Quotes about cold (1482 quotes, page 11)

“The cold heart will burst
If mistrusted first
And a calm heart will break
When given a shake”

Leslie Feist (1976) Canadian musician

"How My Heart Behaves"
The Reminder (2007)

Heart

“Mount Everest: throughout my early life, she was cold and there.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Life

“Day after day
They send my friends away
To mansions cold and grey.
To the far side of town
Where the thin men stalk the streets
While the sane stay underground.Day after day,
They tell me I can go.
They tell me I can blow
To the far side of town
Where it's pointless to be high,
'Cause it's such a long way down.”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

All the Madmen
Song lyrics, The Man Who Sold the World (1970)

Men , Way

“The ancient empires fall, the dark-skinned peoples fade and even the demons of antiquity gasp their last, but over all stands the Aryan barbarian, white-skinned, cold-eyed, dominant, the supreme fighting man of the earth.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"Wings in the Night" (1932)

People , Fight

“She seemed to have neither sense of fullness nor taste, and would often combine foods in manners that struck Blue as problematic. She didn't believe in telling people how to live their lives (well, maybe a little), but it was hard to stand by and watch Gwenllian spread peanut butter on a cold hot dog.”

Maggie Stiefvater (1981) American writer

pg 165-166
The Raven Cycle Series, Blue Lily, Lily Blue (2014)

People , Food , Dogs , Sense

“A case can be made... that secrecy is for losers. For people who don't realize how important information really is. The Soviet Union realized this too late. Openness is now a singular, and singularly American, advantage. We put it in peril by poking along in a mode of an age now past. It is time to dismantle government secrecy, this most pervasive of Cold War-era regulations. It is time to begin building the supports for the era of openness that is already upon us.”

Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927–2003) American politician

Secrecy, ch. 8 (1998)

War , People , Age , Support

“If you see one cold and vehement at the same time, set him down for a fanatic.”

Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801) Swiss poet

No. 282
Aphorisms on Man (c. 1788)

Time

“All have become so nervous and so cold
That each man hates the cause and distant words
Which brought him here, more terribly than bullets.”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

"Two Armies"
The Still Centre (1939)

Hate , Distant

“We have watched mutant creatures crawl from sewers into cold flat starlight and whisper shyly to each other, drawing maps and messages in faecal mud.
I have sat with the wind at my side and seen cruel things, wicked things.
My scars and bonestubs itch. I am forgetting the weight, the sweep, the motion of wings. If I were not garuda I would pray. But I will not obeise myself before arrogant spirits.”

China Miéville book Perdido Street Station

Source: Perdido Street Station (2000), p. 51

Drawing , Forgetting

“As a nation we must prevent hunger and cold to those of our people who are in honest difficulties.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

The Hoover Policies (1937)

Hunger , People

“Now and then I'll be a little brief with some of my band members. I won't talk or I'll refrain from talking to my band while we're rehearsing. But basically I am friendly with people. … I'll go on cold streaks. I'll work with a collaborator then I'll stop calling the collaborator for a couple weeks. I'll say I need a break from you for a couple weeks. But they're "OK, fine, fine, I'll see you in two weeks."”

Brian Wilson (1942) American musician, singer, songwriter and record producer

CNN interview (2004)

People

“Though it's cold and lonely in the deep dark night
I can see paradise by the dashboard light.”

Jim Steinman (1947) American musician

Bat out of Hell (1977), Paradise by the Dashboard Light

Light , Night

“Oh, soon we'll be out amid the cold world's strife. Soon we'll be sliding down the razor blade of life. Oooh.”

Tom Lehrer (1928) American singer-songwriter and mathematician

"Bright College Days"
An Evening (Wasted) With Tom Lehrer (1959)

Life , World

“Looking back on my attitude to the commonly accepted pleasures of life, I can say that I have never set much store by them. I hardly care what I eat, provided it suffices, and I care not at all for wine or spirits. When I was fourteen someone gave me a glass of beer, and I thought it so unpleasant I have never touched beer again. As for cigarettes, I dislike even being in a room where people are smoking. Sex has been of no great consequence to me, and the celibacy of desert life left me untroubled. Marriage would certainly have been a crippling handicap. I have therefore been able to lead the life of my choice with no sense of deprivation. Existence in the desert had a simplicity that I found wholly satisfying; there, everything not a necessity was an encumbrance. It was those three months in the Sahara in 1938 that taught me to appreciate things that most Europeans are able to take for granted: clean water to drink; meat to eat; a warm fire on a cold night; shelter from the rain; above all, tired surrender to sleep.”

Wilfred Thesiger (1910–2003) British explorer

Source: The Life Of My Choice (1987), p. 295.

Life , Marriage , People , Pleasure

““Petersburg socialism seems cold to the likes of our Cossacks, who would rather worship personalities than embrace ideas.”
I shared his irony. “You make them sound like Americans.””

Michael Moorcock book The Steel Tsar

The Steel Tsar (1981)
Source: Book 2, Chapter 4 “The Black Ships” (p. 361)

Idea , Personality

“Flotsam floats when all is sunk.
Jetsam thrown isn't just junk.
Coughs and colds and bright red sores
Waiting for us, so bend yer oars!”

Garth Nix (1963) Australian fantasy writer

Source: The Keys to the Kingdom series, Drowned Wednesday (2005), p. 53.

