Quotes about footstep (113 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“I'm standing on the bridge; I'm waiting in the dark. I thought that you'd be here by now. There's nothing but the rain, no footsteps on the ground. I'm listening, but there's no sound. Isn't anyone trying to find me? Won't somebody come take me home?”

Avril Lavigne (1984) Canadian singer-songwriter and actress

"I'm With You"
Let Go (2002)

Home , Waiting

“Even the birds above the lake
Are singing of my love,
And even the flowers along the shore
Are growing for her sake.

All the vines are ripening
And the trees come into bud,
For my love's footsteps passing by
Are summoning the spring.

Rian's stars in the night
Shine more brightly over her,
The god's moon and the goddess's
Guard her with their light.

Even the birds above the lake
Are singing of my love,
And even the flowers along the shore
Are growing for her sake”

Guy Gavriel Kay (1954) Canadian author of fantasy fiction

Source: A Song for Arbonne

Love , God , Star , Spring

“An old farm is always more than the people under its roof. It is the past as well as the present, and vanished generations have built themselves into it as well as left their footsteps in the worn woodwork of the stair.”

Henry Beston book Northern Farm

Source: Northern Farm

People , Past

“Those moralists, on the other hand, who, following in the footsteps of Socrates, offer the individual a morality of self-control and temperance as a means to his own advantage, as his personal key to happiness, are the exceptions.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Personality , Happiness

“If it were not my purpose to combine barbarian things with things Hellenic, to traverse and civilize every continent, to search out the uttermost parts of land and sea, to push the bounds of Macedonia to the farthest Ocean, and to disseminate and shower the blessings of the Hellenic justice and peace over every nation, I should not be content to sit quietly in the luxury of idle power, but I should emulate the frugality of Diogenes. But as things are, forgive me Diogenes, that I imitate Herakles, and emulate Perseus, and follow in the footsteps of Dionysos, the divine author and progenitor of my family, and desire that victorious Hellenes should dance again in India and revive the memory of the Bacchic revels among the savage mountain tribes beyond the Kaukasos…”

Alexander the Great (-356–-323 BC) King of Macedon

As quoted in "On the Fortune of Alexander" by Plutarch, 332 a-b

Family , Peace , Justice , Search

“My father was a schoolmaster in a little North German town, and for the very reason that at home culture was a means of livelihood, I detested learning and literature from childhood onwards. That is nature's way. In pursuance of her mysterious design to safeguard the creative faculty, she is apt to make children scorn their father's bent. She does not want to encourage an easy, effortless acceptance of a heritage, a mere handing down of acquisitions from one generation to the next. She sows the seeds of discord, and will only allow children to follow in their parent's footsteps after they have made laborious but fruitful detours.”

Stefan Zweig (1881–1942) Austrian writer

Confusion of Feelings or Confusion: The Private Papers of Privy Councillor R. Von D (1927)

Children , Way , Home , Literature

“And all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy grey eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams —
In what ethereal dances,
By what eternal streams.”

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic

"To One In Paradise", st. 4; variants of this verse read "where thy dark eye glances".

Dreams , Dance

“It was this feeling of being at home everywhere in the country which took the Adi Shankaracharya from the southernmost tip to the farthest corners of Bharatavarsha in North and East and West and helped him found (or revive) the four foremost dhãmas at Badrinath, Dvaraka, Rameshvaram and Puri. There is no count of sadhus and sannyasins and house-holders who have travelled ever since on the trail blazed by that great acharya. Six and a half centuries later, Guru Nanak Dev followed in the footsteps of the Pandavas and the Shankaracharya in search of spiritual company.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Muslim Separatism – Causes and Consequences (1987)

Travel , Feeling , Home , Search

“It was amazing how quickly the silence fell on the crowd. It went from being so loud that you could barely hear the guys 20 feet away on the on-deck circle, to hearing my own footsteps loud and clear as I rounded the bases…that's never happened to me before.”

Albert Pujols (1980) Dominican-American baseball player

On his go-ahead home run in the 2005 National League Championship Series against the Houston Astros http://sports.ign.com/articles/709/709384p1.html

Guy , Silence

“Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored. — It sees no distinction in adding story to story, upon the monuments of fame, erected to the memory of others. It denies that it is glory enough to serve under any chief. It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Often the portion of this passage on "Towering genius..." is quoted without any mention or acknowledgment that Lincoln was speaking of the need to sometimes hold the ambitions of such genius in check, when individuals aim at their own personal aggrandizement rather than the common good.
1830s, The Lyceum Address (1838)
Context: It is to deny, what the history of the world tells us is true, to suppose that men of ambition and talents will not continue to spring up amongst us. And, when they do, they will as naturally seek the gratification of their ruling passion, as others have so done before them. The question then, is, can that gratification be found in supporting and maintaining an edifice that has been erected by others? Most certainly it cannot. Many great and good men sufficiently qualified for any task they should undertake, may ever be found, whose ambition would inspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or a presidential chair; but such belong not to the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle. What! think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon? — Never! Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored. — It sees no distinction in adding story to story, upon the monuments of fame, erected to the memory of others. It denies that it is glory enough to serve under any chief. It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves, or enslaving freemen. Is it unreasonable then to expect, that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time, spring up among us? And when such a one does, it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.

Memory

“There are also animals which are called elks [alces "moose" in Am. Engl.; elk "wapiti"]. The shape of these, and the varied colour of their skins, is much like roes, but in size they surpass them a little and are destitute of horns, and have legs without joints and ligatures; nor do they lie down for the purpose of rest, nor, if they have been thrown down by any accident, can they raise or lift themselves up. Trees serve as beds to them; they lean themselves against them, and thus reclining only slightly, they take their rest; when the huntsmen have discovered from the footsteps of these animals whither they are accustomed to betake themselves, they either undermine all the trees at the roots, or cut into them so far that the upper part of the trees may appear to be left standing. When they have leant upon them, according to their habit, they knock down by their weight the unsupported trees, and fall down themselves along with them.”
Sunt item, quae appellantur alces. Harum est consimilis capris figura et varietas pellium, sed magnitudine paulo antecedunt mutilaeque sunt cornibus et crura sine nodis articulisque habent neque quietis causa procumbunt neque, si quo adflictae casu conciderunt, erigere sese aut sublevare possunt. His sunt arbores pro cubilibus: ad eas se applicant atque ita paulum modo reclinatae quietem capiunt. Quarum ex vestigiis cum est animadversum a venatoribus, quo se recipere consuerint, omnes eo loco aut ab radicibus subruunt aut accidunt arbores, tantum ut summa species earum stantium relinquatur. Huc cum se consuetudine reclinaverunt, infirmas arbores pondere adfligunt atque una ipsae concidunt.

