 2014, would have been extremely simple as well as politically advantageous for us. We had just won a historic election, so obviously the frenzy was at a different level. The Congress Party and their allies were in big trouble. Even for the media, it would have made news for months on end. On the other hand, there was Rashtraneeti, where more than politics and one-upmanship, reform was needed. Needless to say, we preferred to think of ‘India First’ instead of putting politics first. We did not want to push the issues under the carpet, but we were more interested in addressing the issue. We focused on reforming, strengthening and transforming the Indian economy. The details about the decay in the Indian economy were unbelievable. It had the potential to cause a crisis all over. In 2014, industry was leaving India. India was in the Fragile Five. Experts believed that the ‘I’ in BRICS would collapse. Public sentiment was that of disappointment and pessimism.”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

Narendra Modi, Swarajya Interviews Prime Minister Modi, Interview, R Jagannathan- Jul 02, 2018 https://swarajyamag.com/economy/swarajya-interviews-prime-minister-modi-the-state-of-indian-economy 2018

Disappointment, Nature, Thinking, Light

“So to sleep on the sleeping porch required preparation. First, you put on long underwear, pajamas, jeans, a sweatshirt, your grandfather’s old cardigan and bathrobe, two pairs of woolen socks on your feet and another on your hands, and a hat with earflaps tied beneath the chin. Then you climbed into bed and were immediately covered with a dozen bed blankets, three horse blankets, all the household overcoats, a canvas tarpaulin, and a piece of old carpet. I’m not sure that they didn’t lay an old wardrobe on top of that, just to hold everything down. It was like sleeping under a dead horse. For the first minute or so it was unimaginably cold, shockingly cold, but gradually your body heat seeped in and you became warm and happy in a way you would not have believed possible only a minute or two before. It was bliss. Or at least it was until you moved a muscle. The warmth, you discovered, extended only to the edge of your skin and not a micron farther. There wasn’t any possibility of shifting positions. If you so much as flexed a finger or bent a knee, it was like plunging them into liquid nitrogen.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

Source: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 140

Way, Sleep, Horse, Dead

“Vereker’s secret, my dear man — the general intention of his books: the string the pearls were strung on, the buried treasure, the figure in the carpet.”

Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic

The Figure in the Carpet http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext96/fgcpt10h.htm (1896).

Secret, Books

“The health of the white people requires that the negro cabin be kept clean; and the maintenance of chastity there is necessary for the protection of woman throughout the land. The need of making the black man more intelligent and conscientious has already been so far recognized by the South, that she has remodelled her entire school system for his benefit; and her desire to make him more valuable as a member of the community, cannot long permit him to be lynched or otherwise maltreated. Her memory of the misrule of the carpet-baggers will grow fainter; and she will finally be able to see that even the illiterate voter is not so dangerous a citizen in a republic as the man who has not this reason to interest himself in its welfare. The South may be much slower than we could wish in reaching these conclusions; but no others will be found permanently satisfactory to her; and it is by no means certain that her pace will be quickened by a display of federal bayonets.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Speech http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-nations-problem/

People, Health, School, Intelligence

“Market capitalism is the best thing that ever happened to the common man. The rich have always had access to entertainment, often in the comfort of their palaces and mansions. The rich have never had to experience the drudgery of having to beat out carpets, iron their clothing or slave over a hot stove all day in order to have a decent dinner. They could afford to hire people. Capitalism's mass production and marketing have made radios and televisions, vacuum cleaners, wash-and-wear clothing and microwave ovens available and well within the means of the common man; thus, sparing him of the boredom and drudgery of the past. Today, the common man has the power to enjoy much (and more) of what only the rich could afford yesteryear.”

Walter E. Williams (1936) American economist, commentator, and academic

2010s, Markets, Governments, and the Common Good

People, Past, Clothes

“Reeling up, blood streaming down his face from under his dented helmet, Conan glared dizzily at the profusion of destruction which spread before him. From crest to crest the dead lay strewn, a red carpet that choked the valley. It was like a red sea, with each wave a straggling line of corpses.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"Black Colossus" (1933)

Sea, Dead

“The man who invented the red carpet needed his head examined.”

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921) member of the British Royal Family, consort to Queen Elizabeth II

About to disembark on state visit to Brazil (November 1968), as quoted in The Reality of Monarchy (1970) by Andrew Duncan
1960s

“Every age has its pet contradictions. Thirty years ago we used to accept Marx and Freud together, and then wonder, like the chameleon on the turkey carpet, why life was so confusing.”

Mary Midgley (1919–2018) British philosopher and ethicist

Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979). 1.

Life, Age

“The nineteenth century will colonize; so, in its fantasies, did the nineteenth century soul. When Emma [Bovary] turns spendthrift and buys curtains, carpets and hangings from the draper, the information takes on something from the theme of the novel itself: the material is a symbol of the exotic, and the exotic feeds the Romantic appetite. It will lead to satiety, bankruptcy and eventually to nihilism and the final drive towards death and nothingness.”

