Quotes about earring (1051 quotes, page 9)

“A litigant to winning so devotes his energies
That he never gives his neighbours or himself a moment’s rest,
But for every other pleasure he has neither ears nor eyes.”

Pietro Nelli (1672–1740) Italian painter

Un litigante è di vincer si ingordo,
Che non dà a se, o altrui pace o riposo,
Ma ad ogni altro piacer è cieco e sordo.
Satire, II., IX. — "Peccadigli degli Avvocati."
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 432.

Pleasure

“I really remember John Lennon's Imagine. I guess I'm twelve; that's one of my first albums. That really set fire to me. It was like he was whispering in your ear — his ideas of what's possible. Different ways of seeing the world.”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

Rolling Stone interview (2005)

World , Way , Imagination , Idea

“Painting is the most beautiful of all arts. In it, all sensations are condensed, at its aspect everyone may create romance at the will of his imagination, and at a glance have his soul invaded by the most profound memories, no efforts of memory, everything summed up in one moment. Complete art which sums up all the others and completes them. Like music, it acts on the soul through the intermediary of the senses, the harmonious tones corresponding to the harmonies of sounds, but in painting, a unity is obtained which is not possible in music, where the accords follow one another, and the judgement experiences a continuous fatigue if one wants to reunite the end and the beginning. In the main, the ear is an inferior sense to the eye. The hearing can only grasp a single sound at one time, whereas the sight takes in everything and at the same time simplifies at its will.”

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist artist

La peinture est le plus beau de tous les arts; en lui se résument toutes les sensations, à son aspect chacun peut, au gré de son imagination, créer le roman, d'un seul coup d'œil avoir l'âme envahie par les plus profonds souvenirs; point d'effort de mémoire, tout résumé en un seul instant. — Art complet qui résume tous les autres et les complète. — Comme la musique, il agit sur l'âme par l'intermédiaire des sens, les tons harmonieux correspondant aux harmonies des sons; mais en peinture on obtient une unité impossible en musique où les accords viennent les uns après les autres, et le jugement éprouve alors une fatigue incessante s'il veut réunir la fin au commencement. En somme, l'oreille est un sens inférieur à celui de l'œil. L'ouïe ne peut servir qu'à un seul son à la fois, tandis que la vue embrasse tout, en même temps qu'à son gré elle simplifie.
Quote of Gauguin from: Notes Synthéthiques (ca. 1884-1885), ed. Henri Mahaut, in Vers et prose (July-September 1910), p. 52; translation from John Rewald, Gauguin (Hyperion Press, 1938), p. 161.
1870s - 1880s

Beauty , Art , Music , Soul

“Hence the ancient architects, following in the footsteps of nature, perfected the ascending rows of seats in theatres from their investigations of the ascending voice, and by means of the canonical theory of the mathematicians and that of the musicians, endeavoured to make every voice uttered on the stage come with greater clearness and sweetness to the ears of the audience. For just as musical instruments are brought to perfection of clearness in the sound of their strings by means of bronze plates or horn, so the ancients devised methods of increasing the power of the voice in theatres through the application of harmonics.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book V, Chapter IV, Sec. 8

Music , Nature , Perfection

“Such was the man who was sent on an embassy to Ajmir, in order that the Rai (Pithaura) of that country might see the right way without the intervention of the sword, and that he might incline from the track of opposition into the path of propriety, leaving his airy follies for the institutes of the knowledge of Allah, and acknowledging the expediency of uttering the words of martyrdom and repeating the precepts of the law, and might abstain from infidelity and darkness, which entails the loss of this world and that to come, and might place in his ear the ring of slavery to the sublime Court (may Allah exalt it!) which is the centre of justice and mercy, and the pivot of the Sultans of the worldand by these means and modes might cleanse the fords of good life from the sins of impurity'…'The army of Islam was completely victorious, and 'an hundred thousand grovelling Hindus swiftly departed to the fire of hell'… After this great victory, the army of Islam marched forward to Ajmir, where it arrived at a fortunate moment and under an auspicious bird, and obtained so much booty and wealth, that you might have said that the secret depositories of the seas and hills had been revealed….'While the Sultan remained at Ajmir, he destroyed the pillars and foundations of the idol temples, and built in their stead mosques and colleges, and the precepts of Islam, and the customs of the law were divulged and established”

Muhammad of Ghor (1160–1206) Ghurid Sultan

About the conquest of Ajmer (Rajasthan) Hasan Nizami: Taju’l-Ma’sir, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 213-216. Also quoted (in part) in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.

Life , Secret , World , Justice

“That field hath eyen, and the wood hath ears.”

Geoffrey Chaucer book The Canterbury Tales

The Knight's Tale, l. 1524
The Canterbury Tales

“To listen to someone is to put oneself in his place while he is speaking. To put oneself in the place of someone whose soul is corroded by affliction, or in near danger of it, is to annihilate oneself. It is more difficult than suicide would be for a happy child. Therefore the afflicted are not listened to. They are like someone whose tongue has been cut out and who occasionally forgets the fact. When they move their lips no ear perceives any sound. And they themselves soon sink into impotence in the use of language, because of the certainty of not being heard.
That is why there is no hope for the vagrant as he stands before the magistrate. Even if, through his stammerings, he should utter a cry to pierce the soul, neither the magistrate nor the public will hear it. His cry is mute. And the afflicted are nearly always equally deaf to one another; and each of them, constrained by the general indifference, strives by means of self-delusion or forgetfulness to become deaf to his own self.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Human Personality (1943), p. 71

Hope , Soul , Suicide , Affliction

“We no longer like to think about bureaucracy, yet it informs every aspect of out existence. It’s as if as a planetary civilization, we have decided to clap out hands over our ears and start humming whenever the topic comes up.”

David Graeber book The Utopia of Rules

The Utopia of Rules (2015)

Thinking

“Lying rumours do not penetrate farther than our ears.”

Aeschines (-389–-314 BC) Attic orator; statesman

Aeschines, De Falsa Legatione, 149.

Lying

“When I was inspecting the guard of honor and as I walked past one person, I saw through the corner of my eye some movement. Then I saw a man reverse his rifle at me. I ducked down a little bit in a reflex action. By my ducking, he missed my head and the brunt of the blow came on my shoulder below the left ear.”

Rajiv Gandhi (1944–1991) sixth Prime Minister of India

In Sri Lankan in Honor Guard Attacks Gandhi (30 July 1987) http://articles.latimes.com/1987-07-30/news/mn-453_1_sri-lankan
Quote

Past , Personality

“Realism's 'truth' as embodied in painting and literature now solely consists of things capable of being seen by the eye or heard by the ear. Realism is concerned only with the external shell of nature. People content with the discoveries they have made ignore the fact that there are other things to be discovered, even broader avenues to be explored. They have found bacteria, but not what they consist of. [quote of 1892)”

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) Norwegian painter and printmaker

OKK 1760 (Nice, January 1892); as quoted in Edvard Much – behind the scream, Sue Prideaux; Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2007, p. 81
1880 - 1895

People , Truth , Quotes , Literature

“Nietzsche would say my friends lacked ears.”

David Wood (1946) British philosopher, born 1946

Source: Philosophy At The Limit (1990), Chapter 8, Performative Reflexivity, p. 133

“You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ear to hear
That somebody thinks they really found you”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

Fear , Thinking , Sleep , Distant

“Mine be a cot beside the hill;
A beehive's hum shall soothe my ear;
A willowy brook that turns a mill,
With many a fall, shall linger near.”

Samuel Rogers (1763–1855) British poet

A Wish (1834), l. 1-4.

“The general practice is for the secret to be confided only to an equally trustworthy friend, the same conditions being imposed on him. And so from trustworthy friend to trustworthy friend the secret goes moving on round that immense chain, until finally it reaches the ears of just the very person or persons whom the first talker had expressly intended it never should reach.”

