Quotes about cliff (168 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“I love pressure. I love being on the edge of a cliff. Yahooi.”

Yuzuru Hanyu (1994) Japanese figure skater (1994-)

Other quotes, 2016
Original: (ja) プレッシャー大好き、崖っぷち大好き、ヤッホーイ。
Source: Interview with Shuzo Matsuoka, aired 28 November 2016 in 報道ステーション (Hodo Station) on TV Asahi.

Love

“Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off. Build your wings on the way down.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Brown Daily Herald (24 March 1995)
Variant: Stand at the top of a cliff and jump off and build your wings on the way down.
Source: Fahrenheit 451

Way

“Be like the cliff against which the waves continually break; but it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Water

“Love meant jumping off a cliff and trusting that a certain person would be there to catch you at the bottom.”

Jodi Picoult book Second Glance

Source: Second Glance

Romantic , Wedding , Love , Personality

“Sadness isn't sadness. It's happiness in a black jacket. Tears are not tears. They're balls of laughter dipped in salt. Death is not death. It's life that's jumped off a tall cliff.”

Paul McCartney (1942) English singer-songwriter and composer

Source: Blackbird Singing: Poems and Lyrics, 1965-1999

Life , Death , Sadness , Tear

“Lars would talk his way into their pants. Kirk had a babyface that was appealing to the girls. And Cliff; he had a big dick. Word got around about that, I guess.”

James Hetfield (1963) American musician, songwriter and record producer

James Hetfield - Playboy April 2001.

Way , Girl

“Falling in love was like falling off a cliff. It felt pretty much like flying until you hit the ground.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Dragon Heir

Love , Flying

“We are about to change history, said Saphira.
We’re throwing ourselves off a cliff without knowing how deep the water below is.
Ah, but what a glorious flight!
(Eragon to Saphira)”

Christopher Paolini book Eldest

Source: Eldest

History , Water , Change

“Below me Rontu was running along the cliffs barking at the screaming gulls. Pelicans were chattering as they finished the blue water. But suddenly I thought of Tutok, and the island seemed very quiet.”

Scott O'Dell book Island of the Blue Dolphins

Source: Island of the Blue Dolphins

Water

“No matter who you are, no matter where you live, and no matter how many people are chasing you, what you don't read is often as important as what you do read. For instance, if you are walking in the mountains, and you don't read the sign that says "Beware of Cliff" because you were busy reading a joke book instead, you may suddenly find yourself walking on air rather than on a sturdy bed of rocks. If you are baking a pie for your friends, and you read an article entitled "How to Build a Chair" instead of a cookbook, your pie will probably end up tasting like wood and nails instead of like crust and fruity filling. And if you insist on reading this book instead of something more cheerful, you will most certainly find yourself moaning in despair instead of wriggling with delight, so if you have any sense at all you will put this book down and pick up another one. I know of a book, for instance, called The Littlest Elf, which tells the story of a teensy-weensy little man who scurries around fairyland having all sorts of adorable adventures, and you can see at once that you should probably read The Littlest Elf and wriggle over the lovely things that happened to this imaginary creature in a made-up place, instead of reading this book and moaning over the terrible things that have happened to the three Baudelaire orphans.”

Daniel Handler book The Vile Village

Lemony Snicket
The Vile Village (2001)

Love , People , Books , Mountain

“I was born undisciplined. Never, even as a child, could I be made to obey a set rule. What little I know I learned at home. School was always like a prison to me, I could never bring myself to stay there, even four hours a day, when the sun was shining and the sea was so tempting, and it was such fun scrambling over cliffs and paddling in the shallows. Such, to the great despair of my parents, was the unruly but healthy life I lived until I was fourteen or fifteen. In the meantime I somehow picked up the rudiments of reading, writing and arithmetic, with a smattering of spelling. And there my schooling ended. It never worried me very much because I always had plenty of amusements on the side. I doodled in the margins of my books, I decorated our blue copy paper with ultra-fantastic drawings, and I drew the faces and profiles of my schoolmasters as outrageously as I could, distorting them out of all recognition.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

