Quotes about herring
page 66

“A moment or an eternity—did it matter? Life, undefeated, existed and could exist. She smiled, her last smile, to so much that had been possible.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

We The Living (1936)

Life, Smile

“But how is Mneme dreaded by the race,
Who scorn her warnings and despise her grace?
By her unveil'd each horrid crime appears,
Her awful hand a cup of wormwood bears.
Days, years mispent, O what a hell of woe!
Hers the worst tortures that our souls can know.”

Phillis Wheatley (1753–1784) American poet

"On Recollection" st. 2 lines 7-12, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773)

Soul, Hell, Appearance

“Her green eyes fluttered swiftly twice or thrice, then glazed,
her mouth gaped open, bleating, then her jaws hung loose
and retched up all her soul in lumps of clotting blood.”

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) Greek writer

Death of Phida, Book VIII, line 410
The Odyssey : A Modern Sequel (1938)

Soul

“I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful — a faery's child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.”

John Keats book La Belle Dame sans Merci

Stanza IV
La Belle Dame sans Merci (1819)

Beauty, Light

“One more Unfortunate,
Weary of breath,
Rashly importunate,
Gone to her death!

Take her up tenderly,
Lift her with care;
Fashion'd so slenderly
Young, and so fair!”

Thomas Hood The Bridge of Sighs

The Bridge of Sighs (1844), st. 1-2.
1840s

Death

“Calm on the listening ear of night
Come Heaven’s melodious strains,
Where wild Judea stretches far
Her silver-mantled plains.”

Edmund Sears (1810–1876) American minister

Christmas Song, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Night

“Auld Nature swears, the lovely dears
Her noblest work she classes, O:
Her prentice han' she tried on man,
An' then she made the lasses, O.”

Robert Burns Green Grow the Rashes

Green Grow the Rashes, O, st. 5 (1787)

Love, Nature

“True religion, sprung from God above,
Is, like her fountain, full of charity,
Embracing all things with a tender love,
Full of good will and meek expectancy,
Full of true justice and sure verity,
In heart and voice; free, large, even infinite,
Not wedged in straight peculiarity,
But grasping all in her vast active spright:
Bright lamp of God! that men would joy in thy pure light!”

Henry More (1614–1687) British philosopher

The Immortality of the Soul (1662), Book 2, Canto 3

Love, Men, God, Religion

“Elizabeth. A killer. A sociopath. A human scorpion. And Cassidy had let her ride on her back.”

Lis Wiehl (1961) American legal scholar

Source: Heart of Ice A Triple Threat Novel with April Henry (Thomas Nelson), p. 302

“History is truly the witness of times past, the light of truth, the life of memory, the teacher of life, the messenger of antiquity; whose voice, but the orator's, can entrust her to immortality?”
Historia vero testis temporum, lux veritatis, vita memoriae, magistra vitae, nuntia vetustatis, qua voce alia nisi oratoris immortalitati commendatur?

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

De Oratore Book II; Chapter IX, section 36

Life, Truth, History, Light

“How at heaven's gates she claps her wings,
The morne not waking til she sings.”

John Lyly (1554–1606) English politician

Cupid and Campaspe, Act v, Sc. 1. Compare: "Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gat sings,/And Phœbus 'gins arise", William Shakespeare, Cymbeline, act ii, sc. 3.

Singing

“If some of the dynamical models have their way…Juliette could meet her less-than-Shakespearean demise sooner than indicated in the official forecast.”

Lixion Avila (1950) American meteorologist

On Tropical Storm Juliette in 2007 http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2007/ep14/ep142007.discus.003.shtml?

Way

“It came about like a typical audition where the actress doesn’t know a soul in the room, and exposes her heart and vulnerability in hopes of winning a handful of strangers’ affection.”

Masiela Lusha (1985) Albanian actress, writer, author

On being cast for the role of Carmen Lopez on the George Lopez show http://reelladies.wordpress.com/2008/09/01/reel-lady-masiela-lusha/

Hope, Soul, Heart

“Pop Art, Op Art, Flop Art and Slop Art... I fall into the last two categories [her remark, in the mid 1970’s].”

Joan Mitchell (1925–1992) American painter

Quote of Joan Mitchell, in Abstract Expressionism, Barbara Hess, Taschen, Köln, 2006, p. 78
1975 - 1992

Art

“In that mysterious dimension where the body meets the soul the stereotype is born and has her being. She is more body than soul, more soul than mind. To her belongs all that is beautiful, eve the very word beauty itself. All that exists, exists to beautify her.”

Germaine Greer book The Female Eunuch

The Stereotype
The Female Eunuch (1970)

Beauty, Soul

“The friendly cow all red and white,
I love with all my heart:
She gives me cream with all her might,
To eat with apple-tart.”

