Quotes about feast
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“Mine understanding was lifted up into Heaven where I saw our Lord as a lord in his own house, which hath called all his dearworthy servants and friends to a stately feast. Then I saw the Lord take no place in His own house, but I saw Him royally reign in His house, fulfilling it with joy and mirth, Himself endlessly to gladden and to solace His dearworthy friends, full homely and full courteously, with marvellous melody of endless love, in His own fair blessed Countenance. Which glorious Countenance of the Godhead fulfilleth the Heavens with joy and bliss.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Sixth Revelation, Chapter 14

Love, Home, Understanding, Joy

“To thee of All Being /A te, de l’essere
The First Cause immense /Principio immenso,
Of matter and spirit, /Materia e spirito,
Of reason and sense /Ragione e senso;

Whilst in the full goblet /Mentre ne’ calici
Shall sparkle the wine, /Il vin scintilla
So bright the pupil /Si’come l’anima
The souls of men shine, /Ne la pupilla

Whilst earth still is smiling, /Mentre sorridono
And the sun smiles above, /La terra e il sole
And men are exchanging /E si ricambiano
Their sweet words of love, /D’amor parole

Thrills mystic of Hymen /E corre un fremito
Through high mountains course, /D’imene arcano
And broad plains are heaving /Da’ monti e palpita
With life's fertile force, /Fecondo il piano;

On thee in verse daring, /A te disfrenasi
From tight rein released, /Il verso ardito,
On thee I call, Satan, /Te invoco, o Satana
The King of the feast. /Re del convito”

Giosuè Carducci (1835–1907) Italian poet and teacher

-lines 1-20 (as Printed by the Nobel Prize Library)
Hymn to Satan (1865), Inno a Satana

Love, Life, Men, Smile

“The superiority of the woman was not a fancy but a fact. Man's business was to fight, or hunt, or feast or make love. The man was also the travelling partner in commerce, commonly absent from home for months together, while the woman carried on the business. The woman ruled the household and the workshop; cared for the economy; supplied the intelligence and dictated the taste. Her ascendancy was secured by her alliance with the Church, into which she sent her most intelligent children; and a priest or clerk, for the most part, counted socially as a woman. Both physically and mentally the woman was robust, as the men often complained, and she did not greatly resent being treated as a man. Sometimes the husband beat her, dragged her about by the hair, locked her up in the house; but he was quite conscious that she always got even with him in the end. As a matter of fact, probably she got more than even. On this point, history, legend, poetry, romance, and especially the popular Fabliaux,— invented to amuse the gross tastes of the coarser class,— are all agreed, and one could give scores of volumes illustrating it.”

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

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Love, Men, Children, Making love

“Human relationships didn't work anyhow. Only the first two weeks had any zing, then the participants lost their interest. Masks dropped away and real people began to appear: cranks, imbeciles, the demented, the vengeful, sadists, killers. Modern society had created its own kind and they feasted on each other. It was a duel to the death--in a cesspool.”

Charles Bukowski book Women

Women (1978)

Death, People, Appearance

“The mere fact that there could be danger in this is fascination in itself; almost an incentive to push further. That’s how you feel, isn’t it? Every argument they could use against you would only strengthen your resolve. Because knowledge makes you hungry, and it’s a hunger you can’t resist, even if you know that what you’re feasting on could kill you.”

Alastair Reynolds book Revelation Space

Source: Revelation Space (2000), Chapter 26 (p. 452).

Hunger, Feeling, Knowledge

“Of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back--in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian

Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC (1973)

Pain, Way, Wolf, Past

“Invite the man that loves thee to a feast, but let alone thine enemy.”

Hesiod book Works and Days

Source: Works and Days (c. 700 BC), line 342.

Love

“So shall he strive, in changeful hue,
Field, feast, and combat, to renew,
And loves, and arms, and harpers' glee,
And all the pomp of chivalry.”

Walter Scott Marmion

Canto V, introduction.
Marmion (1808)

Love, Change

“I see you don't understand, and I must explain it to you. Well, very long ago, on the spot where the Wild Wood waves now, before ever it had planted itself and grown up to what it now is, there was a city — a city of people, you know. Here, where we are standing, they lived, and walked, and talked, and slept, and carried on their business. Here they stabled their horses and feasted, from here they rode out to fight or drove out to trade. They were a powerful people, and rich, and great builders. They built to last, for they thought their city would last for ever.'
'But what has become of them all?' asked the Mole.
'Who can tell?' said the Badger. 'People come — they stay for a while, they flourish, they build — and they go. It is their way. But we remain. There were badgers here, I've been told, long before that same city ever came to be. And now there are badgers here again. We are an enduring lot, and we may move out for a time, but we wait, and are patient, and back we come. And so it will ever be.”

