Quotes about herring
page 59

“I don’t suppose she would recognize a deep, beautiful thought if you handed it to her on a skewer with tartare sauce.”

P.G. Wodehouse book The Code of the Woosters

The Code of the Woosters (1938)

“Nearby…. are monsters personifying Pestilence and Famine, those inseparable partners of War. On the ground, turning her back, lies a woman with a broken lute representing Harmony… [T]here is also a mother with a child in her arms indicating that fecundity, procreation and charity are thwarted by War, which corrupts and destroys everything.”

Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) Flemish painter

Rubens is describing his painting 'The Horrors of War' https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Rubens_-_The_Consequences_of_War.jpg 1637 In a letter to Justus Sustermans, c. 1637 (Rubens' agent at the Medici court in Florence); as quoted in Rembrandts Eyes', by w:Simon Schrama, Alfred A. Knopf, Borzoi Books, New York 1999, p. 180 Simon Schrama describes: The blue skies in the painting are overwhelmed by smoky darkness.. ..despite support from the usual team of putti and her own spectacularly opulent charms, Venus is losing the battle for Mars's attentions to the Fury Alecto 1625 - 1640

War

“The Prophet said, "He who has a slave-girl and teaches her good manners and improves her education and then manumits and marries her, will get a double reward; and any slave who observes Allah's right and his master's right will get a double reward."”

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

Narrated Abu Musa Al-Ashari, in Bukhari, Volume 3, Book 46, Number 723
Sunni Hadith

Education, Girl

“In the age of the concentration camp, when from 1935 to 1947 or so, she wrote her very best novels, no writer did more to illumine the springs of human cruelty, suffering and bravery.”

Ivy Compton-Burnett (1884–1969) English writer

Angus Wilson, quoted in Malcolm Bradbury The Modern British Novel (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2001) p. 250.
Criticism

Age, Spring, Suffering

“Her own grief grieved her. His devastated her. (On Sophie Mol's death, describing Mamachi's grief, and Chacko's).”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

The God of Small Things (1997)

Death

“Narrated Umm Khalid: I (the daughter of Khalid ibn Said) went to Allah’s Messenger with my father and I was wearing a yellow shirt. Allah’s Messenger said, "Sanah, Sanah!" (`Abdullah, the narrator, said that sanah meant "good" in the Ethiopian language). I then started playing with the seal of prophethood (between the Prophet’s shoulders) and my father rebuked me harshly for that. Allah’s Messenger said, "Leave her."”

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

The Prophet, then, invoked Allah to grant her a long life thrice.
Al-Bukhari [citation needed]
Sunni Hadith

Life, Daughters

““Can you really kill the Goddess?” Jane asked.
“You stupid gobbet of flesh! Don’t you understand yet? There is no Goddess.”
“No,” Jane cried. “You said yourself—”
“I lied,” the dragon said with a fearful complacency. “Everyone you have ever met has lied to you. Life exists, and all who live are born to suffer. The best moments are fleeting and bought with the coin of exquisite torment. All attachments end. All loved ones die. All that you value passes away. In such a vexatious existence laughter is madness and joy is folly. Shall we accept that it all happens for no reason, with no cause? That there is nobody to blame but ourselves but that accepting the responsibility is pointless for doing so cannot ease, defer, or deaden the pain? Not likely! It is so much more comforting to erect a straw figure on which to blame it all.
“Some bow down before the Goddess and others curse her every name. There is not a fart’s difference between the two approaches. They cling to the fiction of the Goddess because admitting the alternative is unbearable.””

Michael Swanwick book The Iron Dragon's Daughter

Source: The Iron Dragon's Daughter (1993), Chapter 19 (pp. 339-340)

Love, Life, Pain, Stupidity

“I think that everybody has a backhoe in his or her head, and at moments of stress or trouble you can fire it up and simply push everything into a great big slit-trench in the floor of your conscious mind. Get rid of it. Bury it. Except that that slit-trench goes down into the subconscious, and sometimes, in dreams, the bodies stir and walk.”

Stephen King book Christine

Pt. 1, Ch. 18
Christine (1983)

Dreams, Thinking

“When I started out, there weren't that many strong female roles, especially women who weren't just strong emotionally. I mean this is a also woman [her character on The Chicago Code, Teresa Colvin] who is strong physically, who isn't afraid of physicality. But now there are a lot more roles for women that are quite strong. I think the Academy Award nominations bespeak how many really great roles there are for women right now, and that's primarily because women are creating those roles for themselves.”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

Interview on Good Day Atlanta (4 February 2011) http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/dpp/good_day_atl/Actress-Jennifer-Beals-of-The-Chicago-Code-20110204-gda-sd/.

Women, Thinking, Strong

“My faith would lay her hand
On that dear head of Thine,
While like a penitent I stand,
And there confess my sin.”

Isaac Watts (1674–1748) English hymnwriter, theologian and logician

Source: Attributed from postum publications, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 72.

Faith

“As when a rose, ere-while of bloom so gay,
Thrown from the careless virgin's breast away,
Lies faded on the plain, the living red,
The snowy white, and all its fragrance fled;
So from her cheeks the roses died away,
And pale in death the beauteous Inez lay.”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Assim como a bonina, que cortada
Antes do tempo foi, cândida e bela,
Sendo das mãos lascivas maltratada
Da menina que a trouxe na capela,
O cheiro traz perdido e a cor murchada:
Tal está morta a pálida donzela,
Secas do rosto as rosas, e perdida
A branca e viva cor, co'a doce vida.
Stanza 134 (tr. William Julius Mickle)
Epic poetry, Os Lusíadas (1572), Canto III

Death

“This despicable remake of the despicable 1978 film I Spit on Your Grave adds yet another offense: a phony moral equivalency. In the original, a woman foolishly thought to go on holiday by herself at a secluded cabin. She attracted the attention of depraved local men, who raped her, one after the other. Then the film ended with her fatal revenge. In this film, less time is devoted to the revenge, and more time to verbal, psychological and physical violence against her. Thus it works even better as vicarious cruelty against women.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/i-spit-on-your-grave-2010 of I Spit on Your Grave (6 October 2010) Reviews, Zero star reviews

Women, Men, Revenge, Time

“A devout and serious Christian, she was often bothered by what she read of socialists because she could not, instantly and absolutely, see where they were so wrong. To her horrified ear, they kept sounding as though they had ideas rather like Christ's.”