Alessandro Manzoni book The Betrothed

Ma la pratica generale ha volato che ella obblighi soltanto a non confidare il segreto che ad un amico egualmente fidato, e imponendogli la condizione medesima. Cosi d'amico fidato in amico fidato, il segreto gira e gira per quella immensa catena, tanto che giunge all' orecchio di colui o di coloro a cui il primo che ha parlato intendeva appunto di non lasciarlo giunger mai.
Source: The Betrothed (1827; 1842), Ch. 11, p. 155

Secret , Confidence , Personality

“It may seem that the only way to make a necessary connexion between 'injury' and the things that are to be avoided, is to say that it is only used in an 'action-guiding sense' when applied to something the speaker intends to avoid. But we should look carefully at the crucial move in that argument, and query the suggestion that someone might happen not to want anything for which he would need the use of hands or eyes. Hands and eyes, like ears and legs, play a part in so many operations that a man could only be said not to need them if he had no wants at all.”

Philippa Foot (1920–2010) British philosopher

"Moral Beliefs"

Way , Sense , Parting

“On one side, lemons are selling for a shilling a dozen; on the other, oranges for sixpence. One man blows a horn in your ear, and offers you the Standard; another exerts his lungs, and shews you the Courier. Pencils are to be had for a penny; and penknives, with from three to six blades each, for eighteen pence a-dozen. A fellow with a trunk turns its corner on your temples; another deposits a box, with the grocery of a family —sugar, soap, candles, and all—on your toes. A gigantic gentleman nearly knocks you down in his hurry; and an elderly Jew slips past you so neatly, that you tumble over him before you are aware. Every body is always too late, and therefore every body is in a bustle. Two policemen keep the peace; and half-a-dozen individuals, whose notions on the law of property are at variance with established principles or prejudices, attend for the purpose of breaking it. Add to these some females with shawls and sharp elbows; and pattens, whose iron rings are for the benefit of foot-passengers. Such is the White Horse Cellar, and the pavement from Dover Street to Albemarle Street.”

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

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Family , Peace , Law , Past

“Do not let habit, born from experience, force you along this road, directing aimless eye and echoing ear and tongue; but judge by reason the much contested proof which I have spoken.”

Parmenides (-501–-470 BC) ancient Greek philosopher

Frag. B 7.3-8.1, quoted by Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians, vii. 3

“The country does want rest, we all want rest. Our very civilization wants it — and we mean that it shall have it. It shall have rest — repose — refreshment of soul and re-invigoration of faculty. And that rest shall be of life and not of death. It shall not be a poison that pacifies restlessness in death, nor shall it be any kind of anodyne or patting or propping or bolstering — as if a man with a cancer in his breast would be well if he only said he was so and wore a clean shirt and kept his shoes tied. We want the rest of a real Union, not of a name, not of a great transparent sham, which good old gentlemen must coddle and pat and dandle, and declare wheedlingly is the dearest Union that ever was, SO it is; and naughty, ugly old fanatics shan't frighten the pretty precious — no, they sha'n't. Are we babies or men? This is not the Union our fathers framed — and when slavery says that it will tolerate a Union on condition that freedom holds its tongue and consents that the Constitution means first slavery at all costs and then liberty, if you can get it, it speaks plainly and manfully, and says what it means. There are not wanting men enough to fall on their knees and cry: 'Certainly, certainly, stay on those terms. Don't go out of the Union — please don't go out; we'll promise to take great care in future that you have everything you want. Hold our tongues? Certainly. These people who talk about liberty are only a few fanatics — they are tolerably educated, but most of 'em are crazy; we don't speak to them in the street; we don't ask them to dinner; really, they are of no account, and if you'll really consent to stay in the Union, we'll see if we can't turn Plymouth Rock into a lump of dough'. I don't believe the Southern gentlemen want to be fed on dough. I believe they see quite as clearly as we do that this is not the sentiment of the North, because they can read the election returns as well as we. The thoughtful men among them see and feel that there is a hearty abhorrence of slavery among us, and a hearty desire to prevent its increase and expansion, and a constantly deepening conviction that the two systems of society are incompatible. When they want to know the sentiment of the North, they do not open their ears to speeches, they open their eyes, and go and look in the ballot-box, and they see there a constantly growing resolution that the Union of the United States shall no longer be a pretty name for the extension of slavery and the subversion of the Constitution. Both parties stand front to front. Each claims that the other is aggressive, that its rights have been outraged, and that the Constitution is on its side. Who shall decide? Shall it be the Supreme Court? But that is only a co-ordinate branch of the government. Its right to decide is not mutually acknowledged. There is no universally recognized official expounder of the meaning of the Constitution. Such an instrument, written or unwritten, always means in a crisis what the people choose. The people of the United States will always interpret the Constitution for themselves, because that is the nature of popular governments, and because they have learned that judges are sometimes appointed to do partisan service.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Life , Death , Men , People

“(Streetwalker to friend) First he wants me to put on bunny ears and patent leather shoes, then he wants me to eat a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich. I go, "Mister, you are so sick. I don't do nitrites.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 207

Shoe

“I stood on the stage and watched Marco in rather indignantly, look at Governor Bush and say, someone told you that because we’re running for the same office, that criticizing me will get you to that office. It appears that the same someone who has been whispering in old Marco’s ear too. So the indignation that you carry on, some of the stuff, you have to also own then. So let’s set the facts straight. First of all, I didn’t support Sonia Sotomayor. Secondly, I never wrote a check to Planned Parenthood. Third, if you look at my record as governor of New Jersey, I have vetoed a 50-caliber rifle ban. I have vetoed a reduction this clip size. I vetoed a statewide I. D. system for gun owners and I pardoned, six out-of-state folks who came through our state and were arrested for owning a gun legally in another state so they never have to face charges. And on Common Core, Common Core has been eliminated in New Jersey. So listen, this is the difference between being a governor and a senator. See when you’re a senator, what you get to do is just talk and talk and talk. And you talk so much that nobody can ever keep up with what you’re saying is accurate or not. When you’re a governor, you’re held accountable for everything you do. And the people of New Jersey, I’ve seen it. And the last piece is this. I like Marco too, and two years ago, he called me a conservative reformer that New Jersey needed. That was before he was running against me. Now that he is, he’s changed his tune. I’m never going to change my tune. I like Marco Rubio. He’s a good guy, a smart guy, and he would be a heck of a lot better president than Hillary Rodham Clinton would ever be.”

Chris Christie (1962) 55th Governor of New Jersey, former U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey

Full Transcript of the Sixth Republican Debate in Charleston http://time.com/4182096/republican-debate-charleston-transcript-full-text/, Time (14 January 2016).

People , Guy , Support , Appearance

“What we are slaves to will prevent us from praying to God. If we are slaves to all the thoughts we think, if we are slaves to everything our eyes see, if we are slaves to all the music our ears hear, if we are slaves to everything the nose smells and the tongue tastes, if we are slaves to everything the body wants, then how can we ever reach a state of peace? We can never know peace or tranquility this way. We have to escape from this slavery and become a slave only to God.”

Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (1900–1986) Sri Lankan Sufi leader

God , Peace , Music , Way

“Print also created new literary forms and altered ideas of literary style. Medieval poetry was conceived for the ear, and each poem had to stand the test of recitation. In addition, medieval audiences were not always interested in the poet himself, since his work was known to them only through the interpretations of minstrels, who frequently rephrased poems to suit their own image and images. The printed page changed these conditions. Slowly, the printed poet came into a new relationship with his reader. He learned not to be so repetitive as his predecessors since a reader could be depended upon to return as often as needed to uncompromised passages. …After the flowering of dramatic poetry during the Elizabethan Age, the printed page substituted for the theater, and millions of children came to know Shakespeare only through this form.”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969)

Children , Age , Flowers , Idea

“It is true of opinions as of other compositions that those who are seeped in them, whose ears are sensitive to literary nuances, whose antennae record subtle silences, can gather from their contents meaning beyond the words. All this presupposes, of course, a grasp of the nature of the Supreme Court's functions — the scope and limits of its constitutional authority — and often, as well, familiarity with the record and briefs of a particular case whose opinion record and briefs of a particular case whose opinion is under scrutiny.”

Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) American judge

"'The Administrative Side' of Chief Justice Hughes", 63 Harvard Law Review 1, 2 (1949).
Other writings

Nature , Silence

“The belly has no ears nor is it to be filled with fair words.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Original: …l'estomach affamé n'a poinct d'aureilles, il n'oyt goutte.
Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Fourth Book (1548, 1552), Chapter 63.

“The promise had not failed her.... She had won everything from life, for she had given the world a master. Words seemed to speak themselves in her ear.... "Bethink you of the blessedness. Every wife is like the Mother of God and has the hope of bearing a saviour of mankind."”

John Buchan book The Path of the King

Source: The Path of the King (1921), Ch. XIII "The Last Stage"

Life , God , World , Hope

“For some, autumn comes early, stays late through life where October follows September and November touches October and then instead of December and Christ's birth, there is no Bethlehem star, no rejoicing, but September comes again and old October and so on down the years, with no winter, spring, or revivifying summer. For these beings, fall is the ever normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eye? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth. In gusts they beetle-scurry, creep, thread, filter, motion, make all moons sullen, and surely cloud all clear-run waters. The spider-web hears them, trembles -- breaks. Such are the autumn people. Beware of them.”

Ray Bradbury book Something Wicked This Way Comes

Source: Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962), Chapter 38

Life , People , Soul , Star

“VI. We complain that the Confiscation Act which you approved is habitually disregarded by your Generals, and that no word of rebuke for them from you has yet reached the public ear. Fremont's Proclamation and Hunter's Order favoring Emancipation were promptly annulled by you; while Halleck's No. 3, forbidding fugitives from Slavery to Rebels to come within his lines-- an order as unmilitary as inhuman, and which received the hearty approbation of every traitor in America-- with scores of like tendency, have never provoked even your own remonstrance. We complain that the officers of your Armies have habitually repelled rather than invited approach of slaves who would have gladly taken the risks of escaping from their Rebel masters to our camps, bringing intelligence often of inestimable value to the Union cause. We complain that those who have thus escaped to us, avowing a willingness to do for us whatever might be required, have been brutally and madly repulsed, and often surrendered to be scourged, maimed and tortured by the ruffian traitors, who pretend to own them. We complain that a large proportion of our regular Army Officers, with many of the Volunteers, evince far more solicitude to uphold Slavery than to put down the Rebellion. And finally, we complain that you, Mr. President, elected as a Republican, knowing well what an abomination Slavery is, and how emphatically it is the core and essence of this atrocious Rebellion, seem never to interfere with these atrocities, and never give a direction to your Military subordinates, which does not appear to have been conceived in the interest of Slavery rather than of Freedom.”

Horace Greeley (1811–1872) American politician and publisher

1860s, The Prayer of the Twenty Millions (1862)

Intelligence , Freedom , Appearance

“Before the prospect of an intelligence explosion, we humans are like small children playing with a bomb. Such is the mismatch between the power of our plaything and the immaturity of our conduct. Superintelligence is a challenge for which we are not ready now and will not be ready for a long time. We have little idea when the detonation will occur, though if we hold the device to our ear we can hear a faint ticking sound.”

Nick Bostrom book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies

Source: Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014), Ch. 15

Children , Intelligence , Idea , Time

“More towers must yet be built—more towers destroyed—
Great rocks hoisted in air;
And he must seek his bread in high pale sunlight
With gulls about him, and clouds just over his eyes...
And so he did not mention his dream of falling
But drank his coffee in silence, and heard in his ears
That horrible whistle of wind, and felt his breath
Sucked out of him, and saw the tower flash by
And the small tree swell beneath him...
He patted his boy on the head, and kissed his wife,
Looked quickly around the room, to remember it,—
And so went out... For once, he forgot his pail.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Dreams , Boy , Coffee , Kiss

“Nudes -- stark and glistening,
Yelling in lurid glee. Grinning faces
And raging limbs
Whirl over the floor one fire.
For a shirt verminously busy
Yon soldier tore from his throat, with oaths
Godhead might shrink at, but not the lice.
And soon the shirt was aflare
Over the candle he'd lit while we lay.Then we all sprang up and stript
To hunt the verminous brood.
Soon like a demons' pantomine
The place was raging.
See the silhouettes agape,
See the glibbering shadows
Mixed with the battled arms on the wall.
See gargantuan hooked fingers
Pluck in supreme flesh
To smutch supreme littleness.
See the merry limbs in hot Highland fling
Because some wizard vermin
Charmed from the quiet this revel
When our ears were half lulled
By the dark music
Blown from Sleep's trumpet.”

Isaac Rosenberg (1890–1918) English poet

On Receiving News of the War (1914), Louse Hunting

Music , Business , Sleep , Rage

“We, too, have names that blaze on mouldering stone
And I have seen men's tears fall where they slept
And heard a shouting while I wept,
A century off yet louder in my ear
Than all that's so much magnified and near.”

Donald Davidson (1893–1968) American poet, essayist, critic and author

Late Answer: A Civil War Seminar

Men , Tear

“The opposite of freedom is not determinism, but hardness of heart. Freedom presupposes openness of heart, of mind, of eye and ear.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

Volume 1, p. 191
The Prophets (1962)

Freedom , Heart

“Genius doth catch the music of the spheres,
Which mortal ear was never meant to know.
Genius can penetrate the mysteries
Of feeling, all unknown to other hearts;
A power hath entered in the inmost soul,
Whose presence may not be contained.”

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

Translations, From the French

Music , Feeling , Soul , Heart

“This, then, is the obedience of faith, whereunto the Holy Ghost sanctifies us, that we should not give ear to the doctrine taught by the world, which is a doctrine of self-righteousness, and that we should keep ourselves altogether “unspotted from the world,” in our daily walk and conversation, and that we join not with the world in any thing that denies God and Christ, be it what it may.”

Hermann Friedrich Kohlbrügge (1803–1874) Dutch minister

Source: Sermons on the First Epistle of Peter (1855), p. 11 (quote from James 1:27)

God , World , Faith , Christ

“With head upraised, and look intent,
And eye and ear attentive bent,
And locks flung back, and lips apart,
Like monument of Grecian art,
In listening mood, she seemed to stand,
The guardian Naiad of the strand.”

Walter Scott (1771–1832) Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet

Canto I, stanza 17.
The Lady of the Lake http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3011 (1810)

Art , Mood

“A little longer, and thy Heart, Belovèd,
Shall beat for ever with a Love divine;
And joy so pure, so mighty, so eternal,
No creature knows and lives, will then be thine.A little longer yet — and angel voices
Shall ring in heavenly chant upon thine ear;
Angels and Saints await thee, and God needs thee:
Beloved, can we bid thee linger here!”

Adelaide Anne Procter (1825–1864) English poet and songwriter

"A Little Longer".
Legends and Lyrics: A Book of Verses (1858)

Love , God , Angels , Heart

“The lesson is that dying men must groan;
And poets groan in rhymes that please the ear.”

John Wain (1925–1994) British writer

Poem Don't let's spoil it all, I thought that we were going to be such good friends.

Men

“Was never eie did see that face,
Was never eare did heare that tong,
Was never minde did minde his grace,
That ever thought the travell long;
But eies and eares and ev'ry thought
Were with his sweete perfections caught.”

