Quotes about down
page 48

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

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

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

“Brenda and Eddie were the popular steadies
And the king and the queen of the prom
Riding around with the car top down and the radio on
Nobody looked any finer
Or was more of a hit at the Parkway Diner
We never knew we could want more than that out of life
Surely Brenda and Eddie would always know how to survive.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Scenes from an Italian Restaurant.
Song lyrics, The Stranger (1977)

Life, Cars

“The higher the trail the steeper it grows
Ten thousand tiers of dangerous cliffs
The stone bridge is slippery with green moss
Cloud after cloud keeps flying by
Waterfalls hang like ribbons of silk
The moon shines down on the bright pool
I climb the highest peak once more
To wait where the lone crane flies”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

Waiting, Flying

“Out and down in the colonies, life can be indulged, life and sensuality in all its forms, with no harm done to the Metropolis, nothing to soil those cathedrals, white marble statues, noble thoughts.”

Thomas Pynchon book Gravity's Rainbow

Gravity's Rainbow (1973)

Life

“Can you weep for Him with intense longing of heart? Men shed a jugful of tears for the sake of their children, for their wives, or for money. But who weeps for God? So long as the child remains engrossed with its toys, the mother looks after her cooking and other household duties. But when the child no longer relishes the toys, it throws them aside and yells for its mother. Then the mother takes the rice-pot down from the hearth, runs in haste, and takes the child in her arms.”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942), p. 149

Men, Money, God, Children

“What kind of political order, then, is taking shape in Europe, 15 years after Maastricht? The pioneers of European integration – Monnet and his fellow spirits – envisaged the eventual creation of a federal union that would one day be the supranational equivalent of the nation-states out of which it emerged, anchored in an expanded popular sovereignty, based on universal suffrage, its executive answerable to an elected legislature, and its economy subject to requirements of social responsibility. In short, a democracy magnified to semi-continental scale (they had only Western Europe in mind). But there was always another way of looking at European unification, which saw it more as a limited pooling of powers by member governments for certain – principally economic – ends, that did not imply any fundamental derogation of national sovereignty as traditionally understood, but rather the creation of a novel institutional framework for a specified range of transactions. De Gaulle famously represented one version of this outlook; Thatcher another. Between these federalist and inter-governmentalist visions of Europe, there has been a continual tension down to the present.”

Perry Anderson (1938) British historian

"Depicting Europe", London Review of Books (20 September 2007)

Way, Democracy, Universe

“Stemming this tide will require much better coordination and information sharing among countries every step of the way. We should not stop pressing until Turkey, where most foreign fighters cross into Syria, finally locks down its border. The United States and our allies need to know and share the identities of every fighter who has traveled to Syria.”

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

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Speech on fighting ISIS (November 20, 2015)

Way, Travel, Country

“The raising of the status of Darwinian theory to a self-evident axiom has had the consequence that the very real problems and objections with which Darwin so painfully laboured in the Origin have become entirely invisible. Crucial problems such as the absence of connecting links or the difficulty of envisaging intermediate forms are virtually never discussed and the creation of even the most complex of adaptations is put down to natural selection without a ripple of doubt.”

Michael Denton book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis

Source: Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1986), p. 77

Nature, Problem

“Then, on the slight turn of the Lower Hope Reach, clusters of factory chimneys come distinctly into view, tall and slender above the squat ranges of cement works in Grays and Greenhithe. Smoking quietly at the top against the great blaze of a magnificent sunset, they give an industrial character to the scene, speak of work, manufactures, and trade, as palm-groves on the coral strands of distant islands speak of the luxuriant grace, beauty and vigour of tropical nature. The houses of Gravesend crowd upon the shore with an effect of confusion as if they had tumbled down haphazard from the top of the hill at the back. The flatness of the Kentish shore ends there. A fleet of steam-tugs lies at anchor in front of the various piers. A conspicuous church spire, the first seen distinctly coming from the sea, has a thoughtful grace, the serenity of a fine form above the chaotic disorder of men’s houses. But on the other side, on the flat Essex side, a shapeless and desolate red edifice, a vast pile of bricks with many windows and a slate roof more inaccessible than an Alpine slope, towers over the bend in monstrous ugliness, the tallest, heaviest building for miles around, a thing like an hotel, like a mansion of flats (all to let), exiled into these fields out of a street in West Kensington. Just round the corner, as it were, on a pier defined with stone blocks and wooden piles, a white mast, slender like a stalk of straw and crossed by a yard like a knitting-needle, flying the signals of flag and balloon, watches over a set of heavy dock-gates. Mast-heads and funnel-tops of ships peep above the ranges of corrugated iron roofs. This is the entrance to Tilbury Dock, the most recent of all London docks, the nearest to the sea.”

Joseph Conrad book The Mirror of the Sea

Hope Point to Tilbury / Gravesend
The Mirror of the Sea (1906), On the River Thames, Ch. 16

Men, Beauty, Hope, Nature

“We in America – and men across the earth – have trapped ourselves with that word equality, which is inapplicable to the genus man. I wish we would forget it. Stop its use in our country: Let the communists have it. It isn’t fit for men who fling thei…r dreams across the skies. It is fit only for a leveling down of mankind.”

Lillian Smith (author) (1897–1966) American author, social critic

"Killers of the Dream" Lillian Smith

Men, Dreams, Country, Forgetting

“He felt himself melting away, but he still remained firm with his gun on his shoulder. Suddenly the door of the room flew open and the draught of air caught up the little dancer, she fluttered like a sylph right into the stove by the side of the tin soldier, and was instantly in flames and was gone. The tin soldier melted down into a lump, and the next morning, when the maid servant took the ashes out of the stove, she found him in the shape of a little tin heart. But of the little dancer nothing remained but the tinsel rose, which was burnt black as a cinder.”

