Quotes about glass
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“Joy from truth's own glass of fire
Sweetly on the searcher smiles;
Lest on virtue's steeps he tire,
Joy the tedious path beguiles.
High on faith's bright hill before us,
See her banner proudly wave!
Joy, too, swells the angels' chorus,—
Bursts the bondage of the grave!”

Friedrich Schiller Ode to Joy

Stanza 5
An die Freude (Ode to Joy; or Hymn to Joy) (1785)

Truth, Faith, Smile, Angels

“They are splendidly built [Italian Hospitals], the best food and drink are at hand, the attendants are very diligent, the physicians are learned, the beds and coverings are very clean, and the bedsteads are painted. As soon as a sick man is brought in, all his clothes are taken off in the presence of a notary and are faithfully kept for him. He is then laid in a handsomely painted bed with clean sheets. Two physicians are fetched at once. Attendants come with food and drink, served in immaculate glass vessels; these are not touched with as much as a finger but are brought on a tray.”

Martin Luther book Table Talk

3930
Table Talk (1569)

Food, Drink, Learning, Painting

“Take a piece of glass of the size of a half sheet of royal folio paper, and fix it… between your eye and the object you wish to portray. Then move it away until your eye is two-thirds of a braccio away from the piece of glass, and fasten your head by means of an instrument in such a way as to prevent any movement of it whatsoever. Then close or cover up one eye, and with a brush or a piece of red chalk finely ground mark out on the glass what is visible beyond it; afterwards, copy it by tracing on paper from the glass, then prick it out upon paper of a better quality and paint it if you so desire, paying special attention to the aerial perspective.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XXIX Precepts of the Painter

Way, Painting

“As I saw that they were very friendly to us, and perceived that they could be much more easily converted to our holy faith by gentle means than by force, I presented them with some red caps, and strings of beads to wear upon the neck, and many other trifles of small value, wherewith they were much delighted, and became wonderfully attached to us. Afterwards they came swimming to the boats, bringing parrots, balls of cotton thread, javelins, and many other things which they exchanged for articles we gave them, such as glass beads, and hawk's bells; which trade was carried on with the utmost good will. But they seemed on the whole to me, to be a very poor people. They all go completely naked, even the women, though I saw but one girl. All whom I saw were young, not above thirty years of age, well made, with fine shapes and faces; their hair short, and coarse like that of a horse's tail, combed toward the forehead, except a small portion which they suffer to hang down behind, and never cut. Some paint themselves with black, which makes them appear like those of the Canaries, neither black nor white; others with white, others with red, and others with such colors as they can find. Some paint the face, and some the whole body; others only the eyes, and others the nose. Weapons they have none, nor are acquainted with them, for I showed them swords which they grasped by the blades, and cut themselves through ignorance. They have no iron, their javelins being without it, and nothing more than sticks, though some have fish-bones or other things at the ends. They are all of a good size and stature, and handsomely formed. I saw some with scars of wounds upon their bodies, and demanded by signs the of them; they answered me in the same way, that there came people from the other islands in the neighborhood who endeavored to make prisoners of them, and they defended themselves. I thought then, and still believe, that these were from the continent. It appears to me, that the people are ingenious, and would be good servants and I am of opinion that they would very readily become Christians, as they appear to have no religion. They very quickly learn such words as are spoken to them. If it please our Lord, I intend at my return to carry home six of them to your Highnesses, that they may learn our language. I saw no beasts in the island, nor any sort of animals except parrots.”

Cristoforo Colombo (1451–1506) Explorer, navigator, and colonizer

12 October 1492; This entire passage is directly quoted from Columbus in the summary by Bartolomé de Las Casas
Journal of the First Voyage