Mathew Roydon (1583–1622) English poet

An Elegie; or Friend's Passion for his Astrophill, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Travel , Perfection

“In high school in the early Sixties, I dreamed of intellectual work by women that would match the highest male standards and set men on their ear. A lot of women have done a lot of academic work since then, but most of them fall short of that standard.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders : Academe in the Hour of the Wolf, p. 206

Women , Men , School , Dreams

“My eye came to rest on the delicate convolutions of her ear-those intricate, perfect ears. The thought passed through my mind: "No, those ears were not created by any chance coming together of atoms in nature (the Communist view). They could have been created only by immense design."”

Whittaker Chambers Witness

Source: Witness (1952), p. 16

Nature , Chance , Perfection

“When I was first aware that I had been laid low by the disease, I felt a need, among other things, to register a strong protest against the word “depression.” Depression, most people know, used to be termed “melancholia,” a word which appears in English as early as the year 1303 and crops up more than once in Chaucer, who in his usage seemed to be aware of its pathological nuances. “Melancholia” would still appear to be a far more apt and evocative word for the blacker forms of the disorder, but it was usurped by a noun with a bland tonality and lacking any magisterial presence, used indifferently to describe an economic decline or a rut in the ground, a true wimp of a word for such a major illness. It may be that the scientist generally held responsible for its currency in modern times, a Johns Hopkins Medical School faculty member justly venerated — the Swiss-born psychiatrist Adolf Meyer — had a tin ear for the finer rhythms of English and therefore was unaware of the semantic damage he had inflicted by offering “depression” as a descriptive noun for such a dreadful and raging disease. Nonetheless, for over seventy-five years the word has slithered innocuously through the language like a slug, leaving little trace of its intrinsic malevolence and preventing, by its very insipidity, a general awareness of the horrible intensity of the disease when out of control.
As one who has suffered from the malady in extremis yet returned to tell the tale, I would lobby for a truly arresting designation. “Brainstorm,” for instance, has unfortunately been preempted to describe, somewhat jocularly, intellectual inspiration. But something along these lines is needed. Told that someone’s mood disorder has evolved into a storm — a veritable howling tempest in the brain, which is indeed what a clinical depression resembles like nothing else — even the uninformed layman might display sympathy rather than the standard reaction that “depression” evokes, something akin to “So what?” or “You’ll pull out of it” or “We all have bad days.””

William Styron book Darkness Visible

The phrase “nervous breakdown” seems to be on its way out, certainly deservedly so, owing to its insinuation of a vague spinelessness, but we still seem destined to be saddled with “depression” until a better, sturdier name is created.
Source: Darkness Visible (1990), IV

People , Disease , School , Way

“The ear disapproves but tolerates certain musical pieces; transfer them into the domain of our nose, and we will be forced to flee.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

As quoted in An Encyclopedia of Quotations About Music (1981) by Nat Shapiro, p. 130

Music

“The practice of reading aloud did do something towards attuning my ear. The subtle cadences of Elizabethan blank verse taught me more than the substantial study of English prosody could do at that time.”

Vernon Scannell (1922–2007) British boxer and poet

Drums of Morning, 1992

Study , Time , Reading

“Leaden trumpets spit the soot of power they say
"I'm on your side when nobody is, cause nobody is.
Come sit right here and sleep while I slip poison in your ear"”

St. Vincent (musician) (1982) American singer-songwriter

"Paris Is Burning"
Paris Is Burning (2006)

Sleep

“I lost my virginity through my ear.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Haunted

Source: Haunted (2005), Chapter 15, Anticipation

“At an unknown hour, from a source that is still sealed to us, but inexorable, the Work comes into the world. Cold calculations, splashes leaping up without plan, mathematically accurate construction (laid bare or concealed) silent, screaming drawing, scrupulous finish, colour in fanfares or played pianissimo on the strings, large, serene, cradling, fragmented planes. Isn’t that a Form? Aren't those the means?
Suffering, seeking, tormented souls with a deep fissure, caused by the collision of the spiritual with the material... Shame on him who turns his soul's ear away from the mouth of art. A human being speaks to human beings about the superhuman – the language of art.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Quote of Kandinsky, from the catalog of the second exhibition of the 'Neue Künstlervereinigung', München, August, 1910; as cited by de:Wolf-Dieter Dube, in Expressionism; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 95
1910 - 1915

World , Art , Soul , Mathematics

“Pope Pius XII was meant to go and castigate Hitler for being a [air quotes] "Genocidal Fuckhead … [air quotes again] with bunny rabbit ears". But he didn't, he wimped out, and for that history has renamed that Pope as "Pope Gutless Bastard I."”

Eddie Izzard (1962) British stand-up comedian, actor and writer

Circle (2000)

Quotes , History

“Defiling their shadows, infidels, accursed of Allah, with fingernails that are foot-long daggers, with mouths agape like cauldrons full of teeth on the boil, with eyes all fire, shaitans possessed of Iblis, clanking into their wars all linked, like slaves, with iron chains. Murad Bey, the huge, the single-blowed ox-beheader, saw without too much surprise mild-looking pale men dressed in blue, holding guns, drawn up in squares six deep as though in some massed dance depictive of orchard walls. At the corners of the squares were heavy giins and gunners. There did not seem to be many horsemen. Murad said a prayer within, raised his scimitar to heaven and yelled a fierce and holy word. The word was taken up, many thousandfold, and in a kind of gloved thunder the Mamelukes threw themselves on to the infidel right and nearly broke it. But the squares healed themselves at once, and the cavalry of the faithful crashed in three avenging prongs along the fire-spitting avenues between the walls. A great gun uttered earthquake language at them from within a square, and, rearing and cursing the curses of the archangels of Islam on to the uncircumcized, they wheeled and swung towards their protective village of Embabeh. There they encountered certain of the blue-clad infidel horde on the flat roofs of the houses, coughing musket-fire at them. But then disaster sang along their lines from the rear as shell after shell crunched and the Mamelukes roared in panic and burden to the screams of their terrified mounts, to whose ears these noises were new. Their rear dissolving, their retreat cut off, most sought the only way, that of the river. They plunged in, horseless, seeking to swim across to join the inactive horde of Ibrahim, waiting for. action that could now never come. Murad Bey, with such of his horsemen as were left, yelped off inland to Gizeh.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Napoleon Symphony (1974)

Men , War , Faith , Way

“All the love that in Christian lands circles round the life of death of Christ Jesus has been in India freely poured upon the intense realization of the every day presence of the Supreme God in the heart in a way more convincing than eyes or ears or the sense of touch can realize. This constitutes the glory of the saints and it is a possession which is treasured by our people, high and low, men and women, as a solace in life beyond value.”

Mahadev Govind Ranade (1842–1901) Indian scholar, social reformer and author

The tone and colour of his religious life reflected resemblance to that of Evangelical Christians. Quoted in pages=106-07

Love , Life , Death , Women

“Do you know there’s a wonderful Christian idea in which Thomas stretches his hands out to try to touch Christ’s wound and Christ says ‘Noli me tangere’ (do not touch me). What your eyes see your hands will always try to affirm. Much of dealing with the non-material is about this confusion between the hand and the eye, the ear and the eye, when the thing that you look at is uncertain, your body demands a kind of readjustment, it demands certainty. Something happens to where you are, to space; time changes. Time, I think, becomes slower. The mystical truth of art is time.”

Anish Kapoor (1954) British contemporary artist of Indian birth

Anish Kapoor Opens the Door:Modern Artist Creates Monuments that Transcend Space & Time

Truth , Art , Idea , Thinking

“A pun is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.”

