Quotes about gold
page 5

“And now, in ample measure, the French began to reap the harvest of their folly. Conquest, gold, and military occupation had alone been their aims. Not a rod of ground had been stirred with the spade. Their stores were consumed, and the expected supplies had not come. The Indians, too, were hostile. Satouriona hated them as allies of his enemies; and his tribesmen, robbed and maltreated by the lawless soldiers, exulted in their miseries. Yet in these, their dark and subtle neighbors, was their only hope.”

Francis Parkman (1823–1893) American historian

Pt. I, Ch. 6 Famine. War. Succor.
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)

Hate, Hostility, Hope

“Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.”

Constantine P. Cavafy Waiting for the Barbarians

Source: Waiting for the Barbarians (1904), l. 16

“The battle raged with great fury: victory was long doubtful, till two Indian princes, Brahman Dew and Dabishleem, with other reinforcements, joined their countrymen during the action, and inspired them with fresh courage. Mahmood at this moment perceiving his troops to waver, leaped from his horse, and, prostrating himself before God implored his assistance' At the same time he cheered his troops with such energy, that, ashamed to abandon their king, with whom they had so often fought and bled, they, with one accord, gave a loud shout and rushed forwards. In this charge the Moslems broke through the enemy's line, and laid 5,000 Hindus dead at their feet' On approaching the temple, he saw a superb edifice built of hewn stone. Its lofty roof was supported by fifty-six pillars curiously carved and set with precious stones. In the centre of the hall was Somnat, a stone idol five yards in height, two of which were sunk in the ground. The King, approaching the image, raised his mace and struck off its nose. He ordered two pieces of the idol to be broken off and sent to Ghizny, that one might be thrown at the threshold of the public mosque, and the other at the court door of his own palace. These identical fragments are to this day (now 600 years ago) to be seen at Ghizny. Two more fragments were reserved to be sent to Mecca and Medina. It is a well authenticated fact, that when Mahmood was thus employed in destroying this idol, a crowd of Brahmins petitioned his attendants and offered a quantity of gold if the King would desist from further mutilation. His officers endeavoured to persuade him to accept of the money; for they said that breaking one idol would not do away with idolatry altogether; that, therefore, it could serve no purpose to destroy the image entirely; but that such a sum of money given in charity among true believers would be a meritorious act. The King acknowledged that there might be reason in what they said, but replied, that if he should consent to such a measure, his name would be handed down to posterity as 'Mahmood the idol-seller', whereas he was desirous of being known as 'Mahmood the destroyer': he therefore directed the troops to proceed in their work'…'The Caliph of Bagdad, being informed of the expedition of the King of Ghizny, wrote him a congratulatory letter, in which he styled him 'The Guardian of the State, and of the Faith'; to his son, the Prince Ameer Musaood, he gave the title of 'The Lustre of Empire, and the Ornament of Religion'; and to his second son, the Ameer Yoosoof, the appellation of 'The Strength of the Arm of Fortune, and Establisher of Empires.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

He at the same time assured Mahmood, that to whomsoever he should bequeath the throne at his death, he himself would confirm and support the same.'
Tarikh-i-Firishta, translated into English by John Briggs under the title History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, 4 Volumes, New Delhi Reprint, 1981. p. 38-49 (Alternative translation: "but the champion of Islam replied with disdain that he did not want his name to go down to posterity as Mahmud the idol-seller (but farosh) instead of Mahmud the breaker-of-idols (but shikan)." in Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 3)
Sack of Somnath (1025 CE)

Death, Money, God, Faith

“All the average feds care about is dressing up in black uniforms and having mustaches and starring at people… I know your mustache is cool! You got little gold-framed glasses! You scare me so bad! Ugh… you scum! Scum! … What's driving me crazy is that photo right there, zoom in on that, it's one of those cops with a black uniform with a mustache. You know that guy is a coward! You know he's a piece of garbage! You know he's weak! Oh! … Oh, you got a mustache, I'll just worship you. Oh, you got a mustache, it's okay! Ugh, your demonic little mustaches!”

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

"Demonic Mustache Rant!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4ktiWWYxq8, February 2012. 2012

People, Guy, Photo, Star

“Nothing was said. And on crawled the little procession in the direction of Summerhouses, men and animals, men-animals, five souls. The pale red sun grazed the surface of the moorland bluffs on this northern winter's morning which was really only an evening. And yet it was midday. The light gilded the clouds of snow flying over the moors so that they seemed one unbroken ocean of fire, one radiant fire of gold with streaming flames and glimmering smoke from east to west over the whole frozen expanse. Through this golden fire of frost, comparable in its magic to nothing but the most powerful and elaborate witchcraft of the Ballads, lay their homeward way.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book One, Part I: Icelandic Pioneers

Men, Way, Soul, Light

“In Mexico City they somehow wandered into an exhibition of paintings by the beautiful Spanish exile Remedios Varo: in the central painting of a triptych, titled “Bordando el Manto Terrestre,” were a number of frail girls with heart-shaped faces, huge eyes, spun-gold hair, prisoners in the top room of a circular tower, embroidering a kind of tapestry which spilled out the slit windows and into a void, seeking hopelessly to fill the void: for all the other buildings and creatures, all the waves, ships and forests of the earth were contained in the tapestry, and the tapestry was the world.”

Thomas Pynchon book The Crying of Lot 49

Source: The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), Chapter 1

World, Beauty, Girl, Heart

“Not all that tempts your wandering eyes
And heedless hearts, is lawful prize;
Nor all that glisters gold.”

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) English poet, historian

St. 7 On the Death of a Favourite Cat http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=odfc (1747)

Law, Heart

“The idea is still widespread that Australians were among the world's most persistent racists until the White Australia policy was abolished. But in 1900, and long after, almost every part of the Western world was wary of large-scale immigration from poorer, low-wage countries whose reigning culture was different. Asians at times were wary of outsiders. Between 1860 and 1914 it was safer to be a Chinese gold-digger living in Australia than to be an Australian, especially a female missionary, living in China.”