Kenneth Grahame book The Wind in the Willows

Source: The Wind in the Willows (1908), Ch. 4

People, Way, Understanding, Business

“Once, I remember well, my life was a feast where all hearts opened and all wines flowed.”

Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) French Decadent and Symbolist poet

Jadis, si je me souviens bien, ma vie était un festin où s'ouvraient tous les coeurs, où tous les vins coulaient. Une Saison en Enfer http://www.mag4.net/Rimbaud/poesies/Season.html (A Season in Hell) (1873)

Life, Wine, Heart

“Back at the Philadelphia Worldcon (which seems a million years ago), I announced the famous five-year gap: I was going to skip five years forward in the story, to allow some of the younger characters to grow older and the dragons to grow larger, and for various other reasons. I started out writing on that basis in 2001, and it worked very well for some of my myriad characters but not at all for others, because you can't just have nothing happen for five years. If things do happen you have to write flashbacks, a lot of internal retrospection, and that's not a good way to present it. I struggled with that essentially wrong direction for about a year before finally throwing it out, realizing there had to be another interim book. That became A Feast for Crows, where the action is pretty much continuous from the preceding book. Even so, that only accounts for one year. Why the four after that? I don't know, except that this was a very tough book to write -- and it remains so, because I've only finished half. Going in, I thought I could do something about the length of the second book in the series, A Clash of Kings, roughly 1,200 pages in manuscript. But I passed that and there was a lot more to write. Then I passed the length of the third book, A Storm of Swords, which was something like 1,500 pages in manuscript and gave my publishers all around the world lots of production problems. I didn't really want to make any cuts because I had this huge story to tell. We started thinking about dividing it in two and doing it as A Feast for Crows, Parts One and Two, but the more I thought about that the more I really did not like it. Part One would have had no resolution whatsoever for 18 viewpoint characters and their 18 stories. Of course this is all part of a huge megaseries so there is not a complete resolution yet in any of the volumes, but I try to give a certain sense of completion at the end of each volume -- that a movement of the symphony has wrapped up, so to speak.”

George Raymond Richard Martin (1948) American writer, screenwriter and television producer

Interview with Locus magazine (November 2005)

Books, World, Way, Problem

“Even the British Arthur becomes an Englishman, a Germanic hero, brave, daring and open-handed. We are in a world of feasts and vaunting speeches, flytings and lusty battles, fierce deeds and bloody humour, with the Fiend, the Adversary of Man, always round the next corner.”

Layamon (1200) English poet

Gwyn Jones, in Wace and Layamon (trans. Eugene Mason) Arthurian Chronicles (London: Dent, [1912] 1976) p. xi.
Criticism

World

“No flocks that range the valley free
To slaughter I condemn;
Taught by that Power that pities me,
I learn to pity them:
But from the mountain’s grassy side
A guiltless feast I bring;
A scrip with herbs and fruits supplied,
And water from the spring.”

Oliver Goldsmith book The Vicar of Wakefield

Source: The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), Ch. 8, The Hermit (Edwin and Angelina), st. 6-7.

Mountain, Spring, Learning, Water

“Purification of the soul … consists in scorning the pleasures that arise through the senses, in not feasting the eyes on the silly exhibitions of jugglers or on the sight of bodies which gives the spur to sensual pleasure, in not permitting licentious songs to enter through the ears and drench your souls.”

Basil of Caesarea (329–379) Christian Saint

Source: On Greek Literature, p. 419

Pleasure, Soul, Sense

“Call a truce, then, to our labours let us feast with friends and neighbours,
And be merry as the custom of our caste;
For if “faint and forced the laughter,” and if sadness follow after,
We are richer by one mocking Christmas past.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Christmas in India, Stanza 5.
Departmental Ditties and other Verses (1886)

Sadness, Laughter, Past, Christmas

“O surely this morning all sorrow is hidden,
All battle is hushed for this even at least;
And no one this noontide may hunger, unbidden
To the flowers and the singing and the joy of your feast
Where silent ye sit midst the world's tale increased.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

Love is Enough (1872), Song II: Have No Thought for Tomorrow

Hunger, World, Flowers, Singing

“Words are such thin shavings of the fractal fruit,
tiny scraping of the skin that holds
these joyously determined swirls of history
inside their juicy turbulence.
Talking itself westward after the day's feast,
each little word with its meaning strapped to its back
falls down the swell of tomorrow
like a hiker with hopeful new shoes.”

