Quotes about greens
A collection of quotes on the topic of green, greens, likeness, doing.
Quotes about greens
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher
Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 76e
“As the mist leaves no scar
On the dark green hill
So my body leaves no scar
On you and never will”
Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter
Suleiman (1494–1566) Sultan of the Ottoman Empire
Mansel, Philip, Constantinople: city of the world's desire 1453-1924 (1995), p. 84
Written to his wife - see the article Hurrem for another translation of this verse.
Poetry
Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister
In den Zeitungen wird gehetzt und geschimpft. Diese verantwortungslosen Schmieranten!
Das Volk ist auf der Straße, randaliert und demonstriert. Die Herren sitzen am grünen Tisch und spielen seelenruhig ihre Partie zu Ende.
Die alte Europa geht in die Binsen.
Ja, es ist eine tolle Welt! Wirtschaft, Horatio!
Man wird wie von einer geheimnisvollen Macht auf die Straße gezogen. Die Gedanken sind draußen, wo sich ein Stück Weltgeschichte abspielt -- kein erhebendes zwar, aber ein Stück. Der ernsthafte Zuschauer hat viel dabei nachzudenken.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)
“My salad days,
When I was green in judgment, cold in blood,
To say as I said then!”
Cleopatra VII (-69–-30 BC) last active pharaoh of Ptolemaic Egypt
As quoted, Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare, Act I, scene V (1623)
Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon
Source: Think Big (1996), p. 216
Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence
Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer
http://www.popmonk.com/actors/leonardo-dicaprio/quotes-leonardo-dicaprio.htm
“No ocean, no life. No blue, no green. No ocean, no us.”
Sylvia Earle (1935) American oceanographer
[Earle, Sylvia, BREAKING: Dr. Sylvia Earle Boldly Addresses the UN To Urge Legal Protection for High Seas, http://mission-blue.org/2015/01/breaking-dr-sylvia-earle-boldly-addresses-the-un-to-urge-legal-protection-for-high-seas/, www.missionblue.org, Mission Blue, 28 January 2015]
Marcus Aurelius book Meditations
X, 35
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book X
Context: The healthy eye ought to see all visible things and not to say, I wish for green things; for this is the condition of the diseased eye. And the healthy hearing and smelling ought to be ready to perceive all that can be heard and smelled. And the healthy stomach ought to be with respect to all food just as the mill with respect to all things which it is formed to grind. And accordingly the healthy understanding ought to be prepared for everything which happens; but that which says, Let my dear children live, and let all men praise whatever I may do, is an eye which seeks for green things, or teeth which seek for soft things.
Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter
[Laughs] Don't get me wrong, he's a great player. He plays like a motherfucker! <br class="br">Revolver interview; as quoted in "Ozzy Osbourne "Says Ex-GUNS N' ROSES Guitarist Buckethead Auditioned For His Solo Band" http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/ozzy-osbourne-says-ex-guns-n-roses-guitarist-buckethead-auditioned-for-his-solo-band/, Blabbermouth.net, January 5, 2005
Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
John Steinbeck book Travels with Charley: In Search of America
Variant: What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.
Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America
Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist
Touching Peace (1992), p. 1. Parallax Press ISBN 0-938077-57-0
Variant: The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.
Source: Touching Peace: Practicing the Art of Mindful Living
“Green was the silence, wet was the light,
the month of June trembled like a butterfly.”
Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet
Source: 100 Love Sonnets
Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist
All those entire words piled on top of that poor little mountain seemed too much.
1970 - 1986, Some Memories of Drawings (1976)
Paul Watson (1950) Canadian environmental activist
When asked how he addressed accusations of property destruction as being a violent act. Taken from an interview given to the environmentalist magazine, Resistance: Journal of the Earth Liberation Movement http://www.resistancemagazine.org/
Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist
Letter (15 May 1925); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker
“All around the circle, feeding on the green, green grass were fat and happy horses…”
Black Elk (1863–1950) Oglala Lakota leader
Black Elk Speaks (1961)
Lewis Carroll book Sylvie and Bruno
the Professor exclaimed with enthusiasm. "Black Light, and Nothing, look so extremely alike, at first sight, that I don't wonder he failed to distinguish them! We will now proceed to the Third Experiment."</p>
Source: Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893), Chapter 21: The Professor's Lecture
Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer
Kodachrome
Song lyrics, There Goes Rhymin' Simon (1973)
Wang Wei (699–759) a Tang dynasty Chinese poet, musician, painter, and statesman
"Departure" (trans. Robert Payne)
Herman Melville book Pierre: or, The Ambiguities
First lines, Bk. I, ch. 1
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)
Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright
The Song of the Bell (1799)
Ed Sheeran (1991) English singer-songwriter and producer
Wake Me Up, written with Jake Gosling
Song lyrics, + (2011)
Jimi Hendrix (1942–1970) American musician, singer and songwriter
Bold as Love
Song lyrics, Axis: Bold as Love (1967)
John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States
Comedy sketch on Late Night with Conan O'Brien http://www.nbc.com/nbc/Late_Night_with_Conan_O'Brien/celebritysecrets/mccain.shtml (2000) <br class="br">2000s
Gordon Lightfoot (1938) Canadian singer-songwriter
Bitter Green, Track 4, UNITED ARTISTS
Back Here On Earth (1968)
Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher
Sejamos simples e calmos,
Como os regatos e as árvores,
E Deus amar-nos-á fazendo de nós
Belos como as árvores e os regatos,
E dar-nos-á verdor na sua primavera,
E um rio aonde ir ter quando acabemos...