Geoffrey Blainey (1930) Australian historian

The Story of Australia's People: The Rise and Rise of a New Australia (2016)

World, Idea, Time, Parting

“Nothing is more perishable than worn-out apparel, yet, thanks to documentary evidence, to the custom of burying people of high rank in their robes, and to the practice of wrapping up relics of saints in pieces of precious stuffs, we are enabled to form a veiy good idea of what these stuffs were like and where they came from. In the first instance they appear to have come from Byzantium, and from the East generally; but the manufacture afterwards extended to Sicily, and received great impetus at the Norman conquest of that island; Roger I. even transplanting Greek workmen from the towns sacked by his army, and settling them in Sicily. Of course many of the workers would be Mohammedans, and the old patterns, perhaps with the addition of sundry animals, would still continue in use; hence the frequency of Arabic inscriptions in the borders, the Cufic character being one of the most ornamental ever used. In the Hotel de Clu^ny at Paris are preserved the remains of the vestments of a bishop of Bayonne, found when his sepulchre was opened in 1853, the date of the entombment being the twelfth century. Some of these remains are cloth of gold, but the most remarkable is a very deep border ornamented with blue Cufic letters on a gold ground; the letters are fimbriated with white, and from them issue delicate red scrolls, which end in Arabic sort of flowers: this tissue probably is pure Eastern work. On the contrary, the coronation robes of the German emperors, although of an Eastern pattern, bear inscriptions which tell us very clearly where they were manufactured: thus the Cufic characters on the cope inform us that it was made in the city of Palermo in the year 1133, while the tunic has the date of 1181, but then the inscription is in the Latin language. The practice of putting Cufic inscriptions on precious stuffs was not confined to the Eastern and Sicilian manufactures; in process of time other Italian cities took up the art, and, either because it was the fashion, or because they wished to pass off" their own work as Sicilian or Eastern manufacture, imitations of Arabic characters are continually met with, both on the few examples that have come down to us of the stuffs themselves, or on painted statues or sculptured effigies. These are the inscriptions which used to be the despair of antiquaries, who vainly searched out their meaning until it was discovered that they had no meaning at all, and that they were mere ornaments. Sometimes the inscriptions appear to be imitations of the Greek, and sometimes even of the Hebrew. The celebrated ciborium of Limoges work in the Louvre, known as the work of Magister G. Alpais, bears an ornament around its rim which a French antiquary has discovered to be nothing more than the upper part of a Cufic word repeated and made into a decoration.”

William Burges (1827–1881) English architect

Quote was introduced with the phrase: In the lecture on the weaver's art, we are reminded of the superiority of Indian muslins and Chinese and Persian carpets, and the gorgeous costumes of the middle ages are contrasted with our own dark ungraceful garments. The Cufic inscriptions that have so perplexed antiquaries, were introduced with the rich Eastern stuffs so much sought after by the wealthy class, and though, as Mr. Burges observes Source: Art applied to industry: a series of lectures, 1865, p. 85; Cited in: " Belles Lettres http://books.google.com/books?id=0EegAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA143" in: The Westminster Review, Vol. 84-85. Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1865. p. 143

People, Art, Search, Flowers

“When the late king, Ibrahim Kootb Shah, had settled the countries of the Hindoos on his southern frontier, and despatched his commander, Ameer Shah Meer, to oppose the armies of his Mahomedan neighbours, he vested the management of the affairs of his government in the hands of one Moorhary Row, a Marratta bramin, to whom was attached a body of ten thousand infantry, under the command of Mahomedan officers of rank, with permission to beat the nobut. Moorhary Row was in every respect the second person in the state, not even excepting the princes of the blood-royal. In the latter end of the late king’s reign, this unprincipled infidel proceeded with a force towards a famous temple near Adony, where he attacked the inhabitants, laid waste the country, and sacked it of its idols, made of gold and silver, and studded with rubies. He levied also four lacks of hoons (160,000l.) from the inhabitants. At sight of the idols the King was taken seriously ill, and never recovered. He died on Thursday the 21st of Rubbeeoos-Sany, AH 988 (AD June 2, 1580) AD…”

Firishta (1560–1620) Indian historian

Sultãn Ibrãhîm Qutb Shãh of Golconda (AD 1550-1580) Adoni (Karnataka)
Tãrîkh-i-Firishta

Personality, Country

“You recall a girl that's been in nearly every song?
This is what I heard of course the story could be wrong.She's the one — I've been told
Now she's wearing a band of gold.
Peggy Sue got married not long ago.”

Buddy Holly (1936–1959) American singer-songwriter

Peggy Sue Got Married (1959)
Song lyrics, Singles

Girl

“In the year AH 710 (AD 1310), the King again sent Mullik Kafoor and Khwaja Hajy with a great army, to reduce Dwara Sumoodra and Maabir in the Deccan, where he heard there were temples very rich in gold and jewels… They found in the temple prodigious spoils, such as idols of gold, adorned with precious stones, and other rich effects, consecrated to Hindoo worship. On the sea-coast the conqueror built a small mosque, and ordered prayers to be read according to the Mahomedan faith, and the Khootba to be pronounced in the name of Allaood-Deen Khiljy. This mosque remains entire in our days at Sett Bund Rameswur, for the infidels, esteeming it a house consecrated to God, would not destroy it.”

Firishta (1560–1620) Indian historian

Sultãn ‘Alãu’d-Dîn Khaljî (AD 1296-1316) Dwarasamudra (Karnataka)
Tãrîkh-i-Firishta

God, Faith, Reading, Housing

“Standing to America, bringing home
black gold, black ivory, black seed.”

Robert Hayden (1913–1980) American writer and academic

Middle Passage (lines 15-16), from Collected Poems (1985)

Home

“Well it's bulls and blood,
It's dust and mud,
It's the roar of a Sunday crowd.
It's the white in his knuckles,
The gold in the buckle,
He'll win the next go 'round.
It's boots and chaps,
It's cowboy hats,
It's spurs and latigo.
It's the ropes and the reins,
And the joy and the pain,
And they call the thing rodeo.”

Garth Brooks (1962) American country music artist

Rodeo, written by Larry Bastian.
Song lyrics, Ropin' the Wind (1991)

Pain, Joy

“Much more definitive and much more lasting than all the gold that one can accumulate is the gratitude of a people.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

On Revolutionary Medicine (1960)

People, Gratitude

“Industry is the only true source of wealth, and there was no industry in Rome. By day the Ostia road was crowded with carts and muleteers, carrying to the great city the silks and spices of the East, the marble of Asia Minor, the timber of the Atlas, the grain of Africa and Egypt; and the carts brought nothing out but loads of dung. That was their return cargo. London turns dirt into gold. Rome turned gold into dirt.”

William Winwood Reade (1838–1875) British historian

Source: The Martyrdom of Man (1872), Chapter IV, "Intellect", pp. 383-4.

Wealth

“On account of his extensive charities, scholars from Irãq, Khorãsãn and Mawãraun-Nahar started presenting themselves in his court and Islãm was spread. He held in great regard Sayyid Muhammad who was a very great scholar of the time, and strived to destroy the idols and temples of the infidels. He got demolished the famous temple of Mahãdeva at Bahrãre. The temple was dug out from its foundations and the hole (that remained) reached the water level. Another temple at Jagdar was also demolished… Rãjã Alamãdat had got a big temple constructed at Sinpur. He had come to know from astrologers that after 11 hundred years a king by the name of Sikandar would get the temple destroyed and the idol of Utãrid, which was in it, broken. He got this [forecast] inscribed on a copper plate which was kept in a box and buried under the temple. The inscription came up when the temple was destroyed [by Sikandar]…“…The value of currency had come down, because Sultãn Sikandar had got idols of gold, silver and copper broken and turned into coins…”

