Quotes about herring
page 62

“Asma' bint Abi Bakr as-Siddiq said, "My mother came to me during the time of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, while she was still an idolater and I asked the Messenger of Allah, 'My mother has come to me, wanting something. Shall I give it to her?'”

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

He said, 'Yes. Give to your mother.'"
Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 3, hadith number 325
Sunni Hadith

Peace, Time

“His wife had held him in her arms as if she could keep death away from him.
He had cried out, "My God, I am a dead man!"”

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

Source: The Riverworld series, To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971), Chapter 1 (p. 1; First lines, depicting the death of Sir Richard Francis Burton).

Death, God, Dead

“The reason that Syria is facing this crisis is not because of any bad thing which Syria has done or any weaknesses within its democracy, or within its economy, or within its human rights record - and there are weaknesses in all three of these. The reason why Syria is being threatened is not because of anything bad which she did, but because of the good which she is doing. That's the reason why Syria is being threatened - because she will not betray the Palestinian resistance, because she will not betray the Lebanese resistance, Hizbullah, because she will not sign a shameful surrender-peace with General Sharon, and above all - more than any of these others - because Syria will not allow her country to be used as a military base for America to crush the resistance in Iraq. These are the reasons why Syria is being targeted by these imperial powers.”

George Galloway (1954) British politician, broadcaster, and writer

MemriTV http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP102405 <br class="br">Speech at the University of Damascus, televised on Al-Jazeera TV on November 13, 2005

Peace, Democracy, Country

“The Multitude will hardly believe the excessive Force of Education, and in the difference of Modesty between Men and Women ascribe that to Nature, which is altogether owing to early Instruction: Miss is scarce Three years old, but she is spoke to every Day to hide her Leg, and rebuk'd in good Earnest if she shews it; while Little Master at the same Age is bid to take up his Coats, and piss like a Man.”

Bernard Mandeville book The Fable of the Bees

Remark C, p. 63
The Fable of the Bees (1714)

Women, Men, Age, Education

“She is nether fish nor flesh, nor good red herring.”

John Heywood (1497–1580) English writer known for plays, poems and a collection of proverbs

Part I, chapter 10.
Proverbs (1546), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Fish

“It was while Princess Margaret was attending a high-society party in New York that the hostess asked her politely how the Queen was keeping. "Which one?" she is reported to have replied with her typically razor-sharp wit. "My sister, my mother or my husband?"”

Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon (1930–2002) younger daughter of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother

From Snowdon: The Biography

Sister, Princess

“There is no doubt that to-day feeling in totalitarian countries is, or they would like it to be, one of contempt for democracy. Whether it is the feeling of the fox which has lost its brush for his brother who has not I do not know, but it exists. Coupled with that is the idea that a democracy qua democracy must be a kind of decadent country in which there is no order, where industrial trouble is the order of the day, and where the people can never keep to a fixed purpose. There is a great deal that is ridiculous in that, but it is a dangerous belief for any country to have of another. There is in the world another feeling. I think you will find this in America, in France, and throughout all our Dominions. It is a sympathy with, and an admiration for, this country in the way she came through the great storm, the blizzard, some years ago, and the way in which she is progressing, as they believe, with so little industrial strife. They feel that that is a great thing which marks off our country from other countries to-day. Except for those who love industrial strife for its own sake, and they are but a few, it indeed is the greatest testimony to my mind that democracy is really functioning when her children can see her through these difficulties, some of which are very real, and settle them—a far harder thing than to fight.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1937/may/05/supply in the House of Commons (5 May 1937). <br class="br">1937

Love, Children, People, World

“She well knew the great architectural secret of decorating her constructions, and never descended to construct a decoration.”

Anthony Trollope book Barchester Towers

Source: Barchester Towers (1857), Ch. 9

Secret

“Man's preeminent advantage is his organism. …Only through nature do we have any good qualities; to her we owe all that we are.”

Julien Offray de La Mettrie book Man a Machine

Man a Machine (1747)

Nature

“What?” Jenna came out of her chair so fast, it crashed over. “Are you insane?”
“No,” Skeeter said mildly, “although I know a few people who might argue the point.”

Robert Lynn Asprin (1946–2008) American science fiction and fantasy author

Source: The House that Jack Built (2001), Chapter 14 (p. 348)

People

“Though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of Time.”

Clive Staples Lewis The Chronicles of Narnia

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950) Ch. 15: Deeper Magic from Before the Dawn of Time
The Chronicles of Narnia (1950–1956)

Knowledge, Time

“In the morning when you finally go
And the nurse runs in with her head hung low,
And the cardinal hits the window.
In the morning in the winter shade,
On the first of March, on the holiday,
I thought I saw you breathing.”

Sufjan Stevens (1975) American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist

"Casimir Pulaski Day"
Lyrics, Illinois (2005)

Winter, Holiday

“I know she ain't you, but she's here, and she's got that dark rhythm in her soul.”

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

Song lyrics, Knocked Out Loaded (1986), Brownsville Girl (with Sam Shepard)

Soul

“Look at her,’ said Patrick, ‘pacing around the cage of her Valentino dress, longing to be released into her natural habitat.”