E não nos dará mais nada, porque dar-nos mais seria tirar-nos mais.
Alberto Caeiro (heteronym), O Guardador de Rebanhos ("The Keeper of Sheep"), VI — in A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe, trans. Richard Zenith (Penguin, 2006)
“April prepares her green traffic light and the world thinks Go.”
Christopher Morley (1890–1957) American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet
John Mistletoe (1931) http://books.google.com/books?id=20pJAAAAMAAJ&q=%22April+prepares+her+green+traffic+light+and+the+world+thinks+Go%22&pg=PA61#v=onepage
Shania Twain (1965) Canadian country pop singer-songwriter
“Shania Twain vegetarian but not about to preachify,” interview with Doug Elfman in Las Vegas Review-Journal (19 January 2014) http://www.reviewjournal.com/columns-blogs/doug-elfman/shania-twain-vegetarian-not-about-preachify.
W.B. Yeats book Michael Robartes and the Dancer
St. 4. <br class="br">Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), Easter, 1916 http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1477/ <br class="br">Context: I write it out in a verse—<br>MacDonagh and MacBride<br>And Connolly and Pearse<br>Now and in time to be,<br>Wherever green is worn,<br>Are changed, changed utterly:<br>A terrible beauty is born.
Tomas Tranströmer (1931–2015) Swedish poet, psychologist and translator
As When You Were a Child.
För levande och döda (For the Living and the Dead) 1996
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Wednesday
William Shatner (1931) Canadian actor, musician, recording artist, author, and film director
From a Just for Laughs appearance in a parody of the popular Molson "I Am Canadian" commercials (21 July 2007) http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1648058156561008324&q=i+am+canadian.
“Don’t quibble with the king over pears, let him eat the ripe ones and give you the green ones.”
José Saramago book The Cave
Source: The Cave (2000), p. 78 (Vintage 2003)
Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868–1928) Scottish architect, designer, water colourist and artist
Lecture, "Seemliness" (Glasgow, 1902), as cited in: David Brett, C. R. Mackintosh: The Poetics of Workmanship, (2004), p. 56
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XX Humorous Writings
John Anderson (Australian politician) (1956) Australian politician, 11th Deputy Prime Minister of Australia
Anderson sees red over 'watermelon' Greens, theage.com.au, Max Blenkin, September 7, 2004 http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/09/06/1094322715096.html,
Linda Smith (1958–2006) comedian
I suppose we could have swapped them for books, but we had our eye on a twin-tub.
Stand-up
Joseph Stella (1877–1946) American artist
Biographical note; Quotes in: Horst Woldemar Janson, Anthony F. Janson, History of Art: The Western Tradition http://books.google.com/books?id=MMYHuvhWBH4C&pg=PT831&lpg=PT831, Prentice Hall Professional, 2004. p. 831
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer
Boisgeloup, winter 1934
As quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008
Quotes, 1930's, "Conversations avec Picasso," 1934–35
Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet
Ibid., p. 124
The Book of Disquiet
Original: A sua cara lívida está de um verde falso e desnorteado. Noto-o, entre o ar difícil do peito, com a fraternidade de saber que também estarei assim.
“They are too green", he said, "and only good for fools.”
Jean De La Fontaine (1621–1695) French poet, fabulist and writer.