in Denis Rouart (1972) Claude Monet, p. 21 : About his youth
after Monet's death

Life , Books , School , Home

“[While working beneath the cliff at Manneport, Normandy] I didn't see a huge wave coming; it threw me against the cliff and I was tossed about in its wake along with all my materials! My immediate thought was that I was done for, as the water dragged me down, but in the end I managed to clamber out on all fours, but Lord, what a state I was in! My boots, my thick stockings and my coat were soaked through. The palette which I had kept a grip on had been knocked over my face and my beard was covered in blue, yellow etc. But anyway, now the excitement is passed and no harm's done, the worst of it was that I lost my painting which was very soon broken up, along with my easel, bag etc. Impossible to fish anything out. Besides, everything was torn to shreds by the sea, that "old hag" as you sister calls her.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

in a letter from Etretat to Alice Hoschedé, 1884; as quoted in: Howard F. Isham (2004) Image of the Sea: Oceanic Consciousness in the Romantic Century. p. 337
1870 - 1890

Fish , Sister , Water , Painting

“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

“The sea is superb, but the cliffs don't match up to those at Fecamp. Here I'll be certain to do more boats.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

in his letter from Dieppe; as quoted in: Howard F. Isham (2004) Image of the Sea: Oceanic Consciousness in the Romantic Century. p. 336 : About his 1880s travels
1870 - 1890

Sea

“Some people think love is the end of the road, and if you're lucky enough to find it, you stay there. Other people say it just becomes a cliff you drive off, but most people who've been around awhile know it's just a thing that changes day by day, and depending on how much you fight for it, you get it, or you hold on to it, or you lose it, but sometimes it's never even there in the first place.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book Three: All Hail and Hallelujah

Love , People , Thinking , Change

“These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Speech at Pointe du Hoc on the 40th Anniversary of D-Day http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1984/60684a.htm (6 June 1984)
1980s, First term of office (1981–1985)

Men , War , Boy , Help

“This last summer, when I was on my way back to Vienna from the Appetite-Cure in the mountains, I fell over a cliff in the twilight, and broke some arms and legs and one thing or another, and by good luck was found by some peasants who had lost an ass, and they carried me to the nearest habitation, which was one of those large, low, thatch-roofed farm-houses, with apartments in the garret for the family, and a cunning little porch under the deep gable decorated with boxes of bright colored flowers and cats; on the ground floor a large and light sitting-room, separated from the milch-cattle apartment by a partition; and in the front yard rose stately and fine the wealth and pride of the house, the manure-pile. That sentence is Germanic, and shows that I am acquiring that sort of mastery of the art and spirit of the language which enables a man to travel all day in one sentence without changing cars.”

Mark Twain Christian Science

Book I, Ch. 1 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3187/3187-h/3187-h.htm#link2H_4_0002
Christian Science (1907)

Family , Housing , Light , Mountain

“Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Way

“July 24, 6:03 A. M.
The laundry was warm and the rafters were firm, and Michael Holzapfel jumped from the chair as if it were a cliff…
Michael Holzapfel knew what he was doing.
He killed himself for wanting to live.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

“We think a flower on a cliff is beautiful
Because we stop our feet at the cliff's edge
Unable to step out into the sky
Like that fearless flower
--Sosuke Aizen, Flower on the Precipice”

Tite Kubo (1977) Japanese manga artist

Beauty , Flowers , Thinking

“If Annabeth's mother was Athena, the goddess of wisdom, then why didn't Annabeth know better than to fall off a cliff?”

Rick Riordan book The Titan's Curse

Source: The Titan's Curse

Funny , Wisdom

“You don't want to be rude but you have to be careful - there are a lot of strange people out there.

(Goldman attributes this quote to Cliff Robertson.)”

William Goldman (1931–2018) American novelist, screenwriter and playwright

Source: Adventures In The Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood

People , Quotes

“Come to think of it, an Aes Sedai would probably follow a man off a cliff, too, if only to explain to him - in detail - all the things he was doing incorrectly in the way he went about killing himself.”

Robert Jordan The Wheel of Time

Source: A Memory of Light

Way , Thinking

“The knowledge that she would never be loved in return acted upon her ideas as a tide acts upon cliffs.”

Thornton Wilder book The Bridge of San Luis Rey

Source: The Bridge of San Luis Rey

Love , Idea , Knowledge

“All right. First, find me a cliff"

"That, will it give you a vantage to see the area?"