Waiting

“During the Cold War, widespread alcoholism was always seen in the West as evidence that life under Communism was so dismal that Russians needed large quantities of vodka to get through the day. Under capitalism, however, Russians drinks more than twice as much alcohol as they used to - and they are reaching for harder painkillers as well.”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007)

Life , War , Alcohol , Communication

“There is a very stunning range of studies… of interstellar organic matter… the cold, dark spaces between the stars are also loaded with organic matter. …complex organic materials are everywhere.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006)

Star , Study

“[Radhakrishnan describes the state of dejection he experienced as a student at Madras Christian College:] 'I was strongly persuaded of the inferiority of the Hindu religion to which I attributed the political downfall of India…. I remember the cold sense of reality, the depressing feeling that crept over me, as a causal relation between the anaemic Hindu religon and our political failure forced itself on my mind.”

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India

Radhakrishnan, 'The Spirit of Man', quoted in Rajiv Malhotra, Indra's Net, p. 316., 1st ed.

Religion , Feeling , Failure , Reality

“Putin's Russia is our adversary and moral opposite. It is committed to the destruction of the post-war, rule-based, world order built on American leadership and the primacy of our political and economic values…There is no placating Putin. There is no transforming him from a gangster to a responsible statesman. Previous administrations have tried and failed not because they didn’t try hard enough, but because Putin wants no part of it… Oppose Russian aggression against the world we have built from the ruined cities and destroyed empires of World War II. Don’t surrender the gains for our security and the progress for humanity that our Cold War victory achieved. Support the Russian people and their rights to liberty and justice, not the corrupt leaders who betray them… [A]ll who risk their lives to free Russia from tyranny and corruption are our allies. They are our moral equals. And the president of the United States, the nation that has been the greatest force for good in human history, should be the first among us to recognize that.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

"Russia dissidents are our moral equals" http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/02/13/trump-gets-it-wrong-on-putin-russia-moral-equals-john-mccain-column/97822770/ (13 February 2017), USA Today
2010s, 2017

War , People , World , Justice

“The cristall water ran so clere and cold,
That in myn ere maid contynualy
A maner soun, mellit with armony,
That full of lytill fischis by the brym
Now here now there with bakkis blewe as lede
Lap and playit, and in a rout can swym
So prattily, and dressit tham to sprede
Thair curall fynnis as the ruby rede,
That in the sonne on thair scalis bryght
As gesserant ay glitterit in my sight.”

James I of Scotland (1394–1437) King of Scots

Source: The Kingis Quair, Line 1060

Water

“It must, however, be admitted, that the hard circumstances form the strong character, as the cold climes of the north nurture a race of men, whose activity and energies leave those of the south far behind. Hence it is that the characters of women are more uniform than men; they are rarely placed in circumstances to call forth the latent powers of the mind.”

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

Literary Remains

Women , Men , Strong

“Tom Strong and the rest of the ABC bunch leave me cold for a lot of reasons. First—and I realize this is purely subjective, but what isn’t?—I find a smugness, a condescension that reads to me as nostalgia being done by someone who is not in the least bit nostalgic. Almost as if Moore sits down to write and flips his brain 180°, so he’s not really writing what he feels or what he likes, just the exact opposite of what he would usually write.

Also, there is the whole pastiche/homage/whatever thing. I find this really annoying. Not just when Moore does it. I can look back on elements of my own work and be annoyed at myself for going down that path. I only did it on rare occasions, tho. Moore has turned it into a career. So much so, that in the post-Watchmen era I have trouble calling to mind much that he has done that was not based on someone else’s previous work. I am not the most original guy on the block, but at least when I do Superman, I do Superman.

I suppose a lot of this could simply be the bad taste his earlier work left for me. All that tearing down and “deconstructionism.””

John Byrne (1950) American author and artist of comic books

All that revealing of the flaws and feet of clay, not a bit of which has served the industry in any positive way, and, in fact, has left huge scars across it, like the ones left in the landscape by open pit mining.
Alan Moore

Way , Guy , Feeling , Tear

“Rhymer, brawler, and musician,
Famed for his lunar expedition,
And the unnumbered duels he fought, —
And lover also, — by interposition! —
Here lies Hercule Savinien
De Cyrano de Bergerac,
Who was everything, yet was naught.
I cry you pardon, but I may not stay;
See, the moon-ray that comes to call me hence!
I would not bid you mourn less faithfully
That good, brave Christian: I would only ask
That when my body shall be cold in clay
You wear those sable mourning weeds for two,
And mourn awhile for me, in mourning him.”

Edmond Rostand (1868–1918) French writer

Cyrano, Act 5, Sc. 6
Cyrano de Bergerac (1897)

Lovers , Cry

“Wherever there exists a difference of temperature… it is possible to have also the production of impelling power. …All substances in nature can be employed for this purpose, all are susceptible of changes of volume, of successive contractions and dilatations, through the alternation of heat and cold. All are capable of overcoming in their changes of volume certain resistances… A solid… A liquid… An aeriform fluid… If it is enclosed in an expansible space, such as a cylinder provided with a piston, it will produce movements of great extent. Vapors of all substances capable of passing into a gaseous condition, as of alcohol, of mercury, of sulphur, etc., may fulfil the same office as vapor of water. …Most of these… have been proposed, many even have been tried, although… without remarkable success.”

Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot (1796–1832) French physicist, the "father of thermodynamics" (1796–1832)

Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat (1824)

Nature , Water , Change , Success

“To paint an autumn landscape I will not try to remember what colors suit this season, I will only be inspired by the sensation that the season gives me; the icy clearness of the sour blue sky will express the season just as well as the tonalities of the leaves. My sensation itself may vary, the autumn may be soft and warm like a protracted summer or quite cool with a cold sky and lemon yellow trees that give a chilly impression and announce winter.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

Source: 1900s, Notes d'un Peintre (Notes of a Painter) (1908), p. 412

Color , Autumn , Tree , Winter

“Oh Genius! fling aside thy starry crown,
Close up thy rainbow wings, and on thy head
Lay dust and ashes — for, this cold drear world
Is but thy prison-house. Alas for him
Who has thy dangerous gifts, for they are like
The fatal ones that evil spirits give, —
Bright and bewildering, leading unto death.”