Claud Cockburn (1904–1981) Irish journalist

Pages 11-12
A Discord of Trumpets (1956)

Idea, Reading, Christ

“I don't try to justify myself or defend myself. I've always done what I had to. She should know for herself that I love her, that I've loved her always, always. Those years you can't replace by words, though. After years and years, words get weaker and weaker.”

Klaus Kinski (1926–1991) German actor

On his daughter, Nastassja, as quoted in Denise Worrell (1989), Icons: Intimate Portraits.

Love

“And the blue gentian flower, that, in the breeze,
Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last.”

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

November. A Sonnet http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16341/16341-h/16341-h.htm#page74 (1824)

Flowers

“A woman does not spend all her time in buying things; she spends part of it in taking them back.”

E. W. Howe (1853–1937) Novelist, magazine and newspaper editor

Country Town Sayings (1911), p16.

Time, Parting

“I was talking earlier — about anarchy and fascism being the two poles of politics. On one hand you’ve got fascism, with the bound bundle of twigs, the idea that in unity and uniformity there is strength; on the other you have anarchy, which is completely determined by the individual, and where the individual determines his or her own life. Now if you move that into the spiritual domain, then in religion, I find very much the spiritual equivalent of fascism. The word “religion” comes from the root word ligare, which is the same root word as ligature, and ligament, and basically means “bound together in one belief.” It’s basically the same as the idea behind fascism; there’s not even necessarily a spiritual component it. Everything from the Republican Party to the Girl Guides could be seen as a religion, in that they are bound together in one belief. So to me, like I said, religion becomes very much the spiritual equivalent of fascism. And by the same token, magic becomes the spiritual equivalent of anarchy, in that it is purely about self-determination, with the magician simply a human being writ large, and in more dramatic terms, standing at the center of his or her own universe. Which I think is a kind of a spiritual statement of the basic anarchist position. I find an awful lot in common between anarchist politics and the pursuit of magic, that there’s a great sympathy there.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

Alan Moore on Anarchism (2009)

Life, Religion, Girl, Idea

“Kunti wins two boons from the encounter: her own virgo intacta and special powers for her son.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Five Holy Virgins, Five Sacred MythsOf Kunti and Satyawati Sexually Assertive Women of the Mahabharata

“He was wrong, as all are who rouse the passive resistance of a woman's nature. The indignity and violence with which she was treated only made her turn more fondly to the shelter of the loving heart she believed was so truly her own. Kindness might have brought her to her father's feet, ready to give up her dearest hopes for his sake; but his harsh anger only made her tremble at the hopeless future.”

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

The Monthly Magazine

Love, Hope, Nature, Future

“"She's like a woman, sir, take care of her and she'll take care of you." "You'll notice he let Mister Sharpe do the ramming, sir."”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Rifleman Hagman and Sergeant Patrick Harper, p. 188
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Havoc (2003)

“From an early age. I used to dress up and impersonate our next-door neighbor, Miss Cox. She wore rubber boots, a wool hat, and her nose always dripped. My father died when I was 6 and we were really sad, so I put on a show for my mum. [In a mocking American accent] Looking back now, it was a kind of therapy.”

Tracey Ullman (1959) English-born actress, comedian, singer, dancer, screenwriter, producer, director, author and businesswoman

"Q&A: Tracey Ullman" http://www.newsweek.com/newsmakers-127011 (Newsweek, 19 September 2004)

Age, Sadness

“[Her birth] was the best moment of my life, by far, and it didn't do it justice watching it on Skype…When I saw my child for the first time it just switched the switch, you know. That's when you realise you love something more than you love yourself.”

Sonny Bill Williams (1985) New Zealand rugby player and heavyweight boxer

Williams on birth of his first child. Noble name for SBW's baby http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=11369071, by Rachel Glucina, NZ Herald, dated 5 December 2014.

Love, Life, Justice, Birth

“When your mother has grown old
and with her so have you,
When that which once came easy
has at last become a burden,
When her loving, true eyes
no longer see life as once they did
When her weary feet
no longer want to wear her as she stands,
then reach an arm to her shoulder,
escort her gently, with happiness and passion
The hour will come, when you, crying,
must take her on her final walk.
And if she asks you, then give her an answer
And if she asks you again, listen!
And if she asks you again, take in her words
not impetuously, but gently and in peace!
And if she cannot quite understand you,
explain all to her gladly
For the hour will come, the bitter hour
when her mouth will ask for nothing more.”

Georg Runsky

Source: The poem was originally titled "Habe Geduld". It was first published in Blüthen des Herzens around 1906. https://www.bartfmdroog.com/droog/dd/bluthen_des_herzens_scans.html#front

Adolf Hitler used this poem with the title "Deine Mutter" in the handwritten manuscript he signed and dated in 1923. For this reason, this poem is sometimes misattributed to him. Adolf Hitler, "Denk' es!" (Be Reminded!) 1923, first published in Sonntag-Morgenpost (14 May 1933).

