Quotes about gold
page 9

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

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

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

God, People, World, Way

“The Drama's altar isn't on the stage: it is candlesticked and flowered in the box office. There is the gold, though there be no frankincense nor myrrh; and the gospel for the day always The Play will Run for a Year. The Dove of Inspiration, of the desire for inspiration, has flown away from it; and on its roof, now, the commonplace crow caws candidly.”

Sean O`Casey (1880–1964) Irish writer

Sunset and Evening Star (New York: Macmillan, 1954) p. 322.

Flowers, Box

“The Mirlitons in the Place Vendôme, opposite the column! What a crush! A lot of people, a lot of women, and a lot of nonsense! It's a crush made up of gloved hands manipulating tortoiseshell or gold lorgnettes; but it's a crush all the same!”

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901) French painter

Lautrec visited in the Spring of 1885 several exhibitions in Paris, he made a note of his impressions. His spontaneous criticisms were irreverent, with a certain irony. 'Le Mirliton', a Paris cabaret, was opened in 1885 by Aristide Bruant
Source: 1885-1895, T-Lautrec, by Henri Perruchot, p. 83 - from a note of his impressions

Women, People

“Fourteen small broidered berries on the hern
Of Circe's mantle, each of magic gold;
Fourteen of lone Calypso's tears that rolled
Into the sea, for pearls to come to them;
Fourteen clear signs of omen in the gem
With which Medea human fate foretold
Fourteen small drops, which Fautus, growing old,
Craved of the Fiend, to water Life's stem”

Eugene Lee-Hamilton (1845–1907) English poet and translator

From What the Sonnet Is.

Life, Fate, Tear, Water

“They tell you "Time is money," as if your life was worth its weight in gold.”

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

Song lyrics, Slow Train Coming (1979), When You Gonna Wake Up

Life, Money, Time

“I try to catch at many a tune
Like petals of light fallen from the moon,
Broken and bright on a dark lagoon,But they float away — for who can hold
Youth, or perfume or the moon's gold?”

Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) American writer and poet

"Old Tunes"
Flame and Shadow (1920)

Youth, Light

“It's funny. People come to my house because I was recommended to them to do some writing. They've never heard of me, and you can see the reticence written all over their faces. Then they look at the walls and see the platinum and gold albums and they say, "Oh. That one's from Prince! That's from Robert Palmer! Oh my God, Paul McCartney!" And then they say, "You're a really fine composer"--without having heard any of my music.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

As quoted in "Fischer: A Ferocious Teddy Bear" http://articles.latimes.com/1992-07-03/entertainment/ca-1426_1_teddy-bear

God, People, Music, Housing

“One Australian tradition is to cut down the elite and the successful. It had its roots in the era of convicts who naturally opposed those in authority. This levelling or egalitarian tradition continued to flourish on the goldfields in the 1850s when the unusual mining laws gave everyone an opportunity to find gold, and the tradition was accentuated around 1900 by the rising trade unions. The attitude was one of the spurs to Australian democracy.”

Geoffrey Blainey (1930) Australian historian

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

Law, Democracy, Nature, Success

“The declared object of deflation was the restoration of the gold standard at pre-war parity. Its actual effect has been to create unemployment by the restriction of industrial credit. By the lever of unemployment it has forced down wages and has thus facilitated the return to gold through the reduction of prices. An incidental effect has been to transfer purchasing power from the workers, whose wages have been reduced, to the bondholders, whose interest has remained the same. It has also doubled the real burden of Debt since 1920, and was largely responsible for the mining lock-out last year, by the reduction in terms of sterling of the money which we receive for coal sold abroad. Deflation, in fact, has been responsible for a sinister catalogue of disasters which can be substantiated in detailed argument that has never yet been rebutted.”

Oswald Mosley (1896–1980) British politician; founder of the British Union of Fascists

New Leader (20 September 1927), quoted in Robert Skidelsky, Oswald Mosley (Papermacs, 1981), pp. 152-153.

Money, War

““Judge” Andrew Napolitano is at it again, legitimizing some of the worst people in American politics on his Fox News online show. This time around, he’s pimping for Ron Paul and racialist paleocon Lew Rockwell… [Ron Paul is] a kook with weird unworkable ideas about the economy (return to the gold standard? you've gotta be kidding) and unsavory racist connections.”

Charles Foster Johnson (1953) American musician

April 16, 2009 http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/33378_Video-_Napolitano_Pimping_Ron_Paul_and_Lew_Rockwell_Again&only

People, Idea, Time

“She is a brittle, relentless manipulator with few stable core values who shuffles through useful personalities like a card shark ("Cue the tears!"). Forget all her little gold crosses: Hillary's real god is political expediency. Do Americans truly want this hard-bitten Machiavellian back in the White House? Day one will just be more of the same.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

On Hillary Rodham Clinton, in "Camille Paglia on Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Iran and More" at Salon.com (8 January 2008) http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2008/01/10/hillary/

God, Tear, Housing, Personality

“It was in 1926 that John Maynard Keynes wrote his now famous essay "The End of Laissez-Faire." Since then, history has evolved through the Great Depression, "hot" and cold wars, the establishment of the Bretton woods regime, suspension of convertibility of the US dollar into gold, oil shocks, and the information and telecommunications revolution. The situation at the end of the 20th century seems to be quite similar to that of the late 1920s, having come full circle.”

Eisuke Sakakibara (1941) Japanese economist and critic

The End of Market Fundamentalism (1999)

War, History

“Beggening their voyage with salty deep, By sweet water they returned, Big merchants trade not with Gold but with Pearls and Gemstones…such wealth, these Sailors form distant lands had brought.”

Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai book Shah Jo Risalo

-Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai, Shah Jo Risalo
Shah Jo Risalo

Water, Distant, Wealth

“When leprosy patients touched the soil, they transformed it into gold, but the politicians did that and made it into dirt.”