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

(26th July 1823) The Artist’s Studio
The London Literary Gazette, 1823

Death , World , Evil , Housing

“From psychics to spiritualists to palm readers to graphologists to astrologists, the ‘expert’ in question either just simply deluded and naive or they’re using a skill called cold-reading.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Other TV and web appearances, The Enemies of Reason (Richard Dawkins)

Question , Reading

“I love the joy of mountains
Wandering free with no concerns
Every day I find food for this old body
There's leisure for thinking, nothing to do
Often I carry an ancient book
Sometimes I climb a rock pavilion
To look down a thousand foot precipice
Overhead are swirling clouds
A cold moon chilly cold
My body feels like a flying crane”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

Love , Books , Food , Feeling

“Sometimes I wander under prehistoric skys
Here she comes with a penetrating stare
cold desert stars feel and sparkle like frost, they are so lost
his seed of adulation is your butter and your bread,
it's an exquisite corpse and its lips are red
If you're alone and you're feeling blue,
everyone in Persia probably feels like you do. ~ Lost”

Steve Kilbey (1954) British artist

Lyrics

Feeling , Star

“You kol-isha think you know everything. You think the world was created for your pleasure, but you do not understand the land. You sit there and you breathe and you feel the cold earth beneath you, and you notice nothing. And why? Because you live your lives in cities of stone, building walls to keep at bay the spirit of the land. You see nothing. You hear nothing. You feel nothing.”

David Gemmell book Waylander II: In the Realm of the Wolf

ibid
Drenai series, Waylander II: In the Realm of the Wolf

Pleasure , World , Feeling , Understanding

“I lie back. They've "refurbished" the room. I loathe the word, its blunt sound (as if someone with a cold were trying to say "furnished"), and don't say it without irony.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

Friend of My Youth (2017)

Lie

“The Brahmans who were custodians of the idols and idol-houses, and “teachers of the infidels”, also received their share of attention from the soldiers of Allãh. Our citations contain only stray references to the Brahmans because they have been compiled primarily with reference to the destruction of temples. Even so, they provide the broad contours of another chapter in the history of medieval India, a chapter which has yet to be brought out in full. The Brahmans are referred to as magicians by some Islamic invaders and massacred straight away. Elsewhere, the Hindus who are not totally defeated and want to surrender on some terms, are made to sign a treaty saying that the Brahmans will be expelled from the temples. The holy cities of the Hindus were “the nests of the Brahmans” who had to be slaughtered before or after the destruction of temples, so that these places were “cleansed” completely of “kufr” and made fit as “abodes of Islam”. Amîr Khusrû describes with great glee how the heads of Brahmans “danced from their necks and fell to the ground at their feet”, along with those of the other “infidels” whom Malik Kãfûr had slaughtered during the sack of the temples at Chidambaram. Fîrûz Shãh Tughlaq got bags full of cow’s flesh tied round the necks of Brahmans and had them paraded through his army camp at Kangra. Muhmûd Shãh II Bahmanî bestowed on himself the honour of being a ghãzî, simply because he had killed in cold blood the helpless BrãhmaNa priests of the local temple after Hindu warriors had died fighting in defence of the fort at Kondapalli. The present-day progressives, leftists and dalits whose main plank is anti-Brahminism have no reason to feel innovative about their ideology. Anti-Brahminism in India is as old a the advent of Islam. Our present-day Brahmin-baiters are no more than ideological descendants of the Islamic invaders. Hindus will do well to remember Mahatma Gandhi’s deep reflection--“if Brahmanism does not revive, Hinduism must perish.””

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume II (1993)

Feeling , History , Teachers , Dance

“June 1, 2009 was the day that we were meant to go to the stadium and try and get the president's attention. It's a national holiday, it's broadcast across the country, and I showed up at the stadium. My friends did not show up. I found myself alone, and I didn't know what to do. I was scared, but I knew very well that that particular day, I had to make a decision. Was I able to live as a coward, like everyone else, or was I going to make a stand? And when the president stood up to speak, I found myself on my feet shouting at the president, telling him to remember the post-election violence victims, to stop the corruption. And suddenly, out of nowhere, the police pounced on me like hungry lions. They held my mouth and dragged me out of the stadium, where they thoroughly beat me up and locked me up in jail. I spent that night in a cold cement floor in the jail, and that got me thinking. What was making me feel this way? My friends and family thought I was crazy because of what I did, and the images that I took were disturbing my life. The images that I took were just a number to many Kenyans. Most Kenyans did not see the violence. It was a story to them. … That day in the stadium, I stood up as a smart coward. By that one action, I said goodbye to the 24 years living as a coward.”

Boniface Mwangi (1983) Kenyan photojournalist

The day I stood up alone

Life , Family , Way , Feeling

“Sinatra with a cold is Picasso without paint, Ferrari without fuel — only worse.”