Life, Cry, Understanding, Passion

“We all know what the negro has been as a slave. In this relation we have his experience of two hundred and fifty years before us, and can easily know the character and qualities he has developed and exhibited during this long and severe ordeal. In his new relation to his environments, we see him only in the twilight of twenty years of semi-freedom; for he has scarcely been free long enough to outgrow the marks of the lash on his back and the fetters on his limbs. He stands before us, today, physically, a maimed and mutilated man. His mother was lashed to agony before the birth of her babe, and the bitter anguish of the mother is seen in the countenance of her offspring. Slavery has twisted his limbs, shattered his feet, deformed his body and distorted his features. He remains black, but no longer comely. Sleeping on the dirt floor of the slave cabin in infancy, cold on one side and warm on the other, a forced circulation of blood on the one side and chilled and retarded circulation on the other, it has come to pass that he has not the vertical bearing of a perfect man. His lack of symmetry, caused by no fault of his own, creates a resistance to his progress which cannot well be overestimated, and should be taken into account, when measuring his speed in the new race of life upon which he has now entered.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1880s, The Future of the Colored Race (1886)

Life, Birth, Sleep, Freedom

“(On Paris Hilton) Believe it or not, I sort of know her a little bit. And based on that, I'm here to tell you that she is actually……. um….. retarded!”

Kathy Griffin (1960) American actress and comedian

Straight To Hell (2007)

“The first thing you see will be the two Cyanean Rocks, at the end of the straits. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever made his way between them, for not being fixed to the bottom of the sea they frequently collide, flinging up the water in a seething mass which falls on the rocky flanks of the straits with a resounding roar. Now if, as I take it, you are god-fearing travellers and men of sense, you will be advised by me: you will not rashly throw away your lives or rush into danger with the recklessness of youth. Make an experiment first. Send out a dove from Argo to explore the way. If she succeeds in flying in between the Rocks and out across the sea, do not hesitate to follow in her path, but get a firm grip on your oars and cleave the water of the straits. For that is the time when salvation will depend, not on your prayers, but on your strength of arm. So think of nothing else, be firm, and spend your energies on what will pay you best. By all means pray to the gods, but choose an earlier moment. And if the dove flies on, but comes to grief midway, turn back. It is always better to submit to heaven; and you could not possibly escape a dreadful end. The Rocks would crush you, even if Argo were an iron ship.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book II. Onward to Colchis, Lines 317–340

Men, God, Youth, Fear

“I accept this challenge wholeheartedly because I believe in the character and ability of Senator Grace. Like her father FPJ, Senator Poe’s heart is in the right place. I believe that, as president, Senator Grace Poe or “GP” will lead a “GP””

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Gobyernong may Puso or a Government with Heart.
2015, Speech: Declaration as Vice Presidential Candidate

Heart

“I've thought upon thy brow when Night
Threw o'er my pallet her summer moonlight,
And I have looked on the midnight sky
To catch the depth and light of thy eye;
I painted from these and from memory,
For I could not paint when I looked on thee.”

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

28th April 1824) Raphael Showing his Mistress her Portrait By Mr. Brockedon. (British Gallery.
The London Literary Gazette, 1824

Light, Memory, Summer, Painting

“I was with Karen Carpenter in Vegas. We were invited to Elvis's dressing room and I had to drag her away. She was such a sweet girl but I could see what was going on. I met him a few times after that, and he flirted very heavily with me. I was supposed to do a movie with him and that was stopped right away by my husband!”

Petula Clark (1932) British actress and singer

Calgary Herald, 14 Feb 2013

Girl, Time

“A woman well bred and well taught, furnished with the additional accomplishments of knowledge and behaviour, is a creature without comparison. Her society is the emblem of sublimer enjoyments, her person is angelic, and her conversation heavenly. She is all softness and sweetness, peace, love, wit, and delight. She is every way suitable to the sublimest wish, and the man that has such a one to his portion, has nothing to do but to rejoice in her, and be thankful.”

Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) English trader, writer and journalist

The Education of Women (1719)

Love, Peace, Angels, Way

“Japan cannot remain indifferent to anyone's taking action, under any pretext, which is prejudicial to the maintenance of law and order in st Asia for which she, if only in view of her geographic position, has the most vital concern.”

Kōki Hirota (1878–1948) Japanese politician executed

Quoted in "Modern Japan: A Brief History" - Page 135 - by Arthur E. Tiedemann - 1962.

Law, Indifference

“For what do we now see in the country? We see a man who, as Senator of the United States, voted to tamper with the public mails for the benefit of slavery, sitting in the President's chair. Two days after he is seated we see a judge rising in the place of John Jay — who said, 'Slaves, though held by the laws of men, are free by the laws of God' — to declare that a seventh of the population not only have no original rights as men, but no legal rights as citizens. We see every great office of State held by ministers of slavery; our foreign ambassadors not the representatives of our distinctive principle, but the eager advocates of the bitter anomaly in our system, so that the world sneers as it listens and laughs at liberty. We see the majority of every important committee of each house of Congress carefully devoted to slavery. We see throughout the vast ramification of the Federal system every little postmaster in every little town professing loyalty to slavery or sadly holding his tongue as the price of his salary, which is taxed to propagate the faith. We see every small Custom-House officer expected to carry primary meetings in his pocket and to insult at Fourth-of-July dinners men who quote the Declaration of Independence. We see the slave-trade in fact, though not yet in law, reopened — the slave-law of Virginia contesting the freedom of the soil of New York We see slave-holders in South Carolina and Louisiana enacting laws to imprison and sell the free citizens of other States. Yes, and on the way to these results, at once symptoms and causes, we have seen the public mails robbed — the right of petition denied — the appeal to the public conscience made by the abolitionists in 1833 and onward derided and denounced, and their very name become a byword and a hissing. We have seen free speech in public and in private suppressed, and a Senator of the United States struck down in his place for defending liberty. We have heard Mr. Edward Everett, succeeding brave John Hancock and grand old Samuel Adams as governor of the freest State in history, say in his inaugural address in 1836 that all discussion of the subject which tends to excite insurrection among the slaves, as if all discussion of it would not be so construed, 'has been held by highly respectable legal authorities an offence against the peace of the commonwealth, which may be prosecuted as a misdemeanor at common law'. We have heard Daniel Webster, who had once declared that the future of the slave was 'a widespread prospect of suffering, anguish, and death', now declaring it to be 'an affair of high morals' to drive back into that doom any innocent victim appealing to God and man, and flying for life and liberty. We have heard clergymen in their pulpits preaching implicit obedience to the powers that be, whether they are of God or the Devil — insisting that God's tribute should be paid to Caesar, and, by sneering at the scruples of the private conscience, denouncing every mother of Judea who saved her child from the sword of Herod's soldiers.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Life, Death, Men, God