V.S. Pritchett (1900–1997) British writer and critic

"Gustave Flaubert: The Quotidian", p. 130
The Myth Makers: European and Latin American Writers (1979)

Death, Soul

“Men tend to cry, in Landsman's experience, when they have been living for a long time with a sense of rightness and safety, and then they realize that all along just, under their boot, lay the abyss. This is part of the policeman's job, to jerk back the pretty carpet that covers over the deep jagged hole in the floor.”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

Source: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007), Chapter 11

Men, Jerk, Sense, Time

“The dark corridor of that Central Avenue Hotel, the sinister Negro, the black room and the hopheads, and now the girl who loved a man who hated her. It was all of the same cloth, perverse, drugged in fascinating ugliness. Midnight on Temple Street, a can of marijuana between us. She lay there, her long fingers dangling to the carpet, waiting, listless, tired.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Love, Hate, Girl, Waiting

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

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

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

God, Books, Fear, Imagination

“Sri Chithira Tirunal Maharaja was a visionary. Gandhiji came here after the Temple Entry Proclamation was made by my brother, throwing open the temples to all the castes. The Mahatma said it was not a trip but a pilgrimage. The carpet on which he sat is now a prized possession of the family.”

Uthradom Thirunal Marthanda Varma (1922–2013) Maharaja of Travancore

In "Royal vignettes: Travancore - Simplicity graces this House (30 March 2003)"

Family

“Jack: (to camera) My office! (indicates mess) I'm sorry about all this, but we in the Labour Party link drabness with idealism, see. I'm a paid agent of the party, but whenever I need to know anything I have to ring up Conservative Central Office. It's a very plush place, that - carpets plucking at your bleeding ankles. You see, they link drabness with idealism, too.”

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

Vote, vote, vote for Nigel Barton (1965)

“Delacroix spoke of the Greek coin being built from the center out. Vermeer has painted in this way, according to the principles of mass... How beautifully they are drawn – Vermeer does not just make a leaf and place it in the design, he relates space and leaf. [in the painting of Vermeer: 'Allegory on the New Testament']. That drapery – it is abstract – observe how this shape [a space between a shepherd and the tree] curves around the center space while the tree counter-curves opposite it, cutting an egg shape.... the spaces on the carpet that carry no figuration are, in fact, shapes of vital importance in building the whole..”

Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) Armenian-American painter

Source: 1942 - 1948, Arshile Gorky, – Goats on the roof' (2009), p. 357: in: 'A visit to the Metropolitan Museum with Gorky', Ethel Schwabacher, 1947

Way, Tree, Painting

“Hi I'm Patrick. Today we're going to look at how long it takes for spilt Coke to sink into a carpet. [plays Jeopardy music] Note that it's still fizzy.”

Patrick Stump (1984) American musician

Friends or Enemies.com

Music

“The intellectual is called on the carpet. … Don't you conceal something? You talk a language which is suspect. You don't talk like the rest of us, like the man in the street, but rather like a foreigner who does not belong here. We have to cut you down to size, expose your tricks, purge you.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), p. 192

“I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern.”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Screwtape Letters

Preface
The Screwtape Letters (1942)

Love, Men, Age, World

“If until now colour and form were used as inner agents, it was mainly done subconsciously. The subordination of composition to geometrical form is no new idea (cf. the art of the Persians). Construction on a purely spiritual basis is a slow business, and at first seemingly blind and unmethodical. The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul, so that it can weigh colours in its own scale and thus become a determinant in artistic creation. If we begin at once to break the bonds that bind us to nature and to devote ourselves purely to combination of pure colour and independent form, we shall produce works that are mere geometric decoration, resembling something like a necktie or a carpet. Beauty of form and colour is no sufficient aim by itself, despite the assertions of pure aesthetes or even of naturalists obsessed with the idea of "beauty". It is because our painting is still at an elementary stage that we are so little able to be moved by wholly autonomous colour and form composition. The nerve vibrations are there (as we feel when confronted by applied art), but they get no farther than the nerves because the corresponding vibrations of the spirit which they call forth are weak. When we remember however, that spiritual experience is quickening, that positive science, the firmest basis of human thought is tottering, that dissolution of matter is imminent, we have reason to hope that the hour of pure composition is not far away. The first stage has arrived.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Quote from Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Wassily Kandinsky, Munich, 1912; as cited in Kandinsky, Frank Whitford, Paul Hamlyn Ltd, London 1967, p. 15
1910 - 1915

Beauty, Hope, Art, Feeling

“Our path to Palestine will not be covered with a red carpet or with yellow sand. Our path to Palestine will be covered with blood… In order that we may liberate Palestine, the Arab nation must unite, the Arab armies must unite, and a unified plan of action must be established”

Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918–1970) second president of Egypt

In a re-election speech (1965), as quoted in Islamic Imperialism : A History (2007) by Efraim Karsh, p. 162

“You know when a company wants to use letters in their phone number to be catchy? But often times they use too many letters. "Give us a call down here at 1-800-I-Really-Enjoy-Carpeting." It's too many letters, man. "Hello?" "Hold on, I'm only on 'Enjoy'! How did you know I was calling? I can see why they hired you!"”

Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) American stand-up comedian

Videos and Audio from Hedberg.com

Time

“I do promotion when it is necessary … But I always want to get back to the music. The personal appearances and red carpet events are very glitzy, but it's a bit false.”

Enya (1961) Irish singer, songwriter, and musician

The Telegraph interview (2005)

Music, Appearance, Personality, Falseness

“"It is of course a magic carpet."
Abdullah had heard that one before. He bowed over his tucked-up hands. "Many and various are the virtues said to reside in carpets," he agreed. "Which one does the poet of the sands claim for this? Does it welcome a man home to his tent? Does it bring peace to the hearth? Or maybe," he said, poking the frayed edge suggestively with one toe, "it is said to never wear out?"”

Diana Wynne Jones (1934–2011) English children's fantasy writer

Source: Castle Series, Castle in the Air (1990), pp. 16-17.

Peace, Home

“Disneyworld…is a historical reconstruction as sanitised as the Kremlin's, and a future vision as uncognisant of contemporary pointers as Peter Pan's. It is a magic carpet under which everything has been swept.”

Alan Coren (1938–2007) humorist and writer from the United Kingdom

"Suspended Animation", Tissues for Men (1980).

Future

“I wish I had space to write more of the surpassing beauty of this favorite spruce. … The deer love to lie down beneath its spreading branches; bright streams from the snow that is always near ripple through its groves, and bryanthus spreads precious carpets in its shade. But the best words only hint its charms. Come to the mountains and see.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

[Concerning the Hemlock Spruce, now called Mountain Hemlock http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=TSME:] Source: 1890s, The Mountains of California (1894), chapter 8: The Forests

Love, Lie, Beauty, Mountain

“While parents are naturally in a leadership role, strong families strive to share decision-making. They resolve differences by respecting other viewpoints and accepting compromise solutions. One family decided to spend money on a son's music lessons rather than replace worn carpeting. The compromise was to pitch in and clean the carpet. In another family, everyone but the youngest daughter loved to ski. They rented a vacation condo with plenty of activities for the daughter, and the skiers accepted an hour's drive to the slopes.”

Joyce Brothers (1927–2013) Joyce Brothers

10 Keys to a Strong Family (2002)

Love, Money, Family, Music

“Soft carpet-knights, all scenting musk and amber.”

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas (1544–1590) French writer

Second Week, Third Day, Part i. Compare: "As much valour is to be found in feasting as in fighting, and some of our city captains and carpet knights will make this good, and prove it", Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Part i, Section 2, Membrane 2, Subsection 2.
La Seconde Semaine (1584)

“When discussing a Florida woman denied a drivers license for refusing to remove her Burka and head covering- You know, I think they should give her the license, but then, it should only be good for flying carpets.”

Greg Giraldo (1965–2010) American comedian

Just For Laughs

Thinking, Flying

“And then he looked down at his fallen opponent, sprawled heavily on the carpet, and somehow the sight of his old neck, no longer festooned with an expensive black silk tie, but wrinkled and sagging and open at the throat, as if waiting for the final dagger thrust, filled him with pity and renewed his respect for the conservative powers of an ego that would rather kill its owner than allow him to change.”

Edward St. Aubyn (1960) British writer

At Last, Chapter 13

Change, Waiting

“Herbert von Karajan always rolled out a magic carpet for us, the singers. With him, our musical work took on another dimension.”

Jessye Norman (1945–2019) American opera singer

Quoted in Hohn Rockwell (1989) " Herbert von Karajan Is Dead; Musical Perfectionist Was 81 http://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/17/obituaries/herbert-von-karajan-is-dead-musical-perfectionist-was-81.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm" in New York Times, July 17, 1989

Music

“Themistocles said that a man's discourse was like to a rich Persian carpet, the beautiful figures and patterns of which can be shown only by spreading and extending it out; when it is contracted and folded up, they are obscured and lost.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Life of Themistocles

Beauty

“I opened the door, and there he stood, a telegraph boy. I signed for the telegram, sat on the bed, and wondered if the wine had finally got the Old Man's heart. The telegram said: your book accepted mailing contract today. Hackmuth. That was all. I let the paper float to the carpet. I just sat there. Then I got down on the floor and began kissing the telegram. I crawled under the bed and just lay there. I did not need the sunshine anymore. Nor the earth, nor heaven. I just lay there, happy to die. Nothing else could happen to me. My life was over.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Life, Books, Boy, Kiss