The Fox and the Grapes, fable 11; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Fables (1668–1679)
Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics
"Hypothesis explaining the Properties of Light" (1675)
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
Epitaph for his daughter, Olivia Susan Clemens (1896), this is actually a slight adaptation of the poem "Annette" by Robert Richardson; more details are available at "The Poem on Susy Clemens' Headstone" http://www.twainquotes.com/headstone.html <br class="br">Misattributed
Kurt Vonnegut book God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
Chapter 1 Page 4 http://miltonthed.weebly.com/uploads/1/4/1/6/14162844/vonnegut_kurt_-_god_bless_you_mr_rosewater.pdf <br class="br">God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965)
Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist
(14th October 1826) Changes
The London Literary Gazette, 1826
Friedrich Nietzsche book The Birth of Tragedy
Aber wie verändert sich plötzlich jene eben so düster geschilderte Wildniss unserer ermüdeten Cultur, wenn sie der dionysische Zauber berührt! Ein Sturmwind packt alles Abgelebte, Morsche, Zerbrochne, Verkümmerte, hüllt es wirbelnd in eine rothe Staubwolke und trägt es wie ein Geier in die Lüfte. Verwirrt suchen unsere Blicke nach dem Entschwundenen: denn was sie sehen, ist wie aus einer Versenkung an's goldne Licht gestiegen, so voll und grün, so üppig lebendig, so sehnsuchtsvoll unermesslich. Die Tragödie sitzt inmitten dieses Ueberflusses an Leben, Leid und Lust, in erhabener Entzückung, sie horcht einem fernen schwermüthigen Gesange - er erzählt von den Müttern des Seins, deren Namen lauten: Wahn, Wille, Wehe.
Ja, meine Freunde, glaubt mit mir an das dionysische Leben und an die Wiedergeburt der Tragödie. Die Zeit des sokratischen Menschen ist vorüber: kränzt euch mit Epheu, nehmt den Thyrsusstab zur Hand und wundert euch nicht, wenn Tiger und Panther sich schmeichelnd zu euren Knien niederlegen. Jetzt wagt es nur, tragische Menschen zu sein: denn ihr sollt erlöst werden. Ihr sollt den dionysischen Festzug von Indien nach Griechenland geleiten! Rüstet euch zu hartem Streite, aber glaubt an die Wunder eures Gottes!
Source: The Birth of Tragedy (1872), p. 98
H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author
Letter to Lillian D. Clark (29 March 1926), quoted in Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 186
Non-Fiction, Letters
Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter
In his letter from Normandy to art-critic and friend Gustave Geffroy, 24 April 1889; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 129
1870 - 1890
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic
" Sonnet. To Science http://library.thinkquest.org/11840/Poe/science.html", l. 12-14 (1829).
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
To the Person Sitting in Darkness http://xroads.virginia.edu/~drbr/sitting.html (1901)
Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist
Source: The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), p. 418
Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter
Quote of Claude Monet (1909), as cited in: Sarah Walden (1985) The ravished image, or, How to ruin masterpieces by restoration, p. 67
1900 - 1920
Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher
Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 10
Theodore Kaczynski (1942) American domestic terrorist, mathematician and anarchist
Letter to M. K.
The Road to Revolution (2008)
H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author
the scattered plasticity of that nameless sky-spawn was nebulously recombining in its hateful original form...
Fiction, The Call of Cthulhu (1926)
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India
Address on the Flag of India (22 July 1947), as recorded in the Constituent Assembly Of India Vol. IV http://parliamentofindia.nic.in/ls/debates/vol4p7.htm <br class="br">Context: The Flag links up the past and the present. It is the legacy bequeathed to us by the architects of our liberty. Those who fought under this Flag are mainly responsible for the arrival of this great day of Independence for India. Pandit Jawaharlal has pointed out to you that it is not a day of joy unmixed with sorrow. The Congress fought for unity and liberty. The unity has been compromised; liberty too. I feel, has been compromised, unless we are able to face the tasks which now confront us with courage, strength and vision. What is essential to-day is to equip ourselves with new strength and with new character if these difficulties are to be overcome and if the country is to achieve the great ideal of unity and liberty which it fought for. Times are hard. Everywhere we are consumed by phantasies. Our minds are haunted by myths. The world is full of misunderstandings, suspicions and distrusts. In these difficult days it depends on us under what banner we fight.<br>Here we are Putting in the very centre the white, the white of the Sun's rays. The white means the path of light. There is darkness even at noon as some People have urged, but it is necessary for us to dissipate these clouds of darkness and control our conduct-by the ideal light, the light of truth, of transparent simplicity which is illustrated by the colour of white.