Edward St. Aubyn (1960) British writer

Some Hope, Chapter 7

Nature

“Bement [her art teacher] told me things to read. He told me of exhibitions to go and see [c. 1917].... the two books that he told me to get were Jeromy Eddy 'Cubists and Post-impressionism' and Kandinsky 'On the Spiritual of Art'… It was some time before I really begun to use the ideas. I didn't start at until I was down in Carolina — alone — thinking things out for myself.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

1970 - 1986, Some Memories of Drawings (1976)

Books, Art, Idea, Thinking

“I have watched the French Emperor narrowly, and have studied his character and conduct. You may rely upon it that, at the bottom of his heart, there rankles a deep and inextinguishable desire to humble and punish England, and to avenge, if he can, the many humiliations — political, naval and military — which, since the beginning of this century, England has by herself and her allies inflicted upon France. He has sufficiently organised his military means; he is now stealthily but steadily organising his naval means; and when all is ready, the overture will be played, the curtain will draw up, and we shall have a very disagreeable melodrama.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Letter to the Duke of Somerset (23 June 1861), quoted in Lord Dalling, Life of Palmerston: Volume II, p. 391.
1860s

Study, Heart, Drawing

“Hawaii made the mouth of her soul water.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

Soul, Water

“She would go right through a stop signal if no cars were around, and when anyone got in her way she would smash her palm on the squealing horn and hold it there. The sound rose like a cry of help through the canyons of buildings. She kept doing this, no matter whether she needed it or not.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Cars, Way, Help, Cry

“For the more paart, youthe is rebel,
Un-to reson & hatith her doctryne.”

Thomas Occleve (1369–1426) British writer

As for the moré part Youth is rebél
Unto Reasón, and hateth her doctrine.
Source: La Male Regle (c. 1405), Line 65; vol. 1, p. 27; translation p. 58.

Youth

“Jewish people in Canada, Israel and around the world will begin celebrating Purim. I would like to extend my best wishes to the community as you celebrate with some of the happiest traditions of the holiday. Chag Purim Sameach!
Happy Purim! Chag Sameach! This evening, Jewish people in Canada, Israel and around the world will begin celebrating Purim. This delightful holiday tells the story of Queen Esther and her uncle Mordechai, who saved the Jewish community of ancient Persia from their persecutor, Haman. Purim celebrates their heroism and bravery, which led to the survival and victory of the Jewish people. For all Canadians, the story of Purim is a reminder of the freedoms we enjoy and our duty to stand against religious intolerance.
I would like to extend my best wishes to Canada’s Jewish community as you celebrate with some of the happiest traditions of the holiday: the reading of the Book of Esther (Megillat Esther); the exchange of special gift baskets with family and friends (Mishloach Manot); and, of course, eating delicious Hamentashen pastries. Have a fun and festive celebration! Happy Purim! Freilichen Purim!”

Andrew Scheer (1979) 35th Speaker of the Canadian House of Commons and MP for Regina—Qu'Appelle

28 February 2018 tweet https://twitter.com/andrewscheer/status/968965231987830786?lang=en referencing Facebook post https://www.facebook.com/notes/andrew-scheer/happy-purim/1939533102747099/

People, Books, World, Family

“I found the king extremely attractive, naturally endowed as he was with all the intellectual qualities a woman could wish for in the man close to her heart. His gentle, serious look, which could still be indulgent and warm, and his lovely smile touched me deeply. And there were other details I liked: the way he held his head, his long eyelashes, which I found unutterably romantic, his hands. Yes, I was secretly won over, charmed by him.”

Farah Pahlavi (1938) Empress of Iran

Page 76
Publications, An Enduring Love: My Life with the Shah (2004)

Love, Smile, Way, Nature

“America took me into her bosom when there was no longer a country worthy of the name, but in my heart I am German – German in my soul.”

Marlene Dietrich (1901–1992) German-American actress and singer

citation needed

Soul, Heart, Country

“She showed the direction, and the party followed her. It was decisive that Merkel appeared human and credible, thereby winning over the trust of the party members.”

Günter Nooke (1959) German politician

The Christian Science Monitor, April 10, 2000: "Embattled German conservatives try 'girl' power"
On the fact, that Merkel was the first to break with Helmut Kohl publicly.

Decision, Appearance

“Not even a bomb scare could keep Gloria Estefan from her fans.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

comment by Frank Amadeo, president of Estefan Enterprises, Inc. (EEI), after Estefan walked across a gridlocked George Washington Bridge in New York City to appear at a book signing in Ridgeway, New Jersey -- where she was greeted by 1,000 fans
2007, 2008

“She remembered taking money out from gathering crop
And buying Johnnys guitar at the broker shop
As long as he would play it by the railroad side
And wouldn't get in trouble, he was satisfied
But never thought that there would come a day like this
When she would have to give her son a goodbye kissGoing bye, bye, bye, bye
Bye, bye, bye, bye
Bye, bye Johnny
Bye, bye Johnny B. Goode”

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

"Bye Bye Johnny" (1960)
Song lyrics

Money

“When it was clear that I was leaving Ajax [in 1973], I was sent all kinds of poisonous messages and lots more of that kind of nonsense. But the worst thing for me was that Ajax gave my mother, who had always done her best for the club, an inferior seat in the stadium. Behind a pole. That absolutely crushed me.”

Johan Cruyff (1947–2016) Dutch association football player

reported in Johan Cruyff (2016). My Turn: The Autobiography.