Women, People, Age, Faith

“Suddenly he saw them, the bottles of aguardiente, of anís, of jerez, of Highland Queen, the glasses, a babel of glasses—towering, like the smoke from the train that day—built to the sky, then falling, the glasses toppling and crashing, falling downhill from the Generalife Gardens, the bottles breaking, bottles of Oporto, tinto, blanco, bottles of Pernod, Oxygènée, absinthe, bottles smashing, bottles cast aside, falling with a thud on the ground in parks, under benches, beds, cinema seats, hidden in drawers at Consulates, bottles of Calvados dropped and broken, or bursting into smithereens, tossed into garbage heaps, flung into the sea, the Mediterranean, the Caspian, the Caribbean, bottles floating in the ocean, dead Scotchmen on the Atlantic highlands—and now he saw them, smelt them, all, from the very beginning—bottles, bottles, bottles, and glasses, glasses, glasses, of bitter, of Dubonnet, of Falstaff, Rye, Johnny Walker, Vieux Whiskey blanc Canadien, the apéritifs, the digestifs, the demis, the dobles, the noch ein Herr Obers, the et glas Araks, the tusen taks, the bottles, the bottles, the beautiful bottles of tequila, and the gourds, gourds, gourds, the millions of gourds of beautiful mescal...”

Malcolm Lowry book Under the Volcano

Source: Under the Volcano (1947), Ch. X (p. 292)

Beauty, Training, Sea, Dead

“We meet neath the sounding rafter,
And the walls around are bare;
As they shout back our peals of laughter
It seems that the dead are there.
Ho! stand to your glasses steady!
'T is all we have left to prize.
A cup to the dead already,—
Hurrah for the next that dies!”

Bartholomew Dowling (1823–1863) Irish poet

The Revel: Time of the Famine and Plague in India, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919); alternately attributed to Alfred Domett.

Laughter, Dead

“It's like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell!”

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

On how Apple is the largest developer for Microsoft Windows due to the popularity of its iTunes software, at the All Things Digital Conference 5 (30 May 2007) http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/30/steve-jobs-live-from-d-2007/, on stage with Bill Gates, Kara Swisher and Walter Mossberg. 2000s

Hell, Water

“You're going to tell me that poverty's nothing to be ashamed of. It's not true, though. If you can't hide it, then it is something to be ashamed of. There's nothing you can do, you're ashamed just the same, the way you're ashamed when you leave a spot on somebody's table. No matter if it's deserved or not, honorable or not, poverty stinks. Yes, stinks, stinks like a ground-floor room off an airshaft, or clothes that need changing. You smell it yourself, as though you were made of sewage. It can't be wiped away. It doesn't help to put on a new hat, any more than rinsing your mouth helps when you're belching your guts out. It's around you and on you and everyone who brushes up against you or looks at you knows it. I know the way women look down on you when you're down at heels. I know it's embarrassing for other people, but the hell with that, it's a lot more embarrassing when it's you. You can't get out of it, you can't get past it, the best thing to do is get plastered, and here" (he reached for his glass and drained it in a deliberately uncouth gulp) "here's the great social problem, here's why the 'lower classes' indulge in alcohol so much more - that problem that countesses and matrons in women's groups rack their brains over at tea. For those few minutes, those few hours, you forget you're an affront to other and to yourself. It's no great distinction to be seen in the company of someone dressed lie this, I know, but it's no fun for me either.”

Stefan Zweig book The Post Office Girl

The Post Office Girl (published posthumously in 1982)

Women, People, Alcohol, Lie

“So as through a glass, and darkly
The age long strife I see
Where I fought in many guises,
Many names, but always me.”

George S. Patton (1885–1945) United States Army general

Through A Glass, Darkly (1918)
Context: So as through a glass, and darkly
The age long strife I see
Where I fought in many guises,
Many names, but always me. And I see not in my blindness
What the objects were I wrought,
But as God rules o'er our bickerings
It was through His will I fought. So forever in the future,
Shall I battle as of yore,
Dying to be born a fighter,
But to die again, once more.

Age

“Could the impossible come to pass
She would have time to turn her eyes,
Her lover thought, upon the glass
And on the instant would grow wise.”

W.B. Yeats book Michael Robartes and the Dancer

Michael Robartes and the Dancer http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1535/ Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921) Context: Opinion is not worth a rush; In this altar-piece the knight, Who grips his long spear so to push That dragon through the fading light, Loved the lady; and it’s plain The half-dead dragon was her thought, That every morning rose again And dug its claws and shrieked and fought. Could the impossible come to pass She would have time to turn her eyes, Her lover thought, upon the glass And on the instant would grow wise.