Hans Christian Andersen The Steadfast Tin Soldier

The Steadfast Tin Soldier
Fairy Tales (1835)

Heart

“The big artist does not sit down monkey like & copy a coal scuttle or an ugly old woman like some Dutch painters have done nor a dungpile, but he keeps a sharp eye on Nature & steals her tools. He learns what she does with light the big tool & then colour then form and appropriates them to his own use. Then he's got a canoe of his own smaller than Nature's but big enough for every purpose except to paint the midday sun which is not beautiful at all. It is plenty strong enough though to make midday sunlight or the setting sun if you know how to handle it. With this canoe he can sail parallel to Nature's sailing. He will soon be sailing only where he wants to selecting nice little coves & shady shores or storms to his own liking, but if ever he thinks he can sail another fashion from Nature or make a better shaped boat he'll capsize or stick in the mud & nobody will buy his pictures or sail with him in his old tub.”

Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) American painter

Letter to Benjamin Eakins (1868-03-03).

Beauty, Fashion, Nature, Thinking

“During the final months of the campaign, as polls indicated that I had a real chance of becoming the next leader, opposition from the supply management lobby gathered speed. Radio-Canada reported on dairy farmers who were busy selling Conservative Party memberships across Quebec. A Facebook page called Les amis de la gestion de l’offre et des régions (Friends of supply management and regions) was set up and had gathered more than 10,500 members by early May. As members started receiving their ballots by mail from the party, its creator, Jacques Roy, asked them to vote for Andrew Scheer.
Andrew, along with several other candidates, was then busy touring Quebec’s agricultural belt, including my own riding of Beauce, to pick up support from these fake Conservatives, only interested in blocking my candidacy and protecting their privileges. Interestingly, one year later, most of them have not renewed their memberships and are not members of the party anymore. During these last months of the campaign, the number of members in Quebec had increased considerably, from about 6,000 to more than 16,000. In April 2018, according to my estimates, we are down to about 6,000 again.
A few days after the vote, Éric Grenier, a political analyst at the CBC, calculated that if only 66 voters in a few key ridings had voted differently, I could have won. The points system, by which every riding in the country represented 100 points regardless of the number of members they had, gave outsized importance in the vote to a handful of ridings with few members. Of course, a lot more than 66 supply management farmers voted, likely thousands of them in Quebec, Ontario, and the other provinces. I even lost my riding of Beauce by 51% to 49%, the same proportion as the national vote.
At the annual press gallery dinner in Ottawa a few days after the vote, a gala where personalities make fun of political events of the past year, Andrew was said to have gotten the most laughs when he declared: “I certainly don’t owe my leadership victory to anybody…”, stopping in mid-sentence to take a swig of 2% milk from the carton. “It’s a high quality drink and it’s affordable too.” Of course, it was so funny because everybody in the room knew that was precisely why he got elected. He did what he thought he had to do to get the most votes, and that is fair game in a democratic system. But this also helps explain why so many people are so cynical about politics, and with good reason.”

Maxime Bernier (1963) Canadian politician

page 23 in "Live or die with supply management", chapter 5 previewed April 2018 http://www.maximebernier.com/my_chapter_on_supply_management of "Doing Politics Differently: My Vision for Canada"

People, Game, Drink, Business

“In these days he promoted a bramin, by name Seeva Dew Bhut, to the office of prime minister, who embracing the Mahomedan faith, became such a persecutor of Hindoos that he induced Sikundur to issue orders proscribing the residence of any other than Mahomedans in Kashmeer; and he required that no man should wear the mark on his forehead, or any woman be permitted to burn with her husband's corpse. Lastly, he insisted on all golden and silver images being broken and melted down, and the metal coined into money. Many of the bramins, rather than abandon their religion or their country, poisoned themselves; some emigrated from their native homes, while a few escaped the evil of banishment by becoming Mahomedans. After the emigration of the bramins, Sikundur ordered all the temples in Kashmeer to be thrown down; among which was one dedicated to Maha Dew, in the district of Punjhuzara, which they were unable to destroy, in consequence of its foundation being below the surface of the neighbouring water. But the temple dedicated to Jug Dew was levelled with the ground; and on digging into its foundation the earth emitted volumes of fire and smoke which the infidels declared to be the emblem of the wrath of the Deity; but Sikundur, who witnessed the phenomenon, did not desist till the building was entirely razed to the ground, and its foundations dug up….”

Sikandar Butshikan

Tarikh-i-Firishta, translated by John Briggs under the title History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, first published in 1829, New Delhi Reprint 1981, Vol. III p.268-69

Money, Faith, Religion, Home

“Hayden marches down the pitch towards Collymore, bat raised, as if he's just returned from the theatre to find him rifling through his wife.”

Ben Dirs journalist

West Indies v Australia, 2007-27-03, BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/6496463.stm,

“No longer is science asked to understand the world, or to improve any part of it. It is asked instead to immediately justify everything that happens…. spectacular domination has cut down the vast tree of scientific knowledge in order to make itself a truncheon.”

Guy Debord book Comments on the Society of the Spectacle

Comments on the Society of the Spectacle (1988)

World, Understanding, Knowledge, Tree

“While I was going through it, although I must admit that I broke down many times as the indignities of repeated handcuffing, stripping and cavity searches, swabbing, hold up with common criminals and drug addicts were all being imposed upon me despite my incessant assertions of immunity, I got the strength to regain composure and remain dignified thinking that I must represent all of my colleagues and my country with confidence and pride.”

