Quotes about down
page 30

“Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown.”

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English novelist and poet

" The Man He Killed http://www.illyria.com/hardyman.html" (1902), lines 17-20, from Time's Laughingstocks (1909)

“Here I want to reiterate very clearly that this Little Mandate did not come to me dictated, or as a whole, but as I am telling it now. Get the picture: it could happen any place, any time, in the midst of a group, in my office, at lunch in a cafeteria. Suddenly a little light, a little added word would come to me. I used to write them down on scraps of paper, on the back of old envelopes, in some diary, maybe lost or forgotten now; though some of them are still here. It was a patchy thing.”

Catherine Doherty (1896–1985) Religious order founder; Servant of God

"How the Little Mandate Came to Be", p. 23
Unfinished Pilgrimage (1995)

Light, Time

“I hope, for your sake, that you have not chosen to read this book because you are in the mood for a pleasant experience. If this is the case, I advise you to put this book down instantaneously, because of all the books describing the unhappy lives of the Baudelaire orphans, The Miserable Mill might be the unhappiest yet. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire are sent to Paltryville to work in a lumber mill, and they find disaster and misfortune lurking behind every log.”

Daniel Handler book The Miserable Mill

The Miserable Mill (2000)

Books, Hope, Mood, Reading

“On Christmas Eve, during my terrible personal ordeal of the renewed bombing of North Vietnam, which after 12 years of war finally helped to bring America peace with honor, I sat down just before midnight. I wrote out some of my goals for my second term as President.
Let me read them to you:”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

To make it possible for our children, and for our children's children, to live in a world of peace.
To make this country be more than ever a land of opportunity — of equal opportunity, full opportunity for every American.
To provide jobs for all who can work, and generous help for those who cannot work. To establish a climate of decency and civility, in which each person respects the feelings and the dignity and the God-given rights of his neighbor.
To make this a land in which each person can dare to dream, can live his dreams — not in fear, but in hope — proud of his community, proud of his country, proud of what America has meant to himself and to the world.
1970s, First Watergate Speech (1973)

War, Peace, Reading, Help

“When the moon comes up, I go down
For the first time
There’s a garden deep, deep in my heart
But it’s blossomed for the last time”

Happy Rhodes (1965) American singer-songwriter

"Fall"
Find Me (2007)

Time, Heart

“The swell was gently lifting and lowering the boat. My breathing grew slower, falling into step with the creaking of the hull, until I could no longer tell the difference between the faint rhythmic motion of the cabin and the sensation of filling and emptying my lungs. It was like floating in darkness: every inhalation buoyed me up, slightly; every exhalation made me sink back down again.”

Greg Egan (1961) Australian science fiction writer and former computer programmer

Oceanic http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/OCEANIC/Complete/Oceanic.html, ch. 1 Fiction, Oceanic and Other Stories (2000)

“…magisteeerial…the corner kick sails in…and Ramos leaps…like a fresh salmon from a summer stream…it's an exquisite header…with power and accuracy measured down to a pixel!”

Ray Hudson (1955) English footballer

[Mandis, Steven G., The Real Madrid Way: How Values Created the Most Successful Sports Team on the Planet, 2016, BenBella Books, https://books.google.fi/books/about/The_Real_Madrid_Way.html?id=IEbQDAAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y, 978-1-942952-54-1]
After Sergio Ramos' 93rd-minute header, which cancelled out Diego Godín's first-half goal.
2014 UEFA Champions League Final

Summer

“All Empires fall,
All ages die,
All strife shall be in vain.
All Kings go down,
All hope must fail,
But Tanelorn remains—
Our Tanelorn remains…”

Michael Moorcock book Phoenix in Obsidian

Book 2 “The Champion’s Road” Chapter 5 “The Black Sword” (p. 365)
Phoenix in Obsidian (1970)

Age, Hope

“[About airports with advanced equipment] You know, you can have fun with that if you do it like I do. I take two Viagra and demand a pat down. "What's that in your pants, Mr. White?" "I have no idea. You're gonna need to pat that down… Pat it back up again… Give it a couple twists. See if it's connected to anything… You might wanna go wash your hands."”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

A Little Unprofessional

Idea

“If you ask someone whether our Constitutional rights are being flushed down the porcelain oubliette, and their response is, "If I answer that honestly they'll arrest me," then you already have your answer.”

Robert X. Cringely (1953) American technology journalist and columnist

Discussing Ladar Levison's statement that he couldn't legally explain why he had to shut down secure-email system Lavabit or "become complicit in crimes against the American people"
[August 9, 2013, http://www.infoworld.com/t/cringely/personal-email-and-private-clouds-fall-in-war-privacy-224603?source=IFWNLE_nlt_notes_2013-08-12, Personal email and private clouds fall in war on privacy, Notes from the Field, InfoWorld, 2013-08-12]

“I would have done better. I would have been more effective. Deep Throat didn't exactly bring the White House crashing down, did he?”

W. Mark Felt (1913–2008) Whistleblower who exposed the Watergate scandal

Interview in The Hartford Courant (1999)

Housing

“When they asked some old Roman philosopher or other how he wanted to die, he said he would open his veins in a warm bath. I thought it would be easy, lying in the tub and seeing the redness flower from my wrists, flush after flush through the clear water, till I sank to sleep under a surface gaudy as poppies. But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defenseless that I couldn't do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get at.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch. 12

Secret, Flowers, Lying, Sleep

“Ah, my brother, it is a far harder thing, and it is afar higher proof of a thorough-going, persistent, Christian principle woven into the very texture of my soul, to go on plodding and patient, never taken by surprise by any small temptation, than to gather into myself the strength which God has given me, and, expecting some great storm to come down upon me, to stand fast, and let it rage. It is a great deal easier to die once for Christ than to live always for Him.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 109.