“Her haughtiness and habit of domination was, therefore, a fictitious character, induced over that which was natural to her, and it deserted her when her eyes were opened to the extent of her own danger, as well as that of her lover and her guardian; and when she found her will, the slightest expression of which was wont to command respect and attention, now placed in opposition to that of a man of a strong, fierce, and determined mind, who possessed the advantage over her, and was resolved to use it, she quailed before him.”

Walter Scott book Ivanhoe

Source: Ivanhoe (1819), Ch. 23.

Lovers, Nature, Strong

“She [Elizabeth Taylor] never reads a book, at least not more than a couple of pages at a time… I have always been a heavy drinker but now as a result of this half-life we've been leading I am drinking twice as much. The upshot will be that I'll die of drink while she'll go blithely on in her half-world.”

Richard Burton (1925–1984) Welsh actor

In "Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor: The Love Letters. How drinking cocooned them from pressure of fame. Without it, they couldn't even make love."

Life, Books, World, Drink

“Oh, she takes care of herself
She can wait if she wants
She's ahead of her time
Oh, and she never gives out
And she never gives in
She just changes her mind.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

She's Always a Woman.
Song lyrics, The Stranger (1977)

Change, Time, Waiting

“When a Secretary of State illegally stores her emails on a private server, deletes 33,000 of them so the authorities can't see her crime, puts our country at risk, lies about it in every different form and faces no consequence – I know that corruption has reached a level like never before.”

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

2010s, 2016, July, 2016 Republican National Convention (21 July 2016)

Country

“Why are pictures like this allowed?’ he suddenly cried. He had stopped in front of a colonial print in which the martyrdom of St Agatha was depicted with all the fervour that incompetence could command.
‘It’s only a saint,’ said Lady Peaslake, placidly raising her head.
‘How disgusting – and how ugly’
‘Yes, very. It’s Roman Catholic.”

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

Albergo Empedocle
The Life to Come and other stories (1972)

“I've just finished a (for me) very important book about the parents (Louis Martin and Zélie Martin) of the Little Flower.. It confirms my thesis 100 per cent: that everything claimed by her super-heralds as her direct inspiration, her unique originality, in fact stemmed from inheritance, upbringing and repetition…Most interesting for me is the recognition how alien and remote this bourgeois piety of the late nineteenth century has become, even for cultivated contemporary Catholic writers - a veritable terra incognita; otherwise this so wide-spread legend of Thérèse's uniqueness could never have grown up.”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Broken Lights (Letters 1951-59).

Books, Flowers, Parent

“Out in deep space the planets sweep, inexorable, along their splendid orbits. Maxine bowed her head. From now on she would take the gods' dictation.”

Helen Garner book Cosmo Cosmolino

Page 166.
Cosmo Cosmolino (1992)

God

“I look into my daughter's eyes. And realize that I'ma learn through her. The Messiah, might even return through her. If I'ma do it, I gotta change the world through her”

Common (rapper) (1972) American rapper, actor and author from Illinois

"Be (Intro)" (Track 1)
Albums, Be (2005)

World, Learning, Change, Daughters

“… it is not men that most women worry about when they rise to the defense of the status quo. Their apparent endorsement of male supremacy is, rather, a pathetic striving for self-respect, self-justification, and self-pardon. After fifteen hundred years of subjection to men, Western woman finds it almost unbearable to face the fact that she has been hoodwinked and enslaved by her inferiors — that the master is lesser than the slave.”

Elizabeth Gould Davis book The First Sex

The First Sex, ch. 21 - The Prejudice Lingers On (1971).

Women, Men

“The woman who has sprung free has emotional mobility. She is able to move toward the things that are satisfying to her and away from those that are not. She is free, also, to succeed.”

Colette Dowling (1938)

Source: The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence (1981), pp. 228–229

“…the Assistant Secretary in Charge of Administration (was) a job which should be undertaken only by a saint or a fool…the House and Senate subcommittees in charge of appropriations, their chairmen, and the Comptroller General's office make this job a perfect hell. Like an ill-tempered chatelaine of a medieval manor, her keys hanging from her belt, Congress parsimoniously and suspiciously doles out supplies for the shortest time, each item meticulously weighed and measured, each request at first harshly denied. Almost simultaneously yesterday's accounting goes on amid screamed accusation and denunciation of every purpose of policy.”

Dean Acheson book Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department

Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1969), State Department Management, Leadership Perspectives

Fools, Hell, Time, Housing

“It would be another two decades before I came upon the words that made me think I had a story to tell—the opening words of Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: “You must not tell anyone,” my mother said, “what I am about to tell you.” The immigrant mother’s prohibition to her daughter reminded me of my own mother’s warning about spreading “family secrets.” In the face of California’s fame for blatancy—in the face of pervasive light, ingenuousness, glass-and-aluminum housing, bikinis, billboards—Mrs. Hong recommended concealment.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography (2013)

Secret, Family, Thinking, Light

“If there had been any unbelief in Mary, that could not prevent God from accomplishing his work in any other way which he might choose. But she is called blessed, because she received by faith the blessing offered to her, and opened up the way to God for its accomplishment.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Commentary on Luke 1:45 http://www.biblestudyguide.org/comment/calvin/comm_vol31/htm/ix.viii.htm. <br class="br">Harmony of Matthew, Mark, Luke

God, Faith, Way

“Anna accumulated things as a way of insulating herself against her own thoughts.”