Lovers, Time

“The Marxist ideology is wrong. But I have met many Marxists in my life who are good people, so I don’t feel offended. … The promise was that when the glass was full, it would overflow, benefiting the poor. But what happens instead, is that when the glass is full, it magically gets bigger (and) nothing ever comes out for the poor.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

Response to critics who have called him a Marxist, because of his criticism of capitalist theories in "Pope Francis: I’m Not a Marxist" in TIME magazine (15 December 2013) http://world.time.com/2013/12/15/pope-francis-im-not-a-marxist/ 2010s, 2013 Context: The Marxist ideology is wrong. But I have met many Marxists in my life who are good people, so I don’t feel offended. … The promise was that when the glass was full, it would overflow, benefiting the poor. But what happens instead, is that when the glass is full, it magically gets bigger (and) nothing ever comes out for the poor. This was the only reference to a specific theory. I was not, I repeat, speaking from a technical point of view but according to the church’s social doctrine. This does not mean being a Marxist.

Life, People, Feeling

“This viscous whiteness became in my mind the frontier between the real and the unreal, between the known and the unknowable. Already I was beginning to realize that a spectacle has no meaning except it be seen through the glass of a culture, a civilization, a craft.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944) French writer and aviator

Source: Terre des Hommes (1939), Ch. I : The Craft
Context: "Navigating by the compass in a sea of clouds over Spain is all very well, it is very dashing, but—"
And I was struck by the graphic image:
"But you want to remember that below the sea of clouds lies eternity."
And suddenly that tranquil cloud-world, that world so harmless and simple that one sees below on rising out of the clouds, took on in my eyes a new quality. That peaceful world became a pitfall. I imagined the immense white pitfall spread beneath me. Below it reigned not what one might think — not the agitation of men, not the living tumult and bustle of cities, but a silence even more absolute than in the clouds, a peace even more final. This viscous whiteness became in my mind the frontier between the real and the unreal, between the known and the unknowable. Already I was beginning to realize that a spectacle has no meaning except it be seen through the glass of a culture, a civilization, a craft. Mountaineers too know the sea of clouds, yet it does not seem to them the fabulous curtain it is to me.

“The French are a smallish, monkey-looking bunch and not dressed any better, on average, than the citizens of Baltimore. True, you can sit outside in Paris and drink little cups of coffee, but why this is more stylish than sitting inside and drinking large glasses of whiskey I don't know.”

P. J. O'Rourke book Holidays in Hell

Holidays in Hell (1989)

Coffee, Drink

“Isn't it lovely, all alone
Heart made of glass, my mind of stone
Tear me to pieces, skin to bone
Hello, welcome home”

Billie Eilish (2001) American singer-songwriter

Source: + Khalid, Song Lovely

Home, Heart, Love, Tear

“Do you know what pain is, Cammie? It’s the
body’s physical response to imminent harm.
It is the mind’s way of telling us to move our
hand off the stove or let go of the broken
glass.”

Ally Carter Out of Sight, Out of Time

Source: Out of Sight, Out of Time

Pain, Way

“There's no trouble in this world so serious that it can't be cured with a hot bath, a glass of whiskey, and the Book of Common Prayer.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Books, World

“Alec muttered a retort into his coffee. It rhymed with something that sounded a lot more like "ducking glass mole.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Coffee

“When we opened the doors, we saw that the entire room was scorched black and you were on the floor possibly dead, surrounded by broken glass. Window glass is expensive, you realize that?"
"Yes, Your Majesty," he said meekly.”

Megan Whalen Turner The Queen of Attolia

Source: The Queen of Attolia

Dead

“You’re ten pints of crazy in a one-pint glass.”

Scott Lynch book Red Seas Under Red Skies

Source: Red Seas Under Red Skies (2007), Chapter 8 “Summer’s End” section 5 (p. 396)

“A lie preserved in stained glass doesn't make it more true.”