Baba Amte (1914–2008) Indian freedom fighter, social worker

His analogy between Indian politicians and his leprosy patients.
Baba Amte's Words of Wisdom

“When we had been in Ashenstovo [1873, located near the Prussian border]] a few days my mother took us children to see a famous Polish church, Kostjol, famous for its miraculous Madonna icon. This icon had three precious coats, one of gold, one of coral and one with pearls and diamonds... Many peasant men and women were were lying prostrate on the floor as if crucified, with their arms outstretched. It was very quiet. Suddenly a great blare of trumpets shattered the silence. Terribly frightened I saw the gold curtain open and the Madonna appear wearing a gold robe.”

Alexej von Jawlensky (1864–1941) Russian painter

from his 'Memories', in 'Catalogue Raisonné of the oil Paintings', ed. Maria Jawlensky, Angelica Jawlensky and Lucia Pieroni-Jawlensky; published resp. in 1991, 1992, 1993
Source: 1936 - 1941, Life Memories' (1938), p.274

Women, Men, Children, Lying

“Since ever and ever the world began
They danced like a ribbon of flame,
They have sung their song through the centuries long,
And yet it is never the same.
And though you be foolish or though you be wise,
With hair of silver or gold,
You can never be as young as the fairies are,
And never be as old.”

Rose Fyleman (1877–1957) British writer

The Fairies

World, Dance

“How deepe do we dig, and for how coarse gold?”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

Meditation 13
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

“There is only one possible settlement – war! It has got to come… The difficulty is in the occasion and not the job itself, that is very easily done and I think nothing of the bogies and difficulties of settling South Africa afterwards. You will find a very different tone and temper when the center of unrest is dealt with.
— Milner as recorded by Percy FitzPatrick, cited in Diamonds, Gold, and War: The British, the Boers, and the Making of South Africa, 2008, Martin Meredith, p. 374.”

Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner (1854–1925) British statesman and colonial administrator

War, Thinking

“Why think of anything at all but the pretty, gentle child sitting high upon the white horse!
So women holding up their children to see her pass cried blessings on her head, the easy blessings of a crowd, that may turn at any moment to curses. And there were wenches in plenty, who, seeing the little Queen in cloth of gold and the King at her side, handsome Richard, wished themselves, no doubt, in her place.”

Hilda Lewis book The Gentle Falcon

The Gentle Falcon (1957)

Women, Children, Thinking, Horse

“Abu Hurayra reported that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "If I had the whole of Uhud in gold, it would not make me happy for three days to pass while I have any of it except something I have kept for a debt."”

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

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 3, hadith number 466
Sunni Hadith

Happiness, Peace

“God forbid, if the British rule disappears from India. Hindus will lord over it, and we will be in constant danger of our life, property and honour. The only way for the Muslims to escape this danger is to help in the continuance of the British rule. If the Muslims are heartily with the British, then that rule is bound to endure. Let the Muslims consider themselves as a British army ready to shed their blood and sacrifice their lives for the British Crown… Wherever you are, whether in the football field or in the tennis lawn, you have to consider yourselves as soldiers of a British regiment. You have to defend the British Empire, and to give the enemy [Hindus] a fight in doing so. If you bear it in mind and act accordingly, you will have done that and your name will be written in letters of gold in the British Indian history. The future generations will be grateful to you.”

Nawab Waqar-ul-Mulk Kamboh (1841–1917) Politician for India's independence

Viqar-ul-Mulk addressing a students’ gathering at Aligarh. Cited by R.C. Majumdar (ed.), History and Culture of the Indian People, Volume XI, Bombay, 1981, p.146. Quoted from Goel, Sita Ram (1995). Muslim separatism: Causes and consequences. ISBN 9788185990262

Life, God, Way, History

“The summer skies are darkly blue,
The days are still and bright,
And Evening trails her robes of gold
Through the dim halls of Night.”

Sarah Helen Whitman (1803–1878) United States poet

Summer's Call. Compare: "I heard the trailing garments of the Night / Sweep through her marble halls", Longfellow.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Summer, Night

“The seven dwarfs were devastated when an eighth joined them one morning before they went to work. He went straight into their house, took little plates and cutlery out of his waistcoat, grabbed the mining tools and was the first dwarf to set off for work. Caught off-guard by his cheeky but honest manner, the others followed, angry because he was showing them the way along the path they took every day and surprised when they found he had turned into dark grotto into a glass palace with Snow White hewn in gold. For these established prospectors it was terrible to behold the intruder appropriating for himself the right to mine the virgin goldmine.”

Günter Brus (1938) Austrian artist

Source: Nervous Stillness on the Horizon (2006), P. 216 (1993)

Way, Housing

“The first thing the Muslim Sultanate of Delhi started on was construction of impressive buildings. The first sultan Qutbuddin Aibak had to establish Muslim power in India and to raise buildings "as quickly as possible, so that no time might be lost in making an impression on their newly-conquered subjects". Architecture was considered as the visual symbol of Muslim political power. It denoted victory with authority. The first two buildings of the early period in Delhi are the Qutb Minar and the congregational mosque named purposefully as the Quwwat-ul-Islam (might of Islam) Masjid. This mosque was commenced by Aibak in 592/1195. It was built with materials and gold obtained by destroying 27 Hindu and Jain temples in Delhi and its neighborhood. A Persian inscription in the mosque testifies to this. The Qutb Minar, planned and commenced by Aibak sometime in or before 1199 and completed by Iltutmish, was also constructed with similar materials, "the sculptured figures on the stones being either defaced or concealed by turning them upside down". A century and a quarter later Ibn Battutah describes the congregational mosque and the Qutb Minar. "About the latter he says that its staircase is so wide that elephants can go up there." About the former his observations are interesting. "Near the eastern gate of the mosque their lie two very big idols of copper connected together by stones. Every one who comes in and goes out of the mosque treads over them. On the site of this mosque was a bud khana, that is an idol house. After the conquest of Delhi it was turned into a mosque."”