Karen Press (1956) South African poet

Purposefully peeling footsteps (Home, 2000)

Hope, Shoe, History

“I think Stone Mountain is amusing, but then again I find most representations of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson outside of Virginia, and, in Jackson's case, West Virginia, to be amusing. Aside from a short period in 1861-62, when Lee was placed in charge of the coastal defense of South Carolina and Georgia, neither general stepped foot in Georgia during the war. Lee cut off furloughs to Georgia's soldiers later in the war because he was convinced that once home they’d never come back. He resisted the dispatch of James Longstreet's two divisions westward to defend northern Georgia, and he had no answer when Sherman operated in the state. It would be better to see Joseph E. Johnston and John Bell Hood on the mountain, although it probably would have been difficult to get those two men to ride together. Maybe Braxton Bragg would have been a better pick, but no one calls him the hero of Chickamauga. Yet Bragg, Johnston, and Hood all attempted to defend Georgia, and they are ignored on Stone Mountain. So is Joe Wheeler, whose cavalry feasted off Georgians in 1864. So is John B. Gordon, wartime hero and postwar Klansman. Given Stone Mountain's history, Klansman Gordon would have been a good choice. It's also amusing to see Jefferson Davis represented. Yes, Davis came to Georgia, once to try to settle disputes within the high command of the Army of Tennessee, not a rousing success, and once to rally white Georgians to the cause once more after the fall of Atlanta. But any serious student of the war knows that Davis spent much of his presidency arguing with Georgia governor Joseph Brown about Georgia's contribution to the Confederate war effort, and that the vice president of the Confederacy, Georgia's own Alexander Hamilton Stephens, was not a big supporter of his superior. Yet we don't see Brown or Stephens on Stone Mountain, either.”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

Brooks D. Simpson, "The Future of Stone Mountain" https://cwcrossroads.wordpress.com/2015/07/22/the-future-of-stone-mountain/ (22 July 2015), Crossroads, WordPress

Men, War, Home, History

“East and west and north, wherever the battle grew,
As men to a feast we fared, the work of the Will to do.

Bent upon vast beginnings, bidding anarchy cease —
(Had we hacked it to the Pit, we had left it a place of peace!) —

Marching, building, sailing, pillar of cloud or fire,
Sons of the Will, we fought the fight of the Will, our sire.”

William Ernest Henley (1849–1903) English poet, critic and editor

Source: Poems (1898), Rhymes And Rhythms, II

Men, Peace, Fight

“The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real… for a moment at least… that long magic moment before we wake. Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smoke-stacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true?
We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the song the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever, somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.
They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to Middle Earth.”

George Raymond Richard Martin (1948) American writer, screenwriter and television producer

The Faces of Fantasy (1996)

Love, Dreams, Color, Thinking

“The rugged old Norsemen spoke of death as Heimgang — home-going. So the snow-flowers go home when they melt and flow to the sea, and the rock-ferns, after unrolling their fronds to the light and beautifying the rocks, roll them up close again in the autumn and blend with the soil. Myriads of rejoicing living creatures, daily, hourly, perhaps every moment sink into death’s arms, dust to dust, spirit to spirit — waited on, watched over, noticed only by their Maker, each arriving at its own heaven-dealt destiny. All the merry dwellers of the trees and streams, and the myriad swarms of the air, called into life by the sunbeam of a summer morning, go home through death, wings folded perhaps in the last red rays of sunset of the day they were first tried. Trees towering in the sky, braving storms of centuries, flowers turning faces to the light for a single day or hour, having enjoyed their share of life’s feast — all alike pass on and away under the law of death and love. Yet all are our brothers and they enjoy life as we do, share heaven’s blessings with us, die and are buried in hallowed ground, come with us out of eternity and return into eternity. 'Our little lives are rounded with a sleep.”

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

pages 439-440 ("Trees towering … into eternity" are the next-to-last lines of the documentary film " John Muir in the New World http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/john-muir-in-the-new-world/watch-the-full-documentary-film/1823/" (American Masters), produced, directed, and written by Catherine Tatge.) John of the Mountains, 1938

Love, Life, Death, Law

“The priest said to the man who married: “Remember that you are caught for life. This door opens but once. Before this den of matrimony the tracks are all one way.” This was in the nature of a punishment for having married. The theologian felt that the contract of marriage, if not contrary to God’s command, was at least contrary to his advice, and that the married ought to suffer in some way, as a matter of justice. The fact that there could be no divorce, that a mistake could not be corrected, was held up as a warning. At every wedding feast this skeleton stretched its fleshless finger towards bride and groom.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Is Divorce Wrong? (1889)

Life, God, Marriage, Justice

“King Lear: How hath my fool offended?
Regan: He hath shagged me roughly, against my will, and finished too soon.
King Lear: By force- Pocket? He isn't eight-stone on a feast day- he couldn't shag a cat by force.
Pocket: That's not true, sire. If the cat is distracted with a trout, then - well, uh, never mind.”

Christopher Moore book Fool

Ch 14 - On Tender Horns - pg 177
Fool (2009)

Fools, Cats

“Best of feasts is the essence of the Supreme
Brahman, Nothing to beg when you have tasted it.
Vanishes the distinction of renouncer, renunciation and renounced.
And you become the monarch of the universe - Mankuthimma.”