M. John Harrison book Light

Source: Light (2002), Chapter 16 “The Venture Capital” (p. 150)

Way

“As I confronted her, the changes grew less apparent to me, her identity stronger. She was there, in the full vigour of her personality, battered but not diminished, looking at me, speaking to me in the husky, breathy voice I remembered so well.”

Willa Cather book My Ántonia

Book V, Ch. 1
My Antonia (1918)

Change, Personality

“To divide people into sadists and masochists is almost as foolish as dividing them into eaters and digesters. In all cases one must disregard abnormalities; after all, there are people who are better at digesting than they are at eating and vice versa. As regards masochism and sadism, it is safe to say that a healthy person displays both perversities. The only ugly thing in each case is the word. The one derived from the novelist Leopold von Sacher-Masoch is particularly degrading, and it is hard not to let one's taste for things be spoiled by the designation. Nevertheless, a man with an artistic imagination will manage to let an authentic woman turn him into a masochist and an inauthentic one into a sadist. One knocks the latter's educated unnaturalness out of her until the woman is revealed. If she already is a woman, the only thing left to do is adore her.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

People, Education, Imagination, Personality

“The blue woman, linked and lacquered, at her window
Did not desire that feathery argentines
Should be cold silver, neither that frothy clouds Should foam, be foamy waves, should move like them”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Give Pleasure

“Twilight, ascending slowly from the east,
Entwined in duskier wreaths her braided locks
O'er the fair front and radiant eyes of day,
Night followed, clad with stars.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude (1816)

Star, Night

“All my friends are always telling me how hard it is to have kids. 'Oh, David, it's so hard.' That's not hard. I'll tell you what hard is. Try talking your girlfriend into her third consecutive abortion. Yeah, that's hard, that takes finesse. You’re just inconvenienced.”

David Cross (1964) American comedian, writer and actor

It's Not Funny

“Let's define "terrorist organization." A terrorist organization is an organization that makes you feel scared all the time and makes you change your behavior. What does CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC do all the time? That's right. Wolf Blitzer? Terrorist. Glenn Beck? Terrorist. Nancy Grace? Terrorist. AND her plastic surgeon. The only news organization that is not a terrorist organization is the BBC. Because the BBC can make the worst things sound okay. [British accent] Hello, welcome to the BBC. Satan has re-entered the planet. He is picking up babies with his talons, ripping off their heads, and sucking out their souls. We're in for a thousand years of darkness, all hope is lost and now, the World Cup update.”

Christopher Titus (1964) actor, writer, podcaster

Neverlution (2011)

World, Hope, Behavior, Feeling

“The courts have properly determined that a man should neither be able to force a woman to have an abortion nor to prevent her from having one, should she so choose. Justice therefore dictates that if a woman makes a unilateral decision to bring pregnancy to term, and the biological father does not, and cannot, share in this decision, he should not be liable for 21 years of support. Or, put another way, autonomous women making independent decisions about their lives should not expect men to finance their choice.”

Karen DeCrow (1937–2014) American lawyer

New York Times Magazine, 9 May 1982, letter to the editor <br class="br">Source: New York Times Magazine, letter to the editor http://www.nytimes.com/1982/05/09/magazine/l-no-headline-123813.html, 1982-05-09

Women, Men, Justice, Way

“Midnight is a wonderful thing in a vast city—and midnight was upon Vienna. The shops were closed, the windows darkened, and the streets deserted—strange that where so much of life was gathered together there could be such deep repose; yet nothing equals the stillness of a great town at night. Perhaps it is the contrast afforded by memory that makes this appear yet more profound. In the lone valley, and in the green forest, there is quiet even at noon—quiet, at least, broken by sounds belonging alike to day and night. The singing of the bee and the bird, or the voice of the herdsman carolling some old song of the hills—these may be hushed; but there is still the rustle of the leaves, the wind murmuring in the long grass, and the low perpetual whisper of the pine. But in the town—the brick and mortar have no voices of their own. Nature is silent—her soft, sweet harmonies are hushed in the great human tumult—man, and man only, is heard. Through many hours of the twenty-four, the ocean of existence rolls on with a sound like thunder—a thousand voices speak at once. The wheels pass and re-pass over the stones—music, laughter, anger, the words of courtesy and of business, mingle together—the history of a day is the history of all time. The annals of life but repeat themselves.”

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

The Monthly Magazine

Life, Music, History, Business

“Even though something like Danny Hillis' "connection machine" is big, it's nothing compared with Avogadro's number of processors that nature has at her disposal.”

J. Doyne Farmer (1952) American physicist and entrepreneur (b.1952)

The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution (1995)

Nature

“Her mother had once told her that there were men who kept secrets bottled up inside and that it spelled trouble for the women who loved them.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Denise Holton, Chapter 21, p. 231
2000s, The Rescue (2000)

Love, Women, Men, Secret

“God could have given us the Redeemer of the human race, and the Founder of the Faiths in another way than through the Virgin, but since Divine Providence has been pleased that we should have the Man-God through Mary, who conceived Him by the Holy Spirit and bore Him in her womb, it only remains for us to receive Christ from the hands of Mary.”