Qutb al-Din Aibak (1150–1210) Turkic peoples king of Northwest India

Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 5 (quoting Gordon Sanderson, 'Archaeology at the Qutb', Archaeological Survey of India Report, 1912-13; Ibn Battutah)

Lie, Time, Victory, Housing

“Writing about the days of Sultan Muhammad bin Tughlaq (1325-51), Shihabuddin Al-Umari writes:
“The Sultan never ceases to show the greatest zeal in making war upon the infidels… Every day thousands of slaves are sold at a very low price, so great is the number of prisoners… (that) the value at Delhi of a young slave girl, for domestic service, does not exceed eight tankahs. Those who are deemed fit to fill the parts of domestic and concubine sell for about fifteen tankahs. In other cities prices are still lower…” Probably it was so because Ibn Battuta while in Bengal says that a pretty Kaniz (slave girl) could be had there for one gold dinar (or 10 silver tankahs). “I purchased at this price a very beautiful slave girl whose name was Ashura. A friend of mine also bought a young slave named Lulu for two gold coins.”32…Umari continues, “but still, in spite of low price of slaves, 20000 tankahs, and even more, are paid for young Indian girls. I inquired the reason… and was told that these young girls are remarkable for their beauty, and the grace of their manners.””

Muhammad bin Tughluq (1290–1351) Turkic Sultan of Delhi

Battuta, Mahdi Husain, 235; Quaunah Turks, 155 n. ; Masalik-ul-Absar, E.D., III, 580-81. (Shihabuddin al-Umri, Masalik-ul-Absar fi Mumalik-ul-Amar) quoted from Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 10

War, Beauty, Girl, Parting

“Kull was still mazed. "But being a wizard, having knowledge of all the ages and despising gold, glory, and position, what could Kaanuub offer Tuzun Thune that would make of him a foul traitor?"
"Gold, power, and position," grunted Brule. "The sooner you learn that men are men whether wizard, king, or thrall, the better you will rule, Kull."”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune" (1929)

Men, Age, Knowledge, Learning

“The blessed damozel lean'd out
From the gold bar of Heaven;
Her eyes were deeper than the depth
Of waters still'd at even;
She had three lilies in her hand,
And the stars in her hair were seven.”

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) English poet, illustrator, painter and translator

Stanza 1. The Blessed Damozel http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/715.html (1850)

Star, Water

“Having engaged in vigorous and passionate debate while on their honeymoon trip from New York, they had arrived at the startling—and rather liberating—conclusion that the marriage itself was not at all necessary. Stanton no longer had a name to give, and taking Emily’s would have involved all the tedium of authority and nonsense they’d hoped to avoid. So, in the end, he had returned to her the simple gold band she had worn for so long, sliding it onto the ring finger of her new right hand. And she had given him a soft slow kiss. They were the only vows required.”

M. K. Hobson (1969) American writer

Epilogue (p. 373)
The Hidden Goddess (2011)

Marriage, Hope, Kiss, Passion

“T is an old tale and often told;
But did my fate and wish agree,
Ne'er had been read, in story old,
Of maiden true betray'd for gold,
That loved, or was avenged, like me.”

Walter Scott Marmion

Canto II, stanza 27.
Marmion (1808)

Love, Fate, Reading

“The offerings arise:
Hazes of rainbow light,
Pure crystal, blue, and gold,
Through dreamland take their flight;
And 'mid the sacrifice
God moveth as of old.
In miracles of fire
He symbols forth his days;
In gleams of crystal light
Reveals what pure pathways
Lead to the soul's desire,
The silence of the height.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

God, Soul, Light, Silence

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

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

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

Love, Women, God, Secret

“Common experience is the gold reserve which confers an exchange value on the currency which words are; without this reserve of shared experiences, all our pronouncements are cheques drawn on insufficient funds.”

René Daumal book A Night of Serious Drinking

Foreword
A Night of Serious Drinking (1938)

“…Their idol of Zur was of gold, and its eyes were two rubies. The zealous Musalmans cut off its hands and plucked out its eyes, and then remarked to the Marzaban how powerless was his idol to do either good or evil…”

Al-Baladhuri (806–892) historian

About Ibn Samurah at Seistan. Futuhu’l-Buldan by al-Biladhuri. in Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, Vol. II, pp. 413-14.

Evil

“Homer often calls kings “shepherds of the people,” but nature more accurately applies the title to the good, since kings are more often in the position of the sheep than of the shepherd. They are led by strong drink and good looks and by baked meats and savory dishes and the dainties produced by cooks and confectioners, to say nothing of their craving for silver and gold and grander ambitions.”

Philo (-15–45 BC) Roman philosopher

31.
Every Good Man is Free

People, Drink, Nature, Strong

“Bodybuilders party a lot, and once, in Gold's — the gym in Venice, California, where all the top guys train — there was a black girl who came out naked. Everybody jumped on her and took her upstairs, where we all got together.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947) actor, businessman and politician of Austrian-American heritage

1970s, Oui interview (1977)

Guy, Girl, Training

“In our Father s house it will not be the pearl gate or the streets of gold that will make us happy. But oh, how tran-scendently glad shall we be when we see our Lord. Perhaps in that "upper room," also, He may show us His hands and His side, and we may cry out with happy Thomas, "My Lord and my God!"”

Theodore L. Cuyler (1822–1909) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 303.

God, Happiness, Housing, Cry

“And then, all of a sudden, it was as though through those dark eyes an electrical circuit had been struck. She sat fascinated. Snake-and-bird fascinated. Afterwards she could not recall the details of what he had said. She remembered only that she had been absorbed, rapt, lost, for over ten minutes by the clock. She had perceived images conjured up from the dead past: a hand trailed in clear river water, deliciously cool, while the sun smiled and a shoal of tiny fishes darted between her fingers; the crisp flesh of a ripe apple straight from the tree, so juicy it ran down her chin; grass between her bare toes, the turf like springs so that she seemed not to bear the whole of her weight on her soles but to be floating, dreamlike, in slow motion, instantly transported to the moon; the western sky painted with vast heart-tearing slapdash streaks of red below the bright steel-blue of clouds, and stars coming snap-snap into view against the eastern dark; wind gentle in her hair and on her cheeks, bearing flower perfumes, dusting her with petals; snow cold to the palm as it was shaped into a ball; laughter echoing from a dark lane where only lovers walked, not thieves and muggers; butter like an ingot of soft gold; ocean spray sharp and clean as the edge of an axe; with the same sense of safe, provided rightly used; round pebbles polychrome beside a pool; rain to which a thirsty mouth could open, distilling the taste of a continent of air... And under, and through, and in, and around all this, a conviction: “Something can be done to get that back!”
She was crying. Small tears like ants had itched their paths down her cheeks. She said, when she realized he had fallen silent, “But I never knew that! None of it! I was born and raised right here in New York!””