D. V. Gundappa (1887–1975) Indian writer

A Kagga {Quatrian) of Verse 752 of Manku Thimmana Kagga in page=217
The Wisdom Of Vasistha A Study On Laghu Yoga Vasistha From A Seeker`S Point Of View

Universe

“That prudent Hero's wandering, Muse, rehearse,
Who (Troy b'ing sack'd) coasting the Universe,
Saw many Cities, and their various Modes;
Much suffering, tost by Storms on raging Floods,
His Friends conducting to their Native Coast:
But all in vain, for he his Navy lost,
And they their Lives, prophanely feasting on
Herds consecrated to the glorious Sun;
Who much incens'd obstructed so their way,
They ne'er return'd: Jove's Daughter this display.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

Book I, opening lines
Homer His Odysses Translated (1665)

Way, Suffering, Universe, Rage

“We face the dilemma… that if everyone gets his deserts, some may be driven from the table: and if everyone comes to the table, some may not get their deserts. In practice, this seems to be resolved by the establishment of a social minimum as reflected for instance, in the poor law, in social security and various welfare sevices. The principle of desert come into play above this social minimun. That is to say, society lays a modest table at which all can sup and a high table at which the deserving can feast”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Boulding (1962) "Social Justice in Social Dynamics", in: R.B. Brandt, ed. Social Justice. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. p. 83 as cited in: Toril Aalberg (2003) Achieving Justice: Comparative Public Opinion on Income Distribution. p. 33
1960s

Law

“A cup of wine, under the flowering trees;
I drink alone, for no friend is near.
Raising my cup I beckon the bright moon,
For he, with my shadow, will make three men.
The moon, alas, is no drinker of wine;
Listless, my shadow creeps about at my side.
Yet with the moon as friend and the shadow as slave
I must make merry before the Spring is spent.
To the songs I sing the moon flickers her beams;
In the dance I weave my shadow tangles and breaks.
While we were sober, three shared the fun;
Now we are drunk, each goes his way.
May we long share our odd, inanimate feast,
And meet at last on the Cloudy River of the sky.”

Li Bai (701–762) Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty poetry period

"Drinking Alone by Moonlight" (月下獨酌), one of Li Bai's best-known poems, as translated by Arthur Waley in More Translations From the Chinese (1919)
Variant translation:
From a pot of wine among the flowers
I drank alone. There was no one with me—
Till, raising my cup, I asked the bright moon
To bring me my shadow and make us three.
Alas, the moon was unable to drink
And my shadow tagged me vacantly;
But still for a while I had these friends
To cheer me through the end of spring...
I sang. The moon encouraged me.
I danced. My shadow tumbled after.
As long as I knew, we were boon companions.
And then I was drunk, and we lost one another.
...Shall goodwill ever be secure?
I watch the long road of the River of Stars.
"Drinking Alone with the Moon" (trans. Witter Bynner and Kiang Kang-hu)

Men, Way, Spring, Flowers

“Still to be neat, still to be drest,
As you were going to a feast.”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

Epicene, or The Silent Woman (1609), Act I, scene i; a translation from Bonnefonius

“Selden asserts, and in my opinion with great justice, that all these whimsical transpositions of dignity are derived from the ancient Saturnalia, or Feasts of Saturn, when the masters waited upon their servants, who were honoured with mock titles, and permitted to assume the state and deportment of their lords. These fooleries were exceedingly popular, and continued to be practised long after the establishment of Christianity, in defiance of the threatenings and the remonstrances of the clergy, who, finding it impossible to divert the stream of vulgar prejudice permitted them to be exercised, but changed the primitive object of devotion; so that the same unhallowed orgies, which had disgraced the worship of a heathen deity, were dedicated, as it was called, to the service of the true God, and sanctioned by the appellation of a Christian institution. From this polluted stock branched out variety of unseemly and immoral sports; but none of them more daringly impious and outrageous to common sense, than the Festival of Fools, in which the most sacred rites and ceremonies of the church were turned into ridicule, and the ecclesiastics themselves participated in the abominable profanations.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 344
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Festival of Fools

God, Justice, Fools, Exercises

“The Rich Man's Banquet, which was to last for a decade, had now begun: the feast, it was recognised, went to the greediest.”

Osbert Sitwell (1892–1969) British baronet

Left Hand, Right Hand!, Bk. II, ch. 6.
Of the Edwardian age.

“Peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.”

Derek Walcott (1930–2017) Saint Lucian–Trinidadian poet and playwright

"Love after Love"
"A Far Cry from Africa" (1962), Collected Poems, 1948-1984 (1986)

Life

“Original spelling: Our harvest being gotten in, our Governour sent foure men on fowling, that so we might after a speciall manner rejoyce together, after we had gathered the fruits of our labours; they foure in one day killed as much fowle, as with a little helpe beside, served the Company almost a weeke, at which time amongst other Recreations, we exercised our Armes, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest king Massasoyt, with some ninetie men, whom for three dayes we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five Deere, which they brought to the Plantation and bestowed on our Governour, and upon the Captaine and others. And although it be not always so plentifull, as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so farre from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plentie.”