Julius Caesar book Commentarii de Bello Gallico

Book VI
De Bello Gallico

Lie , Tree , Appearance , Animals

“Following in the footsteps of Maharaja Pariksit, it is the duty of all executive heads of states to see that the principles of religion, namely austerity, cleanliness, mercy and truthfulness, are established in the state, and that the principles of irreligion, namely pride, illicit female association or prostitution, intoxication and falsity, are checked by all means.”

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977) Indian guru

Truth , Religion

“Science treads in the same footsteps of our ancestors, answering to our longing to understand where we fit in as we look up to the sky.”

Marcelo Gleiser (1959) Brazilian physicist

Source: https://news.dartmouth.edu/news/2016/03/quoted-marcelo-gleiser-stories-about-universe

Science , Understanding

“Your shadow stealthily
leaves nothing of where you go, like a poisoned needle
that sews together my footsteps.
Your light pliantly
strikes the water tower, like a lightning bolt
that severs the source of my life.
-Soifon”

Tite Kubo (1977) Japanese manga artist

Source: Bleach, Volume 18

Life , Light , Water

“Footsteps in the snow
suggest where you have been,
point to where you were going:
but when they suddenly vanish,
never dismiss the possibility
of flight…”

Diane Duane (1952) American author

“I hope the snow covers everything so all the footsteps are silenced, and the whole city can be at peace.”

Brian Selznick book The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Source: The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Peace , Hope , Silence

“Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise; seek what they sought.”

Bashō Matsuo (1644–1694) Japanese poet

Wise

“I got up and walked back to my roominghouse. The moonlight was bright. My footsteps echoed in the empty street and it sounded as if somebody was following me, I looked around. I was mistaken. I was quite alone.”

Charles Bukowski book Factotum

Source: Factotum

“His love for her was a gift he gave her daily, expecting nothing in return. He walked at her side, his love for her a torch to guide her footsteps along the dark path she walked.”

Margaret Weis book Dragons of a Fallen Sun

Source: Dragons of a Fallen Sun

Love

“Writing will be like a journey, every word a footstep that takes me further into undiscovered land.”

David Almond book My Name Is Mina

Source: My Name Is Mina

“I won't put in a load of laundry, because the machine is too loud and would drown out other, more significant noises - namely, the shuffling footsteps of the living dead.”

David Sedaris book Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

Source: Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

Dead

“If you're bored, one thing is for sure: You're not following in the footsteps of Christ.”

Mark Batterson (1969) American pastor and writer

Source: In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day: How to Survive and Thrive When Opportunity Roars

Christ

“Pause, fellow-sinner, fellow man, before that wonderful Being that you find now in the manger, now on the cross; follow His wonderful footsteps; dwell on His words; hear His prayers; gaze on His tears, — nay, on His flowing blood, until you fully and firmly believe, never to doubt it, or forget that God loves us when we do not love Him.”

Edward Norris Kirk (1802–1874) American Christian missionary, pastor, teacher, evangelist and writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 271.

Love , God , Tear , Forgetting

“On! ye patriots to the battle. Hear Fort Moultrie's canon rattle. Then away, then away, then away to the fight! Go meet those Southern Traitors with iron will and should your courage falter boys, remember Bunker Hill. Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah! The stars and stripes forever! Hurrah! Hurrah! Our Union shall not sever! As our fathers crushed oppression deal with those who breathe Secession. Then away, then away, then away to the fight. Though Beauregard and Wigfall. Their swords may whet. Just tell them Major Anderson. Has not surrendered yet. Hurrah! Hurrah! Our Union shall not sever! Is Virginia, too, seceeding? Washington's remains unheeding? Then away, then away, then away to the fight. Unfold our country's banner. In triumph there and let the rebels desecrate that banner if they dare. Hurrah! Hurrah! Our Union shall not sever! Volunteers, be up and doing. Still the good old path pursuing. Then away, then away, then away to the fight. Your sires, who fought before you have led the way. Then follow in their footsteps and be as brave as they. Hurrah! Hurrah! Our Union shall not sever! On! ye patriots to the battle. Hear Fort Moultrie's cannon rattle then away, then away, then away to the fight. The star that lights our Union shall never set! Though fierce may be the conflict we'll gain the victory yet. Hurrah! Hurrah! Our Union shall not sever!”

Fanny J. Crosby (1820–1915) American poet, lyricist and composer

Dixie For The Union http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/patc/dixie/lyrics.html#union.
1860s