"No," said Kaladin. "It will give me something to throw you off of”

Brandon Sanderson book The Way of Kings

Source: The Way of Kings

“Hey anyone who thinks a non-military–grade rappelling cable can support the weight of two grown men and a miniature donkey deserves to fall off a cliff.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: Uncommon Criminals

Men , Support , Thinking

“The spoken word converts individual knowledge into mutual knowledge, and there is no way back once you've gone over that cliff. Saying nothing was more amendable, and over time I'd come to see that it was usually your best course of action.”

Karen Joy Fowler book We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Source: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Way , Knowledge , Time

“The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits;—on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!”

Matthew Arnold Dover Beach

St. 1
Dover Beach (1867)
Source: Dover Beach and Other Poems

Light , Sea , Night

“You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.”

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

Way , Time

“A man falling off a cliff to certain death will stretch out a hand even to his worst enemy.”

Robert Jordan Lord of Chaos

Source: Lord of Chaos

Death

“I wish I were driving a blue 1952 Buick
or a dark blue 1942 Buick
or a blue 1932 Buick
over a cliff of hell and into the
sea.”

Charles Bukowski book Love Is a Dog from Hell

Source: Love Is a Dog from Hell

Hell , Sea

“I don't care if we have our house, or a cliff ledge, or a cardboard box. Home is wherever we all are, together”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Home , Housing , Box

“And that was it. All this buildup to a great leap, and I didn't fall or fly. Instead I found myself back on the edge of the cliff, blinking, wondering if I'd ever jumped at all. It's not supposed to be like this.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

Flying

“Campbell" Julia says "Don't do this to me"
"Do what?"
"Push me off the same cliff twice”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

“I’d have been dead a long time ago if not for my friends, one of whom had just jumped off the cliff after me.
I’d have been a lot more appreciative if he hadn’t pushed me first." ~Cassandra Palmer”

Karen Chance American writer

Source: Hunt the Moon

Time , Dead

“Ignorantly is how we all fall in love; for it is a kind of fall. Closing our eyes, we leap from that cliff in hope of a soft landing. Nor is it always soft; but still, without that leap nobody comes to life.”

Salman Rushdie book The Moor's Last Sigh

Source: The Moor's Last Sigh

Love , Life , Hope

“There's always a choice,' said Torak, and walked backward off the cliff.”

Michelle Paver (1960) English children's fiction writer

“Women don't want all that. Women just want a partner who is considerate and attentive, who will spoon with them while reciting Keats, and feed them organic yogurt by candlelight on a seaside cliff at sunset.”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

Women

“And I felt a sudden whirl in my head, knowing this leap was inevitable, that I wasn't just standing on the cliff, toes poking over, but already in mid-air.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

“You don't know about falling off cliffs, Preppie,' she said. 'You never fell off one in your goddamn life.'

'Yeah,' I said, recovering the power of speech. 'When I met you.”

Erich Segal book Love Story

Source: Love Story

Life

“Nudge threw her arms around my neck. 'I love you Max! I love all of us too!'
Yeah, me too,' Said the Gasman. 'I don't care if we have our house, or a cliff ledge, or a cardboard box. Home is wherever we all are, together.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Love , Home , Housing , Box

“I had killed our careful relationship by driving my tongue through its heart and pushing it off a cliff.”

Jeff Lindsay book Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Source: Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Heart

“I learned not to fear infinity,
The far field, the windy cliffs of forever,
The dying of time in the white light of tomorrow,
The wheel turning away from itself,
The sprawl of the wave,
The on-coming water.”

Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) American poet

Fear , Light , Learning , Water

“He's nuts" Bianca said
"We need to jump off this cliff" i said
"Oh nice idea!! Your nuts too”

Rick Riordan book The Titan's Curse

Source: The Titan's Curse

Idea

“She remembered timidly standing atop the Luthadel city wall, afraid to use her Allomancy to jump off, despite Kelsier's coaxing. Now she could step off a cliff and muse thoughtfully to herself on the way down.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Hero of Ages

Way

“Cliff said "damn" for me (I'm going to die). I didn't know he liked me enough to swear.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Night World, No. 1

“Acting without knowing takes you right off the cliff.”