Robert Louis Stevenson book A Child's Garden of Verses

The Cow, st. 1.
A Child's Garden of Verses (1885)

Love, Heart

“Ireland gives England her soldiers, her generals too.”

George Meredith (1828–1909) British novelist and poet of the Victorian era

Source: Diana of the Crossways http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4470/4470.txt (1885), Ch. 2.

“The spirit of Japan, conceived in the Nara epoch, carried in the womb of her islands throughout the Heian period, delivered in the anguish of the Middle Ages, schooled by the rod of iron of the Tokugawas, fully grown now, benefited from all her past experiences. She cannot forget them.”

Louis Frédéric (1923–1996) French scholar

Frédéric, L. (1984). Daily life in Japan at the time of the samurai, 1185-1603. Tokyo: Tuttle.

Age, School, Past, Forgetting

“She in left hand bears a leafy quince;
When with her right she crooks a finger, smiling,
How may the King hold back?
Royally then he barters life for love.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"To Juan at the Winter Solstice" from Poems 1938-1945 (1946).
Poems

Love, Life, Smile

“Tyranny does not impose itself only in the. Therefore, when a woman like me decides to break their dictated norms, she must suffer prison and separation from her children, as an intimidating lesson for other women.”

Narges Mohammadi (1972) Iranian human rights activist

Letter Accepting 2018 Andrei Sakharov Prizefrom (2018)

Women, Children, Suffering

“She grabbed him by both ears and kissed him quickly, then ran away.
Don stared after her, rubbing his mouth. Girls, he reflected, were much odder than dragons. Probably another race entirely.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Between Planets

Source: Between Planets (1951), Chapter 18, “Little David” (p. 182)

Girl, Kiss

“In reply Kunti took the regal face in her hands, and kissed him on his brow. Karna shuddered in delight. A warrior reduced to infancy. The ecstasy of that kiss. He dispatched it to the ends of his body. To his toes. His fingertips. His lovely mother's kiss.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Source: The God of Small Things, p. 233.

Love, Kiss

“I didn't marry her family.'
'Of course not. But you always do. Dead or alive.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Garden of Eden

David and Colonel John Boyle in Ch. 7
The Garden of Eden (1986)

Family, Dead

“Justice, sir, is the great interest of man on Earth. It is the ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together. Wherever her temple stands, and so long as it is duly honored, there is a foundation for social security, general happiness and the improvement and progress of our race.”

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

On Mr. Justice Story (September 12, 1845); reported in Edward Everett, ed., The Works of Daniel Webster (1851), page 300

Justice, Happiness

“As if Misfortune made the throne her seat,
And none could be unhappy but the great.”

Nicholas Rowe The Fair Penitent

Prologue. Compare: "None think the great unhappy, but the great", Edward Young, The Love of Fame, satire 1, line 238.
The Fair Penitent (1703)

“Sarah palin's latest makes her either a despicable liar or horribly uninformed.”

David Shuster (1967) American television journalist

3:14 AM - 8 Aug 09 http://twitter.com/DavidShuster/status/3186603567 <br class="br">On Twitter

“Don't soil your pretty little shoes
The gutter's deep and red
Climb up climb up and ride along with me
the tumbrel driver saidBut she never said a word
never turned her headDon't soil your pretty little pants
I only go one way
Climb up climb up and ride along with me
There's no gold coach todayBut she never said a word
never turned her head”

Peter Weiss Marat/Sade

Singers, act 1, scene 10 (pp.19-20)
Marat/Sade (1963)

Shoe, Way

“When I was Levi, I drew myself as Ayin or Baphomet, 'The Devil' with Beast's Head. This is the Beast throned, crowned, exalted; the leaper, the erect, the butter-in. Her womb is my city, Babel. This Ayin is then my phallic will, my Holy Guardian Angel, Aiwaz, who was afterwards called Satan.”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

Source: Magical Record of the Beast 666: The Diaries of Aleister Crowley 1914-1920 (1972), p. 198

Angels

“Only after she begins to disengage from her belief in her own helplessness can she break out of the vicious cycle of dependency and its brutal effect in her life.”

Colette Dowling (1938)

Source: The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence (1981), p. 114

Life, Dependency

“Thus we see clearly that the Papacy has substituted a false or sham sacrifice, in the place of the one everlasting, complete and never-to-be-repeated sacrifice of Calvary, made once for all time. Thus it was that Papacy took away from Christ's work the merit of being rightly esteemed the Continual Sacrifice, by substituting in its stead a fraud, made by its own priests. It is needless here to detail the reason why Papacy denies and sets aside the true Continual Sacrifice, and substitutes the "abomination," the Mass, in its stead; for most of our readers know that this doctrine that the priest makes in the Mass a sacrifice for sins, without which they cannot be canceled, or their penalties escaped, is at the very foundation of all the various schemes of the Church of Rome for wringing money from the people, for all her extravagancies and luxuries. "Absolutions", "indulgences", and all the various presumed benefits, favors, privileges and immunities, for either the present or the future life, for either the living or the dead, are based upon this blasphemous doctrine of the Mass, the fundamental doctrine of the apostasy. It is by virtue of the power and authority which the sacrifice of the Mass imposes upon the priests, that their other blasphemous claims, to have and exercise the various prerogatives which belong to Christ only, are countenanced by the people.”