Way , Star , Boy , Courage

“Lying down to sleep on the earthen riverbank, I thought, Vrindavan is attracting my heart like no other place. What is happening to me? Please reveal Your divine will. With this prayer, I drifted off to sleep.
Before dawn, I awoke to the ringing of temple bells, signaling that it was time to begin my journey to Hardwar. But my body lay there like a corpse. Gasping in pain, I couldn’t move. A blazing fever consumed me from within, and under the spell of unbearable nausea, my stomach churned. Like a hostage, I lay on that riverbank. As the sun rose, celebrating a new day, I felt my life force sinking. Death that morning would have been a welcome relief. Hours passed.
At noon, I still lay there. This fever will surely kill me, I thought.
Just when I felt it couldn’t get any worse, I saw in the overcast sky something that chilled my heart. Vultures circled above, their keen sights focused on me. It seemed the fever was cooking me for their lunch, and they were just waiting until I was well done. They hovered lower and lower. One swooped to the ground, a huge black and white bird with a long, curving neck and sloping beak. It stared, sizing up my condition, then jabbed its pointed beak into my ribcage. My body recoiled, my mind screamed, and my eyes stared back at my assailant, seeking pity. The vulture flapped its gigantic wings and rejoined its fellow predators circling above. On the damp soil, I gazed up at the birds as they soared in impatient circles. Suddenly, my vision blurred and I momentarily blacked out. When I came to, I felt I was burning alive from inside out. Perspiring, trembling, and gagging, I gave up all hope.
Suddenly, I heard footsteps approaching. A local farmer herding his cows noticed me and took pity. Pressing the back of his hand to my forehead, he looked skyward toward the vultures and, understanding my predicament, lifted me onto a bullock cart. As we jostled along the muddy paths, the vultures followed overhead. The farmer entrusted me to a charitable hospital where the attendants placed me in the free ward. Eight beds lined each side of the room. The impoverished and sadhu patients alike occupied all sixteen beds. For hours, I lay unattended in a bed near the entrance. Finally that evening the doctor came and, after performing a series of tests, concluded that I was suffering from severe typhoid fever and dehydration. In a matter-of-fact tone, he said, “You will likely die, but we will try to save your life.””

Radhanath Swami (1950) Gaudiya Vaishnava guru

Republished on The Journey Home website.
The Journey Home: Autobiography of an American Swami (Tulsi Books, 2010)

Life , Death , Pain , Hope

“How great hath been the number of those who have falsely laid claim to a cause within Islám, and ye followed in their footsteps without having witnessed a single proof. What evidence can ye then produce in the presence of your Lord, if ye do but meditate a while?
Take ye good heed in your night lest ye be a cause of sadness to any soul, whether ye be able to discover proofs in him or not, that haply on the Day of Resurrection ye may not grieve Him within Whose grasp lieth every proof. And when ye do not discern God’s testimony in a person, he will verily fail in manifesting the power of Truth; and God is sufficient to deal with him. Indeed on no account should ye sadden any person; surely God will put him to the proof and bring him to account. It behooveth you to cling to the testimony of your own Faith and to observe the ordinances laid down in the Bayán.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

XVIII, 3
The Kitáb-I-Asmá

God , Truth , Sadness , Faith

“How dull, how impossible life would be without dreams — waking dreams, I mean — the dreams that we call "castles in the air," built by the kindly hands of Hope! Were it not for the mirage of the oasis, drawing his footsteps ever onward, the weary traveler would lie down in the desert sand and die. It is the mirage of distant success, of happiness that, like the bunch of carrots fastened an inch beyond the donkey's nose, seems always just within our reach, if only we will gallop fast enough, that makes us run so eagerly along the road of Life.”

Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) English humorist

Dreams http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/jjdrm10.txt

Life , Lie , Dreams , Hope

“Verily, the guide and teacher of this path [of rebellion against, a reigning father] is Your Majesty; others are merely following your footsteps. How can the path which Your Majesty chose to follow can be called 'the path of ill-luck'?
My fathered bartered away the garden of Eden for two grains of wheat; I shall be an unworthy son if I do not sell it for a grain of barley!”

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

Muhammad Akbar to Aurangzeb; see Studies in Aurangzib's reign: Being Studies in Mughal India, first series by Jadunath Sarkar, p. 68, Ayodhya Revisited https://books.google.com/books?id=gKKaDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA581 by Kunal Kishore, p. 581; Mughal Empire in India, 1526-1761: Volume 2 by Shripad Rama Sharma, p. 637
Quotes from late medieval histories

Teachers

“Duty reaches down the ages in its effects, and into eternity; and when the man goes about it resolutely, it seems to me now as though his footsteps were echoing beyond the stars, though only heard faintly in the atmosphere of this world.”

William Mountford (1816–1885) English Unitarian preacher and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 197.

Age , World , Star

“You walk down the street at night. It's raining out. The only sound is that of your own feet. There are city sounds too, but these you don't hear because at the end of the street is the woman you've been waiting for for seven long years and each muffled tread of your footsteps takes you closer and closer and the sound of them marks off seconds and days and months of waiting.
Then, suddenly, you're there, outside a dark-faced building, a brownstone anachronism that stares back dully with the defiant expression of the moronic and you have an impending sense of being challenged.”

Mickey Spillane book The Snake

The Snake (1964)

Sense , Waiting , Night

“Each footstep taken in this society bristles with privileges, and is marked with a bloodstain; each turn of the government machinery grinds the tumbling, gasping flesh of the poor; and tears are running from everywhere in the impenetrable night of suffering. Facing these endless murders and continuous tortures, what's the meaning of society, this crumbling wall, this collapsing staircase?”

Octave Mirbeau (1848–1917) French journalist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, novelist, and playwright

Tear , Suffering , Night

“He entered into life with a burden that most of us bear: with the example of great men before his eyes and the desire to follow in their footsteps, but without any knowledge of petty men, who are the only ones we meet.”

Meša Selimović book Death and the Dervish

Death and the Dervish (Derviš i smrt), Part II, page. 329.
Death and the Dervish (1966)

Life , Men , Knowledge

“My father died of neither hot nor cold. My father was as leathern as a saint. He required no trees. As unrefreshed as a Muslim courtyard. He required no fountain. No music. Whenever he saw a baby he said “poor baby.” His questions were the basic questions, as prosaic as footsteps. What is heaven like? Will I be young? Will I be with Mama? Will I go to sleep? (I don’t know, Papa; how can I know?) Absurdly, I gave answers.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

Music , Question , Sleep , Tree

“Our footsteps echo against the concrete floor. The steel roof hums with rain. And she says, 'Don't you feel, somehow, buried in history?”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 10

Feeling , History

“Postscript: It's a dangerous mission for Lapps, said Ingimundur the Old's Finns in Vatnsdœla Saga, when he sent them on a magic journey to explore Iceland. One poor little part-time tutor from the south has no motorway to guide him when he finds himself in the footsteps of the extraordinary Otto Lidenbrock, who years ago went looking for the Icelander Árni Saknússemm. Professor Lidenbrock followed the trail of this philosopher and alchemist down the crater on Snæfellsjökull all the way to the center of the earth... Perhaps the poor part-time tutor who writes this has yet to go through the center of the earth before Christianity at Glacier is fully explored. But where shall I come up?</b”

Halldór Laxness book Kristnihald undir Jökli (bók)

Kristnihald undir Jökli (Under the Glacier/Christianity at Glacier) (1968)

Way , Time , Parting

“And that was as far as he got before i heard it. The thumping of footsteps, running up the lawn toward me: It seemed like I could hear it through the grass, like leaning your ear to a railroad track and feeling the train coming, miles away. As the noise got closer I could hear ragged breaths, and then a voice.”