God, Soul, Rage, Christ

“The first thing that will strike you as odd in Japan is how polite everyone is. Quite apart from the neverending bowing, they have obsequiousness down to an art that even the Chinese haven't mastered.”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

Source: Clarkson on Cars (1996), p. 58

Art

“I did not teach painting but seeing. I concentrated on the basic courses for beginners. I taught drawing (purposely without nudes), color (without any painting as such) and design (as 'structural organization'). And so the graduate students came 'down' to the basic courses for beginners.”

Josef Albers (1888–1976) German-American artist and educator

Source: Homage to the square' (1964), A conversation with Josef Albers' (1970), p. 459

Color, Drawing, Painting

“There's lots of law these days, but not much justice. Celebrities murder their wives and go free. A mother kills her children, and the news people on TV say she's the victim and want you to send money to her lawyers. When everything's upside down like this, what fool just sits back and thinks justice will prevail?”

Dean Koontz book One Door Away from Heaven

Geneva Davis; chapter 60, p. 473
One Door Away from Heaven (2001)

Money, Children, People, Justice

“It will be impossible to achieve this (keeping the people together) if the elders and chiefs have their own way and are too proud of their chiefly status to not bring themselves down to the people.”

Joni Madraiwiwi (1957–2016) Fijian politician

Speech to the Lau Provincial Council, 11 May 2005.

People, Way

“I'll say this about nuclear weapons. You know I'm not sitting on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I'm not in on the planning. I'll take it at face value that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff successfully eliminated nuclear weapons in the first phase of the operation.But keep in mind this. That the Bush Administration has built a new generation of nuclear weapons that we call 'usable nukes.' And they have a nuclear posture now, which permits the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons in a non-nuclear environment, if the Commander in Chief deems U. S. forces to be in significant risk.If we start bombing Iran, I'm telling you right now, it's not going to work. We're not going to achieve decapitation, regime change, all that. What will happen is the Iranians will respond, and we will feel the pain instantaneously, which will prompt the Bush administration to phase two, which will have to be boots on the ground. And we will put boots on the ground, we will surge a couple of divisions in, probably through Azerbaijan, down the Caspian Sea coast, in an effort to push the regime over. And when they don't push over, we now have 40,000 troops trapped. We have now reached the definition of significant numbers of U. S. troops in harm's way, and there is no reserve to pull them out! There's no more cavalry to come riding to the rescue. And at that point in time, my concern is that we will use nuclear weapons to break the backbone of Iranian resistance, and it may not work.But what it will do is this: it will unleash the nuclear genie. And so for all those Americans out there tonight who say, 'You know what - taking on Iran is a good thing.' I just told you if we take on Iran, we're gonna use nuclear weapons. And if we use nuclear weapons, the genie ain't going back in the bottle, until an American city is taken out by an Islamic weapon in retaliation. So, tell me, you want to go to war with Iran. Pick your city. Pick your city. Tell me which one you want gone. Seattle? L. A.? Boston? New York? Miami. Pick one. Cause at least one's going. And that's something we should all think about before we march down this path of insanity that George Bush has us headed on.</p”

Scott Ritter (1961) American weapons inspector and writer

October 16, 2006
2006

Pain, War, Way, Feeling

“I have turned roles down because they are rapists. It's something I don't even want to watch. If I even click on it on TV, I have to click it off or I'll put my foot through the screen… What you see on that screen is just my terror at having to do that scene.”

James Marsters (1962) American actor

James Marsters on Life After Buffy, on the rape scene in Buffy the Vampire Slayer "Seeing Red"

“Why should God wish to take a thoroughbred like Matty so soon, and leave some others down here that could well be spared?”

Kenesaw Mountain Landis (1866–1944) American judge and baseball commissioner

Lamenting on the death of the famously virtuous former N.Y. Giants pitcher Christy Mathewson in 1925. Quoted in Christopher Hodge Evans, William R. Herzog, The Faith of Fifty Million: Baseball, Religion, and American Culture (Westminster John Knox Press, 2002, ISBN 0664223052), p. 77. http://books.google.com/books?id=nfk_O47SFGwC&pg=PA77&dq=%22like+Matty+so+soon

God

“She walked down the aisle with all eyes on her and she glowed
Someone chose her above all other women they had known
I can only wonder what it must be like to be
so perfect in a lover's eyes, the only one they see Well, it’s never been me, the chosen one
It’s never been me
If ever I see a chosen one I feel ugly”

Happy Rhodes (1965) American singer-songwriter

"Chosen One" - Live performance at The Tin Angel, Philadelphia PA (29 January 2005) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xt4PTtcVh5s Find Me (2007)

Women, Feeling, Lovers, Perfection

“What means this heaviness that hangs upon me?
This lethargy that creeps through all my senses?
Nature, oppress'd and harrass'd out with care,
Sinks down to rest.”

Joseph Addison book Cato

Act V, scene i.
Cato, A Tragedy (1713)

Nature, Sense

“On January 3, 1992 a meeting of Russian and American scholars took place in the auditorium of a government building in Moscow. Two weeks earlier the Soviet Union had ceased to exist and the Russian Federation had become an independent country. As a result, the statue of Lenin which previously graced the stage of the auditorium had disappeared and instead the flag of the Russian Federation was now displayed on the front wall. The only problem, one American observed, was that the flag had been hung upside down. After this was pointed out to the Russian hosts, they quickly and quietly corrected the error during the first intermission.
The years after the Cold War witnessed the beginnings of dramatic changes in peoples’ identities and the symbols of those identities. Global politics began to be reconfigured along cultural lines. Upside-down flags were a sign of the transition, but more and more the flags are flying high and true, and Russians and other peoples are mobilizing and marching behind these and other symbols of their new cultural identities.”