<br>We cannot attain purity, we cannot gain our goal of truth, unless we walk in the path of virtue. The Asoka's wheel represents to us the wheel of the Law, the wheel Dharma. Truth can be gained only by the pursuit of the path of Dharma, by the practice of virtue. Truth,—Satya, Dharma —Virtue, these ought to be the controlling principles of all those who work under this Flag. It also tells us that the Dharma is something which is perpetually moving. If this country has suffered in the recent past, it is due to our resistance to change. There are ever so many challenges hurled at us and if we have not got the courage and the strength to move along with the times, we will be left behind. There are ever so many institutions which are worked into our social fabric like caste and untouchability. Unless these things are scrapped we cannot say that we either seek truth or practise virtue. This wheel which is a rotating thing, which is a perpetually revolving thing, indicates to us that there is death in stagnation. There is life in movement. Our Dharma is Sanatana, eternal, not in the sense that it is a fixed deposit but in the sense that it is perpetually changing. Its uninterrupted continuity is its Sanatana character. So even with regard to our social conditions it is essential for us to move forward.<br>The red, the orange, the Bhagwa colour, represents the spirit of renunciation. All forms of renunciation are to be embodied in Raja Dharma. Philosophers must be kings. Our leaders must be disinterested. They must be dedicated spirits. They must be people who are imbued with the spirit of renunciation which that saffron, colour has transmitted to us from the beginning of our history. That stands for the fact that the World belongs not to the wealthy, not to the prosperous but to the meek and the humble, the dedicated and the detached.<br>That spirit of detachment that spirit of renunciation is represented by the orange or the saffron colour and Mahatma Gandhi has embodied it for us in his life and the Congress has worked under his guidance and with his message. If we are not imbued with that spirit of renunciation in than difficult days, we will again go under.<br>The green is there, our relation to the soil, our relation to the plant life here, on which all other life depends. We must build our Paradise, here on this green earth. If we are to succeed in this enterprise, we must be guided by truth (white), practise virtue (wheel), adopt the method of self-control and renunciation (saffron). This flag tells us "Be ever alert, be ever on the move, go forward, work for a free, flexible, compassionate, decent, democratic society in which Christians, Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists will all find a safe shelter." Let us all unite under this banner and rededicate ourselves to the ideas our flag symbolizes.
Andrew Marvell (1621–1678) English metaphysical poet and politician
The Garden (1650-1652)
Context: Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less
Withdraws into its happiness;
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas;
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade.
C.G. Jung book Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle
Source: Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle (1960), p. 110
Context: My example concerns a young woman patient who, in spite of efforts made on both sides, proved to be psychologically inaccessible. The difficulty lay in the fact that she always knew better about everything. Her excellent education had provided her with a weapon ideally suited to this purpose, namely a highly polished Cartesian rationalism with an impeccably "geometrical" idea of reality. After several fruitless attempts to sweeten her rationalism with a somewhat more human understanding, I had to confine myself to the hope that something unexpected and irrational would turn up, something that burst the intellectual retort into which she had sealed herself. Well, I was sitting opposite of her one day, with my back to the window, listening to her flow of rhetoric. She had an impressive dream the night before, in which someone had given her a golden scarab-a costly piece of jewellery. While she was still telling me this dream, I heard something behind me gently tapping on the window. I turned round and saw that it was a fairly large flying insect that was knocking against the window from outside in the obvious effort to get into the dark room. This seemed to me very strange. I opened the window and immediately and caught the insect in the air as it flew in. It was a scarabaeid beetle, or common rose-chafer, whose gold-green color most nearly resembles that of a golden scarab. I handed the beetle to my patient with the words "Here is your scarab." This broke the ice of her intellectual resistance. The treatment could now be continued with satisfactory results.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien book On Fairy-Stories
On Fairy-Stories (1939)
Context: The mind that thought of light, heavy, grey, yellow, still, swift also conceived of magic that would make heavy things light and able to fly, turn grey lead into yellow gold, and the still rock into a swift water. If it could do the one, it could do the other; it inevitably did both. When we can take green from grass, blue from heaven, and red from blood, we have already an enchanter's power.
Ursula K. Le Guin book The Language of the Night
And never under any circumstances, to squelch it, or sneer at it, or imply that it is childish, or unmanly, or untrue. <br class="br"> "Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons?" https://books.google.com/books?id=ksOjjuy3issC&pg=PA44, in The Language of the Night (1979), p. 44
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States
1910s, Address to the Knights of Columbus (1915)
Adam Levine (1979) singer, songwriter, actor, and record producer from the United States
On being on Beverly Hills, 90210 when he was 17 in his band Kara's Flowers
Voss, Brandon (2007-05-22), "Adam Levine". Advocate. (986):25.
Vandana Shiva (1952) Indian philosopher
On Bill Gate's philanthropic activities, from " Bill Gates is continuing the work of Monsanto, Vandana Shiva tells France24 https://www.france24.com/en/20191023-bill-gates-is-continuing-the-work-of-monsanto-vandana-shiva-tells-france-24-1" France24 (23 October 2019)