Sarah Dessen book Dreamland

Dreamland (2000)

Feeling , Grass , Training

“Jesus Christ is trying to follow me, my footsteps, all the way. He stayed in Paradise, because he did not marry. But I gave him marriage. Don’t you want to meet the wives of Buddha, Confucius and Muhammad? They sent letters of gratitude to me from spirit world. They pledge that even if their religion disappears, they will follow me. Can you imagine anyone in this world claiming to have married those past saints? The rings I prepared for their marriage cost a great deal per couple. Did I do that because I am crazy?”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

Jae Sa gwa Adam Kwon Shidae Dorae: The Arrival of the Era of the Fourth Adam's Realm http://www.unification.net/news/news19991024.html (1999-10-24)

Marriage , World , Religion , Way

“It is almost as difficult to make a man unlearn his errors as his knowledge. Mal-information is more hopeless than non-information; for error is always more busy than ignorance. Ignorance is a blank sheet, on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one, on which we must first erase. Ignorance is contented to stand still with her back to the truth; but error is more presumptuous, and proceeds in the same direction. Ignorance has no light, but error follows a false one. The consequence is, that error, when she retraces her footsteps, has further to go, before she can arrive at the truth, than ignorance.”

Charles Caleb Colton (1777–1832) British priest and writer

Vol. I; I
Lacon (1820)

Truth , Error , Business , Knowledge

“Terrorism benefits the Arabs, it may lay waste the Yishuv and shake Zionism. But to follow in the Arabs' footsteps and ape their deeds is to be blind to the gulf between us. Our aims and theirs run counter: methods calculated to further theirs, are ruinous to us.”

David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973) Israeli politician, Zionist leader, prime minister of Israel

"On three fronts" (3 August 1938) as quoted in * Rebirth and Destiny of Israel
1954
91
Philosophical Library
New York.

“Lord Peter Wimsey: He dogs my footsteps with the incompetent zeal of fifty Watsons.”

Dorothy L. Sayers book Murder Must Advertise

Murder Must Advertise (1933)

Dogs

“Let me die in my footsteps before I go under the ground.”

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

Song lyrics, The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961-1991 (1991), Let Me Die In My Footsteps (recorded 1962)

“I wanted to go away, in the midst of something entirely different,
I had been there, in the house of torture,
I have seen people being kicked, men’s bodies scorched,
nails pulled out with pliers.
Armed with flame and cudgels, grinning men in shirt sleeves.
Where I could hear my friends being thrown headlong
down the stairs.
Night was as day, and long shrieks wounded me.
In vain I tried to think of wooded lanes and flowers,
a serene life and human words.
The thought seized up, it was as if a wound were opened up
again and again and endlessly searched.
From the mouth struck, teeth and blood came out,
and lamenting moans from the deep throat.
Away, away from that house, from that street and town,
from anything similar to it.
I must save myself, keep up my mind,
that I should not be led to madness by these memories.
Oh, if we could go back to a void, from which a new order,
a maternal opening could come forth,
if I hear a certain tone of voice even in jest, I shudder.
My unhappiness is that I avoid the sight of suffering,
hospitals and prisons.
I have yearned for high solitudes, lands of still sunshine
and sweet shadows,
but I would always be pursued by the ghosts of human beings.
All of a sudden I feel the need of distraction and play,
to lose myself in the noise of the fairground.
I remain with you, but forgive me
if you see me sometimes act like a madman.
I try to heal myself by myself, as an animal,
trusting that the wounds will close.
I stop to listen to the simple conversations of the women
in the marketplace, with their dialectical lilt.
I rejoice at the footsteps of running children,
their overpowering calls.
Because you do not know the absurdity of my dreams,
the fixed expressions, the incomprehensible gestures.
There is turmoil inside me, which seems to ridicule me.
And I cannot cry out, not to be like them.
Tomorrow I will go towards some music, now I am getting ready.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

Life , Women , Men , Children

“The truly awesome intellectuals in our history have not merely made discoveries; they have woven variegated, but firm, tapestries of comprehensive coverage. The tapestries have various fates: Most burn or unravel in the footsteps of time and the fires of later discovery. But their glory lies in their integrity as unified structures of great complexity and broad implication.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Eight Little Piggies

"Men of the Thirty-Third Division: An Essay on Integrity", p. 125
Eight Little Piggies (1993)

Fate , History , Time

“My father was an engineer and I intended to follow in his footsteps, but movies became my real passion. Careful planning is important in engineering, so I used that experience to focus on film preproduction. With the low budgets I had, I couldn’t afford to have the cast and crew waiting around for days on a 10-day picture while I figured out how and what to shoot.”

Roger Corman (1926) American film director and film producer

Roger Corman still the Cult Classic King http://www.thespectrum.com/story/entertainment/2016/10/17/roger-corman-still-cult-classic-king/92296836/ (October 17, 2016)

Passion , Waiting

“God moves in a mysterious way,
His wonders to perform;
He plants his footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

The opening statement is often paraphrased: God moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform.
No. 35, "Light Shining out of Darkness".
Olney Hymns (1779)

God , Way , Sea

“He allows very readily, that the eyes and footsteps of the master are things most salutary to the land.”
Oculos et vestigia domini, res agro saluberrimas, facilius admittit.

Columella (4–70) Roman writer on agriculture

De Re Rustica, IV. 18: Quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), Lemma "Agriculture" p. 18-19.

“Running anywhere, blindly, hating the echo of her footsteps in the silence of the empty streets, Florentine fled from her own fear, fled from herself.”