Charles Lamb Last Essays of Elia

Popular Fallacies: IX, That the Worst Puns Are the Best.
Last Essays of Elia (1833)

“Later Julian would give me another book he had culled from among the Archival duplicates, a short novel called The Time Machine by Mr. H. G. Wells, about a marvelous but apparently imaginary cart which carried a man into the future—and it fascinated me—but the Archive itself was a Time Machine in everything but name. Here were voices preserved on browning paper like pressed flowers, whispering apostasies into the ear of a new century.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America

Source: Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (2009), p. 332

Books , Flowers , Time , Future

“If your ear is open to the afflicted, God will keep his ear open to you.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

God , Affliction

“You have seen bigger horses than his thirteen and a half, perhaps fourteen hands, his nine hundred pounds. You have seen handsomer profiles than this Roman nose, slightly convex. Burrs cling to his long sweeping tail. His coat is dark and unglossed. Yet look again, while he is still, for he will not be still long. Sense the vitality in those muscles, trembling beneath the skin; see the pride in that high head, hear the haughty command to his voice. For this is a wild horse, my friend. Once he claimed the western range. Then they took his range away from him. But nothing, no one claims him. He feels the wind and the air with his nose, with his ears, with his very soul, and what he feels is good. He tosses his head, once, quickly, and behind him his harem of six mares trot up to join him, and behind them, a yearling colt, a filly and two stork-legged foals. Coats dusty and chewed, tails spiked with bits of the desert, sage and nettle and leftover pine needles from winter climbs down from timberland. The Barb-nosed stallion led his family down to the waterhole. Not Barb from barbed wire, though perhaps the chewed skin was from barbed wire, but Barb from the Spanish horses from which he descended, brought to the New World over four hundred years ago, from the Barbary states of North Africa, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Fez, Tripoli. Indians stole them from the Spaniards; the Barbs stole themselves free from the Indians. Running wild, a few still run free.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

From Running Wild (1973) by Hano, p. 10
Other Topics

World , Family , Feeling , Soul

““It happened that Mahmud had long been planning an expedition into Bhardana, and Gujarat, to destroy the idol temple of Somnat, a place of great sanctity to all Hindus. So as soon as he had returned to Ghazni from his Khurasan business, he issued a farman to the General of the army, ordering him to leave a confidential officer in charge of the fort of Kabuliz, and himself to join the court with his son Salar Mas‘ud…
“It is related in the Tarikh-i Mahmudi that the Sultan shortly after reached Ghazni, and laid down the image of Somnat at the threshold of the Mosque of Ghazni, so that the Musulmans might tread upon the breast of the idol on their way to and from their devotions. As soon as the unbelievers heard of this, they sent an embassy to Khwaja Hasan Maimandi, stating that the idol was of stone and useless to the Musulmans, and offered to give twice its weight in gold as a ransom, if it might be returned to them. Khwaja Hasan Maimandi represented to the Sultan that the unbelievers had offered twice the weight of the idol in gold, and had agreed to be subject to him. He added, that the best policy would be to take the gold and restore the image, thereby attaching die people to his Government. The Sultan yielded to the advice of the Khwaja, and the unbelievers paid the gold into the treasury.
“One day, when the Sultan was seated on his throne, the ambassadors of the unbelievers came, and humbly petitioned thus: ‘Oh, Lord of the world! we have paid the gold to your Government in ransom, but have not yet received our purchase, the idol Somnat.’ The Sultan was wroth at their words, and, falling into reflection, broke up the assembly and retired, with his dear Salar Mas‘ud, into his private apartments. He then asked his opinion as to whether the image ought to be restored, or not? Salar Mas‘ud, who was perfect in goodness, said quickly, ‘In the day of the resurrection, when the Almighty shall call for Ãzar, the idol-destroyer, and Mahmud, the idol-seller, Sire! what will you say?’ This speech deeply affected the Sultan, he was full of grief, and answered, ‘I have given my word; it will be a breach of promise.’ Salar Mas‘ud begged him to make over the idol to him, and tell the unbelievers to get it from him. The Sultan agreed; and Salar Mas‘ud took it to his house, and, breaking off its nose and ears, ground them to powder.
“When Khwaja Hasan introduced the unbelievers, and asked the Sultan to give orders to restore the image to them, his majesty replied that Salar Mas‘ud had carried it off to his house, and that he might send them to get it from him. Khwaja Hasan, bowing his head, repeated these words in Arabic, ‘No easy matter is it to recover anything which has fallen into the hands of a lion.’ He then told the unbelievers that the idol was with Salar Mas‘ud, and that they were at liberty to go and fetch it. So they went to Mas‘ud’s door and demanded their god.
“That prince commanded Malik Nekbakht to treat them courteously, and make them be seated; then to mix the dust of the nose and ears of the idol with sandal and the lime eaten with betel-nut, and present it to them. The unbelievers were delighted, and smeared themselves with sandal, and ate the betel-leaf. After a while they asked for the idol, when Salar Mas‘ud said he had given it to them. They inquired, with astonishment, what he meant by saying that they had received the idol? And Malik Nekbakht explained that it was mixed with the sandal and betel-lime. Some began to vomit, while others went weeping and lamenting to Khwaja Hasan Maimandi and told him what had occurred…”
“Afterwards the image of Somnat was divided into four parts, as is described in the Tawarikh-i-Mahmudi. Mahmud’s first exploit is said to have been conquering the Hindu rebels, destroying the forts and the idol temples of the Rai Ajipal (Jaipal), and subduing the country of India. His second, the expedition into Harradawa and Guzerat, the carrying off the idol of Somnat, and dividing it into four pieces, one of which he is reported to have placed on the threshold of the Imperial Palace, while he sent two others to Mecca and Medina respectively. Both these exploits were performed at the suggestion, and by the advice, of the General and Salar Mas‘ud; but India was conquered by the efforts of Salar Mas‘ud alone, and the idol of Somnat was broken in pieces by his sold advice, as has been related. Salar Sahu was Sultan of the army and General of the forces in Iran…”

Ghazi Saiyyad Salar Masud (1014) semi-legendary Muslim figure from India

Somnath (Gujarat), Mir‘at-i-Mas‘udi Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own historians, Vol. II. p. 524-547

God , People , World , Way

“.. for the dead fish was striped like a cat and the sky was striped like the fish and the conch was whorled like an ear and the beach was ribbed like a dog's mouth and the movables in the surf splintered and crashed like the walls of Jericho.”

John Cheever book The Wapshot Chronicle

The Wapshot Chronicle (1957)

Dogs , Cats , Fish , Dead

“Like Duchamp's 'ready mades' - manufactured objects which qualified as art because he chose to call them such, the most unremarkable and inappropriate items - a pin, a plastic clothes peg, a television component, a razor blade, a tampon - could be brought within the province of punk (un)fashion… Objects borrowed from the most sordid of contexts found a place in punks' ensembles; lavatory chains were draped in graceful arcs across chests encased in plastic bin liners. Safety pins were taken out of their domestic 'utility' context and worn as gruesome ornaments through the cheek, ear or lip… fragments of school uniform (white bri-nylon shirts, school ties) were symbolically defiled (the shirts covered in graffiti, or fake blood; the ties left undone) and juxtaposed against leather drains or shocking pink mohair tops.”

Dick Hebdidge

Dick Hebdidge (1979). . p.106-12

School , Art , Fashion , Clothes

“Nevertheless I like being in Norway [to escape the Nazi threat Schwitters fled to Norway, c. 1937], for it is a country of unparalleled beauty... I paint landscapes and portraits, model portrait, glue and paint abstract pictures and glue abstract plastic art; besides, I write poetry in German... What distresses me most of all is that I cannot live in my 'Merzraum' [a sculptured studio-space, Schwitters had built in Germany in the 1920's, but bomb-damaged in the war] and that it may be given up to destruction. For that reason I ask you once more, can you keep your ear to the ground again, to see if anyone in America is willing to give me an opportunity to shape a three-dimensional room?”

Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) German artist

In a letter to w:Galka Scheyer, 24 July 1937; as quoted in I is Style, ed. Siegfried Gohr & Gunda Luyken, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, NAI Publishers, Rotterdam 2000, p. 41.
1930s
Source: http://www.sprengel-museum.de/bilderarchiv/sprengel_deutsch/fotos/merzbau1933_530.jpg

War , Beauty , Art , Painting

“The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson English Traits

English Traits, Race
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“The king, in his zeal to propagate the faith, now marched against the Hindoos of Nagrakote [Nagarkot Kangra], breaking down their idols and razing their temples. The fort, at that time denominated the Fort of Bheem, was closely invested by the Mahomedans, who had first laid waste the country around it with fire and sword.'…'In the year AH 402 (AD 1011), Mahmood resolved on the conquest of Tahnesur [Thanesar (Haryana)], in the kingdom of Hindoostan. It had reached the ears of the king that Tahnesur was held in the same veneration by idolaters, as Mecca by the faithful; that they had there set up a number of idols, the principal of which they called Jugsom, pretending that it had existed ever since the creation. Mahmood having reached Punjab, required, according to the subsisting treaty with Anundpal, that his army should not be molested on its march through his country…'The Raja's brother, with two thousand horse was also sent to meet the army, and to deliver the following message:- "My brother is the subject and tributary of the King, but he begs permission to acquaint his Majesty, that Tahnesur is the principal place of worship of the inhabitants of the country: that if it is required by the religion of Mahmood to subvert the religion of others, he has already acquitted himself of that duty, in the destruction of the temple of Nagrakote. But if he should be pleased to alter his resolution regarding Tahnesur, Anundpal promises that the amount of the revenues of that country shall be annually paid to Mahmood; that a sum shall also be paid to reimburse him for the expense of his expedition, besides which, on his own part he will present him with fifty elephants, and jewels to a considerable amount." Mahmood replied, "The religion of the faithful inculcates the following tenet: That in proportion as the tenets of the prophet are diffused, and his followers exert themselves in the subversion of idolatry, so shall be their reward in heaven; that, therefore, it behoved him, with the assistance of God, to root out the worship of idols from the face of all India. How then should he spare Tahnesur?"… This answer was communicated to the Raja of Dehly, who, resolving to oppose the invaders, sent messengers throughout Hindoostan to acquaint the other rajas that Mahmood, without provocation, was marching with a vast army to destroy Tahnesur, now under his immediate protection. He observed, that if a barrier was not expeditiously raised against this roaring torrent, the country of Hindoostan would be soon overwhelmed, and that it behoved them to unite their forces at Tahnesur, to avert the impending calamity….”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

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

God , Faith , Religion , Communication

“Shivering in fever, weak, and parched to sand,
My ears, those entrances of word-dressed thoughts,
My pictured eyes, and my assuring touch,
Fell from me, and my body turned me forth
From its beloved abode: then I was dead;
And in my grave beside my corpse I sat,
In vain attempting to return”

Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803–1849) English poet, dramatist and physician

Dream of Dying, from The Poetical Works of Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1890).

Dead

“ You're listening to the sounds of the reason we're about to die as a nation. The vermin in the media…they all yesterday said it was a white man. There was Bloomberg saying it was a deranged man with a political agenda. Not one of them would say if it was a Muslim. Not one of them would say if it was a Middle-Easterner. Not one of them if it hit them in the face would acknowledge what's going on around them, which is why we must defend ourselves—we have a bunch of overly race-conscious government dupes running everything in this country. There were the news anchors and the reporters, you heard it with your own ears, just yesterday. Repeating "white male", "white male", "white male", "white male", "white male", "white male", "white male", "white male", "white male", "white male", "white male", "white male", "white male". Because they believe in blackmail, blackmail, blackmail, blackmail. They blackmail the entire white race into a corner. They blackmail the entire white race into a corner. And they're killing us. The Muslims are running wild in this country. The Muslims are running wild in this country, and the police are afraid of them. The police are afraid of CAIR. The police are afraid of the ACLU. The police are afraid of everybody but you. "White male", "white male", "white male", "white male", "white male", "white male". You haven't heard, "Muslim male", "Muslim male", "Muslim male", "Muslim male", "Muslim male", "Muslim male", "Muslim male", did you? After they found who it was? The guy gave himself up, and they won't say "Muslim male", "Muslim male", "links to Islam", "Islam", "Muslim", "Muslim", "Islam", "Islam", "Muslim!"”

Michael Savage book The Savage Nation

Why won't they say it? Because they're a bunch of morons. And that's why we're in trouble. You heard it with your own damn ears, what more do I have to say to you?
The Savage Nation
The Savage Nation (1995- ), 2010-05-04
Radio (Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaE2YA8vFEs)
2010

Guy , Country

“But these things are often unknown to the world; for there is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of murder; robberies that leave man or woman for ever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer – committed to no sound except that of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed in no human ear.”

George Eliot book Felix Holt, the Radical

Introductory chapter (at page 11-12 – page numbers per the 'Wordsworth Classics' edition 1997.)
Felix Holt, the Radical (1866)

Life , Pain , Secret , World

“It is a terrible and awesome thing when a man sets out to create all other men in his own image. Such became the goal and all consuming ambition of Karl Marx. Not that he would have made each man equal to himself; in fact, it was quite the contrary. The image he hoped to construct was a great human colossus with Karl Marx as the brain and builder and all other men serving him as the ears and eyes, feet and hands, mouth and gullet. In other words, Marx surveyed the world and dreamed of the day when the whole body of humanity could be forced into a gigantic social image which conformed completely to Marx's dream of a perfect society.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

Men , World , Dreams , Hope

“Noise accompanies every manifestation of our life. Noise is familiar to us. Noise has the power to bring us back to life. On the other hand, sound, foreign to life, always a musical, outside thing, an occasional element, has come to strike our ears no more than an overly familiar face does our eye. Noise, gushing confusely and irregularly out of life, is never totally revealed to us and it keeps in store innumerable surprises for our benefit. We feel certain that in selecting and coordinating all noises we will enrich men with a voluptuousness they did not suspect.”

Luigi Russolo (1885–1947) Electronic music pioneer and Futurist painter

Source: 1910's, The Art of Noise', 1913, p. 9

Life , Men , Music , Feeling

“Homeland security will make America not only stronger, but, in many ways, better. Knowledge gained from bioterrorism research will improve public health. Stronger police and fire departments will mean safer neighborhoods. Stricter border enforcement will help combat illegal drugs. And as government works to better secure our homeland, America will continue to depend on the eyes and ears of alert citizens.”

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

2000s, 2002, State of the Union address (January 2002)

Health , Way , Knowledge , Help

“Hark! My ears are catching corncrake’s clicking,
Silver moonlight shines on cobhead corn;
Summer evening’s blessing me, enriching,
Valley’s wreaths of smoky slash and burn.
Neither joying I, nor grieve I, mournful;
But for forest’s darkness am I yearnful,
Rose-gilt clouds the day’s protracted ending,
Windy sleeping hill o’er all extending,
Fragrant twinflower, shortening, lingering shade;
These the things from which my heart-song’s made.

Lady June-July, for you I’m singing,
Great the silence of my ardent heart,
Merry music make, for faith is mounting,
Verdant wreath of oak eternal start.
Foolish errands now I’ll make no longer,
Fortune blessèd hands will grasp the stronger;
Rippled pool of circles now decreasing;
Time has ceased and weathervane is sleeping;
Stretches road at twilit end of day,
Bound for home unknown, I take its way.”

Eino Leino (1878–1926) Finnish poet and journalist

Faith , Music , Way , Home

“So, to answer the question, “What did God do before the Creation?” there was no “before the Creation.” God actually created time for us to live in. He’s not in time like we are, so the question is invalid. Think on that one for a few years (or since 1969, like I’ve been doing!). I can say it but I still can’t understand it. I’m one blind man trying to tell another blind man about colors. Once we get to Heaven, we will say, “O-o-o-o-h! So That’s how it works!” Once God gives us eyes to see and ears to hear in Heaven, I’m sure many more things will make sense! I’m ready for that day! I hope you are, too.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 29

God , Hope , Color , Understanding

“No longer can we compound attacks on truth with our silent acquiescence. No longer can we turn a blind eye or a deaf ear to these assaults on our institutions.”