“There is a city, that for slaves
Has kings, and nations, winds, and waves:
St. Mark is conscious of her power,
His winged lion marks her tower.”

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

The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

“Does not even the most sexually democratic of us, among which number I unquestionably count myself, not choke back the tiniest sob at the sight of poor old Denis stumbling along behind, struggling pitifully to hold his trilby on, as the PM strides across Goose Green with the wind managing only to make her hair look more Medusan, and the very mines praying she will not crush them under-heel?”

Alan Coren (1938–2007) humorist and writer from the United Kingdom

"Subordinate Claus", Bumf (1984).

“Everyone wants to be around her because she's always the one at the discos and at the centre of things.”

Louise Burfitt-Dons (1953) Activist, writer, blogger

"The Bully," Act Against Bullying 2002

“Inside every widow there's a spider that weaves it's webs in the corners of her heart.”

Avner Strauss (1954) Israeli musician

"Voices Within the Ark", ibid.

Heart

“This bored fantastic woman, with her animal nature, giving herself the pleasure of seeing her enemy struck down, not a particularly keen one for her because she is so weary of having all her desires satisfied. This woman, walking nonchalantly in a vegetal, bestial manner, through the gardens that have just been stained by a horrible murder, which has frightened the executioner himself and made him flee distracted…. When I want to render these fine nuances, I do not find them in the subject, but in the nature of women in real life who seek unhealthy emotions and are too stupid even to understand the horror in the most appalling situations.”

Gustave Moreau (1826–1898) French painter

On Salomé, p. 113
Gustave Moreau (1972)

Life, Women, Pleasure, Stupidity

“If Miss Sloviak were not already a transvestite, Crabtree would certainly make her into one.”

Michael Chabon book Wonder Boys

Wonder Boys (1995)

“My father’s mother, a pure-blooded Indian from Oaxaca, had been a gifted fifteen-year-old when Benito Juárez won Mexico’s independence from France. They’d taken her to the Academy of blah-blah-blah in Mexico City, and she’d astonished her European professors by learning French in six weeks.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Crazy Loco Love: A Memoir (2008)

Learning

“No particular place to go,
So we parked way out on the Kokomo
The night was young and the moon was bold
So we both decided to take a stroll
Can you imagine the way I felt?
I couldn't unfasten her safety belt!”

Chuck Berry (1926–2017) American rock-and-roll musician

"No Particular Place to Go" (1964)
Song lyrics

Way, Imagination, Night

“(Man at bar) You know the kind of woman I could really go for?... Someone intelligent, witty, passionate about her work, totally involved in life, and willing to give it all up for me.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, pp. 216-217

Life, Intelligence, Passion

“Here I saw a part of the compassion of our Lady, Saint Mary: for Christ and she were so oned in love that the greatness of her loving was cause of the greatness of her pain. For in this I saw a Substance of Nature’s Love, continued by Grace, that creatures have to Him: which Kind Love was most fully shewed in His sweet Mother, and overpassing; for so much as she loved Him more than all other, her pains passed all other. For ever the higher, the mightier, the sweeter that the love be, the more sorrow it is to the lover to see that body in pain that is loved.
And all His disciples and all His true lovers suffered pains more than their own bodily dying. For I am sure by mine own feeling that the least of them loved Him so far above himself that it passeth all that I can say.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Eighth Revelation, Chapter 18

Love, Pain, Feeling, Lovers

“Truth…never comes into the world but like a bastard, to the ignominy of him that brought her forth.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643), Introduction

Truth, World

“Dicko said that he thinks Mark has a problem with her and thinks she doesn't have a recordable voice. Mark agreed but said if David Hasselhoff can sell records so can Hayley.”

Hayley Jensen (1983) Australian singer

Australian Idol, Final Performances, Final 7

Problem, Thinking

“From this patient, and from others like her, I have learnt that seemingly epileptic reactions in adolescents can indicate the latter's capacity to step out of time. In such cases the apparent epileptic tendency disappears as the patient matures.”

Arthur Guirdham (1905–1992) British physician, psychiatrist and writer

Source: The Cathars and Reincarnation (1970), p. 16

Time

“As for Lucrezia, there wasn't even a rumor in her own day that the strawberries at her Wednesday luncheons were dipped in sugar of lead and the other dishes tastefully sprayed with antimony, hellebore, corrosive sublimate, and deadly nightshade, all popular Renaissance flavors.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part III: Strange Bedfellows, Lucrezia Borgia

“Adela returned on luminous mornings, like Pomona from the fire of the enkindled day, tipping from her basket the colourful beauty of the sun: glistening wild cherries, full of water under their transparent skins, mysterious black cherries whose aroma surpassed that which would be realised in their taste, and apricots, in whose golden pulp lay the core of the long afternoons.”

