Quotes about herring
page 44

“It is no longer a passion hidden in my heart:
It is Venus herself fastened to her prey.”

Ce n'est plus une ardeur dans mes veines cachée:
C'est Vénus tout entière à sa proie attachée.
Phèdre, act I, scene III.
Phèdre (1677)

Passion, Heart

“The stars of midnight shall be dear
To her; and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Three years she grew in Sun and Shower.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Secret, Beauty, Star, Dance

“Our appetite for meat leads to widespread, horrific cruelty to animals—chickens pressed wing-to-wing into filthy sheds and debeaked, for example. And since I've always espoused creative nonviolence as the fundamental gospel value, my vegetarianism helps me not to participate in the vicious torture and destruction of billions of cows, chickens, and so many other creatures. These chickens never raise families, root in the soil, build nests, or do anything natural. … Animals have feelings, they suffer; they have needs and desires. They were created by God to breathe fresh air, raise their families, peck in the grass, or root in the soil. Today's farms don't let them do anything God designed them to do. Animal scientists attest that farm animals have personalities and interests, that chickens and pigs can be smarter than dogs and cats. I like that even Jesus identified himself as “a mother hen who longs to gather us under her wings.””

John Dear (1959) Catholic priest from the United States

They Will Inherit the Earth (2018)

God, Family, Dogs, Feeling

“Cupid and my Campaspe play'd
At cards for kisses—Cupid paid:
He stakes his quiver, bow, and arrows,
His mother's doves, and team of sparrows;
Loses them too; then down he throws
The coral of his lips, the rose
Growing one's cheek (but none knows how);
With these, the crystal of his brow,
And then the dimple of his chin:
All these did my Campaspe win.
At last he set her both his eyes—
She won, and Cupid blind did rise.
O Love! has she done this for thee?
What shall, alas! become of me?”

John Lyly (1554–1606) English politician

Poem: Cupid and Campaspe.

Love, Kiss

“She shouted, “Arms and tongues, Spiral?” and waggled her arms and stuck out her tongue, and the old man crowed and did the same. “He’s for the first, against the second, as I recall,” she said to Ori. “Has he chanted for you? ‘Too much yammer, not enough hammer.’””

China Miéville book Iron Council

Part 2 “Returns”, chapter 8 (p. 85)
Iron Council (2004)

“Art! Who comprehends her? With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess?”

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770–1827) German Romantic composer

Letter to Bettina von Arnim (11 August 1810)

Art

“When she's layin' on my shoulder on the sofa in the dark
And about the time she falls asleep, so does my right arm.
And I want so bad to move it, 'cause it's tinglin' and it's numb;
But she looks so much like an angel that I don't wanna wake her up.
Yeah I live for little moments
When she steals my heart again and doesn't even know it.
Yeah I live for little moments like that.”

Brad Paisley (1972) American country music singer

Little Moments
Song lyrics, Mud on the Tires (2003)

Angels, Time, Heart

“The death of John Pennington had left his widow in circumstances which were more straitened than ever, and the Park had receded even from her notepaper, where it had long been retained as a courtesy title on the principle that addresses are given to us to conceal our whereabouts.”

Saki (1870–1916) British writer

"Cross Currents"
Reginald in Russia (1910)

Death

“He never had really been able to understand what it was that she wanted him for…although he felt certain that she wanted him for something real, that he filled some need for her, as she did for him, which could for lack of a more specific term be called love.”

Robert Silverberg (1935) American speculative fiction writer and editor

Source: Short fiction, Against Babylon (1986), p. 276

Love, Understanding

“The birch, most shy and lady-like of trees,
Her poverty, as best she may, retrieves,
And hints at her foregone gentilities
With some saved relics of her wealth of leaves.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

An Indian Summer Reverie http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/1164/, st. 8 (1846)

Tree, Wealth

“The rolling wheel, that runneth often round,
The hardest steel in tract of time doth tear;
And drizzling drops, that often do redound,
The firmest flint doth in continuance wear:
Yet cannot I, with many a dropping tear,
And long entreaty, soften her hard heart,
That she will once vouchsafe my plaint to hear,
Or look with pity on my painful smart:
But when I plead, she bids me play my part;
And when I weep, she says, "Tears are but water";
And when I sigh, she says, "I know the art";
And when I wail, she turns herself to laughter;
So do I weep and wail, and plead in vain,
Whiles she as steel and flint doth still remain.”

Edmund Spenser Amoretti

Amoretti (1595), Sonnet XVIII https://www.bartleby.com/358/784.html

Pain, Art, Tear, Laughter

“Disciple: Lord, what is true detachment?
Truth: Take note with careful discrimination of these two words: oneself and leave. If you know how to weigh these two words properly, testing their meaning thoroughly to their core and viewing them with true discernment, then you can quickly grasp the truth.
Take, first of all, the first word -- oneself or myself -- and see what it is. It is important to realize that everyone has five kinds of self. The first self we have in common with a stone, and this is being. The second we share with plants, and this is growing. The third self we share with animals, and this is sensation. The fourth we share with all other human beings: we possess a common human nature in which all are one. The fifth - which belongs to a person exclusively as his or her own - is one's individual human self…
Now what is it that leads people astray and robs them of happiness? It is exclusively this last self. Because of it a person turns outward, away from God and toward this self, when he or she should be returning inward. Thus they fashion their own selves according to what is accidental. In their blindness they appropriate to themselves what is God's. This is the direction they take, and they eventually sink into sinfulness.”