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

”But don’t you think you should have known it?” Austin Train inquired gently.
September “MINE ENEMIES ARE DELIVERED INTO MY HAND”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Smile, Star, Spring, Flowers

“302. All is not gold that glisters.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

“Legendary King Midas never knew the feel of silk or a human hand after everything he touched turned to gold. Humans are stuck in a similar Midas-like predicament: we can't directly experience the true texture of reality because everything we touch turns to matter.”

Nick Herbert (1936) American physicist

Source: Quantum Reality - Beyond The New Physics, Chapter 10, Quantum Realities: Four More, p. 194

Feeling, Reality

“From fried witchetty grubs to gold-plated turnips, when you're a writer you never know what's going to appear on your plate next. It keeps a woman alert, it does.”

Lois McMaster Bujold (1949) Science Fiction and fantasy author from the USA

"Publishing, Writing, and Authoring", p. 75
The Vorkosigan Companion (2008)

Appearance

“The police case was very simple, because the robbers had been caught in the act of shifting the bullion; and as gold bars are more valuable than human lives, the robbers were given longer sentences than if they had been murderers.”

Arthur Calder-Marshall (1908–1992) English novelist, essayist, critic, memoirist and biographer

Mascott, R. D. (pseud. Arthur Calder-Marshall). The Adventures of James Bond Junior 003½. London: Jonathan Cape. 1967.

“What female heart can gold despise?
What cat's averse to fish?”

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) English poet, historian

St. 4 On the Death of a Favourite Cat http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=odfc (1747)

Cats, Fish, Heart

“The plains are very wonderful now – like green gold and yellow gold and red gold – in patches – and the distance blue and pink and lavender strips and spots – May sounds like a Dow Canyon but really its wonderful – specially in the evening – I usually go alone – Yesterday rode home on a hay wagon – no it was clover with a funny old man – His mules and wagon blocked my path so we started talking... We had a great time riding toward the sunset. He was little and dried up and weather beaten – but he likes living..”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

Canyon, Texas, (October 30), 1916, pp. 209, 210
1915 - 1920, Letters to Anita Pollitzer' (1916)

Home, Time, Weather

“Do not expect again the phoenix hour,
The triple-towered sky, the dove's complaining,
Sudden the rain of gold and heart's first ease
Traced under trees by the eldritch light of sundown.”

Cecil Day Lewis (1904–1972) English poet

From Feathers to Iron (1935)

Tree, Light, Heart

“I am the pool of gold
When sunset burns and dies,—
You are my deepening skies,
Give me your stars to hold.”

Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) American writer and poet

"Peace"
Rivers to the Sea (1915)

Star

“I'm growing fonder of my staff;
I'm growing dimmer in the eyes;
I'm growing fainter in my laugh;
I'm growing deeper in my sighs;
I'm growing careless of my dress;
I'm growing frugal of my gold;
I'm growing wise; I'm growing — yes, —
I'm growing old!”

John Godfrey Saxe (1816–1887) American poet

"I'm growin old.

“Tobacco, divine, rare, superexcellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all the panaceas, potable gold, and philosopher's stones, a sovereign remedy to all diseases…but as it is commonly abused by most men, which take it as tinkers do ale, 'tis a plague, a mischief, a violent purger of goods, lands, health, hellish, devilish and damned tobacco, the ruin and overthrow of body and soul.”

Robert Burton book The Anatomy of Melancholy

Section 4, member 2, subsection 1, Purging Simples upward.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part II

Men, Health, Disease, Soul

“Gold gives an appearance of beauty even to ugliness:
But with poverty everything becomes frightful.”

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636–1711) French poet and critic

L'or même à la laideur donne un teint de beauté :
Mais tout devient affreux avec la pauvreté.
Satire 8, l. 209
Satires (1716)

Beauty, Appearance

“It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From Angels bending near the earth
To touch their harps of gold;
"Peace on the earth, good will to man
From Heaven’s all gracious King."
The world in solemn stillness lay
To hear the angels sing.”

Edmund Sears (1810–1876) American minister

The Angels' Song ("It Came Upon A Midnight Clear", 1849).

World, Peace, Angels, Singing

“In Francis’s view there was ultimate gold in this commitment to impractical knowledge, to theories that had no responsibilities other than to be true. On good days the new ideas inched human intellect toward the grand understandings that were science’s pride and joy.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: The Wine of Violence (1981), Chapter 11 (p. 130)

Idea, Understanding, Knowledge, Science

“No doubt is there that the verses of God are verses that shine forth from this Tree, for the Eternal Essence has ever existed in His state of singleness, whereas the verses are a matter for creativity, which is the work of the Primal Will, in whom none can be seen save God alone. Although, in this day men do not look upon the verses of God, yet before long these same verses shall be recited in the most exalted manner and Bayans worth one thousand mithqals of gold shall be written; men shall pride themselves thereon and regard themselves as related to God.”

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

II, 3
The Persian Bayán

Men, God, Tree

“For such a sovereign joy, a prize so high
No silver and no gold could ever buy.”