Edward Winslow

Modern spelling: Our harvest being gotten in, our Governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruits of our labors; they four in one day killed as much fowl, as with a little help beside, served the Company almost a week, at which time amongst other Recreations, we exercised our Arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five Deer, which they brought to the Plantation and bestowed on our Governor, and upon the Captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful, as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.
Mourt's Relation

Men, God, Exercises, Time

“Feast, n. A festival. A religious celebration usually signalized by gluttony and drunkenness, frequently in honor of some holy person distinguished for abstemiousness.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

Personality

“From the retinue of Mynyddog they hastened forth; in a shining array they fed together round the wine-vessel. My heart has become full of grief for the feast of Mynyddog, I have lost too many of my true kinsmen.”

Aneirin book Y Gododdin

Stanza B20, p. 106.
Y Gododdin

Wine, Heart

“The Predatory State is an economic system where entire sectors have been built up to feast upon public systems built originally for public purposes and largely serving the middle class. The corporate republic simply administers the spoils system. On a day-to-day basis, the business of its leadership is to deliver favors to their clients. These range from coal companies to sweatshop operators to military contractors.”

James K. Galbraith (1952) economist

Source: The Predatory State, 2008, p. 146-7

Business

“In the twelfth year of his reign, when Edward was feasting at Windsor, where he often used to stay, his father-in-law, the traitor Godwine, was lying next to him, and said, "It has frequently been falsely reported to you, king, that I have been intent on your betrayal. But if the God of heaven is true and just, may He grant that this little piece of bread shall not pass my throat if I have ever thought of betraying you." But the true and just God heard the voice of the traitor, and in a short time he was choked by that very bread, and tasted endless death.”
Edwardus, duodecimo anno regni sui, cum pranderet apud Windlesore, ubi plurimum manere solebat, Godwinus gener suus et proditor, recumbens iuxta eum, dixit: "Sepe tibi rex falso delatum est me prodicioni tue inuigilasse. Sed si Deus celi uerax et iustus est, hoc panis frustrulum concedat ne michi guttur pertranseat, si umquam te prodere uel cogitauerim." Deus autem uerax et iustus audiuit uocem proditoris, et mox eodem pane strangulatus, mortem pregustauit eternam.

Henry of Huntingdon book Historia Anglorum

Edwardus, duodecimo anno regni sui, cum pranderet apud Windlesore, ubi plurimum manere solebat, Godwinus gener suus et proditor, recumbens iuxta eum, dixit: "Sepe tibi rex falso delatum est me prodicioni tue inuigilasse. Sed si Deus celi uerax et iustus est, hoc panis frustrulum concedat ne michi guttur pertranseat, si umquam te prodere uel cogitauerim."
Deus autem uerax et iustus audiuit uocem proditoris, et mox eodem pane strangulatus, mortem pregustauit eternam.
Book VI, §23, pp. 378-9
Historia Anglorum (The History of the English People)

Death, God, Law, Lying

“Achilles' fatal wrath, whence discord rose,
That brought the sons of Greece unnumber'd woes,
O Goddess! sing. Full many a hero's ghost
Was driven untimely to th' infernal coast,
While in promiscuous heaps their bodies lay,
A feast for dogs and every bird of prey.
So did the sire of gods and men fulfil
His stedfast purpose and almighty will;
What time the haughty chiefs their jars begun,
Atrides, king of men, and Peleus' godlike son.”

Thomas Tickell (1685–1740) English poet and man of letters

The First Book of the Iliad (1715).

Men, God, Dogs, Bird

“So feast your eyes now
On mimic star and moon-cold bauble:
Worlds may wither unseen,
But the Christmas Tree is a tree of fable,
A phoenix in evergreen”

Cecil Day Lewis (1904–1972) English poet

The Christmas Tree (1953)

World, Star, Tree, Christmas

“The only vestige of these musical vagrants now remaining, is to be found in the blind fiddlers wandering about the country, and the ballad singers, who frequently accompany their ditties with instrumental music, especially the fiddle, vulgarly called a crowd, and the guitar. And here we may observe, that the name of fiddlers was applied to the minstrels as early at least as the fourteenth century: it occurs in the Vision of Pierce the Ploughman, where we read, "not to fare as a fydeler, or a frier, to seke feastes."”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 186
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Minstrels

Music, Reading, Country

“These are the duties of the overseer: He should maintain discipline. He should observe the feast days. He should respect the rights of others and steadfastly uphold his own. He should settle all quarrels among the hands; If any one is at fault he should administer the punishment. He should take care that no one on the place is in want, or lacks food or drink; in this respect he can afford to be generous, for he will thus more easily prevent picking and stealing.”