Henry Suso (1295–1366) Dominican friar and mystic

The Exemplar, The Little Book of Truth

God, People, Truth, Fashion

“I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that Secularism in its present Indian form is no more than an embodiment of anti-Hindu animus, and is supported by all those who want to destroy Hindu society and culture. Secularism is essentially a political concept which originated and took shape in nineteenth century Europe. …. It was in this atmosphere of revolt against Christianity and its closed culture that the concept of Secularism was evolved and employed in country after country in Europe. The secular power of the State was no longer to be the secular arm of the Church. It was to become secular on its own, that is, a power which secured equal rights to all its citizens without bothering about their beliefs. The Church was separated from the State which was no longer supposed to interfere with the religious life of the citizens, or to discriminate against any citizen on the basis of his on her religion or absence of it. Religion was now to be treated as a purely private matter in which the state was not supposed to pry, and which was not to be projected in public affairs.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Defence of Hindu Society (1983)

Life, Religion, Support, Country

“If you would have a boy to despise his mother, let her keep him at home, and spend her life in petting him up, and slaving to indulge his follies and caprices.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. III : A Controversy; Mrs. Markham to Helen

Life, Home, Boy

“The only excuse that America can ever have for the assertion of her physical force is that she asserts it in behalf of the interests of humanity.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

Speech http://books.google.com/books?id=5jIwAAAAYAAJ&q=%22The+only+excuse+that+America+can+ever+have+for+the+assertion+of+her+physical+force+is+that+she+asserts+it+in+behalf+of+the+interests+of+humanity%22&pg=PA23#v=onepage to the Daughters of the American Revolution at Memorial Continental Hall in Washington, D.C. on April 17, 1916 1910s

“You know, the French remind me a little bit of an aging actress of the 1940s who is still trying to dine out on her looks but doesn't have the face for it.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

Supposedly said during an interview with Fox News http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/7/5/00548.shtml Disputed

Age

“Thus it was that America sank further and further into Americanism. Vast wealth and industry, and also brilliant invention, were concentrated upon puerile ends. In particular the whole of American life was organized around the cult of the powerful individual, that phantom ideal which Europe herself had only begun to outgrow in her last phase. Those Americans who wholly failed to realize this ideal, who remained at the bottom of the social ladder, either consoled themselves with hopes for the future, or stole symbolical satisfaction by identifying themselves with some popular star, or gloated upon their American citizenship, and applauded the arrogant foreign policy of their government. Those who achieved power were satisfied so long as they could merely retain it, and advertise it uncritically in the conventionally self-assertive manners.”

Olaf Stapledon book Last and First Men

Source: Last and First Men (1930), Chapter II: Europe’s Downfall; Section 1, “Europe and America” (pp. 34-35)

Life, Hope, Star, Future

“Her track, where'er the goddess roves,
Glory pursue, and gen'rous shame,
Th' unconquerable mind, 3 and freedom's holy flame.”

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) English poet, historian

II. 2, Line 10 The Progress of Poesy http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=pppo (1754)

Freedom

“I arrived at as an undergraduate with two driving passions: a consuming interest for a politics of justice grounded in a Christian theology and acting, as a ‘revelation of the treasures of the human soul’ not as a form of exhibitionism. My search for justice grew out of the pain I experienced when I saw the ridicule my malformed brother elicited. I became aware of the evil that is prejudice, a form of injustice. My urge to redress this prejudice took a more social dimension during my years as a boarder at St Dominic’s Convent, where the great Barbara Hogan matriculated a year later than me though I only got acquainted with her at Wits.”

Angelique Rockas South African actress and founder of Internationalist Theatre, London

The South African Interview (August 8, 2011)

Pain, Justice, Soul, Search

“This was a thing she’d not seen before, how the meat that fed her was a living being one minute and then violently dead. The smell of it was personal, inescapable, like the scent that rose in the steam from her own self when she stepped into a hot bath. They had broken open the animal’s secret body just to eat it.”

Nalo Hopkinson book Midnight Robber

Section 2 (p. 104)
Midnight Robber (2000)

Secret, Animals, Personality, Dead

“After a while Louis let her [du Barry] draw her own drafts on the comptroller-general. It saved time and bother in a field he much disliked. Jeanne never took more than she needed for urgent current expenses — that is, whatever was in the treasury.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part IV: A Few Greats, Madame du Barry

Time, Drawing

“I didn't like Jaya's Hazaar Chaurasi ki Ma, though I did like her performance. I felt the movie was too verbose. I thought why did they have to make a film? They could have simply written an article.”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

“"Just watch," said Sheila, touching her finger to her head.”

Lou Reed (1942–2013) American musician

The Gift (written by Lou Reed, narrated by John Cale)
Lyrics

“One saw I was alive. Loosened
his belt. My bowels opened in a ragged gape of fear.
Between the gap of corpses I could see a child.
The soldiers laughed. Only a matter of days separate
this from acts of torture now. They shot her in the eye.”

Carol Ann Duffy (1955) British writer and professor of contemporary poetry

Shooting Stars.
Standing Female Nude (1985)

Fear

“The young woman had turned toward him and thrust her pink gloves up in the air in a gesture that, from a man, meant “Touchdown!” and, from a woman, “I will hug you now!””