Gabrielle Roy book The Tin Flute

Source: The Tin Flute (1945), P.263

Hate , Fear , Silence

“Tis something, if in absence we can see
The footsteps of the past: it soothes the heart
To breathe the air scented in other years
By lips beloved; to wander through the groves
Where once we were not lonely”

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

The Guerilla Chief
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Past , Heart

“Death rides on my shoulder, death walks in my footsteps. I am death.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Lews Therin Telamon
(15 October 1994)

Death

“Though the snow-drifts of Yoshino were heaped across his path, doubt not that whither his heart is set, his footsteps shall tread out their way.”

Murasaki Shikibu book The Tale of Genji

Source: Tale of Genji, The Tale of Genji, trans. Arthur Waley, Ch. 19: A Wreath of Cloud

Way , Heart

“Ask the faithful youth
Why the cold urn of her whom long he loved
So often fills his arms; so often draws
His lonely footsteps at the silent hour
To pay the mournful tribute of his tears?
Oh! he will tell thee that the wealth of worlds
Should ne'er seduce his bosom to forego
That sacred hour, when, stealing from the noise
Of care and envy, sweet remembrance soothes
With virtue's kindest looks his aching breast,
And turns his tears to rapture.”

Mark Akenside book The Pleasures of the Imagination

Book II, lines 683–693
The Pleasures of the Imagination (1744)

Love , Youth , World , Faith

“That feeling of terrible emptiness when I touched him was like going into a house that you thought would be full of people you loved, only to find it empty, and even the furniture taken. You walk from room to room, hearing your footsteps echo on the naked floors. Your voice bounces back from the empty walls, where the lines of beloved photos still show like the line around a body at a crime scene. He was gone.”

Laurell K. Hamilton (1963) Novelist

memories of Princess Meredith about encountering the body of her father, Essus; p. 40
Merry Gentry series, A Stroke of Midnight (2005)

Love , People , Feeling , Photo

“I was... questioning the students when something else caught my attention. First, dimly, then more vividly, I began to sense the presence of an invisible personality beside me. That is, I didn't see him, but felt his emotional reality quite as strongly as physical vision could ever show it. I'd "met" this same person in several previous classes when he told me mentally that he represented a past life of mine. Then, supposedly, I'd been some kind of jealous leader, demanding utmost loyalty. My friend Sue had been one of my followers. Now he wanted to confront her, feeling that she was going her own way this time and not following in her footsteps, as he thought she should have.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Adventures In Consciousness: An Introduction to Aspect Psychology (1975), p. 8

Life , Way , Feeling , Question

“Abu Hurayra reported that he heard the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, say, "The likeness of the miser and the one who gives is like two men wearing shirts of chain-mail from their breasts to their collar bones. When the giver of sadaqa spends, his shirt expands over his body until it covers his fingertips and obliterates his footsteps. When the miser wants to spend anything, every link remains in its place. He tries to make it looser but it will not get looser."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 4, hadith number 560
Sunni Hadith

Men , Peace

“Beekeepers, yes … they've gotta want to be – "I want to be a beekeeper! I wanna keep bees! Don't wanna let them get away; I wanna keep them! They have too much freedom … I want bees on elastic, so when they get pollen, they come back here! My father was a beekeeper before me, his father was a beekeeper before him; I wanna walk in their footsteps." And their footsteps were like this: [running wildly from imaginary bees] "I'm covered in bees!"”

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

Glorious (1997)

Freedom , Bee

“This is the first time that astronauts of the first group have exhibited things that are personal and sentimental to them. We hope it will encourage youngsters to follow in our footsteps.”

Alan Shepard (1923–1998) American astronaut

On dedicating the Astronaut Hall of Fame — reported in Associated Press (May 12, 1990) "Five of Mercury Seven return to the Cape, Launch Hall of Fame - Astronauts hope exhibits will inspire youths to learn", The Gazette, p. A2.

Hope , Time , Personality

“Knowledge alone is the being of Nature,
Giving a soul to her manifold features,
Lighting through paths of the primitive darkness,
The footsteps of Truth and the vision of Song.”

Bayard Taylor (1825–1878) United States poet, novelist and travel writer

Kilimandjaro (1852), Stanza 2; later published in The Poetical Works of Bayard Taylor (1907), p. 73.

Truth , Soul , Nature , Knowledge

“A man came to Allah's Apostle and said, "Instruct me as to such a deed as equals Jihad (in reward)." He replied, "I do not find such a deed." Then he added, "Can you, while the Muslim fighter is in the battle-field, enter your mosque to perform prayers without cease and fast and never break your fast?" The man said, "But who can do that?" Abu- Huraira added, "The Mujahid (i. e. Muslim fighter) is rewarded even for the footsteps of his horse while it wanders about (for grazing) tied in a long rope."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Narrated Abu Huraira, in Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 44
Sunni Hadith

Horse

“If it were not my purpose to combine foreign things with things Greek, to traverse and civilize every continent, to search out the uttermost parts of land and sea, to push the bounds of Macedonia to the farthest Ocean, and to disseminate and shower the blessings of Greek justice and peace over every nation, I should not content to sit quietly in the luxury of idle power, but I should emulate the frugality of Diogenes. But as things are, forgive me Diogenes, that I imitate Herakles, and emulate Perseus, and follow in the footsteps of Dionysos, the divine author and progenitor of my family, and desire that victorious Greeks should dance again in India and revive the memory of the Bacchic revels among the savage mountain tribes beyond the Kaukasos…”

Plutarch book Moralia

On the Fortune of Alexander, I, 332A Loeb, F.C Babbitt
Moralia, Others

Family , Peace , Justice , Search

“Hutte, for instance, used to quote the case of a fellow he called "the beach man ". This man had spent forty years of his life on beaches or by the sides of swimming pools, chatting pleasantly with summer visitors and rich idlers. He is to be seen, in his bathing costume, in the corners and backgrounds of holiday snaps, among groups of happy people, but no one knew his name and why he was there. And no one noticed when one day he vanished from the photographs. I did not dare tell Hutte, but I felt that " the beach man " was myself. Though it would not surprised him if I had confessed it. Hutte was always saying that, in the end, we we're all " beach men " and that the sand keeps the traces of our footsteps only a few moments "”