Devyani Khobragade (1974) Indian diplomat

Devyani Khobragade letter to her colleagues: The full text http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/devyani-khobrogade-letter-to-her-colleagues-the-full-text/2013/12/18/aaad7018-6804-11e3-ae56-22de072140a2_story.html, The Washington Post, 18 December 2014

Confidence, Search, Thinking, Time

“Now I think I'm going down to the well tonight
And I'm going to drink till I get my fill.
And I hope when I get old I don't sit around thinking about it,
But I probably will.
Yeah, just sitting back trying to recapture
A little of the glory of,
Well time slips away and leaves you with nothing mister but boring stories of glory days.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Glory Days"
Song lyrics, Born in the U.S.A. (1984)

Hope, Drink, Thinking, Time

“No government is ever really in favor of so-called civil rights. It always tries to whittle them down. They are preserved under all governments, insofar as they survive at all, by special classes of fanatics, often highly dubious.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

33
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

“I think the US is in a terrible state of denial … Worse than that, we seem to be caught in a kind of Götterdämmerung response: we'd rather have the world go down in flames than change our lifestyle or admit we're wrong.”

Kim Stanley Robinson (1952) American science fiction writer

As quoted in "Future tense" in The Guardian (14 September 2005)

World, Thinking, Change

“We may, indeed, set it down as an absolute certainty, that many things are erroneously deemed impossible; for, till we know all the possible—and how far we are from that need not be insisted on—how can we know what is impossible?”

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) (1802–1871) Scottish publisher and writer

Source: Testimony: its Posture in the Scientific World (1859), p. 14

“I've not come to defeat or to put down anyone… I've come to win the hearts of the people of. People should recognize the character of Congressmen who deprive people of Rajkot of water.”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

2002, Modi election campaign speech, 2002

People, Water, Heart

“I emerged from the womb, right, I was wearing a top hat and I had a cane and said: 'Mother, that was an awkward and embarrassing birth. You should be ashamed of yourself dear. Now pull your nightie down; that doctor looks salacious.' Then I trotted off outside, met up with Kenneth Williams and we both had tea, and we looked down at our dinkles with disgust.”

Russell Brand (1975) British comedian, actor, and author

Radio One Interview, July 5th 2007

Birth, Tea

“The street's alive as secret debts are paid.
Contacts made, they vanished unseen.
Kids flash guitars just like switch-blades hustling for the record machine.
The hungry and the hunted explode into rock'n'roll bands
That face off against each other out in the street, down in Jungleland.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Jungleland"
Song lyrics, Born to Run (1975)

Secret

“Tier on tier of beautiful mountains and streams
Blue green vistas locked in white clouds
The mist makes my bandana wet
Dew coats my grass cape
My feet climb in straw sandals
My hand holds an old wooden stick
When I gaze down again on the dusty world
It has become a land of phantoms and dreams to me”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

World, Beauty, Dreams, Mountain

“Depp: I would never be disrespectful to my country, to the people, especially the kids who are over there serving in the armed forces. My uncle was wounded in Vietnam, paralyzed from the neck down. I would never say those things the way they claim I said them.
Interviewer: What exactly did you say?
Depp: I essentially said the United States is a very young country compared with Europe. We're still growing. That's it. I wouldn't say anything anti-American. I'm an American, and I love my country.
Interviewer: What's your view of President Bush?
Depp: What can I say? He's somebody's kid. He's somebody's father. God bless him. Good luck. You know what I mean? I don't agree with his politics, and I'm not going to pretend to, but I don't agree with a lot of people's politics.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

Quoted in Bernard Weintraub, "Playboy Interview: Johnny Depp," Playboy (May 2004)

Love, God, People, Way

“From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.”

S.J. Perelman (1904–1979) American humorist, author, and screenwriter

Groucho Marx on Perelman’s Dawn Ginsbergh’s Revenge (1928), quoted in Dorothy Herrmann S. J. Perelman: A Life (1986) p. 61.
Criticism

Books, Laughter, Reading

“An ideal country means being able to equalize opportunity each Filipino so that if anyone should devote enough time and energy towards advancing himself, or improving the quality of life of his family or loved ones, he would be able to do so without any strings tying him down; without any hands holding him down. That would be the most ideal thing any official or president can give to his or her people.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Kap Maceda Aguila, "The Substance of Chiz", People Asia, 2006 June, p. 51, ISSN 0119-657X.
2006

Love, Life, People, Family

“I eased him into his new bed [beneath the floorboards] … A week later, I wondered whether his body had changed at all or had started to decompose. I disinterred him and pulled the dirt-stained youth up onto the floor. His skin was very dirty. I stripped myself naked and carried him into the bathroom and washed the body. There was practically no discoloration and his skin was pale white. His limbs were more relaxed than when I had put him down there.”

Dennis Nilsen (1945–2018) British serial killer

As quoted by Brian Masters (2011), Killing for Company, Random House, p. 113, ISBN 1446428737

Youth, Change

“The world isn’t just what you see outside your window. It’s so much larger, so much grander. We are just microscopic specks in the whole big scheme of things in this universe! How bogged down we get by rules, by what society wants and what people say, when in fact it’s all just timepass. Enjoy the moment, even the grief. Celebrate the joy of being alive. It’s so very very easy to be happy.”

Protima Bedi (1948–1998) Indian model and dancer

In "Timepass" p.x

Happiness, People, World, Universe

“And down the dunes a thousand guns lie crouched,
Unseen, beside the flood —
Like tigers in some Orient jungle crouched
That wait and watch for blood. Meanwhile, through streets still echoing with trade,
Walk grave and thoughtful men,
Whose hands may one day wield the patriot's blade
As lightly as the pen.”

Henry Timrod (1828–1867) Poet from the American South

"Charleston", st. 4–5

Men, Lie, Waiting

“I asked him what, if anything, got him down about teaching. He said he didn't think that anything about it got him exactly down, but there was one thing, he thought, that frightened him: reading the pencilled notations in the margins of books in the college library.”