Ludovico Ariosto book Orlando Furioso

Ch'un almo gaudio, un così gran contento
Non potrebbe comprare oro né argento.
Canto XXXVIII, stanza 2 (tr. W. S. Rose)
Orlando Furioso (1532)

Joy

“a gold pendent with stars and moons hanging from it”

Khaled Hosseini book A Thousand Splendid Suns

A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

Star

“When we look at the age in which we live—no matter what age it happens to be—it is hard for us not to be depressed by it. The taste of the age is, always, a bitter one. “What kind of a time is this when one must envy the dead and buried!” said Goethe about his age; yet Matthew Arnold would have traded his own time for Goethe’s almost as willingly as he would have traded his own self for Goethe’s. How often, after a long day witnessing elementary education, School Inspector Arnold came home, sank into what I hope was a Morris chair, looked ’round him at the Age of Victoria, that Indian Summer of the Western World, and gave way to a wistful, exacting, articulate despair!
Do people feel this way because our time is worse than Arnold’s, and Arnold’s than Goethe’s, and so on back to Paradise? Or because forbidden fruits—the fruits forbidden to us by time—are always the sweetest? Or because we can never compare our own age with an earlier age, but only with books about that age?
We say that somebody doesn’t know what he is missing; Arnold, pretty plainly, didn’t know what he was having. The people who live in a Golden Age usually go around complaining how yellow everything looks. Maybe we too are living in a Golden or, anyway, Gold-Plated Age, and the people of the future will look back at us and say ruefully: “We never had it so good.” And yet the thought that they will say this isn’t as reassuring as it might be. We can see that Goethe’s and Arnold’s ages weren’t as bad as Goethe and Arnold thought them: after all, they produced Goethe and Arnold. In the same way, our times may not be as bad as we think them: after all, they have produced us. Yet this too is a thought that isn’t as reassuring as it might be.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“The Taste of the Age”. pp. 16–17; opening
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)

People, Books, Age, World

“One who listens to the Qur’an (while it is being recited) will be kept away from the evils of this world; and one who recites the Qur’an will be kept away from the trials of the hereafter. And the person who listens to even one verse of the book of Allah - this is better (for him) than possessing a mansion of gold.”

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

Biharul Anwar, Volume 92, Page 19
Shi'ite Hadith

Books, World, Evil, Personality

“Certainly the people's insistence that their candidates should present themselves ungirt and without a tunic had nothing to do with any suspicion of bribery, for it was not until long afterwards that the abuse of buying and selling votes crept in and money began to play an important part in determining the elections. Later on, however, this process of corruption spread to the law courts and to the army, and finally, when even the sword became enslaved by the power of gold, the republic was subjected to the rule of the emperors. For it has rightly been said that the man who first offers banquets and bribes to the people is the first to destroy their liberties.”

Plutarch book Parallel Lives

Gaius Marcius (Coriolanus) 14.2, translated by Ian Scott-Kilvert, Makers of Rome: Nine Lives by Plutarch (Harmondsworth : Penguin Books 1965) ISBN 0140441581, p. 27
Parallel Lives

Money, People, Law, Parting

“One kiss, my bonny sweetheart; I'm after a prize tonight,
But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light.
Yet if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
Then look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way.”

Alfred Noyes book The Highwayman

The Highwayman (1907)

Way, Hell, Kiss, Light

“I have long since believed that in spite of all the vigilance that can be infused into post commanders, the special regulations of the Treasury Department have been violated, and that mostly by Jews and other unprincipled traders. So well satisfied have I been of this that I instructed the commanding officers at Columbus to refuse all permits to Jews to come South, and I have frequently had them expelled from the department, but they come in with their carpet-sacks in spite of all that can be done to prevent it. The Jews seem to be a privileged class that can travel anywhere. They will land at any woodyard on the river and make their way through the country. If not permitted to buy cotton themselves, they will act as agents for someone else, who will be at military post with a Treasury permit to receive cotton and pay for it in Treasury notes which the Jew will buy up at an agreed rate, paying gold.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

Letter to C. P. Wolcott, Assistant Secretary of War, Washington (17 December 1862).
1860s

Way, Travel, Country

“Der gelbe Kern der Erde, das Gold, hat alle Macht,
Daß alles sonst für ihme wie Schalen wird geacht.”

Friedrich von Logau (1605–1655) German poet

Deutsche Sinn-Getichte (1654) III, 5, 11.
Untranslated

“Sickness, the serpent, is coming to bite you,
Death, the old dark man, is coming to carry you off,
Rest uneasy, you stinking carrion, on your gold beds.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Two, Part II “The Water”, Chapter 1 (p. 170)
The Birthgrave (1975)

Death

“They're going for silver, they’re going for gold. John Treacy has one hundred metres to go. In the past Ireland have won bronze medals with John Caldwell, Freddie Gilroy, ‘Socks’ Byrne, Jim McCourt, Hugh Russell. They've won golds with Pat O'Callaghan twice, Bob Tisdall, Ron Delaney. They've won silvers with John McNally, Fred Tiedt, Wilkins and Wilkinson and for the thirteenth time an Irish medal goes to John Treacy. The little man with the great heart.”

Jimmy Magee (1935–2017) Gaelic games commentatot

Magee's emotional commentary as John Treacy wins a silver medal the 1984 Summer Olympics.[citation needed]
Olympic Games

Time, Past, Heart

“Countless hearts of gold have been betrayed.
A counterfeit coinage circulates,
Buying, not a true response,
But numb indifference beneath assumed applause.”

Mu Dan (1918–1977) Chinese poet

Performances http://chinaheritage.net/journal/objecting/ (《演出》), written in 1976

Heart, Indifference

“Khizr Khan, the Muslim "Gold Star Father" who harangued Americans at the Democratic National Convention, with a mute, hijab-wearing wife at his side, is just another in a long string of human shields liberals send out to defend their heinous policies. … Does anyone know what Khan thinks of gays? How about miniskirts? Alcohol? Because I gather we're going to have to turn all our policies over to him, too. What have you sacrificed, Barney Frank??”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

The Wrath of Khan http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2016-08-03.html (August 3, 2016) 2016

Alcohol, Star, Thinking

“When the Twin Towers collapsed do you know what was in the basement? […] Lots of gold. Do you know where it is? […] Nobody does. It disappeared. Did those buildings drop down to cover a great crime being committed? Somebody is taking all this gold out of the Twin Tower basement. Makes you wonder.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

3 April 2006
Truth Radio

“The princeps copy, clad in blue and gold.”