Gay Talese Frank Sinatra Has a Cold

Frank Sinatra Has a Cold (Esquire, April 1966)

Painting

“As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Source: A Moveable Feast (1964), Ch. 1

Feeling , Strong , Wine , Sea

“Dinner at the "Continental" to commemorate the great reform [the abolition of the serfdom in 1861]. Tedious and incongruous. To dine, drink champagne, make a racket, and deliver speeches about national consciousness, the conscience of the people, freedom, and such things, while slaves in tail-coats are running round your tables, veritable serfs, and your coachmen wait outside in the street, in the bitter cold—that is lying to the Holy Ghost.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Diary, 9 February 1897
Note-Book of Anton Chekhov (1921)

People , Lying , Drink , Freedom

“A faith, like a species, must evolve or go extinct when the environment changes. It is not a gentle process in either case. … It's nice to have grizzly bears and wolves living in the wild. They are no longer a menace; we can peacefully co-exist, with a little wisdom. The same policy can be discerned in our political tolerance, in religious freedom. You are free to preserve or create any religious creed you wish, so long as it does not become a public menace. We're all on the Earth together, and we have to learn some accommodation. … The message is clear: those who will not accommodate, who will not temper, who insist on keeping only the purest and wildest strain of their heritage alive, we will be obliged, reluctantly, to cage or disarm, and we will do our best to disable the memes they fight for. Slavery is beyond the pale. Child abuse is beyond the pale. Discrimination is beyond the pale. The pronouncing of death sentences on those who blaspheme against a religion (complete with bounties or reward for those who carry them out) is beyond the pale. It is not civilized, and it is owed no more respect in the name of religious freedom than any other incitement to cold-blooded murder. … That is — or, rather, ought to be, the message of multiculturalism, not the patronizing and subtly racist hypertolerance that "respects" vicious and ignorant doctrines when they are propounded by officials of non-European states and religions.”

Daniel Dennett book Darwin's Dangerous Idea

Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995)

Death , Wisdom , Faith , Religion

“The character and conquest of the invincible champion are ever the same. A Lacedaemonian died while writing with his own blood on a rock — " Sparta has conquered!" But, O, there is an illustration higher and better than any derived from mere earthly annals. Jesus veiled His glory in the skies; shrouded divinity in mortality, and with godhead and humanity coalesced in His person, entered the lists with more than mortal strife against the powers of hell. He drank the bitter cup with sublimer resignation than the sages of earth ever knew; contended victoriously where finite champions must inevitably have been destroyed; fell, like the strong man, destroying His foes by His death; persevered on our behalf in all the fearful descent from the august throne of the Eternal to the stony floor of the cold and gloomy sepulchre; that Hope's sweet fountain might gush up for mankind in Golgotha, and Salvation plant her banner with immortal triumph at the portal of the conquered tomb.”

Elias Lyman Magoon (1810–1886) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 451.

Death , Fear , Hope , Hell

“In general, it is possible to say that in artists as deliberate, as careful as [Durer and Holbein], drawing is particularly tight and the color is as cold as the verity of mathematics. In other artists, on the contrary, in those who are the poets of the heart, like Raphael, Correggio, Andrea del Sarto, line has more suppleness and color, more winning tenderness. In others whom we call realists that is to say, whose sensibility is more exterior, in Rubens, Velasquez, Rembrandt, for example, line has a living charm with its force and its repose, and the color sometimes bursts into a fanfare of sunlight, sometimes fades into mist.
So, the modes of expression of men of genius differ as much as their souls, and it is impossible to say that in some among them drawing and color are better or worse than in others.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Art, 1912, Ch. V. Drawing and Color, p. 104-105

Men , Color , Soul , Mathematics

“Sibelius justified the austerity of his old age by saying that while other composers were engaged in manufacturing cocktails, he offered the public pure cold water.”

Neville Cardus (1888–1975) English writer

Manchester Guardian (1958)

Age , Water

“I stepped inside. It was almost pitch dark, smelling of old underwear and the sleep of a sick body. A feeble light came from a crack in the window covered by a slice of sacking. Before I could stop him, Sammy had bolted the door…Vapors spilled from our mouths in the cold air. "Let her in, Sammy," I said. "What the hell."”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Hell , Sleep , Light

“No, the Dutchman is not cold, not insensitive, our people are still full of enthusiasm for what is noble and good. Holland above all! We artists, from Rembrandt to Maris, rave over our country. We find our Holland a delicious beautiful country with its meadows, its beaches, its sea, its domestic interiors, its figures, peasants, farmers, Jews, merchants, everything is similar picturesque as it is all just up for grabs. The most beautifully in the Netherlands is however Amsterdam, that delicious spacious Amsterdam, which is expressing so much and uniting so much in itself.”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat van Jozef Israëls, in Nederlands): Neen, de Nederlander is niet koud, niet ongevoelig, ons volk is nog steeds vol geestdrift voor wat edel en goed is. Holland bovenal! Wij kunstenaars, van Rembrandt tot Maris, dwepen met ons land. Wij vinden ons Holland een heerlijk mooi land met zijn weiden, zijn stranden, zijn zee, zijn binnenhuizen, zijn figuren, boeren, landlieden, joden, kooplieden, alles is even schilderachtig, als maar voor het grijpen. Het mooiste van Nederland is echter Amsterdam, het heerlijk ruim Amsterdam, waarvan zoveel uitgaat en dat zooveel in zich vereenigt.
Quote from Israëls' speech of thanks at the honoring-party for his 70th birthday in Arti et Amacitiae in Amsterdam, Feb 1885; as cited in 'Jozef Israëls in Arti', in Algemeen Hadelsblad, 6 Feb. 1895
Quotes of Jozef Israels, 1871 - 1900

People , Beauty , Sea , Country

“A light snow, a snow so faint and small-bodied that it seems nothing more than a manifestation of the cold.”

James Salter book A Sport and a Pastime

A Sport and a Pastime (1967)

Light

“So we beat the Croations at football and I was there yelling "Ah, you Crotes!" and this guy says "It's cro-at; learn to speak English." So I was about to retort when he said "Hang on, you're Omid Djalili! You're good! I said "Aww thanks." He says "What are you going to do next?" I said "I'm in a pantomime of Wind in the Willows. I play the TO-AD, OF TO-AD HALL! I get in my BO-AT! And it sinks because it can't FLO-AT! And when I get out of the river, I'm wet and cold so I put on my CO-AT! And I can't get in my house because it's full of ferrets and STO-ATS!"”