Patrick Modiano book Missing Person

Missing Person (1978 )

Life , Men , People , Quotes

“Hatred of the priest is one of man's profoundest instincts, as well as one of the least known. That it is as old as the race itself no one doubts, yet our age has raised it to an almost prodigious degree of refinement and excellence. With the decline or disappearance of other powers, the priest, even though appearing so intimately integrated into the life of society, has become a more singular and unclassifiable being than any of those old magicians the ancient world used to keep locked up like sacred animals in the depths of its temples, existing in the intimacy of the gods alone. Priests moreover are all the more singular and unclassifiable in that they do not recognize themselves as such and are nearly always dupes of the most gross outward appearances — whether of the irony of some or the servile deference of others. But that contradiction, by nature more political than religious and used far too long to nurture clerical pride, does, through the growing feeling of their loneliness and to the extent that it is gradually transformed into hostile indifference, throw them unarmed into the heart of social conflicts they naively pride themselves on being able to resolve by using texts. But, then, what does it matter? The hour is coming when, on the ruins of the old Christian order, a new order will be born that will indeed be an order of the world, the order of the Prince of this World, of that prince whose kingdom is of this world. And the hard law of necessity, stronger than any illusions, will then remove the very object for clerical pride so long maintained simply by conventions outlasting any belief. And the footsteps of beggars shall cause the earth to tremble once again.”

Georges Bernanos book Monsieur Ouine

Source: Monsieur Ouine, 1943, pp.176–177

Life , God , Hostility , Age

“In the dark a glimmering light is often sufficient for the pilot to find the polar star and to fix his course. To the pilgrim often a single footstep suffices to enable him to find his way across the bewildering plain.”

Pietro Metastasio Achille in Sciro

Fra l' ombre un lampo solo
Basta al nocchier fugace
Che già ritrova il polo,
Già riconosce il mar.
Al pellegrin ben spesso
Basta un vestigio impresso,
Perchè la via fallace
Non l'abbia ad ingannar.
Act I, scene 6.
Achille in Sciro (1736)

Way , Star , Light

“Straight to her face advanced the Athenian Lykos, and it must be said that it took no slender spirit for him to do so, such was the light of slaughter in the Amazon's eyes. "What do you call this, thou savage!" The prince gestured to the broth irrigating the walls and floors of the canyon. "Are these God's footsteps?" Is this the 'path of holiness' in which your race treads?" Theseus hastened forward, reining-in at his countryman's shoulder. "This is not war," Lykos bellowed to Antiope. "It is butchery!" Theseus sought to speak, as if to offer extenuation for the actions of the Amazons. Lykos cut him off with a curse. "You cannot defend the indefensible!"”

Steven Pressfield book Last of the Amazons

Lykos p. 153
Last of the Amazons (2002)

God , War , Light

“I tread in the footsteps of illustrious men… in receiving from the people the sacred trust confided to my illustrious predecessor.”

Martin Van Buren (1782–1862) American politician, 8th President of the United States (in office from 1837 to 1841)

Inaugural address (1837)

Men , People , Confidence

“Summer — summer — summer! The soundless footsteps on the grass!”

John Galsworthy (1867–1933) English novelist and playwright

Indian Summer of a Forsyte (1918)

Grass , Summer

“We want a man whose life and opinions embody all the achievements of which I have spoken. We want a man who, standing on a mountain height, traces the victorious footsteps of our party in the past, and, carrying in his heart the memory of its glorious deeds, looks forward prepared to meet the dangers to come. We want one who will act in no spirit of unkindness toward those we lately met in battle.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1880s, Speech Nominating John Sherman for President (1880)

Life , Mountain , Memory , Past

“There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved…. After all we have been through. Just to think we can't walk down our own streets, how humiliating.”

Jesse Jackson (1941) African-American civil rights activist and politician

Remarks at a meeting of Operation PUSH in Chicago (27 November 1993). Quoted in "Crime: New Frontier - Jesse Jackson Calls It Top Civil-Rights Issue" by Mary A. Johnson, 29 November 1993, Chicago Sun-Times (ellipsis in original). Partially quoted in "In America; A Sea Change On Crime" http://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/12/opinion/in-america-a-sea-change-on-crime.html by Bob Herbert, 12 December 1993, New York Times.

Life , Pain , Feeling , Thinking

“Trade has passed out of the hands of British merchants, and into the hands of the Greeks, Swiss, or Germans, all belonging to countries that have no navy to protect them at all. This is the fact; and what is the inference? It may be that English merchants are not educated sufficiently in foreign languages. But it may be also that Englishmen carry with them their haughty and inflexible demeanour into their intercourse with the natives of other countries. The noble Lord [Palmerston] inscribes "Civis Romanus sum" on our passports, which may be a very good thing to guard us in our footsteps. But "Civis Romanus sum" is not a very attractive motto to put over the door of our counting-houses abroad.”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1857/feb/26/resolutions-moved-debate-adjourned in the House of Commons (26 February 1857).
1850s

Education , Housing , Country

“In the study of such events we do well to remember that the hand once nailed to the tree holds the chain that binds the past, the present, and the future. His way is in the sea, His path is in the great waters, and His footsteps are not known. But wisdom marks His plans; truth and justice attend their development, and out of seeming evil He brings triumphant good.”

John Lanahan (1815–1903)

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 425.