Ray Bradbury book Something Wicked This Way Comes

Source: Something Wicked This Way Comes

“Inching one's way along a steep cliff in the dark: on reaching the highway, one breathes a sigh of relief. Just when one can't take any more, one sees the moonlight. Beauty that seems to infuse itself into the heart: I know about that”

Banana Yoshimoto book Kitchen

Source: Kitchen

Beauty , Way , Heart

“I love it in a movie when they throw a guy off a cliff. I love it even when it's not a movie. No, especially when it's not a movie.”

George Carlin book Brain Droppings

Source: Brain Droppings

Love , Guy

“Tante Isabelle says it’s better to be bold than meek. She says if you jump off a cliff at least you’ll fly before you fall.”

Kristin Hannah book The Nightingale

Source: The Nightingale

Flying

“And now Rocky is begging me to watch Dora the Explorer with him. I understand that millions of kids love Dora and have learned to read or whatever from her show. But I wouldn't mind if Dora fell off a cliff and took her little pals with her”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Forever Princess

Love , Understanding , Learning , Reading

“Really knowing is good. Not knowing, or refusing to know, is bad, or amoral, at least. You can't act if you don't know. Acting without knowing takes you right off the cliff.”

Ray Bradbury book Something Wicked This Way Comes

Source: Something Wicked This Way Comes

“But the act, called the sexual act, is not for the depositing of seed. It is for leaping off into the unknown, as from a cliff's edge, like Sappho into the sea.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

Sea

“When you jump off a cliff, is it better to land on jagged rocks or burning lava? I know this one. The answer is obvious: It doesn't matter where you land. You just jumped off a cliff.”

Richard Kadrey (1957) San Francisco-based novelist, freelance writer, and photographer

Source: Sandman Slim

“I could instance a load of fuckers whose throats I'd cut and push over the nearest cliffs, but there's no percentage in that!”

Charles Haughey (1925–2006) Irish politician

The Flawed Chieftain http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/niall_stanage/2006/06/the_flawed_chieftain.html (The Guardian 'Comment is Free')
In an interview with Hot Press magazine

“[T]wo moments, of trance and struggle, mingle in the real life of societyː an undercurrent of conflict and disbelief always counteracts the routines of dependence and deference. Society, no matter how impregnable it seems to its inhabitants, always stands at the edge of the cliff. The petty practical quarrels and normative disputes, endlessly refought to reproduce a social world in the face of divergent interests and changing circumstance, can escalate at any moment into broader and more intense conflicts that put this world at risk.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: Social Theoryː Its Situation and Its Task (1987), p. 205

Life , World , Change , Dependency

“Anonymous excess takes life over the cliff, exceeding socially utilizable transgressions and homeostatic sacrifices. Matter goes insane.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

"No Future" (1995), in Fanged Noumena, p. 396

Life

“Ikenobo Sen'o, a master of flower arranging, once said (the remark is to be found in his Sayings): "With a spray of flowers, a bit of water, one evokes the vastness of rivers and mountains." The Japanese garden too, of course symbolizes the vastness of nature. The Western garden tends to be symmetrical, the Japanese garden asymmetrical, and this is because the asymmetrical has the greater power to symbolize multiplicity and vastness. The asymmetry, of course, rests upon a balance imposed by delicate sensibilities. Nothing is more complicated, varied, attentive to detail, than the Japanese art of landscape gardening. Thus there is the form called the dry landscape, composed entirely of rocks, in which the arrangement of stones gives expression to mountains and rivers that are not present, and even suggests the waves of the great ocean breaking in upon cliffs.”

Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972) Japanese author, Nobel Prize winner

Japan, the Beautiful and Myself (1969)

Art , Mountain , Flowers , Nature

“I sit cross-legged on the rock
The valleys and streams are cold and damp
Sitting quietly is beautiful
The cliffs are lost in mist and fog
I rest happily in this place
At dusk the tree shadows are low
I look into my mind
A white lotus emerges from the dark mud”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

Beauty , Tree

“And just like this, all of a sudden, your people and mine will begin to talk?" "It only looks sudden from some places. Running off a cliff is sudden if you don't know it's there, even if you have been running toward it for days." "That's not a reassuring metaphor.”