Saul Williams (1972) American singer, musician, poet, writer, and actor

Source: The Dead Emcee Scrolls: The Lost Teachings of Hip-Hop

Lie

“I looked like a woman in glasses, but I had dreams of leading a very different kind of life, the life of a woman who would not wear glasses, the kind of woman I saw from a distance now and then in a bar.”

Lydia Davis (1947) American writer

Source: The Collected Stories

Life, Dreams

“Mostly we just add to the piles of rainbow glass that's been blown off the exteriors of the cany-colored buildings.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Color

“I looked at the stained-glass image of the lamb in the window above me, but that only reminded me that lambs are famous for being led to slaughter, or sometimes hanging out with lions in ill-advised relationships.”

Maureen Johnson (1973) writer from the USA

Source: The Name of the Star

“That's very funny," says Peeta. Suddenly he lashes out at the glass in Haymitch's hand. It shatters on the floor, sending the bloodred liquid running toward the back of the train. "Only not to us.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Training

“It meant nothing to him any longer, only a faint tinge of sadness--and somewhere within him, a drop of pain moving briefly and vanishing, like a raindrop on the glass of a window, its course in the shape of a question mark.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Pain, Sadness, Question

“Mirroring behavior. When a mark takes a drink from his water glass, so should you. When he smiles, so should you. Keep it subtle, rather than creepy, and it’s a good technique.”

Holly Black book Black Heart

Source: Black Heart

Smile, Behavior, Drink, Water

“I’m packed with broken glass and memories and it all hurts.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: Solipsist

Memory, Hurt

“Kissing Simon was pleasant. It was a gentle sort of pleasant, like lying in a hammock on a summer day with a book and a glass of lemonade”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Books, Lying, Kiss, Summer

“Sometimes… sometimes I think the Asylum is a head. We're inside a huge head that dreams us all into being. Perhaps it's your head, Batman. Arkham is a looking glass… and we are you.”

Grant Morrison (1960) writer

Source: Batman: Arkham Asylum - A Serious House on Serious Earth

Dreams, Thinking

“Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there's no way in or out. In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It's loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its twisted road.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

Way, Loss, Happiness

“This is a cardinal Ya-Ya rule: you must meet each person's eyes while clinking glasses in a toast. Otherwise, the ritual has no meaning, it's just pure show. And that is something the Ya-Yas are not.”

Rebecca Wells book Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Source: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Personality

“Without a word or hesitation, Pain took the mop from Nick. Suffering moved to pick up glass.
"Wow. Where have you two been all my life?"
Pain quirked and eyebrow as he mopped the floor.
"Walking hand in hand with you. Haven't you noticed?”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Invincible

Life, Pain, Suffering

“There was a tacit understanding between them that 'liquor helped'; growing more miserable with every glass one hoped for the moment of relief.”

Graham Greene book The Heart of the Matter

Source: The Heart of the Matter

Hope, Understanding, Help

“I am troubled, immeasurably
by your eyes.
I am struck by the feather
of your soft reply.
The sound of glass
speaks quick, disdain
and conceals
what your eyes fight
to explain.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

Source: Wilderness: The Lost Writings, Vol. 1

Fight

“I'm having the weirdest sense of deja vu right now," said the green caterpiller.
Duh!" said the blue caterpiller. "Do you think, just maybe, that's because you predicted this?"
Oh, yeah."
--The Looking Glass Wars”

Frank Beddor American skier and writer

War, Thinking, Sense

“American love — like coke in green glass bottles… they don't make it anymore.”

Alan Moore book Watchmen

Source: Watchmen

Love

“excuse me' he added, taking the opera glasses out of her hands and looking over her bare shoulder at the row of boxes opposite, 'i'm afraid i'm becoming ridiculous”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

Box

“Break the glass, please, and free us from all these damned rules, from needing to find an explanation for everything, from doing only what others approve of.”

Paulo Coelho book By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

“I don't trust happiness. I turn it over as if it were a glass at a flea market or a rug at a souk, looking for chipped rims or loose threads.”