Bruno Schulz (1892–1942) Polish novelist and painter

“August” http://www.schulzian.net/translation/shops/august1.htm His father, Adela (the domestic servant)

Beauty, Water, Sun

“Judge and prosecutor had hammered it home that Lady Chatterly was an immoral woman, that she had had sexual relations before marriage, that she had committed adultery under her husband's roof; as if these charges somehow disqualified her from participation in serious literature. Indeed, there were long periods of the trial during which an outsider might well have assumed that a divorce case was being heard.”

Kenneth Tynan (1927–1980) English theatre critic and writer

"Lady Chatterly's Trial (The Old Bailey, 20 October - 2 November 1960)", p. 409
Tynan Right and Left (1967)

Marriage, Home, Literature

“On April 3, 1956, according to news reports, a Mrs. Julia Chase of Hagerstown, Maryland, while on a tour of the White House, slipped away from her tour group and vanished into the heart of the building. For four and a half hours, Mrs. Chase, who was described later as “dishevelled, vague and not quite lucid,” wandered through the White House, setting small fires—five in all. That’s how tight security was in those days: a not-quite-lucid woman was able to roam unnoticed through the executive mansion for more than half a working day.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

Source: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 62

Heart, Housing

“Britney Spears is recording a rap song about the recent controversies in her life. "I can't wait to hear that!", said no one.”

Amy Poehler (1971) American actress

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/04/04bupdate.phtml
Weekend Update samples

Life, Waiting

“…NAFTA, signed by her husband, is perhaps the greatest disaster trade deal in the history of the world.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, October, Second presidential debate (October 9, 2016)

World, History

“I recall some years ago this mother and son in California who was very angry and stomped out of the meeting and I did not see her again because I said it was the duty of Christian parents to have their child in the Christian school. And she went on about how wonderful their church was, and how marvelous the youth was, and her daughter had the best kind of Christian training imaginable and she was a good witness at school. And I never saw her again but I heard from her about six, seven years later when she called me weeping. Did I know a school that would take her daughter because her daughter was now into demonism, she was out sometimes for two or three nights, was into drugs and promiscuity, if the mother tried to say anything to her the girl thought nothing about pulling a knife and backing the mother against the wall with a knife against her throat and threatening her life. And she wanted to know if there was a Christian school in town, in particular, and I told her it would take a full time guard to stand over your daughter every moment, and she wanted, she felt that it was unchristian that they wouldn’t take her daughter. And I reminded her of her stand a few years back, when she continued to whine and feel sorry for herself, someone was going to take the mess she had created and hand her back her daughter, perhaps to stick her back in the public schools again.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Dangers Inherent in Public Education (March 24, 1986)

Life, Youth, School, Feeling

“Candy came from out on the Island
In the backroom she was everybody's darlin'
But she never lost her head
Even when she was giving head
She says, Hey babe
Take a walk on the wild side”

Lou Reed (1942–2013) American musician

Walk on the Wild Side Full lyrics online http://www.slangcity.com/songs/lou_reed.htm The title was inspired by Lou Reed being approached in 1970 for a musical based on Nelson Algren's 1956 novel A Walk on the Wild Side. Lyrics

“She has a fascination with Mayan prophecies, and she's writing a book that's sort of her remembrance of her past incarnation. Whatever she applies herself to, she makes it this beautiful, glorious world around her. All of us kids have always been artistic because of her influence.”

Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist

on his mom, Dolly Wiseman. Spin (October 2001)

Books, World, Beauty, Past

“Suppose Mother wants Tommy to call at the cobbler's every morning on his way to school to see if her shoes are done, she can ask him afresh every morning. Alternatively she can stick up a notice once and for all in the hall which he will see when he leaves for school and which tells him to call for the shoes, and also to destroy the notice when he comes back if he has the shoes with him.”

Alan Turing Computing Machinery and Intelligence

Computing Machinery and Intelligence (1950)

School, Shoe, Way

“Yes, madam, Nature is creeping up. [in response to a lady who said that a landscape reminded her of his work]”

James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) American-born, British-based artist

D.C. Seitz, Whistler Stories (1913)
posthumous published

Nature

““You ask a question that cannot be answered without knowing the nature of the primal chaos from which being arose. Is Spiral Castle like a crystal, once shattered, forever destroyed? That is what I prefer to believe. Or is it like a still pond, whose mirrored surface may be shattered and churned, but which will inevitably restore itself as the waves die down? You may believe this if you choose. You can even believe—why not?—that the restored universe will be an improvement on the old. For me, so long as I have my vengeance I care not what comes after.”
“And us?”
“We die.” An involuntary rise in the dragon’s voice, a slight quickening of cadence, told her that she had touched upon some unclean hunger akin to but less seemly than battle-lust. “We die beyond any chance of rebirth. You and I and all we have known will cease to be. The worlds that gave us birth, the creatures that shaped us—all will be unmade. So comprehensive will be their destruction that even their pasts will die with them. It is an extinction beyond death that we court. Though the ages stretch empty and desolate into infinity and beyond, there will be none to remember us, nor any to mourn. Our joys, sorrows, struggles, will never have been.
“And even if there is a universe to come, it will know naught of us.””

Michael Swanwick book The Iron Dragon's Daughter

Source: The Iron Dragon's Daughter (1993), Chapter 19 (pp. 340-341)

Death, Hunger, Age, World

“When news had reached me through well-informed channels that my Aunt Agatha for many years a widow, or derelict, as I believed it is called, was about to take another pop at matrimony, my first emotion, as was natural in the circumstances, had been a gentle pity for the unfortunate goop slated to step up the aisle with her - she, as you are aware, being my tough aunt, the one who eats broken bottles and conducts human sacrifices by the light of the full moon.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Joy in the Morning

Joy in the Morning (1947)

Nature, Light

“According to our belief, Japan was founded by the Sun Goddess Amaterasu Omikami, who is revered by the entire nation for her all-pervading virtue, and from whom our Imperial House is descended.”