John Barnes book Earth Made of Glass

"It isn't meant to be."
Earth Made of Glass (1998)

People

“Once, my back wedded to the solid cliff,
I sat silently, bathed in the full moon's light. I counted there ten thousand shapes,
None with substance save the moon's own glow. The pristine mind is empty as the moon,
I thought, and like the moon, freely shines. By what I knew of moon I knew the mind,
Each mirror to each, profound as stone.”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Encounters With Cold Mountain, tr. Peter Stambler (Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1996)

Wedding , Light

“In brief, part of the need for funding comes from the need to create balance to a third of a century of funding an “attitude” toward men. And part comes from the need to study how both sexes can make a transition from those rigid roles to more flexible roads with a clear enough road map to not go over too many cliffs along the way…”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 241.

Men , Sex , Way , Study

“We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course." Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic.”

Lee Iacocca book Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

Where Have All the Leaders Gone? (2007), Scribner,

Cars , Madness

“It’s too late to change your mind after you’ve jumped off the cliff.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Lini
(15 October 1993)

Change

“A few years hence and he will be beneath the sod; but those cliffs will stand, as now, facing the ocean, incessantly lashed by its waves, yet unshaken, immovable; and other eyes will gaze on them for their brief day of life, and then they, too, will close.”

Henry Liddon (1829–1890) British theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 384.

Life

“!-- Setting forth once more, embarking upon the search once again: the narrow path that snakes among livid rocks and desolate, camel-colored hills; white houses hanging suspended from cliffs, looking as though they were about to let go and fall on the wayfarer’s head; the smell of sweating hides and cow dung; the buzz of afternoon; the screams of monkeys leaping about amid the branches of the trees or scampering along the flat rooftops or swinging from the railings of a balcony; overhead, birds circling and the bluish spirals of smoke rising from kitchen fires; the almost pink light on the stones; the taste of salt on parched lips; the sound of loose earth slithering away beneath one’s feet; the dust that clings to one’s sweat-drenched skin, makes one’s eyes red, and chokes one’s lungs; i --> Images, memories, fragmentary shapes and forms — all those sensations, visions, half-thoughts that appear and disappear in the wink of an eye, as one sets forth to meet…. The path also disappears as I think of it, as I say it.”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

Source: The Monkey Grammarian (1974), Ch. 1

Color , Search , Bird , Thinking

“Among a thousand clouds and ten thousand streams
Here lives an idle man
In the daytime wandering over green mountains
At night coming home to sleep by the cliff
Swiftly springs and autumns pass
But my mind is at peace, clear and free
By now I need nothing to lean on
To be still as the waters of the autumn river”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

Peace , Home , Mountain , Spring

“Apple is balancing on a knife edge. I think we're looking at the end stage of a successful technology disruption on the classic pattern. The question is no longer whether Android can be stopped, but when Apple's market share will fall off a cliff. I think that could easily happen as soon as the next 90 days.”

Eric S. Raymond (1957) American computer programmer, author, and advocate for the open source movement

The Smartphone Wars: multicarrier breakout fail http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3152 in Armed and Dangerous (21 April 2011)

Question , Thinking , Success

“Your body will never be more connected to your mind than when something is at stake. That's how you measure the value of a movement: by its consequences. Climb a tree, throw a rock, balance on the edge of a cliff-- you lose focus for a fraction of a second, you're screwed. It takes a very affluent and indulged culture to convince itself that standing around in weird poses is exercise.”

Erwan Le Corre (1971)

Christopher McDougall (2015). Natural Born Heroes: How A Daring Band of Misfits Mastered the Lost Secrets of Strength and Endurance, Vintage.

Exercises , Tree

“We lunched in Fregene: grilled sardines sprinkled with parsley and lemon. Federico ate daintily, like someone with no appetite. The beach was deserted, the wind brisk. In the distance stood the abandoned lighthouse he filmed for 8 1/2. Like someone about to propose a toast, he stood up and "recited" from King Lear :
Hark! Have you heard the news? The king fell off a cliff.
O horrible! Were you very close to him?
Indeed, sir. Close enough to push.
We laughed until he brusquely sat down again, scraping the fish scales off his fingers, staring at the age spots that covered his hands. The beautiful adolescent waitress asked for his autograph. He drew himself as a man-lion in a hat and scarf with huge paws chasing her, and signed it "Féfé." We spent the afternoon visiting Ostia and returned to Rome in a sweltering twilight. He asked to be driven home for a change of clothes. We invited Giulietta, who wore a green velvet turban, to join us for dinner. (Had she already lost her hair from chemotherapy?) Graciously, she declined while smoking cigarette after cigarette. At Cesarina's, Federico drew hilarious, pornographic sketches on the table napkin saying, "If you have not made love today then you have lost a day!"”