Samuel P. Huntington (1927–2008) American political scientist

Source: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996), Ch. 1: The New Era in World Politics, § 1 : Introduction: Flags And Cultural Identity

War, People, Error, Problem

“Conclusion. Then for conclusion, by these interpretative propositions, followeth foure thinges marvelous and notable. First, that the interpretation of every parte of the Revelation, is accessorie or consectarie to other: that is to say, it is so chained and linked together, that every mysterie opens other to the discoverie of the whole. Secondly, that the first halfe of the book is orderly, that is to say, it containeth in order of time the most notable accidents that concerneth Gods Church, from the time of Christs Baptisme successively to the latter day. Thirdly, that every historie prophecied, is limited or dated with his own nŭber of years. Fourthly and last of all, that whatsoever historie is more orderlie and summarlie, than plainly set downe in the first orderlie parte of the booke, the same is repeated, interpreted, or amplified in the last part of the booke: deviding the whole Revelation according to the table following, before we proceed to the principall matter.”

John Napier (1550–1617) Scottish mathematician

A Plaine Discovery of the Whole Revelation of St. John (1593), The First and Introductory Treatise

God, Books, History, Time

“In 1998, I had a talk with a friend that was vegetarian, and he just made me think … Like, just because someone else can kill an animal for you and cut it up and do all the disgusting dirty work, all I have to do is walk into McDonald’s and order it and then I can eat it. … I still eat the same kinds of things I used to but without meat. So I think that if you love animals and deep down are sort of just over [eating them] or think it’s wrong and not the right thing to do, then just stop doing it. … Videos are also very effective—my friend saw a video about factory farming and stopped eating meat immediately afterward. Seeing is believing. Sometimes people don’t want to think about stuff like that or don’t care to think about stuff like that until it’s really just thrown in their face.”

Tom Higgenson (1979) American singer

"Plain White T's Frontman: ‘Seeing Is Believing'" https://www.peta2.com/news/plain-white-ts-frontman-knows-that-seeing-is-believing/ interview with PETA (18 July 2011).

Love, People, Thinking, Animals

“Don't try to tear down other people's religion about their ears, Build up your own perfect structure of truth, and invite your listeners to enter in and enjoy it's glories.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

The Life Story of Brigham Young, p. 149-150
Attributed

People, Truth, Religion, Tear

“I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base…. There was no greeting ceremony and we were basically told to run to our cars. That is what happened.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

March 17, 2008, allegedly misspeaking about her 1996 trip to Bosnia. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/24/eveningnews/main3964921.shtml Presidential campaign (January 20, 2007 – 2008)

Cars

“The people are being kept in line at the moment, because there are still lots of shiny new things for them to buy. But more and more Americans are beginning to look beyond their immediate material comfort and to worry about the long-term moral slide of their country. If the economy slips badly, there will be hell to pay. More and more people will listen to the dissidents. A big problem for the Jews is how to silence the dissidents now, how to stifle the people who are asking inconvenient questions and thinking dangerous thoughts, before these thoughts spread to other people. They've tried to do it with legislation, but the country isn't yet in a mood to be told what it can think. What the Jews need is a nice, big war. Then they can crack down on the dissidents. Then they can call us "subversives." Then they can call us "unpatriotic," because we will be against their war… That's why I am convinced that there will be a strong effort to involve America in another major war during the next four years. This effort will be disguised, of course. It will be cloaked in deceit, as such efforts always are. While the warmongers are scheming for war, they will tell us how much they want peace. They're good at that sort of thing. They've had a lot of practice. But they will be scheming for war, believe me, no matter what they say. And when that war comes, remember what you have read today.”

William Luther Pierce (1933–2002) American white nationalist

Get Set for War, 1997.
1990s, 1990

War, People, Peace, Mood

“What do I want to take home from my summer vacation? Time. The wonderful luxury of being at rest. The days when you shut down the mental machinery that keeps life on track and let life simply wander. The days when you stop planning, analyzing, thinking and just are. Summer is my period of grace.”

Ellen Goodman (1941) American journalist and writer

Attributed

Life, Home, Thinking, Time

“Turn yo stomach to spaghetti when it hit the ground
Toss the choppers in the chevy then we mashin down
Camelton, counting all yo Benjamins and Hamiltons
As far as I'm concerned you just a job for the janitor”

T.I. (1980) American rapper, record producer, actor, and businessman from Georgia

"Undertaker".

“Good fortune will elevate even petty minds, and give them the appearance of a certain greatness and stateliness, as from their high place they look down upon the world; but the truly noble and resolved spirit raises itself, and becomes more conspicuous in times of disaster and ill fortune.”

Plutarch book Parallel Lives

Eumenes, sec. 9
Parallel Lives

World, Appearance, Time

“[T]he North’s ideology glorifies the heart over the mind, instincts over consciousness, which makes rash decisions more likely to be made, even quite low down the military command structure. There is therefore a significant danger of some sort of limited clash at any time. But that has always been the case.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Interview with The Conversation (September 2017)

Decision, Time, Heart

“The moonlight rolls down like a river,
The silence streams out like a sea;
And far where the eastern winds quiver,
My farewell goes floating to thee.”

Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) American anarchist writer and feminist

And Thou Too (1888)

Silence, Sea

“The dinosaur world I grew up in was classical. They were universally seen as scaley herps that inhabited the immobile continents. There was no hint that birds were their direct descendents. Being reptiles, dinosaurs were cold-blooded and rather sluggish except perhaps for the smaller more bird-like examples. They all dragged their tails. Forelimbs were often sprawling. Leg muscles were slender in the reptilian manner. Intellectual capacity was minimal, as were social activity and parenting; the Knight painting of a Triceratops pair watching over a baby threatened by the Tyrant King was a notable exception. Hadrosaurs and especially sauropods were dinosaurian hippos, the latter perhaps too titanic to even emerge on land, and if they did so were limited by their bulk to lifting one foot of the ground at a time. Suitable only for the lush, warm and sunny tropical climate that enveloped the world from pole to pole before the Cenozoic, a cooling climate and new mountain chains did the obsolete archosaurs in, leaving only the crocodilians. Dinosaurs and the bat-winged pterosaurs were merely an evolutionary interlude, a period of geo-biological stasis before things got really interesting with the rise of the energetic and quick witted birds and especially mammals, leading with inexorable progress to the apex of natural selection: Man. It was pretty much all wrong. Deep down I sensed something was not quite right. Illustrating dinosaurs I found them to be much more reminiscent of birds and mammals than of the reptiles they were supposed to be. I was primed for a new view.”

Gregory Scott Paul (1954) U.S. researcher, author, paleontologist, and illustrator

Autobiography, part I http://gspauldino.com/part1.html, gspauldino.com

World, Mountain, Nature, Bird

“We do not, of course, write literary criticism at all now. Academe has won the battle in which Wilson fought so fiercely on the other side. Ambitious English teachers now invent systems that have nothing to do with literature or life but everything to do with those games that must be played in order for them to rise in the academic bureaucracy. Their works are empty indeed. But then, their works are not meant to be full. They are to be taught, not read. The long dialogue has broken down. Fortunately, as Flaubert pointed out, the worst thing about the present is the future. One day there will be no… But I have been asked not to give the game away. Meanwhile, I shall drop a single hint: Only construct!”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

"Edmund Wilson: This Critic and This Gin and These Shoes", closing lines
1990s, United States - Essays 1952-1992 (1992)

Life, Game, Literature, Teachers

“It’s a dirty, damn universe, and every once in a while I get a chance to hit back at it. That’s all. If I knew in the morning when I started out that I was going to be killed that day, I’d still go—because I couldn’t die happier than to go down hitting back.”

Gordon R. Dickson book Tactics of Mistake

Source: Tactics of Mistake (1971), Chapter 22 (p. 334)

Universe, Chance

“You always knew that, what this was going to be. Intimate, and ugly. You must've needed to see it close when you decided to come down here.”

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

To Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Lincoln.html (2012). In fiction, Lincoln (2012)

“It is hard living down the tempers we are born with. We all begin well, for in our youth there is nothing we are more intolerant of than our own sins writ large in others and we fight them fiercely in ourselves; but we grow old and we see that these our sins are of all sins the really harmless ones to own, nay that they give a charm to any character, and so our struggle with them dies away.”

Gertrude Stein book The Making of Americans

The Making of Americans (1925)

Youth, Fight

“Poetry is the universal art of the spirit which has become free in itself and which is not tied down for its realization to external sensuous material; instead, it launches out exclusively in the inner space and the inner time of ideas and feelings.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel book Lectures on Aesthetics

As quoted in the Introduction to Aesthetics (1842), translated by T. M. Knox, (1979), p. 89
Lectures on Aesthetics (1835)

Art, Feeling, Idea, Universe

“Up to 1931 there was no reason to suppose that social changes would not, or could not, follow the same evolutionary pattern which had resulted from the increased creation and distribution of wealth during the nineteenth century. Now, after 1931, many of us felt that the disease was more deep-rooted. It had become evident that the structure of capitalist society in its old form had broken down, not only in Britain but all over Europe and even in the United States. The whole system had to be reassessed. Perhaps it could not survive at all; it certainly could not survive without radical change. Something like a revolutionary situation had developed, not only at home but overseas.”

Harold Macmillan (1894–1986) British politician

Harold Macmillan (1966) Winds of change, 1914-1939. p. 266 as cited in Brian Vickery (2005) "Coming of age in the 1930s" ( online http://web.archive.org/web/20080531130709/http://www.lucis.me.uk/thirties.htm at archive.org) 1960s

Disease, Home, Change, Wealth

“Understand me: I wish to be a man from somewhere, a man among men. You see, a slave, when he passes by, weary and surly, carrying a heavy load, limping along and looking down at his feet, only at his feet to avoid falling down; he is in his town, like a leaf in greenery, like a tree in a forest, argos surrounds him, heavy and warm, full of herself; I want to be that slave, Electra, I want to pull the city around me and to roll myself up in it like a blanket. I will not leave.”

Jean Paul Sartre The Flies

Orestes to Electra, Act 2
The Flies (1943)

Men, Understanding, Tree

“The point is there's a boring homogenisation of popular culture, so really the problem is there's nothing wrong, the machine works too smoothly. I think the pop music machine is much more fun when it's broken. Things are always more fun when they're broken. No one was ever consulted about this. There was never a Senate committee to say we must produce pop music every day since 1953 or whatever. It's time to lay down the gauntlet.”

Luke Haines (1967) English musician and songwriter

http://uk.news.launch.yahoo.com/dyna/article.html?a=dotmusic_news/20674.html&e=l_news_dm

Music, Problem, Thinking, Time

“Maybe once, early on, he had convinced himself he could do some good, sometimes even imagined he was a mole, getting close so he could strike a blow. Imagined he was in it to defend Ambergris from the enemies that surrounded it. Imagined he was protecting ordinary citizens.
But the truth was he’d been tired, had stopped caring. Broken down from too much fighting, too many things connected to his past. And when that spark, that impulse, had returned, it was too late: he was trapped.”

Jeff VanderMeer book Finch

Source: Finch (2009), p. 20

Truth, Imagination, Past, Fight

“Of course one can jump up and down yelling Europe! Europe! Europe! But it amounts to nothing and it means nothing.”

Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970) eighteenth President of the French Republic

Bien entendu, on peut sauter sur sa chaise comme un cabri en disant l’Europe ! l’Europe ! l’Europe ! mais cela n’aboutit à rien et cela ne signifie rien. Interview on a presidential campaign, December 1965 INA archive of the video http://www.ina.fr/archivespourtous/index.php?vue=notice&id_notice=I00012536 (De Gaulle meant that he wanted to build a European Union on realities, i.e. the existing nation-states with their respective interests – not on slogans and abstractions) Fifth Republic and other post-WW2

“A Prophetess inspir'd thou shalt behold
Down in a Cave, who long hath Fate foretold;
Which writ in Leaves, the Maid in order puts,
And to secure, in hollow Marble shuts.
They keep their Stations just as she design'd:
But the Door op'ning, with the smallest Wind,
The slender leaves do every way disperse.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro (2nd ed. 1654), Virgil's Æneis

Fate, Way

“They darted down and rose up like a wave
Or buzzed impetuously as before;
One would have thought the corpse was held a slave
To living by the life it bore!”

Allen Tate (1899–1979) American poet, essayist and social commentator

A Carrion, from Poems (1961).

Life

“Trump took the elements of an independent candidacy — the lack of clear ideology, the name recognition of a national celebrity and the personal fortune needed to fund a presidential campaign — and then did what no one seemed to have thought of before. He staged a hostile takeover of an existing major party. He had the best of both worlds, an outsider candidacy with crosscutting ideological appeal and the platform of a major party to wage the general election. By the time he had finished, he had taken down two political dynasties: the Bush dynasty in the primaries and the Clinton dynasty in the general election.”

Dan Balz (1946) American journalist

Donald Trump, America’s first independent president (November 19, 2016)

Hostility, World, Time, Personality

“I want to write poetry, I'm bored, disgusted by my habits
If I stop thinking and put my hands down perhaps I will have much to say
I'm scurrying to the attic like a solitary bug
Before you become old and ugly, I must kiss you on the nose”

Ataol Behramoğlu (1942) Turkish writer

"How Awful When Poetry Ages As It Is Read"
I've Learned Some Things (2008)

Kiss, Thinking

“How quiet everything was this Sunday afternoon, how still. No horse and wagon clopped down the street, no cart; no one stood on the corner talking. It was as if they were the only ones in the world.”

Patricia Reilly Giff (1935) American children's writer

Source: Water Street (2006), Chapters 1-10, p. 44

World, Horse

“People who love in glass houses should pull down the blinds.”

Addison Mizner (1872–1933) American architect

The Cynic's Calendar

Love, People, Housing

“Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path and that will make all the difference.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

2000s, Address at Stanford University (2005)

Life, Confidence, Future, Heart

“A tidal wave of trucks and carts moved slowly, inexorably toward the now open gate, bumping and clanging into each other as they squeezed through. The investigator jumped out of the way, and as he stood there observing the passage of this hideous insect, with its countless twisting, shifting sections, he experienced a strange and powerful rage. The birth of that rage was followed by spasms down and around his anus, where irritated blood vessels began to leap painfully, and he knew he was in for a hemorrhoid attack. This time the investigation would go forward, hemorrhoids or no, just like the old days. That thought took the edge off his rage, lessened it considerably, in fact. There's no avoiding the inevitable. Not mass confusion, not hemorrhoids. Only the sacred key to a riddle is eternal. But what was it this time?”

Mo Yan book The Republic of Wine

Source: The Republic of Wine (1992), Chapter I, Section 1

Way, Birth, Rage, Time

“(speaking in a solemn tone to a group of young school children) Now you know that your headmistress, Miss Davis, was going to come in here and just check that you were all going to be well behaved. She can’t do that because, as many of you probably know, she can’t be here today, er, because her pants fell down earlier on. It’s not funny. If any of you see her, don’t make a fuss because it’s a bit embarrassing for her, OK? Alright? It’s not funny.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)

Children, School

“Nor can his blessed soul look down from heaven,
Or break the eternal sabbath of his rest.”

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

Act V, scene 2.
The Spanish Friar (1681)

Soul

“The journalists have constructed for themselves a little wooden chapel, which they also call the Temple of Fame, in which they put up and take down portraits all day long and make such a hammering you can't hear yourself speak.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

D 20
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook D (1773-1775)

“There is in fact a manly and legitimate passion for equality that spurs all men to wish to be strong and esteemed. This passion tends to elevate the lesser to the rank of the greater. But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Often misquoted as: Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.
Source: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter I-V, Chapter III, Part I

Men, Freedom, Strong, Passion

“When they went down to the bunkhouse for dinner the vaqueros seemed to treat them with a certain deference but whether it was the deference accorded the accomplished or that accorded to mental defectives they were unsure.”

Cormac McCarthy book All the Pretty Horses

All the Pretty Horses (1992)

“The building itself is hostile: cracked plaster, broken windows, splintered doors and carved up desks, gloomy corridors and metal stairways, dingy cafeteria (they can eat sitting down only in 20 minute shifts) and an auditorium which has no windows. It does have murals, however, depicting mute, muscular harvesters, faded and immobile under a mustard sun.”

Bel Kaufmanová book Up the Down Staircase

Part I, ch. 5 (Sylvia Barrett)
Up the Down Staircase (1965)

Hostility, Sun

“I won a noble fame;
But with a sudden frown,
The people snatched my crown,
And, in the mire, trod down
My lofty name.”

Theodore Tilton (1835–1907) American newspaper editor

Sir Marmaduke's Musings, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

People

“With their tinted windows up, the cars of the rich go like dark eggs down the roads of Delhi. Every now and then an egg will crack open—a woman’s hand, dazzling with gold bangles, stretches out an open window, flings an empty mineral water bottle onto the road—and then the window goes up, and the egg is resealed.”