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

Thanksgiving (prologue)
Reamde (2011), Part I: Nine Dragons

“Opening the door to the visiting doctor, all set to apologize for the flour on her hands—she had been baking—Mrs. Byrne sniffed. Smoke! And if she could smell it with her heavy head cold, it must be a tremendous fire!
”We ought to call the brigade!” she exclaimed. “Is it a hayrick?”
”The brigade would have a long way to go,” the doctor told her curtly. “It’s from America. The wind’s blowing that way.””

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

November “THE SMOKE OF THAT GREAT BURNING”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Way

“Her rival—hers—language has not a word
By woman's ear so utterly abhorr'd.
No marvel, for it robs her only part
Of sweet dominion—empire o'er the heart.”

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

Title poem, section IV.
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

Heart, Parting

“I drew my hands over her belly and legs, felt my own desire, searched foolishly for my passion, strained for it while she waited, rolled and tore my hair and begged for it, but there was none, there was none at all, only the retreat to Hackmuth's letter and thoughts that remained to be written, but no lust, only fear of her, and shame and humiliation.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Source: Ask the Dust (1939), Chapter Nine

Fear, Search, Passion, Waiting

“Lock her up, that's right. Yeah, that's right, lock her up! I'm going to tell you what, it's unbelievable, it's unbelievable. If I did a tenth, a tenth, of what she did, I would be in jail today.”

Michael T. Flynn (1958) 25th United States National Security Advisor

Speaking at the Republican National Convention https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx94428MYcc (18 July 2016) Public Statements

“…and it's a story that might bore you but you don't have to listen, she told me, because she always knew it was going to be like that, and it was, she thinks, her first year, or actually weekend, really a Friday, in September, at Camden, and this was three or four years ago, and she got so drunk that she ended up in bed, lost her virginity (late, she was eighteen) in Lorna Slavin's room, because she was a Freshman and had a roommate and Lorna was, she remembers, a Senior or Junior and usually somestimes at her boyfriend's place off-campus, to who she thought was a Sophomore Ceramics major but who was actually either some guy from N. Y. U., a film student, and up in New Hampshire just for The Dressed to Get Screwed party, or a townie.”

Bret Easton Ellis The Rules of Attraction

The Rules of Attraction (1987)

Guy, Thinking

“To be sure he's a "Man," the male must see to it that the female be clearly a "Woman," the opposite of a "Man," that is, the female must act like a faggot. And Daddy's Girl, all of whose female instincts were tromped out of her when little, easily and obligingly adapts herself to the role.”

Valerie Solanas (1936–1988) American radical feminist and writer. Attempted to assassinate Andy Warhol.

Source: SCUM MANIFESTO (1967), p. 8.

Girl

“[My family] suffer so much. My mother was much older when I came out [of detention]. She had problems with her hearing and high blood pressure. But they still support me. When you make somebody disappear and you don’t announce it to the family, what is this? You make people desperate and bring them close to death. If our cat or dog is lost, it makes us desperately want to know where it is—so for humans disappearing, you can barely imagine the pain. What kind of society is this? If a society cannot even support somebody like me, then people ask: Who is under protection, then? That’s why there is such support for me. It is not because I am so beautiful or so charming. People feel, This guy is fighting for us.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

“ Ai Weiwei: Artistic Licence http://www.economist.com/node/21554178.” Economist, May 5, 2012. 2010-, 2012

Death, Pain, People, Family

“He had never been lonely in his life before he met her, having at the worst found good company in himself; but now he longed for a companion, and out of all the many millions of the earth's inhabitants there was only one that he wanted.”

John Buchan book The House of the Four Winds

Prologue
The House of the Four Winds (1935)

Life

“One moment he is at her knee,
“So, Leila, wouldst thou weep for me?”
Started she, as at lightning gleam,—
“O, Mirza, this I did not dream!
Moslem and Moor, may Spanish maid
Hearken such words as thou hast said?””

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

The Golden Violet - The Wreath
The Golden Violet (1827)

Dreams

“I…chose a wife, as she did her wedding gown, not for a fine glossy surface, but such qualities as would wear well.”

Oliver Goldsmith book The Vicar of Wakefield

Source: The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), Ch. 1.

Wedding

“. never in my life I have seen such a truly sad thing [an atmosphere at Wolfheze ]. A mother heartbroken about the loss of her only child is nothing compared to this. A broad streak or strip in front of you, which becomes blacker and blacker towards the horizon. a mysterious ticking and hissing of rain drops which keep hanging halfway the heather plant on each twig and sprout..”

Anton Mauve (1838–1888) Dutch painter (1838–1888)

translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
(version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Anton Mauve, uit zijn brief:) ..zoo iets waar droevigs [een atmosfeer bij nl:Wolfheze ] heb ik nimmer gezien. Een diepbedroefde moeder over het verlies van haar eenige kind is er niets bij. Een breede streep of strook vóór u, welke naar de horizon toe langer hoe zwarter wordt. een geheimzinnig getik en gesis van regendroppels welke halverwege de hei plant aan elk takje en uitspreitseltje blijft hangen..
In a letter of Anton Mauve to Willem Maris, 1860's; as cited in Anton Mauve, (exhibition catalog of Teylers Museum, Haarlem / Laren, Singer), ed. De Bodt en Plomp, 2009, p. 33
1860's

Life, Sadness, Loss

“It was the waste of a trip. She's not here," I tell him. Buttercup hisses again. "She's not here. You can hiss all you like. You won't find Prim." At her name, he perks up. Raises his flattened ears. Begins to meow hopefully. "Get out!" He dodges the pillow I throw at him. "Go away! There's nothing left for you here!" I start to shake, furious with him. "She's not coming back! She's never ever coming back here again!" I grab another pillow and get to my feet to improve my aim. Out of nowhere, the tears begin to pour down my cheeks. "She's dead." I clutch my middle to dull the pain. Sink down on my heels, rocking the pillow, crying. "She's dead, you stupid cat. She's dead.”