Nizamuddin Ahmad (1551–1594) historian

Sultãn Sikandar Butshikan of Kashmir (AD 1389-1413) Kashmir
Tabqãt-i-Akharî

Water, Time, Box

“We had a conversation the other day with Ming the Merciless, one of the preeminent villains of modern times, whose half-century-long struggle with his opposite number, Flash Gordon, has helped generations of Americans conceptualize the fearsome enchantments of space. We caught up with the veteran malefactor at the Volney, where he greeted us in a turquise-and-gold dressing gown, a black skullcap setting off his striking yellowish pallor. We immediately put our foot in it by addressing him as ”Mr. Ming”
“I don’t want to be stuffy,” he said pleasantly, “but that’s Emperor Ming, if you don’t mind. …””

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

“Ming”, p. 93, opening
The Teachings of Don. B: Satires, Parodies, Fables, Illustrated Stories, and Plays of Donald Barthelme (1992)

Time, Help

“What became a problem is there was a clause that allowed investors to cover losses. As long as you made losses one year, you could carry them over to the next and to the next. And because of that they would pay no taxes. So this fellow takes all the gold away and he says he makes losses and so he does not pay us anything. So he is the only one that is being protected. Those of us who are losing our resources are not protected. This is the thing that created the kind of debate that we had and we had to renegotiate.”

Jakaya Kikwete (1950) Tanzanian politician and president

On Tanzania's mining sector. Interviews, Interview with Financial Times, 2007-10-04 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d8a07e28-72a3-11dc-b7ff-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check1/

Problem, Loss

“In warlike pomp, with banners flowing,
The regiments of autumn stood:
I saw their gold and scarlet glowing
From every hillside, every wood.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

I, st. 1.
The Fall of the Leaves (1874)

Autumn

“But so far as the Hindus are concerned, this period was a prolonged spell of darkness which ended only when the Marathas and the Jats and the Sikhs broke the back of Islamic imperialism in the middle of the 18th century. The situation of the Hindus under Muslim rule is summed up by the author of Tãrîkh-i-Wassãf in the following words: “The vein of the zeal of religion beat high for the subjection of infidelity and destruction of idols… The Mohammadan forces began to kill and slaughter, on the right and the left unmercifully, throughout the impure land, for the sake of Islãm, and blood flowed in torrents. They plundered gold and silver to an extent greater than can be conceived, and an immense number of precious stones as well as a great variety of cloths… They took captive a great number of handsome and elegant maidens and children of both sexes, more than pen can enumerate… In short, the Mohammadan army brought the country to utter ruin and destroyed the lives of the inhabitants and plundered the cities, and captured their off-springs, so that many temples were deserted and the idols were broken and trodden under foot, the largest of which was Somnãt. The fragments were conveyed to Dehlî and the entrance of the Jãmi‘ Masjid was paved with them so that people might remember and talk of this brilliant victory… Praise be to Allah the lord of the worlds.””

Sita Ram Goel book The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India

The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India (1994)

Children, People, World, Religion

“And loveliest sight of all, in front of the fire, stretched at full length, was his tiger – and on him – also at full length – reclined the lady, garbed in some strange clinging garment of heavy purple crepe, its hem embroidered with gold, one white arm resting on the beast's head, her back supported by a pile of the velvet cushions, and a heap of rarely bound books at her side, while between her red lips was a rose not redder than they – an almost scarlet rose.”

Elinor Glyn book Three Weeks

Three Weeks (1907), ch. 6.

Books, Support

“Time will run back and fetch the Age of Gold.”

John Milton On the Morning of Christ's Nativity

Hymn, stanza 14, line 135
On the Morning of Christ's Nativity (1629)

Age, Time

“Gold and silver and sunshine is rising up”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

Bag it Up
Dig Out Your Soul (2008)

“One who is not perturbed by misfortune, who is beyond comfort, attachment and fear, who considers gold as dust. He neither speaks ill of others nor feels elated by praise and shuns greed, attachments and arrogance. He is indifferent to ecstasy and tragedy, is not affected by honors or humiliations. He renounces expectations, greed. He is neither attached to the worldliness, nor lets senses and anger affect him. In such a person resides God.”

Guru Tegh Bahadur (1621–1675) The ninth Guru of Sikhism

Guru Tegh Bahadur, Sorath 633 (Translated by Gopal Singh), Tegh Bahadur (Translated by Gopal Singh) (2005). Mahalla nawan: compositions of Guru Tegh Bahādur-the ninth guru (from Sri Guru Granth Sahib): Bāṇī Gurū Tega Bahādara. Allied Publishers. pp. xxviii–xxxiii, 15–27. ISBN 978-81-7764-897-3.

God, Fear, Feeling, Sense

“The legend of King Midas has been generally misunderstood. Most people think the curse that turned everything the old miser touched into gold, leaving him unable to eat or drink, was a lesson in the perils of avarice. But Midas’s true sin was his failure to understand monetary economics. What the gods were really telling him is that gold is just a metal. If it sometimes seems to be more, that is only because society has found it convenient to use gold as a medium of exchange—a bridge between other, truly desirable, objects. There are other possible mediums of exchange, and it is silly to imagine that this pretty, but only moderately useful, substance has some irreplaceable significance.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

"The Gold Bug Variations", Originally published in Slate (Nov. 23, 1996)
The Accidental Theorist: And Other Dispatches From The Dismal Science (1998)

God, People, Imagination, Failure

“And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold,
Bring me my Arrows of desire,
Bring me my Spear — O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green & pleasant land.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Prefatory Poem
1800s, Milton (c. 1809)

God, Mountain, Sleep, Time

“He came back to England convinced that Rhodes and his fellow mining capitalists had engineered the war in order to removed the leaders of the Boer republics who stood in the way of the rationalisation of the black labour supply in the gold mines.”

Peter Cain (1958) figure skater

Source: J. A. Hobson's Imperialism: A Study: A Centennial Retrospective (2002), p. 9

War, Way

“The mirror by the door was not a mirror by the door, it was an altar where he stood for only a moment to put on his cap before going out. The red rocking chair was a rocking of his own hips as he sat in the kitchen. Still, there was nothing of his — his own — that she could find. It was as if she were afraid she had hallucinated him and needed proof to the contrary. His absence was everywhere, stinging everything, giving the furnishings primary colors, sharp outlines to the corners of rooms and gold light to the dust collecting on table tops. When he was there he pulled everything toward himself. Not only her eyes and all her senses but also inanimate things seemed to exist because of him, backdrops to his presence. Now that he had gone, these things, so long subdued by his presence, were glamorized in his wake.”

Toni Morrison book Sula

Sula (1973)

Color, Sense, Light

“What I see coming is a gigantic slaughterhouse, a molecular Auschwitz, in which valuable enzymes, hormones, and so on will be extracted instead of gold teeth.”

Erwin Chargaff (1905–2002) Ukrinian-born biochemist who emigrated to the United States

The Genetic Revolution—Great Promise With Growing Concern, Awake! magazine, July 22, 1989.