Pope Pius X (1835–1914) Catholic Pope and saint

"Encyclical Letter of Our Holy Father Pius X" in The American Catholic Quarterly Review, Vol. 29. No. 114 (April 1904) p. 211

God, Faith, Way, Christ

“Do you see that kitten chasing so prettily her own tail? If you could look with her eyes, you might see her surrounded with hundreds of figures performing complex dramas, with tragic and comic issues, long conversations, many characters, many ups and downs of fate, — and meantime it is only puss and her tail. How long before our masquerade will end its noise of tambourines, laughter, and shouting, and we shall find it was a solitary performance?”

Ralph Waldo Emerson book Experience

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Experience

Fate, Laughter

“A bride-to-be, Discreet and penitent, she presents herself to her parents in this guise.”

Francisco De Goya (1746–1828) Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)

Caption, in the so-called Madrid Album 90: sketch-book of Goya, 1796-97; as quoted by Robert Hughes, in: Goya. Borzoi Book - Alfred Knopf, New York, 2003, p. 173-74
caption below a drawing, in brush and India ink – private collection
1790s
Original: Nobia, Discreta y arrenpentida a sus padres se presenta en esta forma.

Parent

“Along crags and sunless cracks I go,
Up rib of rock, down spine of stone,
I dare not slumber where the right winds whistle,
Lest her creeping-soul clutch this heart of thistle.”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Song lyrics, From Her to Eternity (1984), Well of Misery

Soul, Heart

“And as for that low, velvety voice of hers, if she asked me to murder my best friend I should have to do it on the spot.”

Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875–1956) British writer

3. "The Clever Cockatoo"
Trent Intervenes (1938)

“Because their possessions were great, the appeasers had much to lose should the Red flag fly over Westminster. That was why they had felt threatened by the hunger riots of 1932. It was also the driving force behind their exorbitant fear and distrust of the new Russia. They had seen a strong Germany as a buffer against Bolshevism, had thought their security would be strengthened if they sidled up to the fierce, virile Third Reich. Nazi coarseness, anti-Semitism, the Reich's darker underside, were rationalized; time, they assured one another, would blur the jagged edges of Nazi Germany. So, with their eyes open, they sought accommodation with a criminal regime, turned a blind eye to its iniquities, ignored its frequent resort to murder and torture, submitted to extortion, humiliation, and abuse until, having sold out all who had sought to stand shoulder to shoulder with Britain and keep the bridge against the new barbarism, they led England herself into the cold damp shadow of the gallows, friendless save for the demoralized republic across the Channel. Their end came when the House of Commons, in a revolt of conscience, wrenched power from them and summoned to the colors the one man who had foretold that all had passed, who had tried, year after year, alone and mocked, to prevent the war by urging the only policy which would have done the job. And now, in the desperate spring of 1940, with the reins of power at last now firm in his grasp, he resolved to lead Britain and her fading empire in one last great struggle worthy of all they had been and meant, to arm the nation, not only with weapons but also with the mace of honor, creating in every English breast a soul beneath the ribs of death.”

William Manchester (1922–2004) (April 1, 1922 – June 1, 2004) American author, journalist and historian

Source: The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone 1932-1940 (1988), p. 688-689

Death, Hunger, War, Fear

“But there is a Pope in the breast of each of us whom is hard to silence. Long ago a lady said to me, when I asked her the composers she liked: “Dvorak.” I said before I could stop myself: “Dvorak!” How many times, and with what shame, I’ve remembered it. And now I like Dvorak…”

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

“Speaking of Books”, p. 220
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Silence, Time

“She had long ago accepted the fact that, when it came to the affectations with which radical feminists liked to impoverish their minds—crystal therapy, neo-paganism, Wicca—her skepticism placed her emphatically in a minority.”

James K. Morrow book Towing Jehovah

Source: Towing Jehovah (1994), Chapter 4, “Dirge” (p. 72)

“I miss her so much, I want to be with Carrie.”

Debbie Reynolds (1932–2016) American actress, singer, and dancer

Statement to her son, Todd Fisher, a few hours before her death, as reported in "Debbie Reynolds' Last Words: 'I Want to Be with Carrie,' Son Says" by Alexia Fernandez, in People magazine (29 December 2016) http://people.com/movies/debbie-reynolds-last-words-were-carrie-fisher/

“There was not after all a single kind of strife, but on earth there are two kinds: one of them a man might praise when he recognized her, but the other is blameworthy.”

Hesiod book Works and Days

Source: Works and Days (c. 700 BC), line 11.

“People see you one way and think, 'That's not her real thing, she's just putting that on now.' But that is! That's where my creativity really resides. Where it all springs. My characters are really bizarre. They're kind of dark and not really considered great people. It all comes from the same dark place, it's just filtered through comedy.”