Suzanne Collins (1962) American television writer and novelist

Katniss and Buttercup (p. 386)
The Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay (2010)

Pain, Stupidity, Cats, Tear

“Harry Dresden: Hers was a beauty so pure that it was nearly painful to behold--Athena heading out on a Friday night.”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, Changes (2010), Chapter 7

Pain, Beauty, Night

“Alex is cool because a lot of people can relate to her. She's not the most popular girl in school, but she's also not a geek. I know what it's like to think you don't always fit in, and I think kids can relate to Alex's feelings about being average.”

Larisa Oleynik (1981) actress

On her character from the TV series The Secret World of Alex Mack; USA Today, August 7, 1995.

People, School, Feeling, Girl

“The first time Return of the Jedi was released I felt it did not have that much impact and the part of Oola seemed quite insignificant to the film although after saying that it was the opposite because her setting the scene up for Princess Leia. But the second time, I still can't believe the popularity the impact it has had on society, plus not just our generation but all the people that have been born since the beginning of Star Wars up until now.”

Femi Taylor British writer

Q&A with Femi Taylor http://www.lucasfan.com/interviews/femitaylor.html (January 2, 1999)

War, People, Star, Time

“It was a still afternoon — the golden light was lingering languidly among the upper boughs, only glancing down here and there on the purple pathway and its edge of faintly sprinkled moss: an afternoon in which destiny disguises her cold awful face behind a hazy radiant veil, encloses us in warm downy wings, and poisons us with violet-scented breath.”

George Eliot book Adam Bede

Adam Bede (1859)

Light

“The Senate version of the 2015 National Budget will define savings in FULL COMPLIANCE WITH THE SUPREME COURT DECISION on the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) and the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP). Our committee accepted all of Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago's points and took note of her concerns. I believe Senator Santiago based her speech on the NEP version, NOT the one the Senate has amended. However, the Senate version is never going to adopt the version of the NEP as regard to their definition of savings.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Escudero, F. [Francis]. (2014, November 26). Retrieved from Official Facebook Page of Francis Escudero https://www.facebook.com/senchizescudero/posts/10152871070040610/ 2014, Facebook

Decision

“Her every tone is music's own,
Like those of morning birds,
And something more than melody
Dwells ever in her words.”

Edward Coote Pinkney (1802–1828) American poet, lawyer, sailor, professor, and editor

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

Music, Bird

“Those perilous climbings [with her sister Claudia, in the Palo Duro Canyon, 1916] were frightening, but it was wonderful to me and not like anything I had known before. The fright of the day was still with me in the night and I would often dream that the foot of my bed rose straight up into the air — then just as it was to fall I would wake up. Many drawings came from days like that, and later some oil paintings.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

About climbing the Palo Duro Canyon, 1916
1970s, Some Memories of Drawings (1976)

Dreams, Sister, Drawing, Painting

“It's not my dreams that get me in trouble, it's the things my wife dreams I did… My wife punched me in the middle of the night; I woke up, I was like "Oww! What was that for?" She said "I dreamt you were making out with Faith Hill." I said "I wasn't dreaming anything! Send her over to my dream, we'll both be happy."”

Jeff Foxworthy (1958) American stand-up comedian

Have Your Loved Ones Spayed and Neutered (2004)

Faith, Dreams, Night, Happiness

“True courage scorns
To vent her prowess in a storm of words;
And, to the valiant, actions speak alone.”

Tobias Smollett (1721–1771) 18th-century poet and author from Scotland

Act II, scene vii.
The Regicide (1749)

Courage

“There was a lot of revision that went into [making] the [Wind] sculptures, [c. 2009 - meant as her response to the death of Michael Jackson which she admired]. It might look like I just went in the gallery and they just went up – just like that – but it was not like that. It was really a long process to get the things to look the way they do, to have that balance especially in relation to what I already said about minimalism, and to also have this light touch to them.”

Isa Genzken (1948) German sculptor

2001 - 2010, Out to Lunch with Isa Genzken' (2009)

Death, Way, Light

“Portugal converted a portion of India to the Catholic religion with the arms of her soldiers, with the blood of her martyrs, with the miracles of her saints, and with the fires of her Inquisition. Those who were vanquished in this struggle became Christians and Portuguese. England might imitate the example, except as regards force.”