Cato the Elder book De Agri Cultura

On the duties of the overseer
De Agri Cultura, about 160 BC

Food, Drink

“The life of the avaricious resembles a funeral banquet. For though it has all things requisite to a feast, yet no one present rejoices.”

Stobaeus Ancient Greek anthologist

30
Pythagorean Ethical Sentences

Life

“Wedlock, indeed, hath oft compared been
To public feasts, where meet a public rout,—
Where they that are without would fain go in,
And they that are within would fain go out.”

John Davies (poet) (1569–1626) English poet, lawyer, and politician, born 1569

A contention betwixt a Wife, a Widdow and a Maide (1602). Compare:
:"’T is just like a summer bird-cage in a garden: the birds that are without despair to get in, and the birds that are within despair and are in a consumption for fear they shall never get out." John Webster, The White Devil, act i. sc. 2.;
:"Le mariage est comme une forteresse assiégée; ceux qui sont dehors veulent y entrer, et ceux qui sont dedans veulent en sortir." (Translated as: "Marriage is like a beleaguered fortress: those who are outside want to get in, and those inside want to get out.") Quitard, Études sur les Proverbes Français, p. 102.;
:"It happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out." Michel Eyquem, seigneur de Montaigne, Upon some Verses of Virgil, chap. v.;
:"Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?" Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men: Montaigne.

“In Aman's pomp poor Mardocheus wept,
Yet God did turn his fate upon his foe;
The Lazar pined while Dives' feast was kept,
Yet he to heaven, to hell did Dives go.
We trample grass and prize the flowers of May,
Yet grass is green when flowers do fade away.”

Robert Southwell (1561–1595) English Jesuit

"Scorn not the Least", line 19; p. 54.

God, Fate, Flowers, Hell

“Loud I howled through the moonlit wastes,
Loud answered our kith and kin;
From west and east to the crimson feast
The clan came tramping in.”

Langdon Smith Evolution

Evolution (1895; 1909)

“Both the Oblation Board and the Specters of Indifference are bewitched by this truth about human beings: that innocence is different from experience. The Oblation Board fears and hates Dust, and the Specters feast on it, but it's Dust both of them are obsessed by.”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

Stanislaus Grumman to Lee Scoresby in Ch. 14 : Alamo Gulch
His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife (1997)

Hate, Truth, Fear, Indifference

“In sharp contrast to the modus operandi of swarm dynamics, political bodies are ill-equipped to protect the integrity of their components and lack the collective wisdom for synchronization. Instead, highly layered command-based systems invade, institutionalize, and indoctrinate society with centralized directives, straitjacket bureaucracies, and self-serving officialdom. These systems hungrily feast on what others have created, cannibalizing other people’s resources like a tribe of pragmatic headhunters.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action, (2013), p. 35

Wisdom, People

“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

“I am a Christian who wrote a novel in a specific literary tradition. I did not approach the process as a representative of modern evangelical culture, hoping to collect a few crumbs fallen from the medieval feast described in excruciatingly painstaking detail on the secular table, but as one of the legitimate heirs to the literary kingdom who is castigating the usurpers.”

Vox Day (1968) writer, actor, video game designer, blogger, far-right activist

On The ‘Throne Of Bones’: A Q and A With Vox Day http://speculativefaith.lorehaven.com/on-the-throne-of-bones-a-q-and-a-with-vox-day/ (January 18, 2013)

Hope

“A heavy task, but there was light relief
In the Germanic ambience, boisterous, brash,
Torchlit parades and pogroms, guttural grief
In emigration queues, the smash and crash
Of pawnshop windows by insentient beef
In uniform, the gush of beer, the splash
Of schnapps, the joy of being drunk and Aryan,
Though Hitler was a teetotalitarian.
Human pain meant
But little in the Gulf War's visual grammar, a
Big feast of death to feed the cinecamera”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Byrne
Poetry

Death, Pain, War, Beer

“Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end,
after he plundered the stronghold
on the proud height of Troy.
He saw the townlands
and learned the minds of many distant men,
and weathered many bitter nights and days
in his deep heart at sea, while he fought only
to save his life, to bring his shipmates home.
But not by will nor valor could he save them,
for their own recklessness destroyed them all—
children and fools, they killed and feasted on
the cattle of Lord Hêlios, the Sun,
and he who moves all day through the heaven
took from their eyes the dawn of their return.”

Robert Fitzgerald (1910–1985) American poet, critic and translator

opening lines
The Odyssey (1961)

Life, Men, Children, Fools

“Enough is equal to a feast.”