Jennifer Weiner (1970) American writer

Happiness

“You know, the condom is the glass slipper of our generation. You slip it on when you meet a stranger. You dance all night, then you throw it away.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

Dance, Night

“The thing about the Mirror is that no one knows where it is. In fact, no one knows what it is.”
"It’s a mirror,” Simon said. “You know – reflective, glass. I’m just assuming.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

“You know, he told me once, completely exasperated, you've got one glass of water inside your head, with all the tears for a lifetime. If you waste them over nothing, then you won't be able to cry for real when you need to.”

Jodi Picoult book Lone Wolf

Source: Lone Wolf

Tear, Water, Cry

“I hurl the glass teapot to the ground.

we both stare at it, stunned.

"it was supposed to break," I explain after a pause, " and that was going to signify that yes, I would throw something away. If I knew it wasn't right for me.”

Sophie Kinsella book Can You Keep a Secret?

Source: Can You Keep a Secret?

“Will speechless for once, a glass of water frozen halfway to his lips”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Water

“Nearly unable to bear the thought of how much he needed her quiet strength, he closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the cold glass.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

“Men kick friendship around like a football, but it doesn't seem to crack. Women treat it like glass and it goes to pieces.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906–2001) American aviator and author

Women, Men, Friendship, Football

“Who am I? I'm just a writer. I write things down. I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure, I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallow glass, but that comes later.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Love, Dreams, Future

“Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or tortuous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive.”

Joanne Harris book Chocolat

Source: Chocolat

Happy, Heart, Happiness

“It enclosed us in its laceries as we watched the moon spill across the Atlantic like wine from an overturned glass. With the light all around us, we felt secret in that moon-infused water like pearls forming in the soft tissues of oysters.”

Pat Conroy book Beach Music

Source: Beach Music

Secret, Light, Water, Wine

“I can see the beauty of glass objects fully at the moment when they slip from my hand”

Andrew Solomon book The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Source: The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Beauty

“Muriel, you're not a convenience. I'd walk across a mile of cut glass in my bare feet to hold your hand and talk to you for one hour. You're everything to me.--Walt”

Robyn Carr American writer

Source: Paradise Valley

“I buy wine according to the bottle design. After I get down the first glass it all tastes okay to me so I figure you go for something classy to look at on the table”

Janet Evanovich (1943) Novelist

Source: Smokin' Seventeen

Wine

“Sometimes it made her want to put her fist through glass; other times, it made her cry a river.”

Jodi Picoult Salem Falls

Source: Salem Falls

Time, Cry

“Don't drink too much."
"When I can spell out your name in shot glasses, I'll stop."
"I'll have to get a shorter name."
"I'll have to forget how to spell it.”

Richard Kadrey (1957) San Francisco-based novelist, freelance writer, and photographer

Source: Kill the Dead

Drink, Forgetting

“In the kingdom of glass everything is transparent, and there is no place to hide a dark heart.”

Vera Nazarian (1966) American writer

Source: The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

Heart

“My people have been wearing green glasses on their eyes for so long that most of them think this really is an Emerald City.”

L. Frank Baum book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)
Source: Oz: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

People, Thinking

“Art is the magic mirror you make to reflect your invisible dreams in visible pictures. You use a glass mirror to see your face: you use works of art to see your soul.”

George Bernard Shaw Back to Methuselah

The She-Ancient, in Pt. V
Source: 1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)
Context: Art is the magic mirror you make to reflect your invisible dreams in visible pictures. You use a glass mirror to see your face: you use works of art to see your soul. But we who are older use neither glass mirrors nor works of art. We have a direct sense of life. When you gain that you will put aside your mirrors and statues, your toys and your dolls.

Dreams, Art, Soul

“My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness. When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air.”

Derek Parfit book Reasons and Persons

Source: Reasons and Persons (1984), p. 281
Context: Is the truth depressing? Some may find it so. But I find it liberating, and consoling. When I believed that my existence was a further fact, I seemed imprisoned in myself. My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness. When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the difference is less. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others.

Life, Change

“I say that home is where there is a chair and a glass.”

Graham Greene book The Power and the Glory

Source: The Power and the Glory

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