Francisco Luís Gomes (1829–1869) Indo-Portuguese physician, writer, historian, economist, political scientist and MP in the Portuguese parli…

Quoted by Nishitha Desai in Lusotopie 2000, p. 474

Religion

“Behind her chair, from a wall covered in a very expensive velvet-flock paper, a portrait of her grandfather looked down. He had been an Episcopalian bishop, but the picture showed him in the costume of a New England gentleman keeping up the Old English custom of riding to hounds: red coat, brown boots, distinguished with a white dog-collar and black silk front.
Hugh referred to him as being dressed to kill.
The salad was replaced—though Hugh had sampled only a mouthful of his—by a dish of cold fish with mayonnaise. He didn’t even touch this course. He was suddenly afraid of it because it had come from the sea.”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

February “DISGRACE”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Dogs, Fish, Sea

“I enjoy French poetry as well as French prose, and I believe that this land must have some cultural connection with the European continent, and that she is best connected through her spiritual complement across the Straits of Dover.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

"Some Books: A New Year's Resolution for 1944" (1943), reprinted in Jeffrey M. Heath, (ed.) The Creator as Critic and Other Writings by E.M. Forster, Dundurn, 2008.

“The character of the victim has always something to do with his or her murder.”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

Murder for Christmas (1939, Holiday for Murder, Hercule Poirot’s Christmas)

“It pays to advertise! - her best-known slogan for S. H. Benson's, then one of Britain's most prominent advertising firms (Mitzi Brunsdale, Dorothy L. Sayers. New York: Berg, 1990, p. 194)”

Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) English crime writer, playwright, essayist and Christian writer

Other

“She understood too much. She understood that she had reached her destiny point, that time and the circumstances of her life had conspired to bring her to this place. For one ecstatic moment she was the axis on which the stars revolved.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Bios

Source: Bios (1999), Chapter 15 (p. 140)

Life, Star, Time

“And that is the story of Alma,
Who knew how to receive and to give.
The body that reached her embalma'
Was one that had known how to live.”

Tom Lehrer (1928) American singer-songwriter and mathematician

"Alma"
That Was the Year That Was (1965)

“It was as though the lifeline on her palm
had fallen between the cracks
of the impossible and the arbitrary.”

Sheri-D Wilson (1958) Canadian Spoken Word Poet

"In Search of a Metaphysical Rock Star"
Goddess Gone Fishing for a Map of the Universe (2012)

“Molecular evidence suggests that our common ancestor with chimpanzees lived, in Africa, between five and seven million years ago, say half a million generations ago. This is not long by evolutionary standards … in your left hand you hold the right hand of your mother. In turn she holds the hand of her mother, your grandmother. Your grandmother holds her mother's hand, and so on … How far do we have to go until we reach our common ancestor with the chimpanzees? It is a surprisingly short way. Allowing one yard per person, we arrive at the ancestor we share with chimpanzees in under 300 miles.”

Richard Dawkins book A Devil's Chaplain

"Gaps in the Mind"
A Devil's Chaplain (2003)

Way, Personality

“Having drown'd her sparkling Eyes in tears.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro (2nd ed. 1654), Virgil's Æneis

Tear

“To live in such a place was, for Isabel, to hold to her ear all day a shell of the sea of the past. This vague eternal rumour kept her imagination awake.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady (1881), Ch. XXIII.

Imagination, Past, Sea

“The young boy whistles, hurrying down the street,
The young girl hums beneath her breath.
One goes out to beauty, and does not know it.
And one goes out to death.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Death, Beauty, Girl, Boy

“The dynamics of the city. His mother had been scared of cities. It had been part of his education. She had told him cities are dangerous places. They're full of tough, scary guys. He was a tough boy himself but he had walked around as a teenager ready and willing to believe her. And he had seen that she was right. People on city streets were fearful and furtive and defensive. They kept their distance and crossed to the opposite sidewalk to avoid coming near him. They made it so obvious he became convinced the scary guys were always right behind him, at his shoulder. Then he suddenly realized no, I'm the scary guy. They're scared of me. It was a revelation. He saw himself reflected in store windows and understood how it could happen. He had stopped growing at fifteen when he was already six feet five and two hundred and twenty pounds. A giant. Like most teenagers in those days he was dressed like a bum. The caution his mother had drummed into him was showing up in his face as a blank-eyed, impassive stare. They're scared of me. It amused him and he smiled and then people stayed even farther away. From that point onward he knew cities were just the same as every other place, and for every city person he needed to be scared of there were nine hundred and ninety-nine others a lot more scared of him. He used the knowledge like a tactic, and the calm confidence it put in his walk and his gaze redoubled the effect he had on people. The dynamics of the city.”

Lee Child book Running Blind

Source: Running Blind (2000), Ch. 1.

People, Education, Fear, Smile

“I think what he went through as a child was very heavy. He never got over his mother leaving his father, and following her mother to Florida, to an area that was very different, and losing his father. When he was seven years old, this was a very sensitive boy, who was wide-eyed and trusting, and not knowing how to protect himself at all.”

Sandra Seacat (1936) American acting teacher and actress

As heard in the "Mickey Rourke" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_KOo2uaH3E installment of The Dark Side of Fame with Piers Morgan, broadcast October 6, 2008.

Boy, Thinking

“Let the League of Nations say whatever it pleases, let America offer whatever interference, let China decry Japan's action at the top of her voice, but Japan must adhere to her course unswervingly.”

Sadao Araki (1877–1966) Japanese general

Quoted in "China and America" - Page 200 - by Foster Rhea Dulles - Political Science - 1981

“We have had office without power; responsibility without the full means of discharging it. I say to you that the times are too grave and the burden of government too heavy to be confronted or borne by any Ministry which lacks the full power to place its plans on the statute-book, and to give that public leadership which is confidently based upon a loyal Parliamentary following. With your aid we believe that we can, as we must, do much to make Australia strong and to keep her free.”