Jeff Flake (1962) American politician

Speech in the U.S. Senate (2018)

Truth

“When a lady does consent to listen to an argument against her own opinions, she is always predetermined to withstand it — to listen only with her bodily ears, keeping the mental organs resolutely closed against the strongest reasoning.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. III : A Controversy; Gilbert to Helen

“Some day, somewhere … a guy is going to come to you and show you a nice brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is never broken, and this guy is going to offer to bet you that the jack of spades will jump out of this deck and squirt cider in your ear. But, son … do not bet him, for as sure as you do you are going to get an ear full of cider. (From the short story The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown, Collier's Weekly, January 28, 1933. Used with slightly different wording in the musical Guys and Dolls -- both the 1950 stage and the 1955 film versions.)”

Damon Runyon (1880–1946) writer

Music , Guy

“Look, stranger, on this island now
The leaping light for your delight discovers,
Stand stable here
And silent be,
That through the channels of the ear
May wander like a river
The swaying sound of the sea.”

W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet

Look, Stranger, on This Island Now (1936), first published in book form in Look, Stranger! (1936; US title On this Island)

Light , Sea

“Somewhat of a babbler, indeed, did people begin to think him; for he was apt to discourse at wearisome length of marvels of mechanism that he had read about… Among them he enumerated the Man of Brass, constructed by Albertus Magnus, and the Brazen Head of Friar Bacon… the automata of a little coach and horses, which it was pretended had been manufactured for the Dauphin of France; together with an insect that buzzed about the ear like a living fly… a duck that waddled, and quacked, and ate… In his idle and dreamy days he had considered it possible… to spiritualize machinery… a beauty that should attain to the ideal which Nature proposed to herself in all her creatures…”

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

"The Artist of the Beautiful" (1844)

People , Beauty , Nature , Thinking

“If I chose to speak, it is not to defend myself of the acts of which I'm accused, as only society, which by its organisation puts men into continual struggle each against the other, is responsible. Indeed, today do we not see in all classes and walks of life, people who desire, I will not say death as this sounds bad to the ear, but misfortune for their fellows if that can bring them advantages.”

Ravachol (1859–1892) French anarchist

Si je prends la parole, ce n'est pas pour me défendre des actes dont on m'accuse, car seule la société, qui, par son organisation, met les hommes en lutte continuelle les uns contre les autres, est responsable. En effet, ne voit-on pas aujourd'hui dans toutes les classes et dans toutes les fonctions des personnes qui désirent, je ne dirai pas la mort, parce que cela sonne mal à l'oreille, mais le malheur de leurs semblables, si cela peut leur procurer des avantages.
Trial statement

Life , Death , Men , People

“He is Karna, whom the world has abandoned. Karna Alone. Condemned goods. A prince raised in poverty. Born to die unfairly, unarmed and alone at the hands of his brother. Majestic in his complete despair. Praying on the banks of the Ganga. Stoned out of his skull.
Then Kunti appeared. She too was a man, but a man grown soft and womanly, a man with breasts, from doing female parts for years. Her movements were fluid. Full of women. Kunti, too, was stoned. High on the same shared joints. She had come to tell Karna a story.
Karna inclined his beautiful head and listened.
Red-eyed, Kunti danced for him. She told him of a young woman who had been granted a boon. A secret mantra that she could use to choose a lover from among the gods. Of how, with the imprudence of youth, the woman decided to test it to see if it really worked. How she stood alone in an empty field, turned her face to the heavens and recited the mantra. The words had scarcely left her foolish lips, Kunti said, when Surya, the God of Day, appeared before her. The young woman, bewitched by the beauty of the shimmering young god, gave herself to him. Nine months later she bore him a son. The baby was born sheathed in light, with gold earrings in his ears and a gold breastplate on his chest, engraved with the emblem of the sun.
The young mother loved her first-born son deeply, Kunti said, but she was unmarried and couldn't keep him. She put him in a reed basket and cast him away in a river. The child was found downriver by Adhirata, a charioteer. And named Karna.
Karna looked up to Kunti. Who was she? Who was my mother? Tell me where she is. Take me to her.
Kunti bowed her head. She's here, she said. Standing before you.
Karna's elation and anger at the revelation. His dance of confusion and despair. Where were you, he asked her, when I needed you the most? Did you ever hold me in your arms? Did you feed me? Did you ever look for me? Did you wonder where I might be?
In reply Kunti took the regal face in her hands, green the face, red the eyes, and kissed him on his brow. Karna shuddered in delight. A warrior reduced to infancy. The ecstasy of that kiss. He dispatched it to the ends of his body. To his toes. His fingertips. His lovely mother's kiss. Did you know how much I missed you? Rahel could see it coursing through his veins, as clearly as an egg travelling down an ostrich's neck.
A travelling kiss whose journey was cut short by dismay when Karna realised that his mother had revealed herself to him only to secure the safety of her five other, more beloved sons - the Pandavas - poised on the brink of their epic battle with their one hundred cousins. It is them that Kunti sought to protect by announcing to Karna that she was his mother. She had a promise to extract.
She invoked the Love Laws.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

pages 232-233.
The God of Small Things (1997)

Love , Women , God , Secret

“I 'll make the fur
Fly 'bout the ears of the old cur.”

Samuel Butler (poet) (1612–1680) poet and satirist

Canto III, line 277
Source: Hudibras, Part I (1663–1664)

Flying

“By turning my head slightly, I could see something out of the corner of my eye: it was a hand, the small white hand which slid along the table a little while ago. Now it was resting on its back, relaxed, soft and sensual, it had the indolent nudity of a woman sunning herself after bathing. A brown hairy object approached it, hesitant. It was a thick finger, yellowed by tobacco; inside this hand it had all the grossness of a male sex organ. It stopped for an instant, rigid, pointing at the fragile palm, then suddenly, it timidly began to stroke it. I was not surprised, I was only furious at the Self-Taught Man (L'Autodidacte); couldn't he hold himself back, the fool, didn't he realize the risk he was running?
The Self-Taught Man did not look surprised. He must have been expecting this for years. He must have imagined what would happen a hundred times, the day the Corsican would slip up behind him and a furious voice would resound suddenly in his ears. Yet he came back every evening, he feverishly pursued his reading and then, from time to time, like a thief, stroked a white hand or perhaps the leg of a small boy. It was resignation that I read on his face.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Nausea (1938)

Fools , Sex , Imagination , Boy

“I’m nothing but a conduit. The music goes though my ears, my fingers… Composer is a god. Composer creates music. We’re performers. We’re just passing it on.”

Valentina Lisitsa (1973) Ukrainian-American classical pianist

telegraph.co.uk http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/classicalmusic/9467708/Pianist-Valentina-Lisitsa-interview-with-the-YouTube-star.html

God , Music

“As fish in the water love deep places and wells and are most frequently found there, so wicked men have a great love to carnal security and have no will to strive against the stream. Fish love deep places best where there is least noise. Oh, how careful are natural men to keep all quiet, that there may be nothing to disturb them in their rest in sin! They love to be secure which is their destruction. O my soul, beware of carnal security, of being secure, though plunged over head and ears in sin.”

Thomas Boston (1676–1732) Scottish church leader, theologian and philosopher

The Art of Manfishing, First published 1699.
Primary Sources

Love , Men , Soul , Nature

“At present we are living through an unusual period in time a new cosmic creation has become reality in the world, a creativity within ourselves which pervades our consciousness.... in this way the artist became the foundation on which progress in the reconstruction of life could advance beyond the frontiers of the all-seeing eye and the all-hearing ear. Thus a picture was no longer an anecdote nor a lyric poem nor a lecture on morality nor a feast for the eye but a sign and symbol of this new conception of the world which comes from within us.”