John Ferriar (1761–1815) British writer and physician

Illustrations of Sterne, Bibliomania, line 6, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“Now your head, excuse me, is empty.
I have the ticket for that.
Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
Well, what do you think of that?
Naked as paper to start

But in twenty-five years she'll be silver,
In fifty, gold.
A living doll, everywhere you look.
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk, talk.

It works, there is nothing wrong with it.
You have a hole, it's a poultice.
You have an eye, it's an image.
My boy, it's your last resort.
Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.”

Sylvia Plath Ariel

"The Applicant" http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/applicant.html Ariel (1965)

Boy, Thinking, Cooking

“I could become a Gold Glove-caliber shortstop. Not as talented as Vizquel, but definitely on par with Jeter.”

Ichiro Suzuki (1973) Japanese baseball player

Brad Lefton. "Ichiro takes leadership role for Team Japan" http://www.seattletimes.com/sports/ichiro-takes-leadership-role-for-team-japan/. Seattle Times. March 1 2009.

“The moon came white and ghostly as we laid the treasure down,
There was gear there’d make a beggarman as rich as Lima Town,
Copper charms and silver trinkets from the chests of Spanish crews,
Gold doubloons and double moidores, louis d’ors and portagues”

John Masefield (1878–1967) English poet and writer

Ballads and Poems (1910), "Spanish Waters"

“The windy lights of Autumn flare;
I watch the moonlit sails go by;
I marvel how men toil and fare,
The weary business that they play!
Their voyaging is vanity,
And fairy gold is all their gain,
And all the winds of winter cry,
“My Love returns no more again.””

Andrew Lang (1844–1912) Scots poet, novelist and literary critic

Ballade of Autumn

Love, Men, Business, Autumn

“Let go into the mystery
Let yourself go
You've got to open up your heart
That's all I know
Trust what I say and do what you're told
Baby, and all your dirt will turn
Into gold.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

The Mystery
Song lyrics, Poetic Champions Compose (1987)

Heart, Baby

“As forests in Bucovina, all those mountains laden with first belonging to the Orthodox Church, which was now infused with politics, and estranged, were given to the Jew Anhauh for exploitation of the firewood at the unheard-of price of 10 lei per cubic yard, while the Romanian peasant had to pay 3.50 lei. The mountains' forests fall under the merciless Jewish axe. Poverty and sorrow spreads over the Romanian villages, mountains become barren rock, while Anhauh and his kin carry constantly and tirelessly their gold-laden coffers over the border. The partner-in-crime of the Jew in exploiting the misery of thousands of peasants, was the Romanian politician who gorged himself on his portion of this fabulous profit.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Jewish Problem

Mountain

“Ibn Battutah while in Bengal says that a pretty kaniz (slave girl) could be had there for one gold dinar (or 10 silver tankahs). "I purchased at this price a very beautiful slave girl whose name was Ashura. A friend of mine also bought a young slave named Lulu for two gold coins."”

Ibn Battuta (1304–1377) Moroccan explorer

Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 4
Travels in Asia and Africa (Rehalã of Ibn Battûta)

Beauty, Girl

“Love is of the very essence of life. It is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Yet it is more than the end of the rainbow. Love is at the beginning also, and from it springs the beauty that arches across the sky on a stormy day. Love is the security for which children weep, the desire of youth, the cement that binds marriage, and the smoothing oil that prevents devastating friction in the home; it is the peace of old age, the sunlight of hope shining through death. How rich are those who enjoy it in their associations with family, friends, church, and neighbors.”

Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

And the Greatest of These Is Love, Tambuli, Aug 1984, 1.

Love, Life, Death, Marriage

“They went by daily marches through the hills, from stage to stage, and when they arrived at their destination at early dawn they surrounded Kambayat and the idolaters were awakened from their sleepy state of carelessness and were taken by surprise, not knowing where to go, and mothers forgot their children and dropped them from their embrace. The Muhammadan forces began to 'kill and slaughter on the right and on the left unmercifully, throughout the impure land, for the sake of Islam,' and blood flowed in torrents. They plundered gold and silver to an extent greater than can be conceived, and an immense number of brilliant precious stones, such as pearls, diamonds, rubies, and emeralds, etc. as well as a great variety of cloths, both silk and cotton, stamped, embroidered, and coloured.”

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

Elliot and Dowson, Vol. III : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 43 Also quoted in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.
Quotes from The History of India as told by its own Historians

Children, Clothes

“In case the buyer wishes this act of integration of the work of art with himself to take place, Yves Klein must.... plus two witness, throw half of the gold received in the ocean, into a river or in some place of nature where this gold cannot be retrieved by anyone. From this moment on, the immaterial pictorial sensitivity zone belongs to the buyer absolutely and intrinsically.”

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

Art, Nature

“Sharpe, Lossow suspected, often got what he wanted, but the achievements never seemed to satisfy. His friend, the German decided, was like a man who, searching for a crock of gold, found ten and rejected them all because the pots were the wrong shape.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Captain Lossow, King's German Legion, p. 22
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Sword (1983)

“Know, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars - Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyberborea, Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, Zingara with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Stygia with its shadow-guarded tombs, Hyrkania whose riders wore steel and silk and gold. But the proudest kingdom of the world was Aquilonia, reigning supreme in the dreaming west.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"The Phoenix on the Sword" (1932)

Women, Age, World, Dreams

“It would be too ridiculous to go about seriously to prove that wealth does not consist in money, or in gold and silver; but in what money purchases, and is valuable only for purchasing. Money no doubt, makes always a part of the national capital; but it has already been shown that it generally makes but a small part, and always the most unprofitable part of it.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter I, p. 470.