Robert Menzies (1894–1978) Australian politician, 12th Prime Minister of Australia

Second Term as Prime Minister (1949-1966)
Source: http://electionspeeches.moadoph.gov.au/speeches/1951-robert-menzies

Books, Confidence, Strong, Time

“Often again she is resolved to promise her skill to the unhappy man, then again refuses, and is determined rather to perish with him; and she cries that never will she yield to so base a passion…”
Saepe suas misero promittere destinat artes, denegat atque una potius decernit in ira ac neque tam turpi cessuram semet amori proclamat.

Gaius Valerius Flaccus book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica, Book VII, Lines 317–320

Passion

“One thing seems at any rate certain, that the spiritual motive will be in the future of India, as in her past, the real originative and dominating strain. By spirituality we do not mean a remote metaphysical mind or the tendency to dream rather than to act. That was not the great India of old in her splendid days of vigour, — whatever certain European critics or interpreters of her culture may say, — and it will not be the India of the future. Metaphysical thinking will always no doubt be a strong element in her mentality, and it is to be hoped that she will never lose her great, her sovereign powers in that direction…”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

The Renaissance in India (1918)

Dreams, Hope, Motivation, Thinking

“It was the test of loyal citizenship among the Romans to seek out in every part of the world that which was most rare and valued, and bring it back to Rome as a gift. Thus her sons went forth and returned laden with richest trophies to lay at her feet. They brought to her pearls from India, gold chariots from Babylon, elephants from interior Africa, high-breasted virgins from the Greek isles, Phidian marbles from Athens. Paul also would be a bringer of gifts to the Rome that had honored him and his fathers with the high honor of citizenship. And the gift he would bring and lay at her feet would be the richest of them all—a religion.”

Bouck White (1874–1951) American author and novelist

Source: The Call of the Carpenter (1914), p. 229

World, Religion, Parting

“Stand close around, ye Stygian set,
with Dirce in the boat conveyed,
Lest Charon, seeing her, forget,
That he is old and she a shade.”

Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) British writer

Epitaph on Dirce - George Orwell called it 'one of the best epitaphs in English - If I were a woman it would be my favourite epitaph-it would be the one I should like to have for myself." - quoted in Orwell:Collected Works, It is What I Think, p. 45.

Forgetting

“It’s a women’s issue, but a lot of the women wouldn’t be having abortions if the men would step up and be a part of what they are already biologically a part of. Raising children and having children, even though the women birthed the child, is designed for two people to do it. And there is so much undue stress and pressure on the woman if the other one isn’t there. So, really one thing we do is say it’s a woman’s issue, forcing the woman to have to deal with it on her own, so that way men don’t have to. As a man, I am going to passive-aggressively tell you you are in control, when really I am just telling you that because it makes my life easier, cause that way I don’t have to step up and make a decision. I obviously think that a man has just as much invested in that child as the woman does. He need to be there to support her through the physical changes of the pregnancy, and help and provide emotional strength, and do it together. As much as he has a role in making the baby in the first place, it needs to take both of them the whole way through. Any idea that a man doesn’t have a role in it is not true, and is simply more about politics and making a man’s life easier.”

Benjamin Watson (1980) gridiron football player

Benjamin Watson Interview, Part Two http://turningpointfriends.org/benjamin-watson-interview-part-two/

Life, Women, Men, Children

“She projected an air of righteousness that can only come from someone who hasn’t even finished her third decade.”

Sarah Zettel (1966) American writer

Source: Bitter Angels (2009), Chapter 5 (p. 55)

“By forces seemingly antagonistic and destructive Nature accomplishes her beneficent designs — now a flood of fire, now a flood of ice, now a flood of water; and again in the fullness of time an outburst of organic life.”

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

"Mount Shasta" in Picturesque California (1888-1890) page 148; reprinted in Steep Trails (1918), chapter 3
1880s

Life, Nature, Water, Time

“Much like a subtle spider which doth sit
In middle of her web, which spreadeth wide;
If aught do touch the utmost thread of it,
She feels it instantly on every side.”

John Davies (poet) (1569–1626) English poet, lawyer, and politician, born 1569

The Immortality of the Soul (c. 1594). Compare:
:"Our souls sit close and silently within / And their own webs from their own entrails spin; / And when eyes meet far off, our sense is such / That, spider-like, we feel the tenderest touch." John Dryden, Mariage à la Mode, act ii. sc. 1.;
:"The spider’s touch—how exquisitely fine!— / Feels at each thread, and lives along the line." Alexander Pope, Epistle i. line 217.

Feeling

“If the engineer does not honor the nature of the steel or the wood or the stone, his or her failure will go well beyond aesthetics: the bridge or the building will collapse and put human life in peril.
The human self also has a nature, limits as well as potentials. If you seek vocation without understanding the material you are working with, what you build with your life will be ungainly and may well put lives in peril, your own and some of those around you. “Faking it” in the service of high values is no virtue and has nothing to do with vocation. It is an ignorant, sometimes arrogant, attempt to override one’s nature, and it will always fail.”

Parker Palmer (1939) American theologian

Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (1999)

Life, Failure, Understanding, Nature

“My father had a dark glimmer in his eye as he moved behind her. “Old?” He spoke in a low voice as he began to rub her shoulders again. “Woman, I have a mind to prove you wrong.”
She smiled a wry smile. “Sir, I have a mind to let you.””