Aravind Adiga book The White Tiger

The Fourth Night.
The White Tiger (2008)

Cars, Water

“Much water has gone down the Ganges after Lammens wrote in 1929. Islamic Apologetics in India since then has progressed by leaps and bounds. The Quran has been roped in to prove that Islam stands for equality of all religions and religious tolerance.”

Sita Ram Goel book The Calcutta Quran Petition

The Calcutta Quran Petition (1986)

Religion, Water

“All my staff stood by me, the players stood by me, you stood by me, and your job now is to stand by our new manager. That’s important. My retirement doesn’t mean the end of my time at the club. I’ll now be able to enjoy watching them, rather than suffering with them. But, if you think about it, the last-minute goals, the comebacks, even the defeats, are all part of this great football club of ours. It’s been an unbelievable experience for all of us, so thank-you for that. I want to say thank-you to Manchester United. Not just the directors, coaching staff, medical staff, the players, the fans, but to all of you - you have been the most fantastic experience of my life. I’ve been very fortunate. I have been able to manage some of the greatest players in the country, let alone Manchester United. All the players here today have represented this club the proper way. They won the championship in a fantastic fashion, so well done to the players. To the players, I wish them every success in the future. You all know how good you are, you know the jersey you are wearing, you know what it means to everyone here and don’t ever let yourselves down.”

Alex Ferguson (1941) Scottish footballer and manager

Daily Mirror (12 May 2013) http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/manchester-united-manager-sir-alex-1885487].

Life, Way, Fashion, Thinking

“America has had gifted conservative statesmen and national leaders. But with few exceptions, only the liberals have gone down in history as national heroes.”

Gunnar Myrdal book An American Dilemma

Source: An American Dilemma (1944), p. 7

History

“Good morning, son
In twenty years from now
Maybe we'll both sit down and have a few beers
And I can tell you 'bout today
And how I picked you up and everything changed.”

Ben Folds (1966) American musician

"Still Fighting It", Rockin' the Suburbs (2001).
Song lyrics, Solo

Beer, Change

“Fortunately for whining snotface, the party itself goes with a bang. She enters looking every inch the cosseted flesh-waste she is, and her and her nauseating idiot scumbag friends celebrate into the night: dancing, shrieking, acting like pillocks, and generally making you feel like getting down on your knees and praying for a nuclear holocaust.”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

Screenwipe

Feeling, Dance, Night

“The difference between left and right of center … originated in the French parliament. The people left of center were liberals; the people right of center were conservatives. Broadly speaking. And generally speaking, people on … the right of center, are interested in property values, property, property rights. The rights and the rights of property. And generally speaking again – it's all generalized – the left-of-center people are more concerned with humans and human beings and human concerns; to the care of humans, not the care and worry about property rights. That's generally been true. And Bush is pushing this country farther down the hill, faster than anyone has before.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Real Time with Bill Maher, September 9, 2005
Interviews, Television Appearances

People, Country

“Legalistic Southerners tried to view the Constitution as a contract. Unfortunately, that viewpoint breaks down when viewed as a lawyer views a contract. There are very few ways to legally break a contract unilaterally.”

William C. Davis (1946) American historian

Source: The Cause Lost: Myths and Realities of the Confederacy (1996), p. 186

Way

“When I was out in the bars drinking and fighting I was a little bit less of a peacemaker than I would be if I'd had a coupla hits of a joint and gone and laid down somewhere.”

Willie Nelson (1933) American country music singer-songwriter.

Willie Nelson: 'If We Made Marijuana Legal, We'd Save a Whole Lotta Money and Lives', Michael, Hann, May 17, 2012, May 20, 2012, The Guardian, Guardian News and Media Ltd. http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/may/17/30-minutes-with-willie-nelson,

Drink, Fight

“Let me tell you this: They shut me down on radio, that's fine, I'll do TV. They shut me down on TV, that's fine, I'll do Internet. They shut me down on the Internet, that's fine, I'll do stage shows. They shut me down on stage shows, that's fine, I'll go door to door. You will have to shoot me in the head. We are not stopping.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

The Glenn Beck Program
Premiere Radio Networks
2010-05-18
After attacking Media Matters, Beck says: "You will have to shoot me in the head. We are not stopping"
2010-05-18
Media Matters for America
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201005180014
2010s, 2010

“If America was a person, — and it sat down, — Lancaster town would be plunged into a Darkness unbreathable.”

Thomas Pynchon Mason & Dixon

Source: Mason & Dixon (1997), Chapter 66

Personality

“All up and down the whole creation,
Sadly I roam,
Still longing for the old plantation,
And for the old folks at home.”

Stephen Foster (1826–1864) American songwriter

Old Folks at Home

Home

“It must have been in Iran that Frank Lloyd Wright got his brilliant idea for cooling a house… During the summer months, the sunken fireplace hearth was filled with water. Down-draft air movement from the chimney circulates over this pool to cool… This unusual fireplace has a summer-cooling as well as winter-heating function.”

Ken Kern American writer

The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

Idea, Water, Winter, Summer

“Men like Jackson were so upright and honest-seeming, but Hooch knew that there wasn’t no such thing as a good man, just a man who wasn’t bought yet, or wasn’t in deep enough trouble, or didn’t have the guts to reach out and take what he wanted. That’s all that virtue ever boiled down to, so far as Hooch ever saw in his life.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 1.

Life, Men

“Don't let it bring you down
It's only castles burning,
Just find someone who's turning
And you will come around.”

Neil Young (1945) Canadian singer-songwriter

Don't Let It Bring You Down
Song lyrics, After the Gold Rush (1970)

“Ups and downs are inevitable in life. The more favourable the situation, the humbler we need to be. Keep bitterness to ourselves and leave happiness to others.”

Jun Hong Lu (1959) Australian Buddhist leader

Quotes from Words of Wisdoms Vol.2

Life, Happiness

“Adelaide has so little going for it that it should be shut down.”