Damian Pettigrew Canadian filmmaker

The entire restaurant was at his feet. He was twenty years old now and as thin as Kafka. He was Rome. He had adopted us the way Rome adopts everyone, and we loved him.
On Fellini's final years
Federico Fellini: Sou um Grande Mentiroso (2008)

Love , Age , Beauty , Way

“The people with whom I grew up in the Vestmannaeyjar carried heaven within themselves; even if it was sixty fathoms at the end of a rope down a cliff, fowling, they were at home in God's City of Zion.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

old María
Paradísarheimt (Paradise Reclaimed) (1960)

God , People , Home

“Instead of being on display on the cliff for a thousand years
I'd rather have a hearty cry on my lover's shoulder for a single night.”

Shu Ting (1952) Chinese writer

"Goddess Peak" [神女峰, Shennü feng], in The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature, Volume II: From 1375 (Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 649

Lovers , Cry , Night

“There are those who are willing to be herded in droves through 'scenic' places; who find mountains grand if they be proper mountains, with waterfalls, cliffs, and lakes. To such the Kansas plains are tedious. They see the endless corn, but not the heave and grunt of ox teams breaking the prairie. History, for them, grows on campuses. They look at the low horizon, but they cannot see it, as de Vaca did, under the bellies of the buffalo.”

Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American writer and scientist

" Country http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/AldoLeopold/AldoLeopold-idx?type=turn&entity=AldoLeopold.ALDeskFile.p0666&id=AldoLeopold.ALDeskFile&isize=XL" [1941]; Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 32-33.
1940s

History , Mountain

“As stars in the night sky glittering
round the moon's brilliance blaze in all their glory
when the air falls to a sudden, windless calm…
all the lookout peaks stand out and the jutting cliffs
and the steep ravines and down from the high heavens bursts
the boundless, bright air and all the stars shine clear
and the shepherd's heart exults.”

Homér Iliad

VIII. 551–555 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Alexander Pope's translation:
: As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night,
O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light,
When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,
And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene;
Around her throne the vivid planets roll,
And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole,
O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed,
And tip with silver every mountain's head;
Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise,
A flood of glory bursts from all the skies.
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

Star , Heart , Night

“As a mariner caught in a winter sea, to whom neither lazy Wain nor Moon with friendly radiance shows directions, stands clueless in mid commotion of land and sea, expecting every moment rocks sunk in treacherous shallows, or foaming cliffs with spiky tops to run upon the rearing prow.”
Ac velut hiberno deprensus navita ponto, cui neque Temo piger neque amico sidere monstrat Luna vias, medio caeli pelagique tumultu stat rationis inops, jam jamque aut saxa malignis expectat summersa vadis aut vertice acuto spumantes scopulos erectae incurrere prorae.

Statius book Thebaid

Source: Thebaid, Book I, Line 370

Winter , Sea

“As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form,
Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm,—
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head.”

Oliver Goldsmith The Deserted Village

Source: The Deserted Village (1770), Line 189.

“Getting up any cliff is like a physics problem -- you just got to hold on, try everything, and stick with it.”

Marlan Scully (1939) American physicist

as quoted by Robin Beaver in Making 'one great discovery after another' - Marlan Scully embraced science as fervently as his love for the state, Made in Wyoming http://www.madeinwyoming.net/profiles/scully.php (2006)

Problem

“…the American's upper yards and punctured sails rose above the fog of gunfire like a cliff.”

Douglas Reeman (1924–2017) British author

For My Country's Freedom, Cap 11 "Like Father, Like Son"

“A glimpse of Breidablick, whose walls are light
As e'en the silver on the cliff it shone;
Of dark blue steel its columns azure height
And the big altar was one agate stone.
It seemed as if the air upheld alone
Its dome, unless supporting spirits bore it,
Studded with stars Odin's spangled throne,
A light inscrutable burned fiercely o'er it;
In sky-blue mantles,
Sat the gold-crowned gods before it.”