Wisdom , Truth , Justice , Way

“When, therefore, it shall be asked what we have to do with the memory of Abraham Lincoln, or what Abraham Lincoln had to do with us, the answer is ready, full, and complete. Though he loved Caesar less than Rome, though the Union was more to him than our freedom or our future, under his wise and beneficent rule we saw ourselves gradually lifted from the depths of slavery to the heights of liberty and manhood; under his wise and beneficent rule, and by measures approved and vigorously pressed by him, we saw that the handwriting of ages, in the form of prejudice and proscription, was rapidly fading away from the face of our whole country; under his rule, and in due time, about as soon after all as the country could tolerate the strange spectacle, we saw our brave sons and brothers laying off the rags of bondage, and being clothed all over in the blue uniforms of the soldiers of the United States; under his rule we saw two hundred thousand of our dark and dusky people responding to the call of Abraham Lincoln, and with muskets on their shoulders, and eagles on their buttons, timing their high footsteps to liberty and union under the national flag; under his rule we saw the independence of the black republic of Haiti, the special object of slave-holding aversion and horror, fully recognized, and her minister, a colored gentleman, duly received here in the city of Washington; under his rule we saw the internal slave-trade, which so long disgraced the nation, abolished, and slavery abolished in the District of Columbia; under his rule we saw for the first time the law enforced against the foreign slave trade, and the first slave-trader hanged like any other pirate or murderer.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)

Love , People , Age , Law

“What then? Shall I not follow in the footsteps of my predecessors? I shall indeed use the old road, but if I find one that makes a shorter cut and is smoother to travel, I shall open the new road. Men who have made these discoveries before us are not our masters, but our guides. Truth lies open for all; it has not yet been monopolized. And there is plenty of it left even for posterity to discover.”
Quid ergo? non ibo per priorum vestigia? ego vero utar via vetere, sed si propiorem planioremque invenero, hanc muniam. Qui ante nos ista moverunt non domini nostri sed duces sunt. Patet omnibus veritas; nondum est occupata; multum ex illa etiam futuris relictum est.

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XXXIII

Men , Truth , Travel

“Virtue refuses facility for her companion … the easy, gentle, and sloping path that guides the footsteps of a good natural disposition is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 11
Essais (1595), Book II

Nature

“No true work since the world began was ever wasted; no true life since the world began has ever failed. Oh, understand those two perverted words "failure" and "success." and measure them by the eternal, not by the earthly standard. When after thirty obscure, toilsome, unrecorded years in the shop of the village carpenter, one came forth to be preeminently the man of sorrows, to wander from city to city in homeless labors, and to expire in lonely agony upon the shameful cross — was that a failure? Nay, my brethren. it was the death of Him who lived that we might follow His footsteps, it was the life, it was the death of the Son of God.”

Frederic William Farrar (1831–1903) British clergyman and author

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 113.

Life , Death , God , World

“John F. Kennedy … murdered in Dallas by some hapless geek named Oswald who worked for either Castro, the mob, Jimmy Hoffa, the CIA, his dominatrix landlady or the odious, degenerate FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover. The list is long and crazy — maybe Marilyn Monroe's first husband fired those shots from the grassy knoll. Who knows? A whole generation of American journalists is still embarrassed by their failure to answer that question. JFK's ghost will haunt the corridors of power in America for as long as the grass is green and the rivers run to the sea. Take my word for it, Bubba. I have heard his footsteps for 30 years and I still feel guilty about not being able to explain the biggest news story of my lifetime to my son.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Better than Sex (22 August 1994)
1990s

Feeling , Failure , Question , Grass

“Vienna. It means nothing to me but to Orson Welles, it was the setting for one of his finest performances - and a place to get huge plates of cheap rich food. I followed the footsteps of my hero, which are still visible in the concrete, to the world famous Ferris wheel.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

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

World , Food

“It seemed proper indeed to crowd the pages with children, for in real life they run all over; the world is covered thickly with the prints of their little footsteps, though, as a rule, books written for grown-up people are kept almost clear of them.”

Jean Ingelow (1820–1897) British writer

The Preface to the American edition of Fated to be Free (1875)

Life , Children , People , Books

“Though the snow-drifts of Yoshino were heaped across his path, doubt not that whither his heart is set, his footsteps shall tread out their way.”

Arthur Waley (1889–1966) British academic

Source: Translations, The Tale of Genji (1925–1933), Ch. 19: 'A Wreath of Cloud'

Way , Heart

“Every part of all this soil is sacred to my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove has been hollowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. The very dust you now stand on responds more willingly to their footsteps than to yours, because it is rich with the blood of our ancestors and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch.”

Chief Seattle (1786–1866) Duwamish chief

Misattributed

People , Sadness , Parting , Happiness

“Up to eight feet long and as heavy as a lioness, the adult Komodo dragon brandishes steak-knifelike teeth - sharp, recurved blades with serrated cutting edges. Showing the same sagacity found in veteran Nile crocodiles, fully adult dragons know their hunting territory from years of experience. They know where to lie along hilly game trails, awaiting the light footsteps of a deer. Attacks are instant successes or failures because the ora has no stamina, and if it misses on the first short rush, it has little sustained speed for a long pursuit. When an attack succeeds, the cruel rows of slashing teeth cut fearful wounds on the rump and thigh of ambushed animals and the stricken prey may die of massive infection days later even if it manages to break free from the dragon's mouth. Tethered livestock suffer truly terrible cuts across the legs when an ora slinks into the compound under cover of the warm Indonesian nights. Several humans, both native and European visitors, have died in savage daylight attacks. The victims simply had no warning sign that the ora was waiting patiently a few feet from the trail's edge.”

Robert T. Bakker book The Dinosaur Heresies

The Dinosaur Heresies: A Revolutionary View of Dinosaurs (1986), Longman Scientific & Technical, p. 62-63
The Dinosaur Heresies (1986)

Lie , Fear , Game , Failure

“Far from mortal cares retreating,
Sordid hopes and vain desires,
Here, our willing footsteps meeting,
Every heart to heaven aspires.”

Jane Taylor (1783–1824) British poet

Hymn, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Hope , Heart

“O live, I pray! Nor rival the divine Aeneid, but follow afar and ever venerate its footsteps.”
Vive, precor; nec tu divinam Aeneida tempta, sed longe sequere et vestigia semper adora.

Statius book Thebaid

Source: Thebaid, Book XII, Line 816 (tr. J. H. Mozley)

“I have pleaded for the rights of woman, for the rights of wives, and what is more, for the rights of little children. I have said that they could be governed by affection, by love, and that my heart went out to all the children of poverty and of crime; to the children that live in the narrow streets and in the sub-cellars; to the children that run and hide when they hear the footsteps of a brutal father, the children that grow pale when they hear their names pronounced even by a mother; to all the little children, the flotsam and jetsam upon the wide, rude sea of life. I have said that my heart goes out to them one and all; I have asked fathers and mothers to cease beating their own flesh and blood. I have said to them, When your child does wrong, put your arms around him; let him feel your heart beat against his. It is easier to control your child with a kiss than with a club.”