Jerome David Salinger book Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963), Seymour: An Introduction (1959)

Books, Thinking, Reading

“Unfortunately… the philosophy of Aristotle laid it down as a principle, that the celestial motions were regulated by laws proper to themselves, and bearing no affinity to those which prevail on earth. By thus drawing a broad and impassable line of separation between celestial and terrestrial mechanics, it placed the former altogether out of the pale of experimental research, while it at the same time impeded the progress of the latter by the assumption of principles respecting natural and unnatural motions, hastily adopted from the most superficial and cursory and remark, undeserving even the name of observation. Astronomy therefore continued for ages a science of mere record, in which theory had no part, except in so far as it attempted to conciliate the inequalities of the celestial motions with that assumed law of uniform circular revolution which was alone considered consistent with the perfection of the heavenly mechanism.”

John Herschel (1792–1871) English mathematician, astronomer, chemist and photographer

Source: A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (1831), Ch.3 Of Cosmical Phenomena

Age, Law, Nature, Science

“The very employers and politicians and publishers who talk most loudly of class antagonism and the destruction of the American system now undermine that system by this attempt to coerce the votes of the wage earners of this country. It is the 1936 version of the old threat to close down the factory or the office if a particular candidate does not win. It is an old strategy of tyrants to delude their victims into fighting their battles for them. Every message in a pay envelope, even if it is the truth, is a command to vote according to the will of the employer. But this propaganda is worse — it is deceit.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

1930s, Address at Madison Square Garden (1936)

Truth, Fight, Country

“The only thing I'm interested in is the music and the musicians. I don't acknowledge applause 'cause I'm giving them something. They're not giving me anything with their applause. Can I write that down?”

Miles Davis (1926–1991) American jazz musician

As quoted in Jazz-Rock Fusion: The People, The Music, p. 40
1970s

Music

“You cannot love someone you do not know -- not unless you water down the definition of love so much that it becomes meaningless.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression (1979), p. 105

Love, Water

“Rachel Maddow: Do you think that a private business has the right to say we don't serve black people?Rand Paul: I'm not in favor of any discrimination of any form; I would never belong to any club that excluded anybody for race. We still do have private clubs in America that can discriminate based on race. But I think what's important about this debate is not written into any specific "gotcha" on this, but asking the question: what about freedom of speech? Should we limit speech from people we find abhorrent? Should we limit racists from speaking? I don't want to be associated with those people, but I also don't want to limit their speech in any way in the sense that we tolerate boorish and uncivilized behavior because that's one of the things freedom requires is that we allow people to be boorish and uncivilized, but that doesn't mean we approve of it. I think the problem with this debate is by getting muddled down into it, the implication is somehow that I would approve of any racism or discrimination, and I don't in any form or fashion.I do defend and believe that the government should not be involved with institutional racism or discrimination or segregation in schools, busing, all those things. But had I been there, there would have been some discussion over one of the titles of the civil rights. And I think that's a valid point, and still a valid discussion, because the thing is, is if we want to harbor in on private businesses and their policies, then you have to have the discussion about: do you want to abridge the First Amendment as well. Do you want to say that because people say abhorrent things — you know, we still have this. We're having all this debate over hate speech and this and that. Can you have a newspaper and say abhorrent things? Can you march in a parade and believe in abhorrent things, you know?”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

The Rachel Maddow Show
MSNBC
2010-05-19
Rand Paul on 'Maddow' fallout begins
Maddow Blog
MSNBC
2010-05-20
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/05/20/4313688-rand-paul-on-maddow-fallout-begins
2010-11-17
2010s

Hate, People, School, Way

“The only difference [between promoting a book and a CD] is when I do the readings. My fans are out there in full force, but it's nice to have all the kids there as well. I really love this evolution of writing. Writing is my core, and writing the book was like writing a really long love song. I have 31 pages to elaborate instead of three minutes. And my target audience, although it is children, I don't talk down to them. I want the parents to find it interesting. [Children] sit in my lap. I love it. I've always tried to turn an arena into an intimate setting. So, if I'm already in an intimate setting... You get to talk to a few hundred people, and you get to really bring them in, to have an exchange with them that often doesn't occur on the stage.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

Reuters (November 17, 2006)
2007, 2008

Love, Children, People, Books

“Nietzsche proposes the following brilliant hypothesis: The bad conscience is the deep-seated morbid condition that declared itself in man under the stress of the most radical change he has ever experienced when he found himself imprisoned in perpetuity within a society which was in- violable. All the strong and savage instincts such as adventurousness, rashness, cunning, rapacity, lust of power, which till then had not only been honoured, but actually encouraged, were suddenly put down as dangerous, and by degrees branded as immoral and criminal. Creatures adapted to a roving life of war and adventure suddenly saw all their instincts classed as worthless, nay, as forbidden. An immense despondency, a dejection without parallel, then took possession of them. And all these instincts that were not allowed an outward vent, turned inwards on the man himself feelings of enmity, cruelty, … violence, persecution, destruction and thus the bad conscience originated.”

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), p. 39

Life, War, Feeling, Strong

“Papa Bouba Diop the man mountain himself is playing as a striker and he's got healey one side of him and Diamante's coming out the over side of him, it's Papa Bouba Diop with the header! It's a goal. It's a goal Jeff…. is it David Healy he's running away. Andrew D'Urso playing on sorry my monitor's down again I'm looking over my shoulder, I don't really know the assistant, has he give it? Oh the assistant has it give it I don't think Jeff. No the referee hasn't give it either…don't really know what's happening Jeff ha ha. Could be, could be not ha ha ha!”

Chris Kamara (1957) English association football player and manager

http://www.11v11.com/matches/fulham-v-middlesbrough-18-august-2007-278055/ Reporting back from Craven Cottage 18 August 2007.

Mountain, Thinking

“My girlfriend bought me a down jacket, she said it fit my personality.”

Jay London (1966) American comedian

One-liners

Personality

“A political country is like an American forest; you have only to cut down the old trees, and immediately new trees come up to replace them.”