Esaias Tegnér (1782–1846) Swedish poet, professor and bishop

Canto XXIII, Stanza 13.
Fridthjof's Saga (1820-1825)

God , Star , Support , Light

“Like Thelma and Louise, Medicare and Social Security are headed for the cliff. And we are in the back seat.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

2000s, Where the Right Went Wrong (2004)

“Do I have a body? Or have I none?
Am I who I am? Or am I not?
Pondering these questions, I sit
Leaning against the cliff while the years go by
And the green grass grows up between my feet
And the red dust settles on my head
Then men of the world come and thinking me dead
Bring offerings of wine and fruit”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

Men , World , Question , Thinking

“Things could have been even worse. This week, we managed to avoid driving off a cliff. But we’re still on the road to nowhere.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

Regarding the last-minute deal that ended the 2013 U.S. government shutdown just before the U.S. defaulted on its debt
[Paul Krugman, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/18/opinion/krugman-the-damage-done.html?ref=opinion&_r=1&, The Damage Done, New York Times, October 18, 2013, October 18, 2013]
The New York Times Columns

“We came to a side road, and off the side of the side road there was another fifteen foot cliff and at the bottom of the cliff there was another pile of garbage. And we decided that one big pile is better than two little piles, and rather than bring that one up we decided to throw ours down.”

Arlo Guthrie (1947) American folk singer

Alice's Restaurant Massacree

“The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods.”

Sinclair Lewis book Babbitt

Babbitt (1922), Ch. 1, First sentence

“I'd push the lot of you over a cliff myself. Except the one in the wheelchair, I think I'd lose the sympathy vote before people had time to think it through.”

Tom Stoppard Arcadia

Bernard, Act II
Arcadia (1993)

People , Thinking , Time

“The moon, a sweeping scimitar, dipped in the stormy straits,
The dawn, a crimson cataract, burst through the eastern gates,
The cliffs were robed in scarlet, the sands were cinnabar,
Where first two men spread wings for flight and dared the hawk afar.”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Source: Young Adventure (1918), Winged Man

Men

“Growing up in such a stunning landscape is inevitably going to have an effect on you, whether you rebel or whether you embrace, because it's so striking. I lived on this rugged, rugged coastline with the North Sea hammering at the cliffs, and the weather changes literally every half hour. My parents met as rock climbers, so they're absolute outdoors fiends, and we were constantly up hills and under canvas and camping and tramping around. They're very fond memories and something I still love to do.”

KT Tunstall (1975) Scottish singer-songwriter and guitarist

Barnes & Noble Interview with David Sprague (February 2006).

Love , Parent , Memory , Change

“The composer is now faced, not with further experiment but with the more difficult task of consolidating the experiments of this vertiginous period. He is like a man in a high-powered motor-car that has got out of control. He must either steer it away from the cliff's edge back to the road or leap out of it altogether. Most modern composers have chosen the latter plan, remarking, as they dexterously save their precious lives: "I think motor-cars are a little vieux jeu”

Constant Lambert (1905–1951) British composer and conductor

don't you?"
"The Age of Pastiche", p. 70.
Music, Ho! (1934)

Cars , Thinking

“The great innovators have always been fearless…. I have fallen off haystacks, out of trees, over cliffs. I have been nearly drowned, shot and hanged. I have been in countless car crashes without getting a scratch. I have been alone in an office with Louis B. Mayer.”

Michael Powell (1905–1990) English film director

Attributed

Cars , Tree

“Following daily such a dread-
ful trade to earn a living,
With every second on that cliff
So cruel and unforgiving”

Alan Brownjohn (1931) British writer

“Hitler killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs. As it is, they succumbed anyway in their millions.”