“There is at least a punky spark in my heart and it may blaze in this autumn gold, fanned by the King. Some of my grandfathers must have been born on a muirland for there is heather in me, and tinctures of bog juices, that send me to Cassiope, and oozing through all my veins impel me unhaltingly through endless glacier meadows, seemingly the deeper and danker the better.”

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

letter to Mrs. Ezra S. Carr http://digitalcollections.pacific.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/muirletters/id/12500/rec/1 (perhaps Autumn 1870); published in William Federic Badè, The Life and Letters of John Muir http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/life/life_and_letters/default.aspx (1924), chapter 8: Yosemite, Emerson, and the Sequoias 1870s

Autumn, Heart

“What I do for a living is somewhat like mercenary prostitution… I spend a lot of energy trying to find games to bring to alternate platforms, like Linux and MacOS, and in my free time, I work on various open source projects, and other freebies like that… so I guess I'm a hooker with a heart of gold, sorta.”

Ryan C. Gordon (1978) Computer programmer

Quoted in Michael Larabel, "An Interview with Ryan C. Gordon" http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=203&num=1 Phoronix (2003-09-08)

Game, Time, Heart

“It is human life you value isn't it? Not its worth. Just human life. As if it were gold and could be neither good nor bad nor worth more nor worth less but must always be worth the same no matter what. One human life is one human life to you. You are absurd! Like your democracy, which you imagine you got from the Greeks, who had slaves. One vote for each person. What a stupid idea! The worst in your eyes possess the same value as the best. You have no way of differentiating between them.”

Alex Miller book The Ancestor Game

Page 136.
The Ancestor Game (1992)

Life, Stupidity, Way, Democracy

“Only a dad with a tired face,
Coming home from the daily race,
Bringing little of gold or fame
To show how well he has played the game;
But glad in his heart that his own rejoice
To see him come and to hear his voice.”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

Only a Dad, stanza 1, p. 43.
A Heap o' Livin' (1916)

Home, Game, Heart

“Gold is precious because it resembles the sun. Silver has the light of the moon.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

the blind man at the Ölfus River
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part I: Iceland's Bell

Light, Sun

“Rich and rare were the gems she wore,
And a bright gold ring on her wand she bore.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Rich and Rare Were the Gems She Wore, st. 1. Irish Melodies http://www.musicanet.org/robokopp/moore.html (1807–1834)

“And there the lion's ruddy eyes
Shall flow with tears of gold,
And pitying the tender cries,
And walking round the fold,
Saying: "Wrath by his meekness,
And by his health, sickness,
Is driven away
From our immortal day."”

William Blake Night

Night, st. 5
1780s, Songs of Innocence (1789–1790)

Health, Tear

“If you ask me abruptly
Why write poetry
Why not do
Something useful
Then I won't know
How to answer you
I am like a goldsmith hammering day and night
Just so I can extend pain
Into a gold ornament as thin as a cicada's wing
I don't know if working so hard
To transform sorrows into
Shimmering words and phrases
Is also
Beautifully worthwhile.”

Xi Murong (1943) Taiwanese poet and painter

"Poetry's Value", in Where Books Fall Open: A Reader's Anthology of Wit & Passion (David R. Godine Publisher, 2003), p. 56

Pain, Night

“Gold is a living god and rules in scorn,
All earthly things but virtue.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Queen Mab

Canto V
Queen Mab (1813)

God

“There are three [Apple Watch] lineups that range in price from "just" $350 for an Apple Sport stripper model with low-end materials to an astonishing $17,000 for an 18 karat gold silly version. As I noted on Twitter, this isn't consumer electronics anymore. It's consumerism run amok.”

Paul Thurrott (1966) American podcaster, author, and blogger

Apple Event Recap: Apple Watch, MacBook, and Apple TV http://thurrott.com/mobile/1927/apple-event-recap-apple-watch-macbook-and-apple-tv in Thurrott - News & Analysis for Tech Enthusiasts (9 March 2015)

Sport

“She ain't into wine and roses
Beer just makes her turn up her nose and
She can't stand the thought of sipping champagne
No Cuervo gold margaritas
Just ain't enough good burn in tequila
She needs somethin' with a little more edge
And a little more pain
She's my little whiskey girl, she's my little whiskey girl
My ragged on the edges girl, ah but I like em rough.”

Toby Keith (1961) American country music singer and actor

Whiskey Girl, written with Scotty Emerick.
Song lyrics, Shock'n Y'all (2003)

Pain, Girl, Beer, Wine

“And yet he had a thomb of gold parde.”

Geoffrey Chaucer book The Canterbury Tales

General Prologue, l. 565; referencing the proverb, "Every honest miller has a golden thumb".
The Canterbury Tales

“Treasure maps; Czarist bonds; a case of stuffed dodos; Scarlett O'Hara's birth certificate; two flattened and deformed silver bullet heads in an old matchbox; Baedeker's guide to Atlantis (seventeenth edition, 1902); the autograph score of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, with Das Ende written neatly at the foot of the last page; three boxes of moon rocks; a dumpy, heavy statuette of a bird covered in dull black paint, which reminded him of something but he couldn't remember what; a Norwich Union life policy in the name of Vlad Dracul; a cigar box full of oddly shaped teeth, with CAUTION: DO NOT DROP painted on the lid in hysterical capitals; five or six doll's-house-sized books with titles like Lilliput On $2 A Day; a small slab of green crystal that glowed when he opened the envelope; a thick bundle of love letters bound in blue ribbon, all signed Margaret Roberts; a left-luggage token from North Central railway terminus, Ruritania; Bartholomew's Road Atlas of Oz (one page, with a yellow line smack down the middle); a brown paper bag of solid gold jelly babies; several contracts for the sale and purchase of souls; a fat brown envelope inscribed To Be Opened On My Death: E. A. Presley, unopened; Oxford and Cambridge Board O-level papers in Elvish language and literature, 1969-85; a very old drum in a worm-eaten sea-chest marked F. Drake, Plymouth, in with a load of minute-books and annual accounts of the Winchester Round Table; half a dozen incredibly ugly portraits of major Hollywood film stars; Unicorn-Calling, For Pleasure & Profit by J. R. Hartley; a huge collection of betting slips, on races to be held in the year 2019; all water, as far as Paul was concerned, off a duck's {back]”

Tom Holt (1961) British writer

The Portable Door (2003)

Love, Life, Death, Pleasure

“Thus money is almost always something hovering between a commodity and a debt-token. This is probably why coins—pieces of silver or gold that are already valuable commodities in themselves, but that, being stamped with the emblem of local authority, became even more valuable—still sit in our heads as the quintessential form of money. They most perfectly straddle the divide that defines what money is in the first place. What's more, the relation between the two was a matter of constant political conversation. In other words, the battle between state and market, between governments and merchants is not inherent to the human condition.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Four, "Cruelty and Redemption", p. 75

Money

“Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!
Bright and yellow, hard and cold.”