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 14, “The Name of the Wind” (p. 113)

Smile

“Her that ruled the rost in the kitchen.”

Thomas Heywood (1574–1641) English playwright, actor, and author

History of Women (ed. 1624), p. 286. Compare: "He ruleth all the roste", John Skelton, Why Come ye not to Courte (published c. 1550), Line 198; "Rule the rost", John Heywood, Proverbs (1546) part i. chap. v.; "Rules the roast", Ben Jonson, George Chapman, Marston: Eastward Ho, act ii. sc. 1.; William Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI. act i. sc. 1.

“[Conchita Wurst] She is an incredible singer and entertainer. But what made her win so meaningful was the way she turned her victory in the Song Contest into an electrifying moment of human rights education. Conchita is promoting respect for diversity. This is a core value of the United Nations Charter, along with our commitment to tolerance. She confounds people's preconceived ideas of gender and sexuality - and she appeals to them to accept her as she is. That is a powerful message. I am delighted she is using her talent and the Eurovision platform to take this message to a global audience.”

Ban Ki-moon (1944) 8th Secretary-General of the United Nations

3 November 2014; Remarks at Meeting with Conchita Wurst http://www.unis.unvienna.org/unis/en/pressrels/2014/unissgsm573.html

People, Education, Way, Idea

“That was the most terrible thing that a woman could to a decent man: look vulnerable and ask him for mercy. If he refused her he'd be denying all his instincts as a provider and protector.”

Orson Scott Card book Homebody

Homebody (1998)

““Are you still afraid?” I asked her.
“No,” she said, “I am thankful. The world has been threatened too long by the extraordinary, the supernatural and the monstrous. I shall be happy enough to smell the pines and hear the song of the thrush. And to be with you, Captain von Bek.”
“The world is still threatened,” I said to her, “but perhaps not by Lucifer. I held her hand tightly.”

Michael Moorcock book The War Hound and the World's Pain

Source: The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981), Chapter 18 (p. 166)

World, Happiness

“But her parents were certified weirdos and probably deserved such tactics.”

Chetan Bhagat (1974) Indian author, born 1974

P. 106aid nothing, hoping silence would evaporate us.
Source: Five Point Someone - What not to do at IIT! (2004), P. 193

Parent

“I say to myself that her small hands are no more worm, and that I would never again carry them soft to my front.”

Albert Cohen (1895–1981) Swiss writer

Le livre de ma mère [The Book of My Mother] (1954)

“Stood there who knows how long looked / at the clouds the hedge / when someone came out of the door it was her daughter.”

Mirkka Rekola (1931–2014) Finnish writer

Daughters

“A lovely lady, garmented in light
From her own beauty.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

The Witch of Atlas http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/4696 (1820), st. 5

Love, Beauty, Light

“What’s wrong?’ I asked. She said her asthma was playing her up.… She was wheezing quite audibly by now. She picked up my towel and said, ‘I’d better rest awhile; otherwise I might pass out.”

Roman Polanski (1933) Polish-French film director, producer, writer, actor, and rapist

Roman by Polanski (1984)

“Joni's genius is that she creates chords that are ambiguous, chords that have two or more different roots. …Joni's music is as close to impressionist visual art as anything I've heard. …harmonic complexity born out of her strict insistence that the music not be anchored in a single harmonic interpretation.”

Daniel Levitin (1957) American psychologist

This is Your Brain on Music (2006)

Art, Music

“She quarreled with the nanny and accused her of brushing Misha's teeth sideways rather than up and down.”

Woody Allen book Mere Anarchy

Mere Anarchy (2007)

“Poirot twinkled at her gently.”

Agatha Christie book Death in the Clouds

Death in the Clouds (1935)

“…I had no love for politics. I treasured the privacy of my family life. My mother respected both these sentiments. Then my brother, Sanjay was killed in the prime of his life. It broke a mother’s heart. It did not break a Prime Minister’s will. Without even a day’s break, she carried on her noble task single-minded in fulfilling her pledge to her people
There is a loneliness that only a bereaved mother can know…she called to me in her loneliness. I went to her side. At her instance, I left my love for flying at her instance I joined her as a political aide. From her I learned my first political lessons. It was she who urged me to respond to the insistent demand from the constituency and the part to take my brother’s place as Member of Parliament for Amethi. With her blessings I was made General Secretary of my party asking me to accept the challenge of stepping into her shoes.
In accepting this challenge I fulfilled a national duty and a filial duty of a son to a mother.”

Rajiv Gandhi (1944–1991) sixth Prime Minister of India

In Memorable Quotes from Rajiv Gandhi and on Rajiv Gandhi (2009) http://books.google.co.in/books?id=L5bTCgLM1lYC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false, Quote 37 Quote

Love, Life, People, Family

“Pandu was married to Kunti, the adopted daughter of King Kuntibhoja. Her real father was King Sura of the Yadava clan. Kuntibhoja had adopted her and used her to serve a Brahmin visiting his court. This Brahmin [Durvasa] was known both for his irascibility and his great magical powers. Kunti served him so well that he blessed the king and gave Kunti several mantras with which she could call any god to father her child. In her childish curiosity, Kunti used one mantra and called Surya, the sun-god. He appeared immediately and begot a son on her. Frightened, Kunti put the child in a box, with gold and jewelery, and set it in the river. The boy was found and adopted by the suta Adhiratha, and became known as Karna.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Source: The End Of An Epoch, p. 12.