Walter Bagehot book The English Constitution

Introduction, p. xii
The English Constitution (1867)

Tree, Country

“If all the wisdom of the world and all its art—all the spoils that it has won from nature, all the fire that it has snatched from heaven—were gathered together and divided into heaps, and we could point and say, for instance, these mighty truths were flashed forth in the brilliant salon amid the ripple of light laughter and the sparkle of bright eyes; and this deep knowledge was dug up in the quiet study, where the bust of Pallas looks serenely down on the leather-scented shelves; and this heap belongs to the crowded street; and that to the daisied field—the heap that would tower up high above the rest as a mountain above hills would be the one at which we should look up and say: this noblest pile of all—these glorious paintings and this wondrous music, these trumpet words, these solemn thoughts, these daring deeds, they were forged and fashioned amid misery and pain in the sordid squalor of the city garret. There, from their eyries, while the world heaved and throbbed below, the kings of men sent forth their eagle thoughts to wing their flight through the ages. There, where the sunlight streaming through the broken panes fell on rotting boards and crumbling walls; there, from their lofty thrones, those rag-clothed Joves have hurled their thunderbolts and shaken, before now, the earth to its foundations.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Wisdom, Men, Pain, Truth

“You may write me down in history
With your bitter twisted lies
You may trod me down in the very dirt
And still like the dust I'll rise.”

Ben Harper (1969) singer-songwriter and musician

I'll Rise, written by Ben Harper and Maya Angelou.
Song lyrics, Welcome to the Cruel World (1994)

History

“It appeared [based on the evidence given] that I deliberately took up arms, of my own accord, and induced the other three to join me, for the purpose of doing nothing but shooting down the police.”

Ned Kelly (1855–1880) Australian bushranger

Sentencing (1880)

Appearance

“I'm not an author, I'm a writer, that's all I am. Authors want their names down in history; I want to keep the smoke coming out of the chimney.”

Mickey Spillane (1918–2006) American writer

Crime Time interview (2001)

History

“I believe from history and my own gut, instinct, that if I go ahead and lay it all out here, what we're really facing, you've got courage and you've got will, and you're gonna get angry and stop caring. It begins with not caring about what your slack-jawed knuckle-dragging cowardly pseudo tough-guy football-watching neighbor thinks. Okay? That's where it begins. It begins with not caring what happens to your individual person. And when you have that attitude, when you have that attitude, then the enemy doesn't have anything over you anymore. Stop being gelded domesticated garbage. Stop being weak! And when you see a threat coming down on you, deal with it! Become a human again! Stop being weak! We have a bunch of criminals coming down on us. God, ugh! Murdering scum. I wanna get humanity awake. I wanna get our forces up. And I wanna bring these people to justice. And you know what I mean. You know what I mean! I wanna unleash humanity, not have a bunch of con artist pot-bellied chicken-neck pieces of garbage running our world! More importantly they act like effeminate cowardly chicken necks cuz they want to train you to act like that they want to train you to be weak they want to train you. That's a nasty taste coming up in my mouth. Tastin' those globalists. I can taste their fear and their weakness. I taste metal, I taste blood.”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

Alex's Bill Gates Chicken-Neck Bastard 'Rant' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg-5WgcMV_o, September 2011.

God, People, World, Justice

“Economists, firstly, regard only one part of man's nature, and treat him simply as a money-making animal; secondly, they disregard the influence of custom, and only take account of competition. Certain laws are laid down under these assumptions; as, for instance, that the rate of wages always tends to an equality, the permanent difference obtaining in various employments being only sufficient to balance the favourable or unfavourable circumstances attending each of them — a law which is only true after a certain stage of civilisation and in so far as the acquisition of wealth is the sole object of men.”

Arnold Toynbee (1852–1883) British economic historian

Source: Lectures on The Industrial Revolution in England (1884), p. 28-29

Men, Money, Law, Nature

“Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting,
For fear of little men.”

William Allingham (1824–1889) Irish man of letters and poet

Poem: The Fairies http://www.bartleby.com/101/769.html.

Men, Fear, Mountain

“I trust I have not grown so gullible as to consult a doctor,” the bureaucrat said with dignity. “If I want medical attention, I hall employ the qualified machinery or, in extremis, a human with proper biomedical augmentation. But I will not swill down fermented swamp guzzle at the behest of some quasi-literate, uneducated charlatan.”

Michael Swanwick book Stations of the Tide

Source: Stations of the Tide (1991), Chapter 7, “Who Is the Black Beast?” (p. 108)

“In dreams you are so 'dumb' that you believe there is a commerce between the living and the dead. You are so 'irrational' as to imagine that you sometimes speak to parents who are dead. You are so 'unrealistic' that it seems to you that you visit old houses, long ago torn down, or that you travel in exotic foreign cities that you have actually never visited. In dreams you are so 'insane' you do not feel yourself locked in a closet of time and space, but feel instead as if all infinity but waited your beckoning.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 758, Page 25
The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression (1979)

Dreams, Travel, Feeling, Imagination

“As he drove, he was conscious of the web around him. The web of streets, of people, of places, and of things. The other web, too, the new world. This parallel place, with email address private driveways, it sdotcom marketplaces. You could find out so much there, running reality through your hands likea god's. Everything on the web is information; but everything is on the web, these days; so the world has become information. Everything has become an utterance of this thing, of this bank of words and images: everything is something it is saying, or has said. It's about buying, and looking, about our habits and desires, about contact with others, about voyeurism and aspiration and addiction. It is us boiled down — our essence, for better or worse. It is no longer passive. It is telling the story of us, and sometimes that story needs work.”

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

Source: The Lonely Dead (2004), Ch. 16

God, People, World, Reality

“It seems to me, that the most unlikely events almost have to happen, or life would just be dull and no one would write anything down.”