Money, Parting, Wealth

“Why should coal miners suffer a lower standard of life than other classes of labour? They may be lazy, good-for-nothing fellows who do not work so hard or so long as they should. But is there any evidence that they are more lazy or more good-for-nothing than other people?
On grounds of social justice, no case can be made out for reducing. the wages of the miners. They are the victims of the economic Juggernaut. They represent in the flesh the "fundamental adjustments" engineered by the Treasury and the Bank of England to satisfy the impatience of the City fathers to bridge the "moderate gap" between $4.40 and $4.86. They (and others to follow) are the "moderate sacrifice" still necessary to ensure the stability of the gold standard. The plight of the coal miners is the first, but not—unless we are very lucky—the last, of the Economic Consequences of Mr. Churchill.”

John Maynard Keynes book Essays in Persuasion

Essays in Persuasion (1931), The Economic Consequences of Mr. Churchill (1925)

Life, People, Justice, Suffering

“I am here led to relate that at the city of Banaras a temple had been erected by Rajah Maun Singh, which cost him the sum of nearly thirty-six laks of five methkally ashrefies. The principle idol in this temple had on its head a tiara or cap, enriched with jewels to the amount of three laks ashrefies. He had placed in this temple moreover, as the associates and ministering servants of the principal idol, four other images of solid gold, each crowned with a tiara, in the like manner enriched with precious stones. It was the belief of these Jehennemites that a dead Hindu, provided when alive he had been a worshipper, when laid before this idol would be restored to life. As I could not possibly give credit to such a pretence, I employed a confidential person to ascertain the truth; and, as I justly supposed, the whole was detected to be an impudent imposture. Of this discovery I availed myself, and I made it my plea for throwing down the temple which was the scene of this imposture and on the spot, with the very same materials, I erected the great mosque, because the very name of Islam was proscribed at Banaras, and with God's blessing it is my design, if I live, to fill it full with true believers.”

Jahangir (1569–1627) 4th Mughal Emperor

Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh) , Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, translated into English by Major David Price, Calcutta, 1906. pp. 24-25. http://persian.packhum.org/persian/pf?file=11001040&ct=7, "Decisions Involving Urban Planning and Religious Institutions" Different translation: I made it my plea for throwing down the temple which was the scene of this imposture; and on the spot, with the very same materials, I erected the great mosque, because the very name of Islam was proscribed at Banaras, and with God’s blessing it is my design, if I live, to fill it full with true believers.

Life, God, Truth, Personality

“Rao Mandalik saw that his fate was sealed. He fled at night to the fort and gave him a battle. When the warfare continued for some time provisions in the fort became scarce. He requested the Sultan in all humility to save his life. The Sultan agreed on condition of his accepting Islam. Rao Mandalik came down from the fort, surrendered the fort’s keys to the Sultan. The Sultan offered recitation of the word of Unity to him to repeat. He instantly recited it. The fort was conquered in the year 877, eight hundred and seventy-seven… In a few days, he populated a city which can be called Ahmedabad and named it Mustafabad. Rao Mandalik was given the title of Khan Jahan with a grant of jagir. He gave away as presents the gold idols brought from the temple of Rao Mandalik to all soldiers…”

Mahmud Begada (1458–1511) Sultan of Gujarat

Junagadh (Gujarat) Mirat-i-Ahmdi, translated into English by M.F. Lokhandwala, Baroda, 1965,pp 47-52

Life, Fate, Time, Night

“'And he who overcomes, and keeps My works until the end, to him I will give power over the nations' (Revelation 2:26). I see myself on a throne. Why should a throne be made of gold and velvet? Can it not as well be the few planks of a prisoner's bed? Men have given a certain kind of chair the name of "throne." I can give this name to any other object I please. From this my throne I decide about nations.”

Richard Wurmbrand (1909–2001) Romanian Christian minister of Jewish descent

If Prison Walls Could Speak (1972)

Men

“They got how many trillions of dollars in gold and silver and jewelry and art and real estate and stained glass and they're passing the basket on Sunday so they can get the tomato farmers' donation?”

Ted Nugent (1948) American rock musician

On the Roman Catholic Church
The New York Times interview (2005)

Art

“…"the only intrinsic nett worth, in my possession, is Mrs. Sancho- who I can compare to nothing so properly as to a diamond in the dirt- but, my friend, that is Fortune's fault, not mine- for, had I power, I would case her in gold."”

Ignatius Sancho (1729–1780) British composer, writer and grocer

(from vol 1, letter 21: probably summer 1775, to Mr R___ ).

“People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father's blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day. I was just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name of Tom Chaney shot my father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robbed him of his life and his horse and $150 in cash money plus two California gold pieces that he carried in his trouser band.”

Charles Portis book True Grit

Source: True Grit (1968), Chapter 1, p. 9 : thoughts of 'Mattie Ross'

Life, Money, People, Age

“Oh, yes, he thinks a lot of you. I remember his very words. 'Mr Wooster, miss' he said 'is, perhaps, mentally somewhat negligible but he has a heart of gold”

P.G. Wodehouse book Thank You, Jeeves

Thank You, Jeeves (1934)

Thinking, Heart

“Copious springs are found where there are mines of gold, silver, iron, copper, lead, and the like, but they are very harmful.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book VII, Chapter III, Sec. 5

Spring

“Their record has been matched only recently by Communism, considered a Christian heresy by thinkers like Bertrand Russell. In China, the communist regime destroyed half a million Buddhist shrines. (Were the Buddhists there also in the habit of hoarding their gold in their shrines, thus attracting communist expropriatory justice and getting them destroyed in the process? Or was it a rare example of an act purely motivated by an ideology? Probably Stalinist historians of the JNU would like to explain.)”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Hindu View of Christianity and Islam (1992)

Justice, Communication, Motivation

“Men hang out their signs indicative of their respective trades: shoemakers hang out a gigantic shoe; jewelers, a monster watch; and the dentist hangs out a gold tooth; but up in the mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men.”