Sadao Araki (1877–1966) Japanese general

Quoted in "Contemporary Japan" - Page 422 - by Nihon Gaiji Kyokai - 1932

Sun, Housing

“[Aphrodite] set out, and after searching up and down Olympus for her boy, found him far away in the fruit-laden orchard of Zeus. With him was Ganymede, whose beauty had so captivated Zeus that he took him up to heaven to live with the immortals. The two lads, who had much in common, were playing with golden knuckle-bones. Eros, the greedy boy, was standing there with a whole handful of them clutched to his breast and a happy flush mantling his cheeks. Near by sat Ganymede, hunched up, silent and disconsolate, with only two left. He threw these for what they were worth in quick succession and was furious when Eros laughed. Of course he lost them both immediately – they joined the rest. So he went off in despair with empty hands and did not notice the goddess's approach. Aphrodite came up to her boy, took his chin in her hand, and said: 'Why this triumphant smile, you rascal?”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

I do believe you won the game unfairly by cheating a beginner…
Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book III. Jason and Medea

Smile, Beauty, Search, Boy

“I disapproved of the number of men she had traipsing into her bedroom and suggested she should have a turnstile on her bedroom door.”

Jani Allan (1952) South African columnist and broadcaster

Describing Linda Shaw, her former flatmate and defence witness in 1992 in the London High Court to George Carman, defence lawyer representing Channel 4 during the libel case she filed against the broadcaster. http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/courtroom-14-the-owl-has-landed-1535309.html Other

Men

“When a woman get pregnant, it's an issue between her and her girlfriends. When a woman get pregnant, her and her girlfriends form an abortion tribunal, and they vote on the child like it was Survivor. Then the first girlfriend throws in her two cents: "Child, you should have that baby, that man got some good hair, it's wavy, it's wavy." Then second girlfriend throws in her two cents: "Girl, why are we even talking about this? Ain't we supposed to go to Cancun next weekend? Get rid of that baby." And that's how life is decided in America.”

Chris Rock (1965) American comedian, actor, screenwriter, television producer, film producer, and director

Never Scared (HBO, 2004)

Life, Girl, Baby

“A sinning nun, her face in a plate of cakes, caught my eye as I descended on the moving stair.”

Carole Morin British writer

Penniless in Park Lane

“On June 20, 2009, twenty-six-year-old Neda Agha-Soltan was shot to death in Iran while participating in a peaceful demonstration in Tehran. Her death became a “galvanizing symbol, both within Iran and increasingly around the world,” Rachel Maddow said on MSNBC. Video images of her plight circled the globe. The same day Roger Cohen denounced the killing on the editorial page of the New York Times. Only fifteen days later, nineteen-year-old Isis Obed Murillo was shot dead by the Honduran military during a peaceful protest in Honduras. Like Agha-Soltan’s, his death was recorded in video images that circulated on the Internet. The differential media interest in US newspaper coverage was 736-8 in favor of Agha-Soltan; the TV differential was 231-1 in favor of Agha-Soltan. The dramatic video images of Murillo’s killing never caught hold in the world beyond Honduras. The social media, which had displayed such potential for organizing protest in Iran, failed to come to life in Honduras. The Propaganda Model is as strong and applicable as it was thirty years ago. […] the performance of the MSM [mainstream media] in treating the run-up to the Iraq War, the conflict with Iran, and Russia’s alleged election “meddling” and “aggression” in Ukraine and Crimea, offer case studies of biases as dramatic as those offered in the 1988 edition of Manufacturing Consent. The Propaganda Model lives on.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

the last published words in Herman’s lifetime
Herman (2017), “Still Manufacturing Consent: The Propaganda Model at Thirty” in Roth and Huffman, eds., Censored 2018. p. 221.
2010s

Life, Death, War, World

“Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

F 88
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook F (1776-1779)

Dreams

“What's all this talk about me being teamed with Ginger Rogers? I will not have it Leland--I did not go into pictures to be teamed with her or anyone else, and if that is the program in mind for me I will not stand for it. I don't mind making another picture with her but as for this teams idea, it's out.”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

Fred Astaire in a letter to his agent Leland Hayward dated February 9, 1934. He went on to make a further nine musical films with Rogers. (M).

Idea

“And I just like the guy. He's a good joe. Obviously loves his wife, calls her his better half, and polls show America agrees.”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

On George W. Bush.
White House Correspondents' Association Dinner (2006)

Love, Guy

“I first met Diego [who became later her husband] while he was painting the amphitheater [at the Escuela National Preparatoria, where Rivera was painting the mural 'La Créación', 1922 -1923] and I would really cherish going to see him paint. Orozco [famous Mexican painter] was also painting [murals] in the Prepa, and I remember one time a group of kids wanted to scratch the paintings of Diego and Orozco... Every day we went for ice cream at a stand opposite the law school... Sometimes Diego himself would pass by, and we would tease him. One day they asked me who I wanted to marry, and I said I would not marry, but I did want to have a child by Diego Rivera.”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

27 October 1950
Source: 1946 - 1953, "Song of herself"; interviews by Olga Campos, Sept. 1950, Chapter 'My life', p. 71

School, Law, Time, Painting

“I think it was my grandmother who gave me my ease in being a woman. She was unquestionably feminine — small and dainty and pretty and wholly without masculine protest or feminist aggrievement. She had gone to college when this was a very unusual thing for a girl to do, she had a very firm grasp of anything she paid attention to, she had married and had a child, and she a career of her own. All this was true of my mother as well. But my mother was filled with passionate resentment about the condition of women, as perhaps my grandmother might have been had my grandfather lived and had she borne five children and had little opportunity to use her special gifts and training. As it was, the two women I knew best were mothers and had professional training. So I had no reason to doubt that brains were suitable for a woman. And as I had my father's kind of mind — which was also his mother's — I learned that the mind is not sex-typed.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1970s, Blackberry Winter, 1972, p. 54-55