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

My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)

Love , Life , Children , Feeling

“Variant translation: "I saw the infinite, all-knowing and all-powerful God from behind as he went away, and I grew dizzy. I followed his footsteps over nature's fields and saw everywhere an eternal wisdom and power, an inscrutable perfection." (As quoted in History of Science, by Peter Whitfield”

Carl Linnaeus book Systema Naturae

2003), Scholastic Library Pub, p. 23.
Systema Naturae

Wisdom , God , Quotes , History

“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

“This is how we go on: one day a time, one meal at a time, one pain at a time, one breath at a time. Dentists go on one root canal at a time; boat builders go on one hull at a time. If you write books, you go on one page at a time. We turn from all we know and all we fear. We study catalogues, watch football games, choose Sprint over AT&T. We count the birds in the sky and will not turn from the window when we hear the footsteps behind as something comes up the hall; we say yes, I agree that clouds often look like other things - fish and unicorns and men on horseback - but they are really only clouds. Even when the lightning flashes inside them we say they are only clouds and turn our attention to the next meal, the next pain, the next breath, the next page. This is how we go on.”

Stephen King book Bag of Bones

Bag of Bones (1998)

Men , Pain , Books , Fear

“Interviewer: What advice do you have for kids who want to follow your footsteps?
Julianna: In what sense? My footsteps as Stephanie, or as an actress? Either way I would encourage kids to make good choices, don’t get forced into things due to peer pressure, lead a healthy and safe life, and excel in the things you love. You can be great at anything, as long as you like doing it.”

Julianna Rose Mauriello (1991) Nieta de. Tesla

Nicksplat: "Exclusive Interview with Julianna Rose Mauriello" (20 March 2006)

Love , Life , Way , Sense

“Even of old the Christian world, so bitterly antagonistic to any ideas not specifically contained in their creeds and dogmas, made an exception in Socrates’ case. They recognized his likeness to Christ. He was the example that a soul could be Christlike, not through grace, but by nature. Erasmus said: "Holy Socrates, pray for us." To know him is a help to knowing Christ, and it is not hard to know him. We can see him quite clearly. Plato, who drew his portrait, could not, of course, keep himself out of it, any more than Christ’s recorders could; but at least magic did not dog Plato’s footsteps, as it did everyone’s footsteps when the Gospels were written. In the fourth century B. C. Greeks had no leaning to marvels. Also in the centuries that followed no one founded a church on Socrates and built up around him a theology and hung creeds and ceremonials upon him. To see what he was, we do not have to brush anything away, except a bit of Plato. We can use him as a stepping stone to Christ, a first aid in realizing what Christ was.”

Edith Hamilton (1867–1963) American teacher and writer

"The Rediscovery of Christ," Witness to the Truth: Christ and His Interpreters (1962)

World , Dogs , Soul , Idea

“Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd,
As home his footsteps he hath turn'd,
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonor'd, and unsung.”

Walter Scott The Lay of the Last Minstrel

Canto VI, stanza 1.
The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805)

Home , Soul , Heart , Dead

“They knew now that they could never accomplish that long carpet-journey with anything like Cutflower’s air, but he reminded them at every footstep, every inclination of the head, that the whole point of life was to be happy.”

Mervyn Peake (1911–1968) English writer, artist, poet and illustrator

Source: Gormenghast (1950), Chapter 34 (p. 570)

Life , Happiness

“I have to say, Mr. Deputy Speaker, the Ministers are like fraudsters in the fairy tale, telling gullible Liberal Democrat MPs about the beautiful progressive clothes that the emperor is wearing, if only they are clever enough and loyal enough to see them. And desperately, we have Liberal Democrats clinging to shreds of invisible cloth, reaching deep into their Liberal and Conservative history to pretend that they can be progressive now. They are claiming that Keynes might have backed the Budget. They are calling on Beveridge for support, kidding themselves that they can call on their history and that they are following in the footsteps of great liberal Conservatives like Winston Churchill, who supported the minimum wage, but the truth is that the emperor has no clothes.
The truth is that if you look at the detail, the Budget is nastier than any brought in by Margaret Thatcher. Instead of Churchill, Keynes or the founders of the welfare state, the Liberal Democrats have signed up, with the Right Honourable Member for Chingford and his Chancellor, to cut support for the poor. It is perhaps apt that in this week of World Cup disappointments, it was actually a footballer who got it right. In 2002, after England were defeated in the World Cup by Brazil, Gareth Southgate reflected ruefully on England's performance and said:
"We were expecting Winston Churchill and instead got Iain Duncan Smith."
That is the reality for the Liberal Democrats now. With all their high hopes, they have betrayed the poor and the vulnerable, whom they stood up to defend.
[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb) rose]
I will give way to the hon. Gentleman because I know he has a history of supporting people on low incomes and I do not know why he is betraying it now.”

Yvette Cooper (1969) British politician

During a budget response debate http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm100628/debtext/100628-0012.htm, 28 July, 2010. Link to the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtORBuxY0MU.

People , Truth , World , Beauty

“Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

St. 5.
The Day is Done (1845)

Distant , Time

“What I do not like about our definitions of genius is that there is in them nothing of the day of judgment, nothing of resounding through eternity and nothing of the footsteps of the Almighty.”

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

E 92
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook E (1775 - 1776)

“Nothing gives history a greater superiority to many branches of literature, than to see in a manner imprinted, in almost every page of it, the precious footsteps and shining proofs of this great truth, viz. that God disposes all events as supreme Lord and Sovereign; that he alone determines the fate of kings and the duration of empires; and that he transfers the government of kingdoms from one nation to another, because of the unrighteous dealings and wickedness committed therein.”

Charles Rollin (1661–1741) French historian

The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes and Persians, Macedonians, and Grecians, Vol. I, Eleventh Edition (1808), Preface, p. iii

God , Fate , Truth , History