Robert Doyle (1953) Australian politician

News.com.au https://archive.is/20120908102453/www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,25189927-5006301,00.html

“Nixon is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump for a speech on conservation.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Quoted in The Fine Art of Political Wit by Leon Harris (1964)

Tree

“I have just finished one painting and am already at work on the preliminary drawings for the next one. I must do something in order to get rid of such habits or I won't manage to find time for any vacation. I have had this new painting in my mind since January, and must get it down on canvas.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Quote from his letter to Freundlich, 15 July 15, 1938; as cited in Kandinsky in Paris: 1934-1944 - exhibition catalog, published by The Solomon K. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 1985, p. 27
1930 - 1944

Time, Drawing, Painting

“Wilson is adopting a dangerous line. He wants to pose as the great arbiter of the war. His Fourteen Points are very dangerous. He speaks of the freedom of the seas. That would involve the abolition of the right of search and seizure, and the blockade. We shall not agree to that. Such a change would not suit this country. Wilson does not see that by laying down terms without consulting the Allies, he is making their position very difficult. He had no right to reply to the German Note without consultation, and I insisted upon a cablegram being sent to him. The position is very disturbing.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Quoted in Lord Riddell's diary entry (10 October 1918), J. M. McEwen (ed.), The Riddell Diaries 1908-1923 (London: The Athlone Press, 1986), p. 240
Prime Minister

War, Search, Freedom, Change

“It is in dealing with administration, as I apprehend, that civilizations have usually, though not always, broken down, for it has been on administrative difficulties that revolutions have for the most part supervened. Advances in administration seem to presuppose the evolution of new governing classes, since apparently, no established type of mind can adapt itself to changes in environment even in slow-moving civilizations, as fast as environments change. Administration is the capacity of coordinating many, and often conflicting, social energies in a single organism, so adroitly that they shall operate as a unity. This presupposes the power of recognizing a series of relations between numerous special social interests, with all of which no single man can be intimately acquainted. Probably no very highly specialized class can be strong in this intellectual quality because of the intellectual isolation incident to specialization; and yet administration or generalization is not only the faculty upon which social stability rests, but is possibly the highest faculty of the human mind.”

Brooks Adams (1848–1927) American political writer

207-8 , as cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 10
The Theory of Social Revolutions,

Strong, Change, Parting

“You've got to stay sharp, on your toes, alert. Always look over your shoulder. Always protect yourself. Don't let your guard down for even a second. There are people who will take advantage of you the moment they see you're not in control. The world's filled with people like that. Nearly everyone you meet is like that. We're animals in a jungle, and we've got to be prepared to fight if we want to survive. You can't trust hardly anyone, hardly anyone at all. Even people who are supposed to like you can turn on you faster than you think. Even friends. People who say they love you are the worst, the most dangerous, the most untrustworthy of all. People who say they love you will pounce when they get the chance. You gotta always remember that they're just waiting for the opportunity to get you. Love's a trick. A cover. A way to catch you off guard. Never let down your guard. Never.”

Dean Koontz book The Voice of the Night

Roy Borden, p. 53
The Voice of the Night (1980)

Love, People, World, Way

“It was beautiful, of course; I couldn't deny that. Everything was green: the trees, their trunks covered with moss, their branches hanging with a canopy of it, the ground covered with ferns. Even the air filtered down greenly through the leaves. It was too green — an alien planet.”

Stephenie Meyer (1973) American author

Bella Swan about Forks, Washington, p. 8
Twilight series, Twilight (2005)

Beauty, Tree

“The future of mankind, for the socialist, is simple: pull down the existing order and allow the future to emerge.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

"Eliot and Conservatism" (p. 208)
A Political Philosophy (2006)

Future

“Death comes black and hard, rushing down on me from the future, with no possible chance of escape.”

David Gerrold book The Man Who Folded Himself

Source: The Man Who Folded Himself (1973), p. 109

Death, Chance, Future

“I will be the answer
At the end of the line.
I will be there for you,
Why take the time?
In the burning of uncertainty,
I will be your solid ground.
I will hold the balance
If you can't look down.”

Sarah McLachlan (1968) Canadian musician, singer, and songwriter

Answer
Song lyrics, Afterglow (2003)

Time

“Arakawa: At the beginning, I was contracted for a one-shot publication. However, the editor-in-charge of the storyboards passed down a request, "Let us serialise this, okay…". With a story that is meant to be completed in one chapter at this time, "How on earth am I going to do it?" [laughs]. I pounded my brains for around half a month, thinking about ideas to serialise this work.”

Hiromu Arakawa (1973) award winning Japanese manga artist

Interview with mobuta.com (2004)

Idea, Thinking, Time

“I would not kill my enemies, but I will make them get down on their knees. I will, I can, I must.”

Maria Callas (1923–1977) American-born Greek operatic soprano

Callas : The Art and the Life (1974)

“I hope to begin a new plan… not sitting down to local matter but walking and watching.”

Samuel Palmer (1805–1881) British landscape painter, etcher and printmaker

The Life and letters of Samuel Palmer, Painter and Etcher (AH Palmer, London, 1892)

Hope

“The human is a narrative being. We construct emotional machines, so-called “stories”, to communicate, to share the world in which we live and make it collectively experienceable. And we are pretty good at doing that. Since the primordial soup at some point mendelized into primate brains, we have either been fleeing from big cats or telling others about our escapes from the clutches of big cats. Sitting around the campfire, interpreting and breaking down the world, charging it with aura. Initially this was all very mythopoeic, and slowly it became more differentiated. But even in the post-Enlightenment age, world interpretations are not necessarily particularly rational. Good stories sell well, and the best stories are the ones that hit you in the gut, regardless of whether they would hold up to a Wikipedia check or not.”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

via Boing Boing http://boingboing.net/2016/04/14/the-story-of-traceroute-about.html