Thomas Hood (1799–1845) British writer

Her Moral; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
20th century

“As a child, I'd wonder, 'When I die, will people still remember me 1,000 years later?' And without the gold medal … Well, the Olympics are the ultimate achievement in my sport. At times I think, 'Why should I push myself all those long hours in the rink?' But then I think, 'How will I ever know how good I could have been?' I want to be the Michael Jordan of my sport.”

Michelle Kwan (1980) American figure skater

http://espn.go.com/classic/biography/s/Kwan_Michelle.html

People, Thinking, Sport, Time

“It is not necessarily for mercenary soldiers to know what is going on. It is sufficient for them to do the job for which they have taken the gold. That had been drummed into me from the moment I enlisted. There is neither right nor wrong, neither good nor evil, only our side and theirs. The honor of the company lies within, directed one brother toward another. Without, honor lies only in keeping faith with the sponsor.”

Glen Cook book Shadow Games

Source: Shadow Games (1989), Chapter 28, “Back to Scouting” (p. 148)

Faith, Evil

“Broadway — the great sluice that washes out the dust of the gold-mines of Gotham.”

O. Henry (1862–1910) American short story writer

"From Each According to His Ability"
The Voice of the City (1908)

“They [French critics of the Paris Salon of 1824, where his painting 'the Hay Wain' received a gold medal] are very amusing and acute — but very shallow and feeble. Thus one — after saying: "'it is but justice to admire the truth — 'the color' — and 'general vivacity' & richness —" – yet they want the objects more formed and defined &c, and say they are like the rich preludes in musick, and the full harmonious warblings of the Aeolian lyre, which means 'nothing,' and they call them orations — and harangues — and high-flown conversations affecting a careless ease — &c &v &c - Is not some of this 'blame' the highest 'praise' – what is poetry?”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

What is Coleridge's Ancient Mariner (the very best modern poem) but something like this?
Quote from John Constable's letter to Rev. John Fisher, 1824, as quoted in Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams, Constable, (Tate Gallery Publications, London, 1993), p. 205
1820s

Truth, Justice, Color, Painting

“My darling, I will try to guess
What do you want or wish.
I know you prefer to dream
About a Gold Fish.
But I believe that you will find
The famous and gold key.
So, you will open the door.
You saw it in your dreams.
I know: you shall overcome
All troubles in your way.
But do remember every time
About “must” and “may.””

Volodymyr Melnykov (1951) Ukrainian writer, poet, composer

To my friend http://imirelnik.io.ua/s1954083/to_my_friends

Dreams, Way, Fish, Time

“Why was his hair tinted with gold? An evil omen was golden hair in my life. Why had not the brown of his eyes crushed out and killed the blue? — for brown were his father’s eyes, and his father’s father’s. And thus in the Land of the Color-line I saw, as it fell across my baby, the shadow of the Veil.”

W.E.B. Du Bois book The Souls of Black Folk

Source: The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ch. XI: Of the Passing of the First-Born

Life, Color, Evil, Baby

“Let’s see the very thing and nothing else.
Let’s see it with the hottest fire of sight.
Burn everything not part of it to ash.
Trace the gold sun about the whitened sky
Without evasion by a single metaphor.
Look at it in its essential barrenness
And say this, this is the centre that I seek.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

"Credences of Summer"
Collected Poems (1954)

Sun, Parting

“Iron, after it is converted into gold by the touch of philosopher's stone, may be kept under the ground or thrown into a rubbish heap; it will always remain gold and will not return to its former condition. Similar is the state of the man whose soul has touched, even once, the feet of the Almighty Lord. Whether he dwells in the bustle of the world, or in the solitude of the forest, nothing ever contaminates him.”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

As quoted in Hindu Psychology : Its Meaning for the West (1946) by Swami Akhilananda, p. 204

World, Soul, Solitude

“Dust always blowing about the town,
Except when sea-fog laid it down,
And I was one of the children told
Some of the blowing dust was gold.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

1920s, A Peck of Gold (1926)

Children, Sea

“"… But men don't come in just two groups, one of gold and the other of lead. They are a mix of both." "And what about women?" "Pure gold, my girl," Rayvan answered with a chuckle.”

David Gemmell book The King Beyond the Gate

Source: Drenai series, The King Beyond the Gate, Ch. 22

Women, Men, Girl

“This to a tyrant master sold
His native land for cursed gold.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book VI, p. 215

“This is the place' is what the divinely-inspired leader is reported to have said when Salt Lake Valley opened out before the slavering oxen with blood on their hooves and the men who had managed to cross the wilderness even though their children and sweethearts still tarried in the sand. Sometimes I have the feeling that I am dead and have come to the land of eternity. Of such a land it says in a hymn I once knew, that there stood a wondrous palace on pillars, inlaid with gold and brighter than the sun... When I now look back across the ocean to the land whence I came, I glimpse behind me a sparse and barren coast... There stands my family, and looks sorrowing out to sea.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Stone Stanford, Steinar
Paradísarheimt (Paradise Reclaimed) (1960)

Men, Children, Family, Feeling

“Look forward to epic images of heavy equipment barreling toward the Southern border. The sight of a gold-plated structure going up, as sections of the borderland along Mexico start to resemble Liberace's backyard: This is sure to warm the cockles of your heart, and make America's monomaniacal media go berserk.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Let Milo Design The Wall" http://www.thelibertyconservative.com/let-milo-design-wall/ The Liberty Conservative, March 3, 2017 2010s, 2017

Heart

“…the white man is being systematically indoctrinated into believing that he is guilty of enslaving and abusing the Negro. Granted that some Negroes were mistreated as slaves, the fact still remains that nowhere in all history or in the world today has the Negro been better off. The life expectancy of the Negro increased when he was transported to America. He was not taken from freedom into slavery, but from a vicious slavery to degenerate chiefs to a generally benevolent slavery in the United States. There is not the slightest evidence that any American Negro had ever lived in a "free society" in Africa; even the idea did not exist in Africa. The move from Africa to America was a vast increase of freedom for the Negro, materially and spiritually as well as personally. The Negroes were sold from a harsh slavery into a milder one. Slavery was basic to the African way of life, to the point that slaves were the actual money of the African economy. Elsewhere, gold and silver served as money; in Africa, it was slaves…”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Source: Writings, Politics of Guilt and Pity (1978), pp. 3-4

Life, Money, World, Way

“Allen of Bath procured them the same honours from thence; and for some weeks it rained gold boxes: Chester, Worcester, Norwich, Bedford, Salisbury, Yarmouth, Tewkesbury, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Stirling, and other populous and chief towns following the example. Exeter, with singular affection, sent boxes of heart of oak.”