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

Amusing wordplay but ultimately leads nowhere. The Telegraph.
No Agenda (2007)

Guy , Learning , Football , Housing

“The cold, cruel reality is that with one current justice now approaching ninety, and four others over seventy, the day will inevitably arrive when a sitting justice lies in an intensive care unit, both unable to resign and unable to resume his or her duties.”

Jacob M. Appel (1973) American author, bioethicist, physician, lawyer and social critic

"Anticipating the Incapacitated Justice" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jacob-m-appel/anticipating-the-incapaci_b_266179.html, The Huffington Post (2009-08-22)

Justice , Reality

“Degrade first the arts if you'd mankind degrade,
Hire idiots to paint with cold light and hot shade.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Annotations to Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses, title page (c. 1798–1809)
1790s

Art , Light , Painting

“Little yellow spider, laughing at the snow.
Maybe that spider knows something i don't know,
'cause i'm goddamn cold.”

Devendra Banhart (1981) American folk singer

From Niño Rojo

“Shall I make it clear, boys, for all to apprehend,
Those that will not hear, boys, waiting for the end,
Knowing it is near, boys, trying to pretend,
Sitting in cold fear, boys, waiting for the end?”

William Empson (1906–1984) English literary critic and poet

"Just a Smack at Auden" (1937), line 15; cited from John Haffenden (ed.) The Complete Poems (London: Allen Lane, 2000) p. 81.
The Complete Poems

Fear , Boy , Waiting

“the hollow voice
Of that old crone, the only living sound;
Her face, on which mortality has writ
Its closing, with the wan and bony hand,
Raised like a spectre's—and yourself the while,
Cold from the midnight chill, and white with fear,
Your large blue eyes darker and larger grown
With terror's chain'd attention, and your breath
Suppress'd for very earnestness.”

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

The Ancestress (Spoken by Jaromir to Bertha)
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

Fear

“It was dry and cold, not bitter, but with the kind of steady chill that makes it hard to remember being any other way. I tried to imagine people living out here once, and couldn't. It must have been long ago. The land felt like it didn't want anyone bothering it anymore.”

Michael Marshall Smith (1965) British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer

Prologue - Yakima
The Lonely Dead (2004)

People , Way , Imagination

“Look at the material on which to draw. Here is the North, powerful, virile, aggressive, blended with the luxurious, ease-loving, more impetuous South. Again you have the merging of a cold phlegmatic temperament with one mercurial and volatile. Still again the union of great native mental strength, developed or undeveloped, with bodily vigor, but with inferior mind. See, too, what a vast number of environmental influences have been at work in social relations, in climate, in physical surroundings. Along with this we must observe the merging of the vicious with the good, the good with the good, the vicious with the vicious.”

Luther Burbank (1849–1926) American botanist, horticulturist and pioneer in agricultural science

p, 125
The Training of the Human Plant (1907)

Love , Drawing

“Nature, or to speak in more Christian fashion, God, the common Father of men, from the outset gave equal rights to all his children to all the things they needed to preserve their lives. None of us can boast of being more privileged than the rest by nature; but through the insatiable desire to amass wealth, it became impossible for this beautiful brotherhood to endure for long in the world. Men had to resort to division and possession, which resulted in constant quarrels and litigation; of this were born the words 'mine' and 'thine'—such cold terms, as the admirable St. John Chrysostom remarks—of this, too, was born the great diversity of conditions, some living in affluence in every respect, others languishing in penury.”

Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627–1704) French bishop and theologian

"Panegyric in honor of St. Francis of Assisi", as quoted in The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1968), p. 84

Men , God , Children , World

“Now it feels like no one ever left me out in the rain, cold words still remain unspoken.
And I never got lost, spent years in the dark.
You're here, now my heart's unbroken.
When I see you smile, fill my soul again, and I'm unbroken.”

Tim McGraw (1967) American country singer

Unbroken
Song lyrics, Set This Circus Down (2001)

Smile , Feeling , Soul , Heart

“Another Palestinian Mass Murder Attack… An attempted kidnapping and mass murder attack by Palestinian terrorists — killing civilians in cold blood… Two Israeli civilians and seven Palestinians were killed…”

Charles Foster Johnson (1953) American musician

April 9, 2008 http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=29562_Another_Palestinian_Mass_Murder_Attack&only

“I saw the fare welling hands,
They were sickly,
When my hand
Touched her cold and long fingers
Which was from the family of the wailing reed
It gripped an eternal grief in its fist
The pen broke
And pain
Like black drops of ink
dropped on our papery hearts.
I saw the fare welling hands,
They were sickly;”

Farrokh Tamimi (1934–2003) Iranian poet and translator

Poet, Fare welling Hands

Pain , Family , Heart

“She broke in with a question that staggered him.
"Does your idea mean that the next world is a sort of great reservoir of truth, and that what is true in us just pours into it like raindrops?"
"Well!" said he, alarmed and puzzled: "the figure is not perfectly correct, but the idea is a little of that kind."
"After all I wonder whether that may not be what Niagara has been telling me!" said Esther, and she spoke with an outburst of energy that made Strong's blood run cold.”

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

Esther Dudley and George Strong in Ch. IX
Esther: A Novel (1884)

Truth , World , Idea , Question

“Yet now despair itself is mild,
Even as the winds and waters are;
I could lie down like a tired child,
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne and yet must bear,
Till death like sleep might steal on me,
And I might feel in the warm air
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

Stanzas Written in Dejection Near Naples http://www.readprint.com/work-1373/Percy-Bysshe-Shelley (1818), st. 5

Life , Death , Lie , Feeling

“Now, blessings light on him that first invented this same sleep! It covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a cloak; it is meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, heat for the cold, and cold for the hot. It is the current coin that purchases all the pleasures of the world cheap, and the balance that sets the king and the shepherd, the fool and the wise man, even.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part II (1615), Book III, Ch. 68.