Lawrence M. Schoen (1959) American writer and klingonist

Source: Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard (2015), Chapter 17, “Dead Voices” (p. 171)

Life

“Today these taboos and terrors still linger, many of them, in the form of conventions of morality, uneasy strivings of conscience, doubts and desperations of religion; but ultimately Man will emerge from all these things, FREE—familiar, that is, with them all, making use of all, allowing generously for the values of all, but hampered and bound by NONE. He will realize the inner meaning of the creeds and rituals of the ancient religions, and will hail with joy the fulfilment of their far prophecy down the ages—finding after all the long-expected Saviour of the world within his own breast, and Paradise in the disclosure there of the everlasting peace of the soul.”

Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) British poet and academic

Pagan and Christian Creeds (1920)

Age, World, Peace, Religion

“The hotel was called the Alta Loma. It was built on a hillside in reverse, there on the crest of Bunker Hill, built against the decline of the hill, so that the main floor was on the level with the street but the tenth floor was downstairs ten levels. If you had room 862, you got in the elevator and went down eight floors, and if you wanted to go down in the truck room, you didn't go down but up to the attic, one floor above the main floor.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Source: Ask the Dust (1939), Chapter One

“Let us first examine that nightmare to many Americans, especially our friends in California, the growing population of Japanese on the Pacific slope. It is undoubtedly true that in the past many thousands of Japanese have legally or otherwise got into the United States, settled here and raised up children who became American citizens. Californians have properly objected on the sound basic ground that Japanese immigrants are not capable of assimilation into the American population. If this had throughout the discussion been made the sole ground for the American attitude all would have been well, and the people of Japan would today understand and accept our decision.

Anyone who has traveled in the Far East knows that the mingling of Asiatic blood with European or American blood produces, in nine cases out of ten, the most unfortunate results. There are throughout the East many thousands of so-called Eurasians—men and women and children partly of Asiatic blood and partly of European or American blood. These Eurasians are, as a common thing, looked down on and despised, both by the European and American who reside there, and by the pure Asiatic who lives there.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

Editorial for Macon Telegraph, April 30, 1925
1920s

Women, Men, Children, People

“The sun is coming down to earth, and the fields and the waters shout to him golden shouts.”

George Meredith (1828–1909) British novelist and poet of the Victorian era

Source: The Ordeal of Richard Feverel http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4412/4412.txt (1859), Ch. 19.

Water, Sun

“An orca trainer almost drowned after its orca dragged him down in the tank. He did reveal the locations of three Al-Qaeda hideouts.”

Amy Poehler (1971) American actress

citation needed
Weekend Update samples

“In the universe where everything works the way it common-sensically ought to, everything about the study of Artificial General Intelligence is driven by the one overwhelming fact of the indescribably huge effects: initial conditions and unfolding patterns whose consequences will resound for as long as causal chains continue out of Earth, until all the stars and galaxies in the night sky have burned down to cold iron, and maybe long afterward, or forever into infinity if the true laws of physics should happen to permit that. To deliberately thrust your mortal brain onto that stage, as it plays out on ancient Earth the first root of life, is an act so far beyond "audacity" as to set the word on fire, an act which can only be excused by the terrifying knowledge that the empty skies offer no higher authority.”

Eliezer Yudkowsky (1979) American blogger, writer, and artificial intelligence researcher

Above-Average AI Scientists http://lesswrong.com/lw/uc/aboveaverage_ai_scientists/

Life, Law, Way, Star

“Uncorrupted man, with God's blessing, advances across the fields of the universe as though he were walking down a country lane.”

Pierre Stephen Robert Payne (1911–1983) British lecturer, novelist, historian, poet and biographer

The Romantic Agony, p. 157,
The Corrupt Society - From Ancient Greece To Present-Day America (1975)

God, Universe, Country

“The Prime Minister said…that where I failed, for all my brilliant gifts, was in the faculty of judging. I will gladly submit my judgement about foreign affairs and national defence during the last five years, in comparison with his own. … In February the Prime Minister said the tension in Europe had greatly relaxed. A few weeks later Nazi Germany seized Austria. I predicted that he would repeat this statement as soon as the shock of the rape of Austria passed away. He did so in the very same words at the end of July. By the middle of August Germany was mobilising…which…ended in the complete destruction and absorption of the Republic of Czecho-Slovakia. … in November…he told us that Europe was settling down to a more peaceful state. The words were hardly out of his mouth before the Nazi atrocities on the Jewish population resounded throughout the civilised world.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Chingford (9 December 1938), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 1025
The 1930s

World, Peace

“In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

Franklin Roosevelt's Statement on the National Industrial Recovery Act (16 June 1933) http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/odnirast.html 1930s Source: [Tritch, Teresa, F.D.R. Makes the Case for the Minimum Wage, http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/07/f-d-r-makes-the-case-for-the-minimum-wage/, March 7, 2014, New York Times, March 7, 2014]

Men, Business, Dependency, Country

“Even the children of Carmona were divided into two camps, and below the ramparts, among the brushwood and rocks, we battled with stones shouting "Long live the duke!" and others, "Down with the tyrant!" We fought viciously, but I was never satisfied with this game — the fallen enemy rose again, the dead came back to life. The day after a battle, victors and vanquished both found themselves unharmed.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

Source: All Men are Mortal (1946), p. 72

Life, Children, Game, Dead

“The invasion of Iraq will surely go down in history as one of the most cowardly wars ever fought. It was a war in which a band of rich nations, armed with enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world several times over, rounded on a poor nation, falsely accused it of having nuclear weapons, used the United Nations to force it to disarm, then invaded it, occupied it, and are now in the process of selling it.”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

From a speech accepting the Sydney Peace Prize, November 07, 2004 http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=41&ItemID=6594 Speeches

War, World, History, Time

“As the natural systems of the planet broke down, humans would discover conclusively that they were still, after all, just animals in an ecosystem; and as it died back, so did they.”