God, Boy, Appearance, Sun

“It is these two thoughts of union and peace which appear to me to be especially appropriate for our consideration on this day. Like all else in human experience, they are not things which can be set apart and have an independent existence. They exist by reason of the concrete actions of men and women. It is the men and women whose actions between 1861 and 1865 gave us union and peace that we are met here this day to commemorate. When we seek for the chief characteristic of those actions, we come back to the word which I have already uttered — renunciation. They gave up ease and home and safety and braved every impending danger and mortal peril that they might accomplish these ends. They thereby became in this Republic a body of citizens set apart and marked for every honor so long as our Nation shall endure. Here on this wooded eminence, overlooking the Capital of the country for which they fought, many of them repose, officers of high rank and privates mingling in a common dust, holding the common veneration of a grateful people. The heroes of other wars lie with them, and in a place of great preeminence lies one whose identity is unknown, save that he was a soldier of this Republic who fought that its ideals, its institutions, its liberties, might be perpetuated among men. A grateful country holds all these services as her most priceless heritage, to be cherished forevermore.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Freedom and its Obligations (1924)

Women, Men, War, People

“Judah Benjamin said, "The nations of Europe continue to abhor our policy, try as we will to convince them that we cannot do otherwise. Mr. Mason has written from London that Her Majesty's government might well have been willing to extend us recognition two years ago, were it not for the continuation of slavery among us: so Lord Russell has assured him, at any rate. Mr. Thouvenel, the French foreign minister, has expressed similar sentiments to Mr. Slidell in Paris." Slavery, Lee thought. In the end, the world's outside view of the Confederate States of America was colored almost exclusively by its response to the South's peculiar institution. Never mind that the U. S. Constitution was a revocable compact between independent states, never mind that the North had consistently used its numerical majority to force through Congress tariffs that worked only to ruin the South. So long as black men were bought and sold, all the high ideals of the Confederacy would be ignored.”

Harry Turtledove book The Guns of the South

Source: The Guns of the South (1992), p. 234

Men, World, Color

“[About Edith Stein] I see her groping, wonder-filled prayer, which in the beginning resembles a conversation she is conducting with herself and is very managed. It is half like a question she puts to herself without knowing exactly what she means; it may be that the step she takes does not need to be completed by her; the question does not need to be perfectly articulated; perhaps God would be able to intervene in the middle of her step, in order to make his presence known and answer her question in a much more profound way than she herself would have expected or even would have been capable of expecting. And God truly answers. She prays more and more and finally receives a victorious certainty and rejoices. From this moment of victorious certainty on, everything is perfectly simple and unambiguous. She will follow the path God shows to her; she belongs to him; she has rediscovered her childlike cheerfulness, which has increased and become clearly manifest through love and faith.”

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

Book of All Saints (1966)

Love, God, Faith, Way

“When she was home from her boarding-school I used to see her almost every day sometimes, because their house was right opposite the Town Hall Annexe. She and her younger sister used to go in and out a lot, often with young men, which of course I didn’t like. When I had a free moment from the files and ledgers I stood by the window and used to look down over the road over the frosting and sometimes I’d see her. In the evening I marked it in my observations diary, at first with X, and then when I knew her name with M.”

John Fowles book The Collector

The Collector (1963)

Men, School, Home, Sister

“Ideas came swarming through her, and like many people who labour in the obsession of solitude, she lacked the detachment to challenge them.”

Helen Garner book Cosmo Cosmolino

Page 57, describing Maxine.
Cosmo Cosmolino (1992)

People, Idea, Solitude

“I have been strongly influenced by the Mahabharata, discourses of the Buddha, Sri Aurobindo and Plato. My masters have been Vyasa, Buddha and Sri Aurobindo, as elucidated by Ram Swarup. … Paganism was a term of contempt invented by Christianity for people in the countryside who lived close to and in harmony with Nature, and whose ways of worship were spontaneous as opposed to the contrived though-categories constructed by Christianity’s city-based manipulators of human minds. In due course, the term was extended to cover all spiritually spontaneous culture of the world – Greek, Roman, Iranian, Indian, Chinese, native American. It became a respectable term for those who revolted against Christianity in the modern West. But it has yet to recover its spiritual dimension which Christianity had eclipsed. For me, Hinduism preserves ancient Paganism in all its dimensions. In that sense, I am a Pagan. The term "Polytheism' comes from Biblical discourse, which has the term 'theism' as its starting point. I have no use for these terms. They create confusion. I dwell in a different universe of discourse which starts with 'know thyself' and ends with the discovery, 'thou art that'…
I met her [Mother Theresa] briefly in Calcutta in 1954 or 1955 when she was unknown. I had gone to see an American journalist who was a friend and had fallen ill, when she came to his house asking for money for her charity set-up. The friend went inside to get some cash, leaving his five or six year old daughter in the drawing room. Teresa told her, "He is not your real father. Your real father is in heaven." The girl said, "He is very ill." Theresa commented, "If he dies, your father does not die. For your real father who is in heaven never 'dies."”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

The girl was in tears. Interview, The Observer. Date : February 22, 1997. http://sathyavaadi.tripod.com/truthisgod/Articles/goel.htm https://egregores.blogspot.com/2009/10/buddha-sri-aurobindo-and-plato.html https://egregores.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/hindus-and-pagans-a-return-to-the-time-of-the-gods/

Money, People, World, Art