Pleasure , World , Fools , Drink

“In spring I stopped eating the bodies of living things. Nonetheless, the other day I ate several slices of tuna sashimi as a form of magic to “undertake” my “communication” with “society.” I also stirred a cup of chawanmushi with a spoon. If the fish, while being eaten, had stood behind me and watched, what would he have thought? “I gave up my only life and this person is eating my body as if it were something distasteful.” “He’s eating me in anger.” “He’s eating me out of desperation.” “He’s thinking of me and, while quietly savoring my fat with his tongue, praying, ‘Fish, you will come with me as my companion some day, won’t you?’” “Damn! He’s eating my body!” Well, different fish would have had different thoughts. … Suppose I were the fish, and suppose that not only I were being eaten but my father were being eaten, my mother were being eaten, and my sister were also being eaten. And suppose I were behind the people eating us, watching. “Oh, look, that man has torn apart my sibling with chopsticks. Talking to the person next to him, he swallowed her, thinking nothing of it. Just a few minutes ago her body was lying there, cold. Now she must be disintegrating in a pitch-dark place under the influence of mysterious enzymes. Our entire family have given up our precious lives that we value, we’ve sacrificed them, but we haven’t won a thimbleful of pity from these people.””

Kenji Miyazawa (1896–1933) Japanese poet and author of children's literature

I must have been once a fish that was eaten.
Letter to Hosaka (May 1918); as quoted in Miyazawa Kenji: Selections, edited by Hiroaki Sato (University of California Press, 2007), pp. 12 https://books.google.it/books?id=D7IwDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA12-13.

Life , People , Family , Spring

“We are carrying into the next decade many unresolved problems raised by Vietnam. How can a democracy such as ours defend its interests at acceptable cost and continue to enjoy the freedom of speech and behavior to which we are accustomed in time of peace? To a Communist enemy the Cold War is a total, unending conflict with the United States and its allies- without formal military hostilities, to be sure- but conducted with the same discipline and determination as a formal war. Unless we can learn to exercise some degree of self-discipline, to accept and enforce some reasonable standard of responsible civic conduct, and to remove the many self-created obstacles to the use of our power, we will be unable to meet the hard competition waiting for us in the decade of the 1970s.”

Maxwell D. Taylor (1901–1987) United States general

Source: Swords and Plowshares (1972), p. 408

Hostility , War , Peace , Behavior

“In every kind of debauch there enters much coldness of soul. It is a conscious and voluntary abuse of pleasure.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

Pleasure , Soul

“The times in his studio when he washed his hands and they smoked, for his hands were so warm and the water so cold.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume Two (1934-1939)
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)

Water , Time

“Look at all those fancy clothes
but these could keep us warm just like those
and what about your soul, is it cold
is it straight from the mold and ready to be sold
and cars and phones and diamond rings, bling bling
those are only removeable things
and what about your mind, does it shine oh
are there things that concern you more than your time”

Jack Johnson (musician) (1975) American musician

Gone.
Song lyrics, On and On (2003)

Cars , Soul , Time , Clothes

“Oh the long and dreary Winter!
Oh the cold and cruel Winter!”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow book The Song of Hiawatha

Pt. XX.
The Song of Hiawatha (1855)

Winter

“They fell upon an ungenial climate, where there were nine months of winter and three months of cold weather, and that called out the best energies of the men, and of the women too, to get a mere subsistence out of the soil, with such a climate. In their efforts to do that they cultivated industry and frugality at the same time — which is the real foundation of the greatness of the Pilgrims.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

On the Pilgrims, in a speech at a New England Society Dinner (22 December 1880).
1880s

Women , Men , Effort , Winter

“Tell him I lingered alone on the shore,
Where we parted, in sorrow, to meet nevermore;
The night-wind blew cold on my desolate heart
But colder those wild words of doom,—“Ye must part.””

Sarah Helen Whitman (1803–1878) United States poet

Our Island of Dreams.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Heart , Parting , Night

“Old sundial, you stand here for Time:
For Love, the vine that round your base
Its tendrils twines, and dares to climb
And lay one flower-capped spray in grace
Without the asking on your cold
Unsmiling and unfrowning face.”

Eleanor Farjeon (1881–1965) English children's writer

Time And Love
Pan-Worship and Other Poems (1908)

Love , Flowers , Time

“I am standing up at the water's edge in my dream
I cannot make a single sound as you scream.
It can't be that cold, the ground is still warm to touch.
This place is so quiet, sensing that storm.”

Peter Gabriel (1950) English singer-songwriter, record producer and humanitarian

Red Rain
Song lyrics, So (1986)

Dreams , Sense , Water

“We have been friends together
In sunshine and in shade.
Since first beneath the chestnut-tree
In fancy we played
But coldness dwells within thine heart
A cloud is on thy brow.
We have been friends together,—
Shall a light word part us now?”

Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton (1808–1877) English feminist, social reformer, and author

We have been Friends.

Tree , Light , Heart , Parting

“This is an historic moment. We have in this past year made great progress in ending the long era of conflict and cold war. We have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations a new world order, a world where the rule of law, not the law of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations. When we are successful, and we will be, we have a real chance at this new world order, an order in which a credible United Nations can use its peacekeeping role to fulfill the promise and vision of the U. N.'s founders. We have no argument with the people of Iraq. Indeed, for the innocents caught in this conflict, I pray for their safety.”