Stephen Baxter book Evolution

Source: Evolution (2002), Chapter 16 “An Entangled Bank” section II (p. 525)

Nature, Animals

“Then time seemed to stop, or rather to lose its directional urgency of movement; it became a place in the open where one stood rather than a low, narrow corridor down which one was hurried.”

Fritz Leiber book The Wanderer

Source: The Wanderer (1964), Chapter 40 (p. 312).

Time

“A rich man’s body is like a premium cotton pillow, white and soft and blank. ‘’Ours’’ is different. My father’s spine was a knotted rope, the kind that women use in villages to pull water from wells; the clavicle curved around his neck in high relief, like a dog’s collar; cuts and nicks and scars, like little whip marks in his flesh, ran down his chest and waist, reaching down below his hip bones into his buttocks. The story of a poor man’s life is written on his body, in a sharp pen.”

Aravind Adiga book The White Tiger

The First Night.
The White Tiger (2008)

Life, Women, Dogs, Water

“If a person is unwilling to make a decisive resolution, if he wants to cheat God of the heart’s daring venture in which a person ventures way out and loses sight of all shrewdness and probability, indeed, takes leave of his senses or at least all his worldly mode of thinking, if instead of beginning with one step he almost craftily seeks to find out something, to have the infinite certainty changed into a finite certainty, then this discourse will not be able to benefit him. There is an upside-downness that wants to reap before it sows; there is a cowardliness that wants to have certainty before it begins. There is a hypersensitivity so copious in words that it continually shrinks from acting; but what would it avail a person if, double-minded and fork-tongued he wanted to dupe God, trap him in probability, but refused to understand the improbable, that one must lose everything in order to gain everything, and understand it so honestly that, in the most crucial moment, when his soul is already shuddering at the risk, he does not again leap to his own aid with the explanation that he has not yet fully made a resolution but merely wanted to feel his way. Therefore, all discussion of struggling with God in prayer, of the actual loss (since if pain of annihilation is not actually suffered, then the sufferer is not yet out upon the deep, and his scream is not the scream of danger but in the face of danger) and the figurative victory cannot have the purpose of persuading anyone or of converting the situation into a task for secular appraisal and changing God’s gift of grace to the venture into temporal small change for the timorous. It really would not help a person if the speaker, by his oratorical artistry, led him to jump into a half hour’s resolution, by the ardor of conviction started a fire in him so that he would blaze in a momentary good intention without being able to sustain a resolution or to nourish an intention as soon as the speaker stopped talking.”

Sören Kierkegaard book Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses

Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Hong, One Who Prays Aright Struggles In Prayer and is Victorious-In That God is Victorious p. 380-381
1840s, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses

God, Pain, Way, Feeling

“Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all were agreed. She is said to lie at the bottom of a well, for the very reason, perhaps, that whoever looks down in search of her sees his own image at the bottom, and is persuaded not only that he has seen the goddess, but that she is far better looking than he had imagined.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

On Democracy (6 October 1884)

Truth, Lie, Imagination, Search

“So here’s a question from one who believed, only a week ago, that Baghdad might just collapse, that we might wake up one morning to find the Baathist militia and the Iraqi army gone and the Americans walking down Saadun Street with their rifles over their shoulders. If the Iraqis can still hold out against such overwhelming force in Umm Qasr for four days, if they can keep fighting in Basra and Nassariyeh — the latter a city which briefly rose in successful revolt against Saddam in 1991 — why should Saddam’s forces not keep fighting in Baghdad?”

Robert Fisk (1946) English writer and journalist

Anglo-American Lies Exposed http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles191.htm, March 24, 2003 2003

Question, Success, Fight

“We busted out of class had to get away from those fools;
We learned more from a three minute record than we ever learned in school.
Tonight I hear the neighborhood drummer sound;
I can feel my heart begin to pound.
You say you're tired and you just want to close your eyes and follow your dreams down.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"No Surrender"
Song lyrics, Born in the U.S.A. (1984)

School, Dreams, Fools, Feeling

“Oh, Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side,
The summer's gone, and all the roses falling,
It's you, it's you must go, and I must bide.”

Fred Weatherly (1848–1929) English lawyer, author, lyricist and broadcaster

Song Danny Boy http://www.recmusic.org/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=22729

Mountain, Boy, Summer

“I asked M.—why he'd turned down the offer of a particular post. “I didn't want a post where the office is more important than the holder of it,” he replied.”

Nicolas Chamfort (1741–1794) French writer

Reflections

“Drifting in and out, you see the road you’re on
It came rolling down the cheek
Say just what you need
in between, it’s never as it seems”

Victoria Legrand (1981) singer

Myth, Bloom (May 15, 2012).

“Why does our march down the road to development seem to be a pattern of 3 steps forward, 2 steps back?”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2009, Speech: The Socio-Economic Peace Program of Senator Francis Escudero

“He had once, for example, put down a spokesman for the pesticide industry with a remark that people still quoted at parties: “And I presume on the eighth day God called you and said, ‘I changed my mind about insects!’ “”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

September “MINE ENEMIES ARE DELIVERED INTO MY HAND”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

God, People, Quotes, Change

“The timeless, surly patience of the serf
That moves the nearest to the naked earth
And ploughs down palaces, and thrones, and towers.”

Roy Campbell (poet) (1901–1957) South African poet

"The Serf," lines 12-14
Adamastor (1930)

Patience

“Have full-blown contact now. [The ongoing contacts] have been well documented here with multiple eyewitnesses as well as day and night footage with sound of the ships. Can provide all the eyewitnesses you wish. Two days ago I was hit with three balls of light within a stream of energy, after which a woman appeared to me with a strange headdress used for communication and other higher consciousness and energy works. The ship came in as a golden light from the north. It dropped down low and hovered. I have been [burnt] on my chest right over the heart. It has been photographed. These beings are extremely spiritual and technologically advanced. They have a message. This is not airy fairy, this is for real.”