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

Mahatma Gandhi, June 1946, in an interview with Louis Fischer. Rabbi Stephen Pearce, Torah Offers Ethics, rules, so all is fair in love and war, September 2000, http://www.jewishsf.com/bk000901/torah.shtml . Quoted from Hinduism and Judaism compilation https://web.archive.org/web/20060423090103/http://www.nhsf.org.uk/images/stories/HinduDharma/Interfaith/hinduzion.pdf The Life of Mahatma Gandhi (1950) by Louis Fischer. The quote is in the context of Gandhi's argument to his biographer that collective suicide would have been a heroic response that would have "aroused the world and the people of Germany to Hitler's violence".
Posthumous publications (1950s and later)

Time , Sea

“I constructed a machine that I imagined was capable of taking me as high as I wanted to go. I launched myself into the air from the edge of a cliff. But I had miscalculated, and I crashed into the valley below.
I returned to my room, quite rumpled but not discouraged. I took some beef marrow and slathered it all over my body, which was bruised from head to toe. I fortified my courage with a bottle of cordial and went back for my machine.”

Cyrano de Bergerac (1619–1655) French novelist, dramatist, scientist and duelist

The Other World (1657)

Imagination , Courage

“He who comes knows only his coming,
He who goes knows only his end.
To be saved from the chasm,
Why cling to the cliff?
Clouds floating low
Never know where the breezes will blow them.”

Sengai (1750–1837) Japanese artist

Japanese Death Poems. Compiled by Yoel Hoffmann. ISBN 978-0-8048-3179-6

“The Venetian Bridge and the fine cliff walks are a handsome background for a wealth of entertainment which most visitors find irresistible.”

Arthur Mee (1875–1943) British journalist and writer

Page 63, Clacton on Sea.
The King's England: Essex

Wealth

“I know what turns me on, and it's that fine line, that point where you're falling off the edge of a cliff, where your stomach turns, [and] I'm always trying to find that point in music. You rarely hit it, and again, that's the joy of playing live, because there you can be just at that point where you've lost balance. I'm always walking between polarities, trying to find the opposing sides.”

KatieJane Garside (1968) English singer

On creative aspirations, Drowned in Sound http://drownedinsound.com/in_depth/4562-i-want-to-have-a-past (2002)

Music , Joy

“What do you want — a cliff over a city?
A foreland, sloped to sea and overgrown with roses?
These people live here.”

Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980) poet and political activist

"Gauley Bridge"
U.S. 1 (1938), The Book of the Dead

People , Sea

“Science-fiction balances you on the cliff. Fantasy shoves you off.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

The Circus of Dr. Lao Introduction (1956)

Science

“It is a bit unsettling, at first, to think of Apple as a control freak, because it is completely at odds with their corporate image. Weren't these the guys who aired the famous Super Bowl ads showing suited, blindfolded executives marching like lemmings off a cliff? Isn't this the company that even now runs ads picturing the Dalai Lama (except in Hong Kong) and Einstein and other offbeat rebels?
It is indeed the same company, and the fact that they have been able to plant this image of themselves as creative and rebellious free-thinkers in the minds of so many intelligent and media-hardened skeptics really gives one pause. It is testimony to the insidious power of expensive slick ad campaigns and, perhaps, to a certain amount of wishful thinking in the minds of people who fall for them. It also raises the question of why Microsoft is so bad at PR, when the history of Apple demonstrates that, by writing large checks to good ad agencies, you can plant a corporate image in the minds of intelligent people that is completely at odds with reality.”

Neal Stephenson (1959) American science fiction writer

"Class Struggle on the Desktop"
In the Beginning... was the Command Line (1999)

People , Guy , History , Intelligence

“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

“Marylin Marsh, who had about it with Spain, declared to him [the old Spanish man] […] But it redounds to your national credit, the then Missus Turner went on in effect - she'd been reading up on reciprocal atrocities in the Guerra Civil - that the sunny Spanish could never be guilty of an Auschwitz, for example. In the first place, your ovens would have died, like our kitchen stove, instead of your Jews, whom you'd got rid of anyhow in the sunny Fifteenth century, no? And in the second place the whole idea of extermination camps would've been too impersonal for your exquisite Moorish tastes. Much more agradable to push folks off a cliff one at a time into a gorgeous Mediterranean sunset, as you did near Malaga - three hundred, was it, or three thousand? Or to rape and then kill a convent-full of nuns in the manner of the saint of their choice - was that Barcelona or Valencia?”

John Barth book Sabbatical: A Romance

Source: Sabbatical: A Romance (1982), p. 37

Idea , Time , Reading