Horace Walpole (1717–1797) English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician

"The sending of boxes to William Pitt in 1757" in Memoirs of the Reign of King George II (London, 1846–47), Vol. II, p. 202

Heart, Box

““Three days after this, the king entered Jhain at midday and occupied the private apartment of the rai… He then visited the temples, which were ornamented with elaborate work in gold and silver. Next day he went again to the temples, and ordered their destruction, as well as of the fort, and set fire to the palace, and ‘thus made hell of paradise’… While the soldiers sought every opportunity of plundering, the Shah was engaged in burning the temples, and destroying the idols. There were two bronze idols of Brahma each of which weighed more than a thousand mans. These were broken into pieces and the fragments distributed amongst the officers, with orders to throw them down at the gates of the Masjid on their return.”65”

Amir Khusrow (1253–1325) Indian poet, writer, musician and scholar

About Sultan Jalalu’d -Din Khalji (AD 1290-1296) in Jhain (Rajasthan) Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own historians, Vol. III, p. 542.
Miftahu'l-Futuh

Hell

“The Founding Fathers, those who wrote the Constitution and founded the American Republic, they understood the benefits of sound money and the evils of paper money. They’ve put America on a gold standard from the very birth of the republic and we should heed their wise - they were very learned men. I think they were much more educated and understanding about economics then the people who lead the U. S. today. So, to try to suggest that we will have less robust economy if we went back to gold standard - mostly, that’s propaganda from Central Bankers and politicians, who want to scare us from going back to something that works, because when you go back to free market, the politicians and bankers will lose their power, and they want to maintain their power by scaring people into thinking that if we just go back to freedom and market forces, that’s somehow is going to be bad and we have to surrender our freedoms to politicians and bankers because they know much better than the market. They can define the proper rate of interest and they can manage the money supplier, centrally planning the economy, and it’s going to be more effective than free market capitalism - and that is just not the case.”

Peter D. Schiff (1963) American entrepreneur, economist and author

http://blogcritics.org/politics/article/peter-schiff-for-us-senate/http://rt.com/shows/sophieco/190800-economy-dollar-financial-armageddon/
Economic Views

Men, Money, People, Education

“The key issue is whether Jesus really did return from the dead and thus authenticate his claim to being the unique Son of God. As a skeptic, I was shocked to find that the historical evidence for the resurrection is so solid. We have, for instance, a report of the resurrection that goes back to within months of the death of Jesus, which is like a news flash in ancient history. This is historical gold! Whereas much of what we know from ancient history is derived from one or two sources, we have no fewer than nine ancient sources, inside and outside the New Testament, corroborating the disciples’ conviction that they encountered the resurrected Jesus. That’s an avalanche of data. I was thoroughly stunned by the quantity and quality of the evidence for Christ.”

Lee Strobel (1952) American writer

The Case for Christ: An Interview with Lee Strobel https://www.biblegateway.com/blog/2016/09/the-case-for-christ-an-interview-with-lee-strobel/ (September 7, 2016)

Death, God, History, Christ

“I was not blinded by faith, but the encounter was indeed astonishing at several levels. In our private talk, Sai Baba uttered insights about my family and myself that he could not possibly have known…. He waved his hand in the air and opened his palm. In it nestled a gold ring with nine embedded stones, a navratan. He slipped it on my finger, remarking, "See how well it fits. Even a goldsmith would have needed to measure your finger."”

Shashi Tharoor (1956) Indian politician, diplomat, author

The Hindu, "Reality - Spiritual and Virtual", Nov 10, 2002 Available Online http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/mag/2002/11/10/stories/2002111000620300.htm. 2000s

Family, Faith

“By God you are the only great man, except George Pitt, that I care a farthing for, or would wear out a pair of shoes in seeking after. Long-headed cunning people and rich fools are so plentiful in our country that I don’t fear getting now and then a face to paint for bread, but a man of genius with truth and simplicity, sense and good nature, I think worth his weight in gold - [signed:] 'Your Likeness Man”

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) English portrait and landscape painter

Quote in Gainsborough's letter to Hon. Constantine Phipps, undated; as cited in 'My Dear Maggoty Sir – The Letters of Thomas Gainsborough' http://thedabbler.co.uk/2011/10/my-dear-maggoty-sir-the-letters-of-thomas-gainsborough/, review by Roger Hudson, in Slightly Foxed, 18 Oct, 2011 undated

God, People, Truth, Fear

“The immaterial pictorial sensitivity zones of Yves KLEIN, the Monochrome, are relinquished against a certain weight of fine gold. Seven series of these pictural immaterial zones all numbered exist already; for each zone relinquished a receipt is given. This receipt indicates the exact weight of pure gold which is the material value correspond to the immaterial acquired. The zones are transferable by their owner. (See rules on each receipt.)”

Yves Klein (1928–1962) French artist

Source: before 1960, Ritual for the Relinquishment of the immaterial Pictorial Sensitivity Zones', Yves Klein, 1957-59, p. 207

“If all the sky was made of gold leaf, and the air was starred with fine silver, and treasure borne on all the winds, and every drop of sea-water was a florin, and it rained down, morning and evening, riches, goods, honours, jewels, money, till all the people were filled with it, and I stood there naked in such rain and wind, never a drop of it would fall on me.”

Eustache Deschamps (1346–1406) French poet

Se tout le ciel estoit de feuilles d'or,
Et li airs fust estellés d'argent fin,
Et tous les vens fussent pleins de tresor,
Et les gouttes fussent toutes florin
D'eaue de mer, et pleust soir et matin
Richesses, biens, honeurs, joiaux, argent,
Tant que rempli en fust toute la gent,
La terre aussi en fust mouillee toute,
Et fusse nu, – de tel pluie et tel vent
Ja sur mon cors n'en cherroit une goutte.
"Se tout le ciel estoit de feuilles d'or", line 1; text and translation from Brian Woledge (ed.) The Penguin Book of French Verse, 1: To the Fifteenth Century (Harmondsworth: Penguin, [1961] 1968) p. 236.

Money, People, Star, Water

“Miss Follett was not a “business woman,” in the sense of having actually managed any sort of business. But her lucid and illuminating ideas about organization were of priceless interest and value to the many industrial leaders and students of human relations problems, organization and politics with whom she came in contact. Her conceptions were in advance of her time. They are still in advance of current thinking. But they are a gold-mine of suggestion for anyone who is interested in the problems of establishing and maintaining human co-operation in the conduct of an enterprise. They have the added advantage of being presented with remarkable simplicity and clarity.”

Henry C. Metcalf (1867–1942) American business theorist

Source: Dynamic administration, 1942, p. xi

Idea, Business, Problem, Thinking

“Karna inclined his beautiful head and listened. She told him of a young woman who had been granted a boon. A secret mantra that she could use to choose a lover from among the gods. Of how, with the imprudence of youth, the woman decided to test it to see if it really worked. How she stood alone in an empty field, turned her face to the heavens and recited the mantra. The words had scarcely left her foolish lips, when Surya, the God of Day, appeared before her. The young woman, bewitched by the beauty of the shimmering young god, gave herself to him. Nine months later she bore him a son. The baby was born sheathed in light, with gold earrings in his ears and a gold breastplate on his chest, engraved with the emblem of the sun. The young mother loved her first-born son deeply, but she was unmarried and couldn't keep him. She put him in a reed basket and cast him away in a river. The child was found downriver by Adhiratha, a charioteer. And named Karna.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Kunti in p. 232.
The God of Small Things

Love, God, Secret, Youth

“I wore a blue spandex outfit and a gold belt. It was goofy and off-the-wall, but I love doing things like that.”