Daniel Webster (1782–1852) Leading American senator and statesman. January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852. Served as the Secretary of Sta…

On the Old Man of the Mountain

Men, God, Shoe, Mountain

“Zeus, n. The chief of Grecian gods, adored by the Romans as Jupiter and by the modern Americans as God, Gold, Mob and Dog. Some explorers who have touched upon the shores of America, and one who professes to have penetrated a considerable distance to the interior, have thought that these four names stand for as many distinct deities, but in his monumental work on Surviving Faiths, Frumpp insists that the natives are monotheists, each having no other god than himself, whom he worships under many sacred names.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

God, Faith, Dogs

“[Shih-yin] was walking one day on the street, leaning on a cane, when he saw a lame Taoist in hemp sandals and tattered rags coming toward him, chanting this song:We all envy the immortals because they are free,
But fame and fortune we cannot forget.
Where are the ministers and generals of the past and the present?
Under neglected graves overgrown with weeds.We all envy the immortals because they are free,
But gold and silver we cannot forget.
All our lives we save and hoard and wish for more,
When suddenly our eyes are forever closed.We all envy the immortals because they are free,
But our precious wives we cannot forget.
They speak of love and constancy while we live,
But marry again soon enough after we are dead.We all envy the immortals because they are free,
But our sons and grandsons we cannot forget.
Many there are, of doting parents, from ancient times—
But how few of the sons are filial and obedient!After hearing this, Shih-yin went up to the Taoist and asked him, "What are you trying to say? All I can get is 'free' and 'forget.'"
"That's all you need to get," the Taoist answered, laughing. "For if you are free, you'll forget, and if you forget, you'll be free. In other words, to forget is to be free and to be free is to forget. That's why I call my song 'Forget and be free.'"”

Wang Chi-chen (1899–2001)

Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (1958), pp. 13–14

Love, Parent, Time, Past

“A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)
Context: I did not know that mankind were suffering for want of gold. I have seen a little of it. I know that it is very malleable, but not so malleable as wit. A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.

Wisdom

“The only gold is love,
A coin that we have minted from the light
Of others who have cared for us on Earth
And who have deposited in us the power
That nerves our nerves to seize the burning stars.”

Philip José Farmer (1918–2009) American science fiction writer

Sestina of the Space Rocket (1953)
Context: The way is open, comrades, free as Space
Alone is free. The only gold is love,
A coin that we have minted from the light
Of others who have cared for us on Earth
And who have deposited in us the power
That nerves our nerves to seize the burning stars.

Love, Star, Light

“Appearance too often takes the place of reality — the stamp of the coin is there, and the glitter of the gold, but, after all, it is but a worthless wash.”

William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925) United States Secretary of State

Address at Illinois College (1881)
Context: Appearance too often takes the place of reality — the stamp of the coin is there, and the glitter of the gold, but, after all, it is but a worthless wash. Sham is carried into every department of life, and we are being corrupted by show and surface. We are too apt to judge people by what they have, rather than by what they are; we have too few Hamlets who are bold enough to proclaim, "I know not seem!"

Reality, Appearance

“So dear a life your arms enfold,
Whose crying is a cry for gold.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) British poet laureate

The Daisy, Stanza 24; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Life, Cry

“You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”

William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925) United States Secretary of State

Cross of Gold Speech (1896)
Context: If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we will fight them to the uttermost. Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.

“The issue is Socialism versus Capitalism. I am for Socialism because I am for humanity. We have been cursed with the reign of gold long enough.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

Open letter to the American Railway Union, Chicago Railway Times (1 January 1897)
Context: The issue is Socialism versus Capitalism. I am for Socialism because I am for humanity. We have been cursed with the reign of gold long enough. Money constitutes no proper basis of civilization. The time has come to regenerate society — we are on the eve of universal change.

“Gold-Eye didn't wait to see more.”

Garth Nix book Shade's Children

Source: Shade's Children (1997), p. 9.
Context: Gold-Eye's Change Vision suddenly gripped him, showing him a picture of the unpleasantly close future, the soon-to-be-now.
Doors slid open at each end of the carriage, forced apart by metal-gauntleted hands four times the size of Gold-Eye's own. Fog no longer fell in lazy swirls, but danced and spiraled crazily as huge shapes lumbered in, moving to the pile of blankets...
Gold-Eye didn't wait to see more. He came out of the vision and took the escape route he'd planned months before, when he'd first found the carriage. Lifting a trapdoor in the floor, he dropped down, down to the cold steel rails.

Waiting

“Repeatedly I took stabs at writing, but the results were so poor that I would tear up the sheets. I was striving for a level of expression that matched those of the novels I read. But I always somehow failed to get onto the page what I thought and felt. Failing at sustained narrative, I compromised by playing with single sentences and phrases. Under the influence of Stein’s Three Lives, I spent hours and days pounding out disconnected sentences for the sheer love of words. I would write: “The soft melting hunk of butter trickled in gold down the stringy grooves of the split yam.” Or: “The child’s clumsy fingers fumbled in sleep, feeling vainly for the wish of its dream.” “The old man huddled in the dark doorway, his bony face lit by the burning yellow in the windows of distant skyscrapers.” My purpose was to capture a physical state or movement that carried a strong subjective impression, an accomplishment which seemed supremely worth struggling for. If I could fasten the mind of the reader upon words so firmly that he would forget words and be conscious only of his response, I felt that I would be in sight of knowing how to write narrative. I strove to master words, to make them disappear, to make them important by making them new, to make them melt into a rising spiral of emotional stimuli, each greater than the other, each feeding and reinforcing the other, and all ending in an emotional climax that would drench the reader with a sense of a new world. That was the single aim of my living.”

Richard Wright book Black Boy

Black Boy (1945)

Love, World, Dreams, Feeling

“The moral ideal would embrace the whole of life. In its sight nothing is petty or indifferent. It touches the veriest trifles and turns them into shining gold.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Section 4 : Moral Ideals
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)
Context: The moral ideal would embrace the whole of life. In its sight nothing is petty or indifferent. It touches the veriest trifles and turns them into shining gold. We are royal by virtue of it, and like the kings in the fairy tale, we may never lay aside our crowns.
The moral order never is, but is ever becoming. It grows with our growth.

Life, Indifference

Quotes about gold page 9

Quotes about gold
page 9