George H. W. Bush (1924–2018) American politician, 41st President of the United States

WAR IN THE GULF: THE PRESIDENT; Transcript of the Comments by Bush on the Air Strikes Against the Iraqis http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE2DF1F3AF934A25752C0A967958260 The New York Times. January 17, 1991 (NYT transcript of Bush speech from the Oval office January 16, 1991, (Eastern time) two hours after air strikes began in Iraq and Kuwait.)

War , People , World , Law

“If judge and jury had to hang the prisoner themselves in cold blood, there would be fewer executions; if we each had to butcher our own meat, there would be a great increase in the number of vegetarians.”

Ernest Howard Crosby (1856–1907) American politician

Tolstoy and His Message (New York: Funk and Wagnall's Company, 1904), p. 53 https://archive.org/stream/tolstoyhismessa00cros#page/52.

“Cold Mountain is hidden in white clouds
It's peaceful to be cut off from the busy world
I use dry grass for cushions in my mountain home
My only light is the round moon
My bed is the rock beside the green pool
Tigers and deer are my companions
I delight in this happy peaceful life
Forever beyond the world of men”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

Life , Men , World , Peace

“When you are posthumous it is cold and dark
and that is why patriots are a bit nuts in the head”

Roger McGough (1937) British writer and poet

"Why Patriots are a Bit Nuts in the Head", from The Mersey Sound (1967)

“[H]e was now a cold observer, looking on mankind as the subject of his experiment, and, at length, converting man and woman to be his puppets, and pulling the wires that moved them to such degrees of crime as were demanded by his study.
Thus Ethan Brand became a fiend. He began to be so from the moment that his moral nature had ceased to keep the pace of improvement with his intellect.”

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

p, 125
"Ethan Brand" (1850)

Nature , Study

“As the scene of life would be more the cold emptiness of space than the warm, dense atmosphere of planets, the advantage of containing no organic material at all, so as to be independent of both these conditions, would be increasingly felt.”

John Desmond Bernal (1901–1971) British scientist

Source: The world, the flesh & the devil (1929) (1969), p. 63

Life

“General impressions are never to be trusted. Unfortunately when they are of long standing they become fixed rules of life and assume a prescriptive right not to be questioned. Consequently those who are not accustomed to original inquiry entertain a hatred and horror of statistics. They cannot endure the idea of submitting sacred impressions to cold-blooded verification. But it is the triumph of scientific men to rise superior to such superstitions, to desire tests by which the value of beliefs may be ascertained, and to feel sufficiently masters of themselves to discard contemptuously whatever may be found untrue.”

Francis Galton (1822–1911) British polymath: geographer, statistician, pioneer in eugenics

Cited in Modgil, Sohan, and Celia Modgil, eds. Arthur Jensen: Consensus and Controversy. Vol. 4. Routledge, 1987.
Other works

Life , Men , Feeling , Idea

“It is true that we were cautious in our planning. There were many uncertainties about how well our Lunar module systems and our Pressure suit and backpack would match the engineering predictions in the hostile lunar environment. We were operating in a near perfect vacuum with the temperature well above 200 degrees Fahrenheit with the local gravity only one sixth that of Earth. That combination cannot be duplicated here on Earth, but we tried as best we could to test our equipment for those conditions. For example, because normal air conditioning is inadequate for lunar conditions, we were required to use cold water to cool the interior of our suits. We did not have any data to tell us how long the small water tank in our backpacks would suffice. NASA officials limited our surface working time to 2 and 3/4 hours on that first surface exploration to assure that we would not expire of hyperthermia.”

Neil Armstrong (1930–2012) American astronaut; first person to walk on the moon

Letter to Robert Krulwich (2010)

Hostility , Water , Time , Perfection

“I should wish, however, to know what this reason is, through which we are more excellent than all the tribes of animals. Is it because we have made for ourselves houses, by which we can avoid the cold of winter and heat of summer? What! do not the other animals show forethought in this respect? … But if nature, which gave them life, had chosen to give to them also hands to help them, they too would, without doubt, raise lofty buildings and strike out new works of art. Yet, even in those things which they make with beaks and claws, we see that there are many appearances of reason and wisdom which we men are unable to copy, however much we ponder them, although we have hands to serve us dexterously in every kind of work.”

Arnobius (255–327) Christian apologist

Book II, § 17
Adversus Nationes

Life , Wisdom , Men , Art

“All the wild world is beautiful, and it matters but little where we go, to highlands or lowlands, woods or plains, on the sea or land or down among the crystals of waves or high in a balloon in the sky; through all the climates, hot or cold, storms and calms, everywhere and always we are in God's eternal beauty and love. So universally true is this, the spot where we chance to be always seems the best.”

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

June 1890, page 299
John of the Mountains, 1938

Love , God , World , Beauty

“The two men walked on and stopped eight feet in front of him and faced him head-on. Reacher flexed his fingers by his side, to test how cold they were. Eight feet was an interesting choice of distance. It meant they were going to talk before they tangled. He flexed his toes and ran some muscle tension up through his calves, his thighs, his back, his shoulders. Moved his head side to side and then back a little, to loosen his neck. He breathed in through his nose. The wind was on his back. The guy on the left took his hands out of his pockets. No gloves. And either he had bad arthritis or he was holding rolls of quarters in both palms.”

Lee Child book Without Fail

Without Fail, Ch. 1 (2002).

Men , Guy

“"You don't go by odds. You know what's coming. You've seen the cards already." She studied his face intently. "No, you can't be cold-decked. It wouldn't be possible."”

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author

The Golden Man (1954)

Study

“The changing seasons of the Midwest – the intense heat in summer, bitter cold in winter, and unsurpassable beauty and invigorating weather of fall and spring – is what makes it an interesting place to live. Only robust and virile people can live in such a climate and enjoy it.”