Alison Lohman (1979) American actress

On her role in Kraa! the Sea Monster.
Interview in USA Today, 7 Oct 2002

Love

“The Catholic Church’s job is to call people to sanctity and to equip them for living saintly lives. Its mission is not to produce nice people, or people with hearts of gold, or people with good intentions; its mission is to produce saints, people of heroic virtue…To dial down the demands because they are hard, and most people have a hard time realizing them, is to compromise the very meaning and purpose of the Church. However, here’s the flip side. The Catholic Church couples its extraordinary moral demand with an extraordinarily lenient penitential system. The Church mediates the infinite mercy of God to those who fail to live up to that ideal (which means practically everyone). This is why its forgiveness is so generous and so absolute. To grasp both of these extremes is to understand the Catholic approach to morality.”

Robert Barron (bishop) (1959) priest of the Roman Catholic Church, author, scholar and Catholic evangelist.

Barron, Bishop Robert. To Light a Fire on the Earth: Proclaiming the Gospel in a Secular Age (p. 78). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

God, People, Forgiveness, Understanding

“Glorious are the woods in their latest gold and crimson,
Yet our full-leaved willows are in the freshest green.
Such a kindly autumn, so mercifully dealing
With the growths of summer, I never yet have seen.”

William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) American romantic poet and journalist

The Third of November, 1861. Thirty Poems. Appleton, New York. pp. 112-115. (1864)

Autumn, Summer

“I think Alfred Nobel would know what I mean when I say that I accept this award in the spirit of a curator of some precious heirloom which he holds in trust for its true owners — all those to whom beauty is truth and truth beauty — and in whose eyes the beauty of genuine brotherhood and peace is more precious than diamonds or silver or gold.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1964)

Truth, Peace, Beauty, Thinking

“Time, they say, must the best of us capture,
And travel and battle and gems and gold
No more can kindle the ancient rapture,
For even the youngest of hearts grows old.”

John Buchan book Prester John

Dedication
Prester John (1910)

Travel, Time, Heart

“The nature of this trade, certainly not the most honourable in the world, affords room for much investigation and remark in a moral or humane point of view: in a political or commercial light it is perhaps less conspicuously an object of attention. It consists chiefly of commodities that are considered as holding a first rate place in the animal and the mineral world, for which in return the Africans receive the most rascally articles that the ingenuity of Europeans has found means to produce. In return to our fellow creatures, for gold, and for ivory, we exchange the basest of those articles that are suited to the taste or the fancy of a despicable set of barbarians. Whether the spirituous liquirs or the fire-arms that are sent there are most calculated for the destruction of the purchasers, might become a question not very easy to determine. The noxious quality of the one is at least equalled by the danger of attending the use of the other. There does not seem to be that regard to honour in this trade, which ought to make part of the nice character of the English merchant, unimpeachable, unimpeached, upon the 'Change of London or of Amsterdam. It seems as if we kept our honour for ourselves, and that with those barbarians (who are more our inferiors in address and cunning, than perhaps in any thing else) no honour, humanity, or equity, were at all necessary.”

William Playfair (1758–1824) British mathematician, engineer and political economist

Observations on the Trade to Africa, Chart XVI, page 65.
The Commercial and Political Atlas, 3rd Edition

World, Question, Nature, Light

“Would we have played with our lives for nothing but worldly gain?
If our people had run after earth's goods and gold,
Need they have smashed idols, and not idols sold?…
Fake gods that men had made, who did break and shatter?
Who routed infidel armies and destroyed them with bloody slaughter?
Who put out and made cold the sacred flame in Iran?”

Muhammad Iqbál (1877–1938) Urdu poet and leader of the Pakistan Movement

Shikwa. https://archive.org/details/ShikwaJawabIShikwaIqbalsDialogueWithAllahTrKhushwantSinghIqbal Shikwa & Jawab Shikwa : The complaint and the answer : the human grievance and the divine response

Men, God, People

“They tell me thou art rich, my country: gold
In glittering flood has poured into thy chest;
Thy flocks and herds increase, thy barns are pressed
With harvest, and thy stores can hardly hold
Their merchandise; unending trains are rolled
Along thy network rails of East and West;
Thy factories and forges never rest;
Thou art enriched in all things bought and sold!

But dost thou prosper? Better news I crave.
O dearest country, is it well with thee
Indeed, and is thy soul in health?
A nobler people, hearts more wisely brave,
And thoughts that lift men up and make them free,—
These are prosperity and vital wealth!”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

America's Prosperity (October 1, 1916).

Men, People, Health, Art

“Things are going to go wrong, and I think we are false to life if we don't portray it. But there is also the hope that some lucky clown is going to come along and stumble into the gold mine. And I think you are also entitled to hold out that hope.”

James A. Michener (1907–1997) American author

Academy of Achievement interview (1991)

Life, Hope, Thinking, Falseness

“… one morning, when it was barely light, I woke up because of a golden light that filled the whole wall above my bed, and I saw something like a picture of the Holy Virgin, surrounded by several other personages … and several angels, some of whom were as big as she, while others were like little children. It was like a tableau, and yet the Holy Virgin was alive, in heaven, and the angels were changing position. I believe this lasted for a very long time. I looked, as if praying without words, and I was struck with amazement; I had never seen anything so beautiful. At the beginning, all of the light was like very vibrant gold; it faded little by little, and, as it faded, the face and the hands of the Holy Virgin became more alive and clearer. I was not frightened in the least but filled with a new joy that was both intense and very sweet.”

Adrienne von Speyr (1902–1967) Swiss doctor and mystic

The vision of Mary, p. 166
My Early Years (1968)

Children, Beauty, Angels, Light

“Measuring national prestige by gold medals is like using Viagra to judge the potency of a man.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

“ Gold Is Not the Real Measure of a Nation http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/25/olympics2008.china,” Guardian, August 25, 2008. 2000-09, 2008

“And shall they rise, all these? Will there be a trumpet blast so shrill that none of them may refuse to hear it, and the soul, re-entering its shrine of eminent or common clay, pass upward to the judgment? "Many and mighty, but all hushed," shall they submit with us to the judgment of the last assize? And in that world is it true that gold is not the currency, and that rank is not hereditary, and that there is only one name that is honored? Then, if this is the end of all men, let the living lay it to heart. Solemn and thoughtful, let us search for an assured refuge; childlike and earnest, let us conf1de in the one accepted Name; let us realize the tender and infinite nearness of God our Father, through Jesus our Surety and our Friend.”

William Morley Punshon (1824–1881) English Nonconformist minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 519.