Women, Children, Sex, Girl

“It is an interesting law of romance that a truly strong woman will choose a strong man who disagrees with her over a weak one who goes along. Strength demands intelligence, intelligence demands stimulation, and weakness is boring. It is better to find a partner you can contend with for a lifetime than one who accommodates you because he doesn't really care. … Sixty seconds of wondering if someone is about to kiss you is more entertaining than 60 minutes of kissing. … Spill the beans, and the conversation is history. Speak in code, with wit and challenge, and the process of decryption is like foreplay.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-winslow-boy-1999 of The Winslow Boy (28 May 1999) Reviews, Three-and-a-half star reviews

Law, History, Intelligence, Kiss

“A man must have something to grumble about; and if he can’t complain that his wife harries him to death with her perversity and ill-humour, he must complain that she wears him out with her kindness and gentleness.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XXXII : Comparisons: Information Rejected; Ralph to Milicent

Death

“I strongly support Donald Trump for President. I think only Trump has the financial independence to take on the special interests. Trump doesn't need the lobbyists or the special interest money with the strings attached. He is the only one who can fix a broken system. Trump's pro-growth tax reform plan will supercharge the economy. Trump can actually cut waste because he is not beholden to the special pleaders. Trump will get in Hillary's face and confront her with her lies. Jeb gave Hillary a medal. The Bush and Clinton families profiteer off public service together. Is it civility or shared criminality? Only Trump can make America great again!”

Roger Stone (1952) American lobbyist

Wikinews interviews three figures from Donald Trump's political past (October 2015)

Money, Family, Support, Thinking

“If the Church would have her face shine, she must go up into the mount, and be alone with God. If she would have her courts of worship resound with eucharistic praises, she must open her eyes, and see humanity lying lame at the temple gates, and heal it in the miraculous name of Jesus.”

Frederic Dan Huntington (1819–1904) American bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 145.

God, Lying

“The American death penalty exists and it withstands in America because it was a basic and constitutive element of its birth and development. Of the famous 102 «Wandering Fathers» that for first they disembarked from the «Mayflower» in that Continent not to ransack the wealths as they made Spaniards and Portuguese in Mexico and in America of the South, but to build you a new and free society, around the two bystanders they were leftovers of jail that ran away the Justice and the jails of Europe, and a bystander they were men that liberty looked for, and above all that religious. The first ones had in pocket the gun, the seconds the Bible, but in his/her Calvinist version that of the retaliation, based on the conception of a God executioner that demands the death of whom without correct motive it gives it.”

Indro Montanelli (1909–2001) Italian journalist

Corriere della Sera, 9 July 2000.
2000s - 2010s

Death, Men, God, Justice

“He in a few minutes ravished this fair creature, or at least would have ravished her, if she had not, by a timely compliance, prevented him.”

Henry Fielding (1707–1754) English novelist and dramatist

Jonathan Wild (1743, rev. 1754), Book III, ch. 7

Time

“The highest prize in a world of men is the most beautiful woman available on your arm and living there in her heart loyal to you.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

On Joe DiMaggio's marriage to Marilyn Monroe, in Marilyn (1973)

Men, World, Beauty, Heart

“If there's anything that I can tell people that are being bullied, it's that the bullies are really the ones that are hurting. Playing Lauren Tanner made me realize that she was evil because she was harboring so much pain from her childhood. And if there's anything I would tell anyone who is being bullied, it's to just let it go. Bullies are the insecure ones and the ones who are trying to get a rise out of you to make themselves feel better.”

Cassie Scerbo (1990) American actress, singer and dancer

Interview: "Sharknado" Star Cassie Scerbo Talks Being a Fanboy Favorite and Her Upcoming Music http://amp.uk.complex.com/pop-culture/2013/07/interview-sharknado-star-cassie-scerbo (July 24, 2013)

Pain, People, Feeling, Evil

“There is another meaning that might be attached to this admonition to be oneself; that one should not try to disguise himself. I suspect this comes nearer to what psychologists mean when they urge people to be themselves. It is presumed that the person who faces the world barefaced is more spontaneous, that he expresses himself more fully, and that he has a better chance of developing all his resources if he assumes no disguises.
But this doctrine of psychological nakedness in human affairs, so much talked about today and which allows the self neither make-up nor costume, leaves very little to the imagination. Not does it invite one to be venturesome. I suspect, for example, that in the Garden of Eden it might have occurred to Adam to take a chance much sooner than he did if Eve had been paying a little more attention to her wardrobe. As it was I hear she had to bribe him with an apple. Later on they say she contrived a saucy little something out of fig leaves.”

George Kelly (psychologist) (1905–1967) American psychologist and therapist

Source: The Language of Hypothesis, 1964, p. 157-8

People, World, Imagination, Chance

“It took a while, but she looked in the mirror,
And she glanced at the license for my name.
A smile seemed to come to her slowly,
It was a sad smile, just the same.
And she said, "How are you Harry?"
I said, "How are you Sue?
Through the too many miles
and the too little smiles
I still remember you."”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

Taxi
Song lyrics, Heads & Tales (1972)

Sadness, Smile

“…the sin of gluttony, also the sin of lecherous intent toward an honourable and high-placed matron…. But more sin is to come, and that sin a double one, namely of lechery in act, perhaps venial in the young but by no means to be condoned, and of adultery, which Saint John saith shall be punished by fire for the act and brimstone for the stink of the ordure of the partners in that sin…. She is but a heathen…. With the instinct of her kind she knoweth the best and most secret places for lechery…. thou are bent on sin, the act of darkness…. On her breath is no honey but the smell of strong drink, the potent mingling of barley and juniper in deadly ferment…. One man is from the Antipodes but, contrary to the superstition of the vulgar, he is like other men…. It is he who seeth the cabin where thy lust worketh itself out, he remembereth lewd advice of the charioteer of Cathay…. approacheth on tiptoe the sound of beastly gratification…. Lust croucheth now above in the rooftree, his wings fearfully foldeth…. But in his rage he spareth not her, calling her Jezebel and harlot….”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Devil of a State (1961)