Megan Mullally (1958) American actress

Attributed

People, Way, Spring, Thinking

“Well, you must now imagine my friend at my age or almost there. You must picture him growing gray, tired of life and convinced that he had at last discovered the secret of peace. At this time he met, while visiting some relatives in a country house, a mere girl of twenty, who was the image, the haunting image of her whom he had hoped to marry thirty years before. It was one of those strange resemblances which extend from the color of the eyes to the 'timbre' of the voice, from the smile to the thought, from the gestures to the finest feelings of the heart. I could not, in a few disjointed phrases describe to you the strange emotions of my friend. It would take pages and pages to make you understand the tenderness, both present and at the same time retrospective, for the dead through the living; the hypnotic condition of the soul which does not know where dreams and memories end and present feeling begins; the daily commingling of the most unreal thing in the world, the phantom of a lost love, with the freshest, the most actual, the most irresistibly naïve and spontaneous thing in it, a young girl. She comes, she goes, she laughs, she sings, you go about with her in the intimacy of country life, and at her side walks one long dead. After two weeks of almost careless abandon to the dangerous delights of this inward agitation imagine my friend entering by chance one morning one of the less frequented rooms of the house, a gallery, where, among other pictures, hung a portrait of himself, painted when he was twenty-five. He approaches the portrait abstractedly. There had been a fire in the room, so that a slight moisture dimmed the glass which protected the pastel, and on this glass, because of this moisture, he sees distinctly the trace of two lips which had been placed upon the eyes of the portrait, two small delicate lips, the sight of which makes his heart beat. He leaves the gallery, questions a servant, who tells him that no one but the young woman he has in mind has been in the room that morning.”

Paul Bourget (1852–1935) French writer

Pierre Fauchery, as quoted by the character "Jules Labarthe"
The Age for Love

Love, Life, Secret, Age

“A man with taste is the same as a woman with taste. Man invents his home, woman - her dress. Being an artist means having an individual, distinct from all other people's perception and concept of every single thing. Being an artist does not mean possessing a faculty of combining lines and paints, being artful in this or that sort of art, but having a world inside oneself and individual forms to express it.”

Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938) expressionist painter

1895 - 1905
Source: Lettres à un Inconnu, (Notebook II, p. 8) - Aux sources de l'expressionnisme. Presentation par Gabrielle Dufour-Kowalska. Klincksieck, 1999. p. 106

People, World, Art, Home

“"General Turquoise Blue?" asked Arthur. "I didn't make Suzy a general, did I? I remember her talking about it, but I don't remember actually…"
"She probably just put on the uniform," said Dr Scamandros. "No one would question her."”

Garth Nix (1963) Australian fantasy writer

Source: The Keys to the Kingdom series, Superior Saturday (2008), p. 78.

Question

“Underneath her kiss I was so unguarded
Every bottle’s empty now and all those dreams are gone
Ah, but the song carries on … so holy”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

Sweet Scarlet
Song lyrics, Catch Bull at Four (1972)

Dreams, Kiss

““It’s impossible to protect anyone completely without enslaving them. I think that’s something you’ve never understood because you’ve always demanded too much of yourself. You blame yourself for your sister’s death—”
“I didn’t watch her carefully enough.”
“What could you have done? Remember her life, not her death. She was brave and happy and arrogant, the way a child should be. You could only protect her more by chaining her to you with fear. She couldn’t live that way, not and remain the person you loved.””

Vonda N. McIntyre book Dreamsnake

Source: Dreamsnake (1978), Chapter 4 (p. 74)

Love, Life, Death, Fear

“He loved his country as no other man has loved her; but no man deserved less at her hands.”

Edward Everett Hale book The Man Without a Country

Epitaph of Philip Nolan in "The Man Without a Country" (1863)

Love, Country

“…her breasts swam towards me like two pink-nosed fish and she let me hold them.”

Philip Roth book Goodbye, Columbus

Source: Goodbye, Columbus (1959), Chapter 2

Fish

“It is almost impossible systematically to constitute a natural moral law. Nature has no principles. She furnishes us with no reason to believe that human life is to be respected. Nature, in her indifference, makes no distinction between good and evil.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

Il est à peu près impossible de constituer systématiquement une morale naturelle. La nature n'a pas de principes. Elle ne nous fournit aucune raison de croire que la vie humaine est respectable. La nature, indifférente, ne fait nulle distinction du bien et du mal.
La Révolte des Anges [The Revolt of the Angels] (1914), ch. XXVII

Life, Law, Nature, Evil

“"That money," she cried, almost vehemently, "you can be sure I won’t lay a hand on it unless there’s terrible need." He looked away. He couldn’t bear to hear her talking about the rents and poverty. Would the two of them ever talk about anything else? Was that what he’d come home for? To hear more complaints? Outside people were hurrying past, almost racing toward the busy streets of town. Others were on their way to the movies. Girls were going out to meet their boyfriends. There was youth in the streets, and all of that was waiting for him.”

Gabrielle Roy book The Tin Flute

Source: The Tin Flute (1945), P. 235

Money, People, Youth, Way

“Small Mabel whimpered all night long,
For calling herself the cause.
Her oak-eyed mother did no thing
But change the bloody gauze.”

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) American writer

The Ballad of Rudolph Reed

Change, Night

“Wrongly attributed to Noel Coward is a quotation about the Queen of Tonga. He is alleged to have been sitting under cover from the heavy rain with Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent at the Coronation in London in 1953. Opposite them was the vast Queen Salote of Tonga. Princess Marina is supposed to have asked "Noel, who is that little man sheltering under Queen Salote's umbrella?" Coward is said to have peered through the rain and said "Oh, her lunch, my dear." In a later interview with Walter Harris, Coward revealed it had been said by someone at White's Club and was immediately attributed to Coward. "It was very flattering of course, except that I had intended to visit Tonga the following winter, and after that of course it was quite impossible."”

Noel Coward (1899–1973) English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer

Interview with Walter Harris in 1960 reported in The Times (26 May 2009).