Henry Fielding (1707–1754) English novelist and dramatist

The Covent Garden Tragedy (1732), Act V, scene 1

“What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice,
Of Attic taste?”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

To Mr. Lawrence

Light

“Let him look to it, who is pleased with the game of Tarocco, that the only signification of this word Tarocco, is stupid, foolish, simple, fit only to be used by Bakers, Coblers, and the vulgar, to play at most for the fourth part of a Carlino, at Tarocchi, or at Trionfi, or any Sminckiate whatever: which in every way signifies only foolery and idleness, feasting the eye with the Sun, and the Moon, and the twelve (signs) as children do.”

Francesco Berni (1497–1535) Italian poet

Mention made on the Tarocchi in his Capitolo del Gioco della Primiera col Comento di messer Pietropaulo da San Chirico (1526).

Children, Stupidity, Way, Game

“A good conscience is a continual feast.”

Robert Burton book The Anatomy of Melancholy

Section 4, member 2, subsection 3, Causes of Despair, the Devil, Melancholy, Meditation, Distrust, Weakness of Faith, Rigid Ministers, Misunderstanding Scriptures, Guilty Consciences, etc.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part III

“We need not seek our own best selves, and in the meantime we inoculate ourselves against the viruses of age and idealism, which, as the advertising agencies well know, depress sales and sour the feasts of consumption.”

Lewis H. Lapham (1935) American journalist

In The Garden Of Tabloid Delight, p. 197
Waiting For The Barbarians (1997)

Age

“The next matter which by God's help I accomplished, was the repetition of names and titles of former sovereigns which had been omitted from the prayers of Sabbaths and Feasts. The names of those sovereigns of Islam, under whose happy fortune and favour infidel countries had been conquered, whose banners had waved over many a land, under whom idol-temples had been demolished, and mosques and pulpits built and exalted, the fragrant creed had been extended, and the people of Islam had waxen strong and warlike, the names of these men had fallen into neglect and oblivion. So I decreed that according to established custom their names and titles should be rehearsed in the khutba and aspirations offered for the remission of their sins.”

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. Elliot and Dowson. Vol. III, p. 328
Quotes from the Futuhat-i-Firuz Shahi

Men, God, Happiness, People

“The Scorpio period of the year (at least in the Northern Hemisphere) is the time when the life force withdraws from all outer forms in nature and is concentrated in the seed. It is striking that the cultural symbol for this time of the year in the United States is the Halloween pumpkin with its insides removed, leaving only an empty shell with a blankly staring face. In fact, the jack-o-lantern is a symbol of death, a symbolic skull with the glimmering remains of the departed life force represented by the candle within it. Traditionally, the Halloween feast (the Eve of All Saints Day) was a time when the dead came back to life and when human beings in the physical body could most immediately contact departed spirits of all kinds, as well as their own patron saints. It is significant that children are allowed at this time to wander out at night, past their usual bed time, and that they are not supposed to go from house to house begging for food until the Sun (the symbol of physical life) has completely set!”

Stephen Arroyo (1946) American astrologer, astrological writer

Astrology Karma & Transformation: The Inner Dimensions of the Birth Chart (1992, ISBN: 0-916360-54-7)

Life, Death, Children, Food

“Chorus of Furies: Living, you will be my feast, not slain at an altar”

Aeschylus Eumenides

Source: Oresteia (458 BC), Eumenides, line 305 (tr. Herbert Weir Smyth)

“Diogenes maintains that tyrants do not bring about revolutions in cities, and foment wars civil or foreign for the sake of a simple diet of vegetables and fruits, but for costly meats and the delicacies of the table. And, strange to say, Epicurus, the defender of pleasure, in all his books speaks of nothing but vegetables and fruits; and he says that we ought to live on cheap food because the preparation of sumptuous banquets of flesh involves great care and suffering, and greater pains attend the search for such delicacies than pleasures the consumption of them. … Persons who feed on flesh want also gratifications not found in flesh. But they who adopt a simple diet do not look for flesh. … The soul greatly exults when you are content with little: you have the world beneath your feet, and can exchange all its power, its feasts, and its lusts, the objects for which men rake money together, for common food, and make up for them all with a sack-cloth shirt.”

Jerome (345–420) Catholic saint and Doctor of the Church

Book II, 11
Adversus Jovinianum

Men, Money, Pain, War

“I am a harmonious one; I am a clear singer.
I am steel; I am a druid.
I am an artificer; I am a scientific one.
I am a serpent; I am love; I will indulge in feasting.”

Taliesin (534–599) Welsh bard

Book of Taliesin (c. 1275?), The Fold of the Bards
Context: I am a harmonious one; I am a clear singer.
I am steel; I am a druid.
I am an artificer; I am a scientific one.
I am a serpent; I am love; I will indulge in feasting.
I am not a confused bard drivelling,
When songsters sing a song by memory,
They will not make wonderful cries;
May I be receiving them.
Like receiving clothes without a hand,
Like sinking in a lake without swimming
The stream boldly rises tumultuously in degree.