“I had time after time watched the progression across the plain of the giraffe, in their queer, inimitable, vegetative gracefulness as if it were not a herd of animals but a family of rare, long stemmed spackled gigantic flowers slowly advancing. It was, in giant size, the border of a very old, infinitely precious Persian carpet in the dyes of green, yellow and black-brown”

Karen Blixen book Out of Africa

Out of Africa (1937)

Family, Flowers, Time, Animals

“Mahmood having reached Tahnesur before the Hindoos had time to take measures for its defence, the city was plundered, the idols broken, and the idol Jugsom was sent to Ghizny to be trodden under foot…Mahmood having refreshed his troops, and understanding that at some distance stood the rich city of Mutra [Mathura], consecrated to Krishn-Vasdew, whom the Hindoos venerate as an emanation of God, directed his march thither and entering it with little opposition from the troops of the Raja of Delhy, to whom it belonged, gave it up to plunder. He broke down or burned all the idols, and amassed a vast quantity of gold and silver, of which the idols were mostly composed. He would have destroyed the temples also, but he found the labour would have been excessive; while some say that he was averted from his purpose by their admirable beauty. He certainly extravagantly extolled the magnificence of the buildings and city in a letter to the governor of Ghizny, in which the following passage occurs: "There are here a thousand edifices as firm as the faith of the faithful; most of them of marble, besides innumerable temples; nor is it likely that this city has attained its present condition but at the expense of many millions of deenars, nor could such another be constructed under a period of two centuries."…The King tarried in Mutra 20 days; in which time the city suffered greatly from fire, beside the damage it sustained by being pillaged. At length he continued his march along the course of a stream on whose banks were seven strong fortifications, all of which fell in succession: there were also discovered some very ancient temples, which, according to the Hindoos, had existed for 4000 years. Having sacked these temples and forts, the troops were led against the fort of Munj…The King, on his return, ordered a magnificent mosque to be built of marble and granite, of such beauty as struck every beholder with astonishment, and furnished it with rich carpets, and with candelabras and other ornaments of silver and gold. This mosque was universally known by the name of the Celestial Bride. In its neighbourhood the King founded an university, supplied with a vast collection of curious books in various languages. It contained also a museum of natural curiosities. For the maintenance of this establishment he appropriated a large sum of money, besides a sufficient fund for the maintenance of the students, and proper persons to instruct youth in the arts and sciences…The King, in the year AH 410 (AD 1019), caused an account of his exploits to be written and sent to the Caliph, who ordered it to be read to the people of Bagdad, making a great festival upon the occasion, expressive of his joy at the propagation of the faith.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

Tarikh-i-Firishta, translated by John Briggs under the title History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, first published in 1829, New Delhi Reprint 1981, Vol. I, pp. 27-37.
Quotes from Muslim medieval histories

Money, God, People, Books

“And look at the finesse of these historians. They maintain that such facts and narratives must be swept under the carpet in the interest of national integration: recalling them will offend Muslims, they say, doing so will sow rancour against Muslims in the minds of Hindus, they say. Simultaneously, they insist on concocting the myth of Hindus destroying Buddhist temples. Will that concoction not distance Buddhists from Hindus? Will that narrative, specially when it does not have the slightest basis in fact, not embitter Hindus?”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud

“The job of dedicated missile boats is to pootle about, like mice in carpet slippers, waiting for an order to destroy an entire continent.”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

I Know You Got Soul (2004)

Waiting

“Identify an agrarian problem—greenhouse gas emissions, overuse of antibiotics and dangerous pesticides, genetically modified crops, salmonella, E. coli, waste disposal, excessive use of water—and trace it to its ultimate origin and you will likely find an animal. … Research shows that veganism, which obviates the inherent waste involved in growing the grains used to fatten animals for food in conventional systems, is seven times more energy efficient than eating meat and, if embraced globally, could reduce greenhouse gas emissions from conventional agriculture by 94 percent. … But with rare exception, those in the big, lumpy tent have thrown down a red carpet for “ethical butchers” while generally dismissing animal rights advocates as smug ascetics (which they can be) and crazed activists (ditto) who are driven more by sappy sentiment than rock-ribbed reason. It’s an easy move to make. But the problem with this dismissal—and the overall refusal to address the ethics of killing animals for food—is that it potentially anchors the Food Movement’s admirable goals in the shifting sands of an unresolved hypocrisy. Let’s call it the “omnivore’s contradiction.””

James E. McWilliams (1968) American historian

"Loving Animals to Death: How Can We Raise Them Humanely and Then Butcher Them?", in The American Scholar (Spring 2014) https://theamericanscholar.org/loving-animals-to-death/.

Food, Problem, Water, Time