James Gilliland (1952) American academic and author

James describing one of his close encounters.
Source: Montgomery, Christopher (2000), "Washington State UFO Hot Spot", UFO Magazine 15 (3): 36

Communication, Light, Appearance, Heart

“Having consulted widely among colleagues, I have concluded that the unity of the Party and the prospects of victory in a General Election would be better served if I stood down to enable Cabinet colleagues to enter the ballot for the leadership. I should like to thank all those in Cabinet and outside who have given me such dedicated support.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Statement http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/108254 announcing her intention to resign the premiership (22 November 1990). Third term as Prime Minister

Support, Victory

“Financial hardship has a way of keeping people sober. The challenge I see at such times is simple: Will we face reality or deny it? In the past I have done both. But when it comes down to really doing something about a problem, I'm learning that it's prudent to address it head on with those who are closest to you and work at it together.”

Danny Yamashiro (1967) American radio evangelist

From Paradise Calls, pages 80

People, Way, Problem, Reality

“I'm asking Congress to pass my Zero Down Payment Initiative. We should remove the 3 percent down payment rule for first time home buyers with FHA-insured mortgages.”

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

Remarks to the National Association of Home Builders, Columbus, Ohio, October 2, 2004 http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2004/10/20041002-7.html 2000s, 2004

Home, Time

“As conscious beings advance in mental growth, they come to recognise that this ideal must embrace not merely their own kin or neighbours, not only their tribe or nation, not only the whole race or species, but all conscious beings whatever, no matter how foreign. It is surely probable that this desire for the fulfilment of personality-in-community plays a very large part in the universe. We must remember, of course, that the particular forms which it may take in different kinds of worlds, up and down the universe, may be utterly alien to our comprehension and appreciation. Or rather, not utterly alien; since, if these arguments are correct, there is an essential underlying kinship and identity in all possible kinds of conscious being.”

Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) British novelist and philosopher

Source: Philosophy and Living (1939), Chapter VII: Ethics

World, Communication, Universe, Parting

“Listening to music that I hate calms me down.”

Joey Comeau (1980) writer

"Where Are You Off To Now?"
Anthology

Hate, Music

“I want Britain to become an Islamic state. I want to see the flag of Islam raised in 10 Downing Street.”

Omar Bakri Muhammad (1958) Islamist militant leader

As quoted in "Militant groups in the UK" https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/jun/19/religion.september11 (18 June 2002), by Audrey Gillan, The Guardian

“Few poets have made a more interesting rhetoric out of just fooling around: turning things upside down, looking at them from under the sofa, considering them (and their observer) curiously enough to make the reader protest, “That were to consider it too curiously.””

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p. 64
The Third Book of Criticism (1969)

Fools

“People always ask me, "Did you see Larry's latest movie?" I always say, "No, but I flushed a ten dollar bill down the toilet, so I feel like I've seen it."”

Jeff Foxworthy (1958) American stand-up comedian

Comedy Central Roast of Larry the Cable Guy

People, Feeling

“The Head of the State in the British Constitution is a Monarch and the Crown descends according to the rules of heredity. In India the Head of the State is an elected President who holds office for a term and can be removed for misconduct in accordance with the procedure laid down in the Constitution.”

Rajendra Prasad (1884–1963) Indian political leader

From his speech given on 28 November 1960 at laying the foundation-stone of the building of the Law Institute of India, in: p. 15
Presidents of India, 1950-2003

“There once was a brainy baboon,
Who always breathed down a bassoon,
For he said, "It appears
That in billions of years
I shall certainly hit on a tune."”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

New Pathways in Science (1935) Ch. IV The End of the World, p. 62

Appearance

“We cannot use Western models of protocols for research and development. We should guard against being bogged down with clinical trials.”

Manto Tshabalala-Msimang (1940–2009) South African politician

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=333154&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__national/

“The work itself, whether thought of as image of idea, as revelation, or as a manifest of meaning, could not have existed without a profound concern to achieve a purpose beyond vanity, ambition or remembrance, for a man’s term of life. Yet, while one looks at his works, a warning should be given, lest one forget, among the multitude of issues, the relation I bear to those with 'eyes'. Although the reference is in a different context and for another purpose, a metaphor is pertinent as William Blake set it down: THE Vision of Christ that thou dost see – Is my Vision’s Greatest Enemy: - Thine is the friend of All Mankind, - Mine speaks in parables to the Blind: 'Therefore, let no man under-value the implications of this work or its power for life; - or for death, if it is misused'.”

Clyfford Still (1904–1980) American artist

Letter to Gordon Smith, January 1, 1959, as quoted in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p. 196
1950s

Life, Death, Idea, Christ

“The road ahead of you is long, dark, and, I very much fear, bloodstained. I also very much fear that you will take us all down that road. But you must live to reach the end of it.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Elder Haman to Rand al'Thor
(15 October 1994)

Fear

“If, therefore, you've already considered that Signac and the others who are doing pointillism often make very beautiful things with it - Instead of running those things down, one [Bernhard] should respect them and speak of them sympathetically, especially when there's a falling out. Otherwise one becomes a narrow sectarian oneself, and the equivalent of those who think nothing of others and believe themselves to be the only righteous ones. This extends even to the academic painters, because take, for example, a painting by Fantin-Latour — and above all his entire oeuvre. Well then — there's someone who hasn't rebelled, and does that prevent him, that indefinable calm and righteousness that he has, from being one of the most independent characters in existence?”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in Vincent's letter to Emile Bernard, from Paris, about December 1887; from letter 575 - vangoghletters http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let575/letter.html] 1880s, 1887

Beauty, Thinking, Painting

“At least half of my life’s many mistakes can be safely put down to impetuosity: the other half derive from inertia.”

Donald James

Vadim

Life