Love

“Tree always in the center
Of all that surrounds it
Tree feasting upon
Heaven's great dome”

Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) French writer and philosopher

Tree

“The earliest body of gospel tradition, represented by Mark no less than by the primitive non-Marcan document embodied in the first and third gospels, begins, not with the birth and childhood of Jesus, but with his baptism; and this order of accretion of gospel matter is faithfully reflected in the time order of the invention of feasts. The great church adopted Christmas much later than Epiphany; and before the 5th century there was no general consensus of opinion as to when it should come in the calendar, whether on the 6th of January, or the 25th of March, or the 25th of December.”

Frederick Cornwallis Conybeare (1856–1924) British orientalist

[Christmas, Wikisource, 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, 1911, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclopædia_Britannica/Christmas]

Birth, Time, Christmas, Childhood

“The Pharisees were orthodox Jews, deeply concerned with the affairs of the Church and conscientious observers of all its ceremonies. They held its chief offices, occupied the chief places at the feasts, and sat in the chief seats in the synagogues. …Who then could have been more astonished than they when, like a thunderbolt from the sky, came the simplest, clearest, most concise and yet complete statement of fundamental religious truth that has ever been uttered?”

Robert Hunter (author) (1874–1942) American sociologist, author, golf course architect

In twenty-eight words Jesus stated for all time and in a manner that may be understood by everybody, the fundamental basis of Christianity—"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all mind... And Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."
Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 92-93

Truth

“To harm another human releases your inner beast, allowing him to devour you in an orgy of hate. It will lead to a frenzy of butchery and bloodshed. And it will enslave your soul until a larger beast feasts on your corruptible flesh.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: Ferret: The Reluctant King (2020), p. 139

Hate, Soul

“Have I not told you that the white men are as thick as the blades of grass' I have been to the lodge of the Great Father. I know what I say! Now break up your council of war. Leave here - and I will make you a great feast.”

Eagle Woman (1820–1888) American peace activist (born 1820, near Big Bend of the Missouri River [in what is now South Dakota], U.S.…

Speaking to an angry mob of 5,000 which had surrounded the general store on the Grand River reservation, as quoted in Eagle Woman Who All Look At, 2010, South Dakota Hall of Fame – Champions of Excellence, 2019-08-15 http://sdexcellence.org/Eagle_Woman_Who_All_Look_At_2010,

Men, War, Making love, Grass

“They are hideous Golgothas, these old intermural cemeteries of ours. In other cities cemeteries are beautiful with all that the art of the gardener and sculptor can give....There the horror is masked. Here it glares at us with empty sockets. The tombs are fissured, or have caved in, or have crumbled down into shapeless bricks and mortar...[and] crawfish undermine the walls to feast upon what is hidden within.”

Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904) writer

Lafcadio Hearn, Creole Sketches, ed. Charles Woodward Hutsun (1880; Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1924), p. 136. Lafcadio Hearn referring to the cemeteries in New Orleans.

Beauty, Art

“I am not tired.
I am expectant as a runner is
Before a race, a child before a feast day,
A woman at the gates of life and death,
Expectant for us all, for all of us
Who live and suffer on this little earth
With such small brotherhood. Something begins.
Something is full of change and sparkling stars.
Something is loosed that changes all the world.”

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

Innkeeper's wife
Source: A Child is Born (1942)

Life, Death, World, Star

“I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being abides
from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned campsites
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."”

Stanley Kunitz (1905–2006) poet

Though I lack the art to decipher it, no doubt the next chapter in my book of transformations is already written. I am not done with my changes. Poems, The Layers Source: "The Layers" by Stanley Kunitz [Click here for video version on YouTube as read by the author https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk6xW41EFoA ]

Angels, Way, Loss, Heart

“It is the purity of a truth of which you have had only a glimpse. This is the feast, and the tiny tidbits you tasted before, back there, had made you hope for the existence of the Whole. The nameless emotion, longing, nostalgia, sense of destiny that you felt back there when you stared at the cloud layered sunset in Hawaii, when you stood quietly among the tall, waving trees in the silent forest, when a musical selection, passage, or song recalled memories of the past or brought forth a longing for which there was no associated memory, when you longed for the place where you belonged, whether city, town, country, nation, or family—these are now fulfilled. You are Home. You are where you belong. Where you always should have been.”

Robert Monroe (1915–1995) American founder of The Monroe Institute

Journeys Out of the Body (1971), Chapter 8. Because the Bible Tells Me So

Truth, Family, Hope, Music

“Friendship craves
The commerce of the mind, not the exchange
Of emulous feasts that foster sycophants.”

Alfred Austin (1835–1913) British writer and poet

Source: Savonarola (1881), Lorenzo de' Medici in Act I, sc. i; pp. 6–7.

Friendship

Quotes about feast page 2

Quotes about feast
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