El Lissitsky (1890–1941) Soviet artist, designer, photographer, teacher, typographer and architect

1915 - 1925, Suprematism' in World Reconstruction (1920)

Life , World , Way , Reality

“He was listening, too, for it is through the eyes and ears that one learns. A spiderweb of facts can tie up the lion of action; not to know is bad; not to strive to know is worse.”

Andre Norton (1912–2005) American writer of science fiction and fantasy

Source: Dragon Magic (1972), Chapter 3, “Sirrush-Lau” (p. 84)

Learning

“Silence. It flashed from the woodwork and the walls; it smote him with an awful, total power, as if generated by a vast mill. It rose from the floor, up out of the tattered gray wall-to-wall carpeting. It unleashed itself from the broken and semi-broken appliances in the kitchen, the dead machines which hadn’t worked in all the time Isidore had lived here. From the useless pole lamp in the living room it oozed out, meshing with the empty and wordless descent of itself from the fly-specked ceiling. It managed in fact to emerge from every object within his range of vision, as if it—the silence—meant to supplant all things tangible. Hence it assailed not only his ears but his eyes; as he stood by the inert TV set he experienced the silence as visible and, in its own way, alive. Alive! He had often felt its austere approach before; when it came it burst in without subtlety, evidently unable to wait. The silence of the world could not rein back its greed. Not any longer. Not when it had virtually won.”

Philip K. Dick book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Source: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), Chapter 2 (p. 20)

World , Way , Silence , Time

“Ridiculous as the idea may have been for her bluestocking mother to send brother and sister over alone like this, the fact was that Judy was protected as much by her curiosity as by her innocence. And then there was this other thing about her, too. You know all that razzle-dazzle about people being born in Original Sin and all that rot? Well, maybe it’s rot and maybe it isn’t. I mean I wouldn’t slit my throat from ear to ear, just because I’d found out for sure that most people are. But she wasn’t. That was the thing. She simply wasn’t.”

Elaine Dundy (1921–2008) American journalist, actress

I’m positive of that.
Part One, Two
The Dud Avocado (1958)

People , Idea , Sister

“Then, cleaving the grass, gazelles appear
(The gentler dolphins of kindlier waves)
With sensitive heads alert of ear;
Frail crowds that a delicate hearing saves.”

Thomas Sturge Moore (1870–1944) British playwright, poet and artist

"The Gazelles", line 13; from The Centaur's Booty (London: Duckworth, 1903) p. ix.

Grass , Appearance

“Oh, and some nasty stuff in there! It looked to be a bite, almost. Holyfield is very unhappy, look at this! It looked as if Tyson bared his teeth at one stage in the exchange. He bit his ear! Well, feelings are running very, very hot indeed in there. Holyfield was outraged by that. Now what is the referee going to do about that? One point deduction for Tyson! One point deducted from Mike Tyson, for biting Holyfield's ear. Now, let's take a look again. Well, this is getting like a street fight.”

Ian Darke (1950) British association football and boxing commentator

Evander Holyfield vs. Mike Tyson II https://listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=xlIOqypvT-g#Mike_Tyson_Bites_Holyfields_Ear_Clean_Off (28 June 1997).
1990s, 1997, Evander Holyfield vs. Mike Tyson II (June 1997)

Feeling , Fight

“When we try to develop and procure benefits for the world with universal love as our standard, then attentive ears and keen eyes will respond in service to one another, then limbs will be strengthened to work for one another, and those who know the Tao will untiringly instruct others. Thus the old and those who have neither wife nor children will have the support and supply to spend their old age with, and the young and weak and orphans will have the care and admonition to grow up in. When universal love is adopted as the standard, then such are the consequent benefits. It is incomprehensible, then, why people should object to universal love when they hear it.”

Mozi (-470–-391 BC) Chinese political philosopher and religious reformer of the Warring States period

Book 4; Universal Love III
Mozi

Love , Children , People , Age

“I was the same kind of father as I was a harpist - I played by ear.”

Harpo Marx (1888–1964) American comedian

book, Harpo Speaks

“I watched him tiptoe toward the barn door. I cursed him and waited tensely. In a little while I heard the mooing of a cow. It was a piteous cry. Then I heard a thud and a scuffle of hoofs. Out of the barn door came Hellfrick. Across his shoulder lay a dark mass, weighing him down. Behind him, mooing continually, a cow followed…It was a calf, blood spurting from a gash between the ears…I was sick, very sick. It was plain murder.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Waiting , Cry

“Take that singing bird away!
It has too glad a lay
For an ear so lorn as mine!
And its wings are all too light,
And its feathers all too bright,
To rest in a bosom like mine!”

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

The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Bird , Light , Singing

“Some say the Internet is for porn; but you know that in truth the Internet is for spam. As communication technologies got cheaper, the cost of grabbing a megaphone and jamming it up against the aching ear-drums of an advertising-jaded public collapsed: Meanwhile, the content-is-king mantra of the monetization mavens gridlocked the new media in an advertising-supported business model. The great and the good of the Academy have been fighting a losing battle against the Anglo-Saxon hucksterization model for the past thirty years: But the sad truth is that the battle’s lost. The tide of war was turned in Beijing and New Delhi, when the rapidly industrializing new superpowers climbed on the MAKE MONEY FAST band-wagon and gave free rein to the free market, red in tooth and claw—just as long as the sharp bits were directed outwards. And today the entire world is still drowning in a sea of attention-grabbing unregulated unethical untruthful spamvertising.”

Charles Stross book Rule 34

Source: Rule 34 (2011), Chapter 13, “Kemal: Spamcop” (pp. 154-155)

Money , War , Truth , World

“Alf Todd,’ said Ukridge, soaring to an impressive burst of imagery, ‘has about as much chance as a one-armed blind man in a dark room trying to shove a pound of melted butter into a wild-cat’s ear with a red-hot needle.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

Ukridge (1924)

Cats , Chance

“Now my ears are awakening again, just because I’m part of the zeitgeist of contemporary whatever. Even though I’m in this remote place, I get it.”

Suzanne Ciani (1946) Italian American composer and musician

"INTERVIEW: Suzanne Ciani...," (2014)

Parting

“The organization in which this movement was embodied, after three centuries of obscurity and oppression, rose triumphant to be the dominant power of the civilized world. Christian churches were scattered broadcast over the Roman Empire. …Its churches were endowed with the ancient properties and rights of the temples. Its clergy were given immunity from the taxes and exactions which crushed all other classes. Its members filled the civil service. Its great bishops had the ear of the men in power.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.4 Why Has Christianity Never Undertaken the Work of Social Reconstruction?, p. 143-144

Men , World

“They do not ill, being lords of ours, to slay
Me; nay, they could not spare: but thee to slay,
To spill thy strong young life for truth to me,
In all men's eyes would mark them monstrous: thou
Must live, and serve my slayers, and serving them
Sustain my memory by the proof — if God
Shall give thee grace to prove it — that thy name,
Thy father's name and mine, in true men's ears
Rings truth, and means not treason.”

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic

Faliero, Act V. Sc. 3.
Marino Faliero (1885)

Life , Men , God , Truth

“And then, startling in its crisp transatlantic tones, a voice said:
“Stick ’em up.”
They swerved around. Schwartz, dressed in a peculiarly vivid set of striped pyjamas stood in the doorway. In his hand he held an automatic.
“Stick ’em up, guys. I’m pretty good at shooting.”
He pressed the trigger — and a bullet sang past the big man’s ear and buried itself in the woodwork of the window.
Three pairs of hands were raised rapidly.”

Agatha Christie book The Labours of Hercules

The Labours of Hercules (1967)

Guy , Past

“I've got tears in my ears from lyin' on my back
In my bed while I cry over you.
And the tears in my ears, they're off the beaten track
Since you said "It's goodbye, we are through."”

Harold Barlow

Song; the title is variously given as Tears in my ears, I've got tears in my ears and I've got tears in my ears from lyin' on my back in my bed while I cry over you.

Tear , Cry