Winter, Princess

“Looking carefully, one discovers at last that this gorgeous combination of all the hues of Paradise contains or hides a Last Judgment [....]

To the Virgin and her suppliants, as to us, who though outcasts in other churches can still hope in hers, the Last Judgment was not a symbol of God's justice or man's corruption but of her own infinite mercy. The Trinity judged, through Christ;— Christ loved and pardoned, through her. She wielded the last and highest power on earth and in hell. In the glow and beauty of her nature, the light of her Son's infinite love shone as the sunlight through the glass, turning the Last Judgement itself into the highest proof of her divine and supreme authority. The rudest ruffian of the middle-ages, when he looked at this Last Judgment, laughed, for what was the Last Judgment to her! An ornament, a play-thing, a pleasure! a jewelled decoration which she wore on her breast! Her chief joy was to pardon; her eternal instinct was to love; her deepest passion was pity! On her imperial heart the flames of hell showed only the opaline colors of heaven. Christ the Trinity might judge as much as he pleased, but Christ the Mother would rescue; and her servants could look boldly into the flames.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Love, God, Pleasure, Age

“It is this diffused spirit of Christianity rather than the conscious purpose of organized Christianity which has been the chief moral force in social changes. It has often taken its finest form in heretics and free-thinkers, and in non-Christian movements. The Church has often been indifferent or hostile to the effects which it had itself produced. The mother has refused to acknowledge her own children.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.4 Why Has Christianity Never Undertaken the Work of Social Reconstruction?, p. 150

Hostility, Children, Change, Indifference

“Nan, she died again, tragically. We decided to get her embalmed, we threw a bit of money at it. And the embalmer asked us if we had any photos of Nan that he could work from. But unfortunately, the only photo we had was of Nan on the log-flume at Alton Towers.”

Harry Hill (1964) English comedian, doctor

"Hooves" Live

Money, Photo

“Valmiki stood up and broke free out of that hard anthill. Suddenly he saw all around him many houses of hermits and their families, young trees carefully watered, a retreat cleared from the forest. Four boys ran up to him from the river and cried "The wife of some great warrior weeps by Ganges. She is fair as a Goddess fallen from heaven, all bewildered, all alone, never seen before, with child, and with small gifts tied from the city within a silk cloth beside her. Go to her, welcome her and protect her.”

Vālmīki Ramayana

In p. 6.
Narada to Valmiki.
Ramayana

Family, Boy, Tree, Water

“Thus he spake, honouring her; and she cast her eyes down with a smile divinely sweet; and her soul melted within her, uplifted by his praise.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book III. Jason and Medea, Lines 1008–1010 (tr. R. C. Seaton)

Smile, Soul

“Beautiful wreck! for still thy face,
Though changed, is very fair;
Like beauty's moonlight, left to shew
Her morning sun was there.”

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

The Change from The London Literary Gazette (16th February 1828)
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Beauty, Change, Sun

“If man had been created solely for the sake of this world, he would have had no need of being inspired with a soul so precious and exalted as to be greater than the angels themselves, especially so in that it derives no satisfaction whatsoever from all of the pleasures of this world. … "What is this analogous to? To the case of a city dweller who married a princess. If he brought her all that the world possessed, it would mean nothing to her, by virtue of her being a king's daughter. So is it with the soul. If it were to be brought all the delights of the world, they would be as nothing to it."”

Moshe Chaim Luzzatto book Mesillat Yesharim

quote is from Koheleth Rabbah
Mesillat Yesharim (1738), Chapter 1

Pleasure, World, Angels, Soul

“They held up to admiration all those women who from time to time have arrested the victorious progress of conquerors, made of their bodies a field of battle, a means of ruling, a weapon; who have vanquished by their heroic caresses hideous or detested beings, and sacrificed their chastity to vengeance and devotion.
All was said with due restraint and regard for propriety, the effect heightened now and then by an outburst of forced enthusiasm calculated to excite emulation.
A listener would have thought at last that the one role of woman on earth was a perpetual sacrifice of her person, a continual abandonment of herself to the caprices of a hostile soldiery.
The two nuns seemed to hear nothing, and to be lost in thought. Boule de Suif also was silent.”

Guy De Maupassant book Boule de Suif

Boule de Suif (1880)

Women, Hostility, Time, Victory

“Her crop was a miscellany
When all was said and done,
A little bit of everything,
A great deal of none.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

"A Girl's Garden
1910s

“One curve corresponds to the curvature of Mars on a scale of 1:1000, another curve to Venus on a scale of 1:40.000 [named after the Roman Gods of Love and War, probably alluding to her starting romance with Gerhard Richter ]”

Isa Genzken (1948) German sculptor

Quote of Genzken in: 'Gerhard Richter: A Life in Painting', by Dietmar Elger, University of Chicago Press 2009, p. 252
concept-text in 1980, for the commissioned decoration - together with Gerhard Richter - of the the multilevel U-bahn (subway) At König-Heinrich-Platz in Duisburg
1990 - 2000

Love, God, War

“With the coming of the Jesuits in the 16th century, and the consequent introduction of Western science, China lost interest in her native algebra…”

David Eugene Smith (1860–1944) American mathematician

Source: History of Mathematics (1925) Vol.2, Ch. 6: Algebra

Science

“But why should we hear about body bags and deaths, and how many, what day it's gonna happen, and how many this or that or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it's not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that, and watch him (her husband, former president George H. W. Bush) suffer?”