Men, Secret, Drink, Strong

“In one Eastern Shore town, a teacher reported to work one morning to find that someone had smashed the windows of her schoolhouse. Other black schools across Maryland were burned to the ground. Teachers received death threats. One was even beaten by an angry mob. But despite the risks, understand, students flocked to these schools in droves, often walking as many as eight to ten miles a day to get their education. In fact, the educational association that founded Bowie State wrote in their 1864 report that — and this is a quote — “These people are coming in beyond our ability to receive them.” Desperately poor communities held fundraisers for these schools, schools which they often built with their own hands. And folks who were barely scraping by dug deep into their own pockets to donate money.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

Remarks at Bowie State University ceremony (17 May 2013) http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/05/17/remarks-first-lady-bowie-state-university-commencement-ceremony 2010s

Death, Money, People, Education

“And ruined is the Cossack! He is lost for all the chivalry of the Cossacks! He will see Zaporozhye no more; nor his father's farms, nor the church of God. Ukraine will see no more the bravest of the sons who undertook to defend her. Old Taras will tear the gray hair from his head and curse the day and hour when he begot such a son to shame him.”

Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852) Russian writer

"Taras Bulba" (1835)

God, Tear

“Their loss is the loss of every Filipino. In democracy's darkest hour, she joined many others in confronting a repressive dictatorship. Her willingness to accept the daunting challenge of running against Ferdinand Marcos--despite criticism that she was a "mere housewife"--served as a catalyst for an unprecedented bloodless uprising that would lead to the restoration of democracy and the reinstitution of the many freedoms we enjoy and cherish today.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2009, Statement: on the Passing of Former President Corazon C. Aquino

Democracy, Freedom, Loss

“I want to have her back as an ingredient in the restoration of my past. Could I have wished her anything worse? Having got once through death, to come back and then, at some later date, have all her dying to do all over again? They call Stephen the first martyr. Hadn't Lazarus the rawer deal?”

Clive Staples Lewis book A Grief Observed

A Grief Observed (1961)

Death, Past

“Back to him she would never go, but in her lonely life still lived the sweet memory of that happy time when she believed in him and he was all in all to her.”

Louisa May Alcott A Long Fatal Love Chase

A Long Fatal Love Chase (1866)

Life, Memory, Time, Happiness

“And at that point, too, in Buddhist India as in Babylon, in Rome as in our own cities, a man's choice of the woman who is to be, not mother of his children as amongst peasants and primitives, but his own "companion for life", becomes a problem of mentalities. The Ibsen marriage appears, the "higher spiritual affinity" in which both parties are "free"—free, that is, as intelligences, free from the plantlike urge of the blood to continue itself, and it becomes possible for a Shaw to say "that unless Woman repudiates her womanliness, her duty to her husband, to her children, to society, to the law, and to everyone but herself, she cannot emancipate herself." The primary woman, the peasant woman, is mother. The whole vocation towards which she has yearned from childhood is included in that one word. But now emerges the Ibsen woman, the comrade, the heroine of a whole megalopolitan literature from Northern drama to Parisian novel. Instead of children, she has soul-conflicts; marriage is a craft-art for the achievement of "mutual understanding"….
At this level all Civilizations enter upon a stage, which lasts for centuries, of appalling depopulation. The whole pyramid of cultural man vanishes. It crumbles from the summit, first the world-cities, then the provincial forms, and finally the land itself, whose best blood has incontinently poured into the towns, merely to bolster them up awhile. At the last, only the primitive blood remains, alive, but robbed of its strongest and most promising elements. This residue is the Fellah type.
If anything has demonstrated the fact that Causality has nothing to do with history, it is the familiar "decline" of the Classical, which accomplished itself long before the irruption of Germanic migrants. The Imperium enjoyed the completest peace; it was rich and highly developed; it was well organized; and it possessed in its emperors from Nerva to Marcus Aurelius a series of rulers such as the Caesarism of no other Civilization can show. And yet the population dwindled, quickly and wholesale. The desperate marriage-and-children laws of Augustus—amongst them the Lex de maritandis ordinibus, which dismayed Roman society more than the destruction of Varus's legions—the wholesale adoptions, the incessant plantation of soldiers of barbarian origin to fill the depleted country-side, the immense food-charities of Nerva and Trajan for the children of poor parents—nothing availed to check the process.”

Oswald Spengler book The Decline of the West

Vol. II, Alfred A. Knopf, 1928, pp. 104–06 https://archive.org/stream/Decline-Of-The-West-Oswald-Spengler/Decline_Of_The_West#page/n573/mode/2up/search/depopulation The Decline of the West (1918, 1923)

Life, Marriage, Children, World

“You can be told 20 days in (a) row that you should be raped and sodomised and beaten and strung up and thrown out and taught a lesson, but if on the 21st day you turn around and make a joke about firing men into the sun using a cannon, you are a scold who hates men and is teaching her son that he's a rapist.”

Clementine Ford (writer) (1981) Australian feminist writer, broadcaster and public speaker

Clementine Ford: This is the personal price I pay for speaking out online http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/news-and-views/opinion/clementine-ford-this-is-the-personal-price-i-pay-for-speaking-out-online-20170713-gxaa6z.html, July 13 2017, in the Sydney Morning Herald 2017

Men, Hate, Sun