Men, God, World, Soul

“The Sultan requested the wise men to supply some rules and regulations for grinding down the Hindus, and for depriving them of that wealth and property which fosters disaffection and rebellion. … The people were brought to such a state of obedience that one revenue officer would string twenty khiits, mukaddims, or chaudharis together by the neck, and enforce payment by blows. No Hindu could hold up his head, and in their houses no sign of gold or silver, tonkas or jitals, or of any superfluity was to be seen. These things, which nourish insubordination and rebellion, were no longer to be found. Driven by destitution, the wives of the khuls and mukaddims went and served for hire in the houses of the Musulmans…. The Hindu was to be so reduced as to be left un- able to keep a horse to ride on, to carry arms, to wear fine clothes, or to enjoy any of the luxuries of life. …. I have, therefore, taken my measures, and have made my subjects obedient, so that at my command they are ready to creep into holes like mice. Now you tell me that it is all in accordance with law that the Hindus should be reduced to the most abject obedience. I am an unlettered man, but I have seen a great deal; be assured then that the Hindus will never become submissive and obedient till they are reduced to poverty. I have, therefore, given orders that just sufficient shall be left to them from year to year, of corn, milk, and curds, but that they shall not be allowed to accumulate hoards and property.”

Alauddin Khalji (1266–1316) Ruler of the Khalji dynasty

Tarikh-i Firoz Shahi, of Ziauddin Barani in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. III : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. p. 182 ff.
Quotes from Muslim medieval histories

Life, Men, People, Law

“Also, I love my google ads. I have no idea if I make a dime off them, and in fact would pay to have them for what they add to the overall nuklearpower. com experience. Case in point: I just saw an ad for "Rodent Supplies." The obvious question now is, "How do I plug those damn google ad things into Photoshop so I can retire while the comic factory pumps out comedy gold three times a week?"”

Brian Clevinger (1978) writer

http://www.nuklearpower.com/daily.php?date=060523

Love, Idea, Question, Time

“According to the Rajatarirgini of Kalhana, King Harsha of Kashmir plundered Hindu and Buddhist temples in his lust for the gold and silver which went into the making of idols. This fact is played up by the Marxist professors with great fanfare. But they never mention Kalhan’s comment that in doing what he did Harsha “acted like a Turushka (Muslim)” and was “prompted by the Turushkas in his employ.””

Harsha of Kashmir

S.R. Goel, Some Historical Questions (Indian Express, April 16, 1989), quoted in Shourie, A., & Goel, S. R. (1990). Hindu temples: What happened to them.

“The end is easily foretold,
When every blessed thing you hold
Is made of silver, or of gold,
You long for simple pewter.
When you have nothing else to wear
But cloth of gold and satins rare,
For cloth of gold you cease to care—
Up goes the price of shoddy.
In short, whoever you may be,
To this conclusion you'll agree,
When everyone is somebodee,
Then no one's anybody!”

W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

The Gondoliers (1889)

Clothes

“At your time of life, it's love that rules the roast: at mine, it's solid, serviceable gold.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XX : Persistence; Mr. Maxwell to Helen

Love, Life, Time

“If the debt which the banking companies owe be a blessing to anybody, it is to themselves alone, who are realizing a solid interest of eight or ten per cent on it. As to the public, these companies have banished all our gold and silver medium, which, before their institution, we had without interest, which never could have perished in our hands, and would have been our salvation now in the hour of war; instead of which they have given us two hundred million of froth and bubble, on which we are to pay them heavy interest, until it shall vanish into air… We are warranted, then, in affirming that this parody on the principle of 'a public debt being a public blessing,' and its mutation into the blessing of private instead of public debts, is as ridiculous as the original principle itself. In both cases, the truth is, that capital may be produced by industry, and accumulated by economy; but jugglers only will propose to create it by legerdemain tricks with paper.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

ME 13:423
1810s, Letters to John Wayles Eppes (1813)

War, Truth

“You turned white, like a saintBut I'm tired of dancing on a pot of gold……Flecked paint.”

Elliott Smith (1969–2003) American singer-songwriter

The Biggest Lie.
Lyrics, Elliott Smith (1995)

Dance, Painting

“Kisses are but like sands of gold and silver, found upon the ground which are not worth much themselves but as they promise a mine near too be dig'd.”

George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham (1628–1687) English statesman and poet

Source: Commonplace book, P. 195

Kiss

“The Constitution denies the states the power to make anything other than gold or silver coins legal tender in payment of debts.”

Peter D. Schiff (1963) American entrepreneur, economist and author

Quotes from Crash Proof (2006)

“For what man is there who does not prize that gift most rare and beautiful, that one perfect thing which no gold can buy – a woman's unfeigned love?”

H. Rider Haggard book Cleopatra

Cleopatra (1889)

Love, Beauty, Perfection

“If a friend in Texas seals a silver coin in one envelope and a gold coin in another and mails the envelopes to Tokyo and London, the instant you open you envelope in Japan you know the contents of my envelope in England. But opening your letter causes no physical change in England (faster-than-light or otherwise) but merely involves a change in your knowledge concerning something happening far away and outside your control.”

Nick Herbert (1936) American physicist

Source: Quantum Reality - Beyond The New Physics, Chapter 9, Four Quantum Realities, p. 171 ( See also: Principle of locality)

Knowledge, Light, Change

“The Good Economist Hayek is the thinker who has mind-blowing insights into just why the competitive market system is such a marvelous societal device for coordinating our by now 7.2 billion-wide global division of labor. Few other economists imagined that Lenin’s centrally-planned economy behind the Iron Curtain was doomed to settle at a level of productivity 1/5 that of the capitalist industrial market economies outside. Hayek did so imagine. And Hayek had dazzling insights as to why. Explaining the thought of this Hayek requires not sociology or history of thought but rather appreciation, admiration, and respect for pure genius.The Bad Economist Hayek is the thinker who was certain that Keynes had to be wrong, and that the mass unemployment of the Great Depression had to have in some mysterious way been the fault of some excessively-profligate government entity (or perhaps of those people excessively clever with money–fractional-reserve bankers, and those who claim not the natural increase of flocks but rather the interest on barren gold). Why Hayek could not see with everybody else–including Milton Friedman–that the Great Depression proved that Say’s Law was false in theory, and that aggregate demand needed to be properly and delicately managed in order to make Say’s Law true in practice is largely a mystery. Nearly everyone else did: the Lionel Robbinses and the Arthur Burnses quickly marked their beliefs to market after the Great Depression and figured out how to translate what they thought into acceptable post-World War II Keynesian language. Hayek never did.
My hypothesis is that the explanation is theology: For Hayek, the market could never fail. For Hayek, the market could only be failed. And the only way it could be failed was if its apostles were not pure enough.”

J. Bradford DeLong (1960) American economist

Making Sense of Friedrich A. von Hayek: Focus/The Honest Broker for the Week of August 9, 2014 http://equitablegrowth.org/making-sense-friedrich-von-hayek-focusthe-honest-broker-week-august-9-2014/ (2014)

Money, War, People, World