Age, World, Communication, Cats

“Furthermore, we are instructed, when we do come across instances of temple destruction, as in the case of Aurangzeb, we have to be circumspect in inferring what has happened and why…. the early monuments – like the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque in Delhi – had to be built in ‘great haste’, we are instructed…Proclamation of political power, alone! And what about the religion which insists that religious faith is all, that the political cannot be separated from the religious? And the name: the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque, the Might of Islam mosque? Of course, that must be taken to be mere genuflection! And notice: ‘available materials were assembled and incorporated’, they ‘clearly came from Hindu sources’ – may be the materials were just lying about; may be the temples had crumbled on their own earlier; may be the Hindus voluntarily broke their temples and donated the materials? No? After all, there is no proof they didn’t! And so, the word ‘plundered’ is repeatedly put within quotation marks!
In fact, there is more. The use of such materials – from Hindu temples – for constructing Islamic mosques is part of ‘a process of architectural definition and accommodation by local workmen essential to the further development of a South Asian architecture for Islamic use’. The primary responsibility thus becomes that of those ‘local workmen’ and their ‘accommodation’. Hence, features in the Qutb complex come to ‘demonstrate a creative response by architects and carvers to a new programme’. A mosque that has clearly used materials, including pillars, from Hindu temples, in which undeniably ‘in the fabric of the central dome, a lintel carved with Hindu deities has been turned around so that its images face into the rubble wall’ comes ‘not to fix the rule’. ‘Rather, it stands in contrast to the rapid exploration of collaborative and creative possibilities – architectural, decorative, and synthetic – found in less fortified contexts.’ Conclusions to the contrary have been ‘misevaluations’. We are making the error of ‘seeing salvaged pieces’ – what a good word that, ‘salvaged ’: the pieces were not obtained by breaking down temples; they were lying as rubble and would inevitably have disintegrated with the passage of time; instead they were ‘salvaged ’, and given the honour of becoming part of new, pious buildings – ‘seeing salvaged pieces where healthy collaborative creativity was producing new forms’.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud

Faith, Religion, Error, Lying

“I want to reassure the American people that the full resources of the federal government are working to assist local authorities to save lives and to help the victims of these attacks. Make no mistake: The United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts.
I've been in regular contact with the Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, the national security team and my Cabinet. We have taken all appropriate security precautions to protect the American people. Our military at home and around the world is on high alert status, and we have taken the necessary security precautions to continue the functions of your government.
We have been in touch with the leaders of Congress and with world leaders to assure them that we will do whatever is necessary to protect America and Americans.
I ask the American people to join me in saying a thanks for all the folks who have been fighting hard to rescue our fellow citizens and to join me in saying a prayer for the victims and their families.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Remarks Upon Arrival at Barksdale Air Force Base https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Remarks_Upon_Arrival_at_Barksdale_Air_Force_Base (11 September, 2001) 2000s, 2001

People, World, Family, Home

“Always eat grapes downwards — that is, always eat the best grape first; in this way there will be none better left on the bunch, and each grape will seem good down to the last.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Eating Grapes Downwards
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VII - On the Making of Music, Pictures, and Books

Way

“Who am I to dream?,
dreams are for fools, they let you down…”

James Morrison (1984) English singer-songwriter and guitarist

Wonderful World
Song lyrics, Undiscovered (James Morrison album) (2006)

Dreams, Fools

“Jobs: As a kid, I read an article in the Scientific American. It measured the efficiency of locomotion of various species on the planet. Bears. Chimpanzees. Raccoons. Birds. Fish. How many kilo-calories per kilometer did they spend to move? Humans were measured too. And the condor won. It was the most efficient. Humankind came in with an unimpressive showing about a third of the way down the list. But somebody there had the brilliance to test a human riding a bicycle. We blew away the condor. Off the charts.
This really had an impact on me. Humans are tool builders. We build tools that can dramatically amplify our innate human abilities. We ran an ad for this once that the personal computer is the bicycle of the mind. I believe that with every bone in my body.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

1990s

Way, Bird, Fish, Reading

“The problem with guys like Ari Fleischer, the former press secretary of George W. Bush, is that he’s drunk the inside-the-beltway political Kookaid for so long that he actually believes his own spin. Poor guy went down for the third time in the denial goo long ago. Donald Trump’s biggest critics all believe that the engine of all things good and serious emanates from the professional Fedzillacrats who apparently enjoy wallowing in the said goo of Washington, D. C. … Donald Trump is a mess? Maybe Mr. Fleischer should open up the political garbage can he and the majority of Fedzillacrats live in and take a look at the real, certifiable, rotting, stinking mess that has been caused by the professional scammers of both political stripes for the past 50 years. … If you want to watch a real political train wreck, witness a real mess in progress, you need look no further than the professional politicians who have borrowed and spent this country into oblivion. Trump that if you dare.”

Ted Nugent (1948) American rock musician

Give Trump the Medal of Freedom (August 7, 2015)

Guy, Problem, Time, Past

“It’s only one planet. It’s all we have. So what we do here affects the other side of the planet in ways we never know. … I am [vegetarian] too, but leaning towards veganism. … I give people the dirtiest look when we walk down the street and see someone wearing fur. He gets embarrassed because I will look at them like, how could you even walk out of your house like that? You might as well be wearing my dog. What are you doing? I started getting into animal rights when I met him [Corey Feldman], but I’ve always loved animals.”

Susie Feldman (1982) American actress

"Farm Sanctuary Exclusive: Corey and Susie Feldman Are Proud To Be Veg!", interview with Ecorazzi (11 December 2008) http://www.ecorazzi.com/2008/12/11/farm-sanctuary-exclusive-corey-and-susie-feldman-are-proud-to-be-veg/.

Love, People, Dogs, Way