Nile Kinnick (1918–1943) College football player

Journal entry (January 6, 1942)

People , Beauty , Spring , Winter

“That old standby of melodrama, the rich uncle shoved into the bin so the greedy relatives could get their hands on his estate, had a sound basis in fact. The Victorians cleaned up the straw and the chains of the old Bedlam-like institutions of the eighteenth century, but they didn't always clean up the practices. Patients were drugged, starved, drained of vast quantities of blood, beaten up, swung from ropes, immersed in cold water and whirled around in the air upside-down, all in the belief that it would improve their mental states. Ask yourself whether this is likely to have been true.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Ophelia Has a Lot to Answer For (1997)

Water

“Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch cold on over-exposure.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Truth, vii
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIX - Truth and Convenience

Love , Men , Truth , Fear

“It seems to me that the argument of the defendant's counsel blows hot and cold at the same time.”

Sir Francis Buller, 1st Baronet (1746–1800) British judge

L'Anson v. Stuart (1787), 1 T. R. 753. Compare: ". . . . This would be blowing hot and cold". Lawrence, J., Berkeley Peerage Case (1811), 4 Camp. 412; "Hot and cold were in one body fixt; And soft with hard, and light with heavy mixt", Dryden.

Time

“No cause, ever, in the history of all mankind, has produced more cold-blooded tyrants, more slaughtered innocents, and more orphans than socialism with power. It surpassed, exponentially, all other systems of production in turning out the dead. The bodies are all around us. And here is the problem: No one talks about them. No one honors them. No one does penance for them. No one has committed suicide for having been an apologist for those who did this to them. No one pays for them. No one is hunted down to account for them. It is exactly what Solzhenitsyn foresaw in The Gulag Archipelago: "No, no one would have to answer. No one would be looked into."”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

As quoted in "Notable & Quotable: The Victims of Socialism" https://web.archive.org/web/20160217064704/http://www.wsj.com/articles/notable-quotable-the-victims-of-socialism-1455667462 (17 February 2016), The Wall Street Journal, A13
2000s, Can There Be an "After Socialism"? (2003)

History , Problem , Suicide , Dead

“Socialism, or the Red Republic, is all one; for it would tear down the tricolour and set up the red flag. It would make penny pieces out of the Column Vendome. It would knock down the statue of Napoleon and raise up that of Marat in its stead. It would suppress the Académie, the Ecole Polytechnique, and the Legion of Honour. To the grand device Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, it would add “Ou la mort. It would bring about a general bankruptcy. It would ruin the rich without enriching the poor. It would destroy labour, which gives to each one his bread. It would abolish property and family. It would march about with the heads of the proscribed on pikes, fill the prisons with the suspected, and empty them by massacres. It would convert France into the country of gloom. It would strangle liberty, stifle the arts, silence thought, and deny God. It would bring into action these two fatal machines, one of which never works without the other—the assignat press and the guillotine. In a word, it would do in cold blood what the men of 1793 did in fever, and after the grand horrors which our fathers saw, we should have the horrible in all that was low and small.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Statement of May 1848, as quoted in Paris Under the Commune : Or, Seventy-Three Days of the Second Siege (1871) by John Leighton

Men , God , Family , Art

“[G]iven our inability over the past two decades to deal with an unbreakable chain of unemployment, debt, inflation and no real growth, we have drifted farther and farther out into a cold, unfriendly, confusing sea. The new certitude of those in positions of authority — those out of the water — is that the certain answer is to cut away the life preservers.”

John Ralston Saul book The Unconscious Civilization

The Unconscious Civilization (1995)

Life , Water , Past , Sea

“It's so interesting to watch it – every Republican debate – Mitt Romney deny Romneycare. Deny the one great thing he did in his life. But when he's on the stage with those other Republicans in front of a Republican audience: "How dare you?! How dare you accuse me of helping people!? I am as much of a cold-hearted bastard as any of the pricks on this stage!"”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

Crazy Stupid Politics (2012)

Life , People , Help , Heart

“Yo…on the amen, corner I stood lookin' at my former hood
Felt the spirit in the wind, knew my friend was gone for good
Threw dirt on the casket, the hurt, I couldn't mask it
Mixin down emotions, struggle I hadn't mastered
I choreographed seven steps to heaven
and hell, waiting to exhale and make the bread leavened
Veteran of a cold war its Chica-i-go for
What I know or, whats known”

Common (rapper) (1972) American rapper, actor and author from Illinois

"Respiration", Black Star (1998)
Albums, Compilations, Singles, and Cameos

War , Hell , Waiting , Hurt

“Spring, the sweet spring, is the year's pleasant King,
Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring,
Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing,
Cuckoo, jug, jug, pu wee, to witta woo!”

Thomas Nashe (1567–1601) English Elizabethan pamphleteer and poet

Source: Summer's Last Will and Testament http://www.elizabethanauthors.com/summ1.htm (1600), lines 161-164.

Spring , Bird , Singing , Dance

““Outlier” is a scientific term to describe things or phenomena that lie outside normal experience. In the summer, in Paris, we expect most days to be somewhere between warm and very hot. But imagine if you had a day in the middle of August where the temperature fell below freezing. That day would be outlier. And while we have a very good understanding of why summer days in Paris are warm or hot, we know a good deal less about why a summer day in Paris might be freezing cold. In this book I’m interested in people who are outliers—in men and women who, for one reason or another, are so accomplished and so extraordinary and so outside of ordinary experience that they are as puzzling to the rest of us as a cold day in August.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Malcolm Gladwell (2010) in: " Q and A with Malcolm http://gladwell.com/outliers/outliers-q-and-a-with-malcolm/," at gladwell.com, quoted in: Kate Vitasek (2011). The Vested Outsourcing Manual, p. 364

Women , Men , People , Lie