Barbara Bush (1925–2018) former First Lady of the United States

Addressing the question of how much television news she'd recently been watching, in light of the enormous media attention given to likely outcomes in a U.S. war with Iraq. The interview took place two days prior to the start of the Iraq War, Good Morning America (18 March 2003)

Death, Beauty, Suffering

“Rise! ye gallant youth of Britain,
Gather to your country's call,
On your hearts her name is written,
Rise to help her, one and all!”

Martin Farquhar Tupper (1810–1889) English writer and poet

Rule, Britannia!, l. 1-4.
Ballads for the Times (1851)

Youth, Help, Heart, Country

“Beer must be made by food companies. It makes you wander the streets at 3 am looking for things to eat. "What's that, is it moving, get it!! It's a nun! FRY HER!! FRY HER!"”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

On beer.
Monster (2004)

Food, Beer

“I learnt the true meaning of what was euphemistically described as close-quarters combat. No line-of-sight particle-beam weapons now; no delayed-detonation nano-munitions. What close-quarters combat meant was something which would have been infinitely more recognisable to a soldier of a thousand years earlier: the screaming fury of human beings packed so close together that the only effective way to kill each other was with sharpened metal weapons: bayonets and daggers, or with hands around each other’s throats; fingers pressed into each other’s eye-sockets. The only way to survive was to disengage all higher brain-functions and regress to an animal state of mind.
So I did. And in doing so, I learned a deeper truth about war. She punished those who flirted with her by making them like herself. Once you opened the door to the animal, there was no shutting it.”

Alastair Reynolds book Chasm City

Source: Chasm City (2001), Chapter 7 (p. 108).

War, Truth, Way, Learning

“The European War, which began in 1914, is now generally recognized to have been a war between two rival empires, an old one and a new, the new becoming such a successful rival of the old, commercially and militarily, that the world-stage was, or was thought to be, not large enough for both. Germany spoke frankly of her need for expansion, and for new fields of enterprise for her surplus population. England, who likes to fight under a high-sounding title, got her opportunity in the invasion of Belgium. She was entering the war 'in defense of the freedom of small nationalities'. America at first looked on, but she accepted the motive in good faith, and she ultimately joined in as the champion of the weak against the strong. She concentrated attention upon the principle of self-determination and the reign of law based upon the consent of the governed. "Shall", asked President Wilson, "the military power of any small nation, or group of nations, be suffered to determine the fortunes of peoples over whom they have no right to rule except the right of force?" But the most flagrant instance of violation of this principle did not seem to strike the imagination of President Wilson, and he led the American nation- peopled so largely by Irish men and women who had fled from British oppression- into the battle and to the side of the nation that for hundreds of years had determined the fortunes of the Irish people against their wish, and had ruled them, and was still ruling them, by no other right than the right of force.”

Michael Collins (Irish leader) (1890–1922) Irish revolutionary leader

A Path to Freedom (2010), p. 38

Women, Men, War, People

“The gentle Lady married to the Moor,
And heavenly Una with her milk-white lamb.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Personal Talk, Stanza 3.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Will, when looking well can't move her,
Looking ill prevail?
Prithee, why so pale?”

John Suckling (1609–1642) English poet

Why So Pale and Wan, Fond Lover?

“I was working on this movie and the makeup artist was just so ugly! I just wanted to say "Physician, heal thyself!" She looked exactly like Aaron Neville, and she was trying her hardest to make me look exactly like Aaron Neville. This one time, she leaned into my face with the mascara wand almost touching my eye and she says, "Whass my name?"”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Tours and CDs, Drunk With Power CD

Time

“And all her shining keys will be took from her, and her cupboards opened; and little things a' didn't wish seen, anybody will see; and her wishes and ways will all be as nothing!”

Thomas Hardy book The Mayor of Casterbridge

Source: The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Ch. 18

Way

“Julie won a scholarship to Harvard. Graduated with honors and received another scholarship to Boston University Medical School. Julie became a medical doctor, alas, losing her medical license to a terrible addiction to heroin. As an ex-addict, she now manages Autoworld Go Carts in West Covina, California. She has the highest score on PacMan… Go Julie!!!”

Deborah Foreman (1962) American actress

When asked by SportsHollywood "What is valley girl Julie Richman doing today? http://www.sportshollywood.com/askforeman.html

School, Universe

“She dwells with Beauty — Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips.
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.”

John Keats Ode on Melancholy

"Ode on Melancholy", st. 3
Poems (1820)

Pleasure, Sadness, Beauty, Soul

“It seems odd to think of you at Lake George tonight – I can smell the outdoors – and hear it – and see the stars – So often before I went to bed at night I would walk out toward the barn and look at the sky in the open space. There was no light little house – there were no people – there was only the night – I will never go back again – maybe to stand just for a moment where I put the little bit that was left of Alfred [ Alfred Stieglitz, her husband] after he was cremated – but I think not even for that. I put him where he would hear the lake.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

That is finished.
In a letter to William Howard Schubart, (nephew of her died husband), Abiquiu, New Mexico, August 4, 1950; as quoted in Voicing our visions, -Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, pp. 228-29
1950 - 1970

People, Star, Thinking, Light