Charles Taze Russell (1852–1916) Founder of the Bible Student Movement

Source: Milennial Dawn, Vol. III: Thy Kingdom Come (1891), p. 102.

Life, Money, People, Penalty

“Ever since, the Paris wherein I have tried to retrace her steps has remained as silent and deserted as it was on the day. I walk through empty streets. For me, they are always empty, even at dusk, during the rush hour, when the crowds are hurrying towards the mouth of metro. I think of her in spite of myself, sensing an echo of her presence in this neighbourhood or that. The other evening, it was near the Gare du Nord.”

Patrick Modiano (1945) French writer

The Search Warrant (2000)

Thinking, Sense

“God's treasury where He keeps His children's gifts will be like many a mother's store of relics of her children, full of things of no value to others, but precious in His eyes for the love's sake that was in them.”

François Fénelon (1651–1715) Catholic bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 262.

Love, God, Children

“Sketching from nature is very like trying to put a pinch of salt on her tail. And yet many manage to do it very nicely.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Sketching from Nature
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part IX - A Painter's Views on Painting

Nature

“I needed love no words could say;
She drew me softly nigh her chair,
My head upon her knees to lay,
With cool hands that caressed my hair.
She sat with hands as if to bless,
And looked with grave, ethereal eyes;
Ensouled by ancient quietness,
A gentle priestess of the Wise.”

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

By Still Waters (1906)

Love

“Her robe is a cloud, her face a flower;
Her balcony, glimmering with the bright spring dew,
Is either the tip of earth's Jade Mountain,
Or a moon-edged roof of paradise.”

Li Bai (701–762) Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty poetry period

"A Song Of Pure Happiness I" (清平调之一)

Mountain, Spring, Flowers

“Darwin grasped the philosophical bleakness with his characteristic courage. He argued that hope and morality cannot, and should not, be passively read in the construction of nature. Aesthetic and moral truths, as human concepts, must be shaped in human terms, not “discovered” in nature. We must formulate these answers for ourselves and then approach nature as a partner who can answer other kinds of questions for us—questions about the factual state of the universe, not about the meaning of human life. If we grant nature the independence of her own domain—her answers unframed in human terms—then we can grasp her exquisite beauty in a free and humble way. For then we become liberated to approach nature without the burden of an inappropriate and impossible quest for moral messages to assuage our hopes and fears. We can pay our proper respect to nature's independence and read her own ways as beauty or inspiration in our different terms.”

Stephen Jay Gould book I Have Landed

"Art Meets Science in The Heart of the Andes", p. 109
I Have Landed (2002)

Life, Truth, Fear, Beauty

“She understood at once, and with the courageous goodwill that sustained her, resigned herself to the fact: there was always a drawback. There had to be. Sometimes it was the lack of light, or a factory nearby, or not enough rooms. Here, it was a railroad.”

Gabrielle Roy book The Tin Flute

Source: The Tin Flute (1945), P.281

Courage, Light

“Indeed how many were the seers and sages, poets and prophets - right from the Vedic age upto the modern times - who had fostered in the nation's breast the integrated and whole picture of Bharat as the Divine Mother. Bharat, in their eyes, was not a mere clod of clay. It was verily the Matrubhoomi, the Punyabhoomi, the Dharmabhoomi, the Devabhoomi, the Karmabhoomi - all sublimated into one single majestic figure of Bharat Mata. To Bankimchandra, She appeared as the triple manifestation of Saraswati, Lakshmi and Durga. Rabindranath Tagore visualised Her as Devi bhuvana-mana-mohini - the divine enchantress of the world. To Swami Vivekananda, She was the Mother of all the thirty-three crores of gods and goddesses - whose worship would gratify all those myriad deities. Guruji Golwalkar visualised Her as Trinity of Mata - the loving mother, Pita - the protecting father, and Guru - the elevating spiritual guide. The unity of Bharat is so basic to its nature, so sublime in its depths - in fact, an inseparable aspect of its national soul.”

H.V. Sheshadri (1926–2005) Indian writer

Source: The Tragic Story of Partition (1982), p.9

Love, God, Age, World

“Once did She hold the gorgeous east in fee;
And was the safeguard of the west: the worth
Of Venice did not fall below her birth,
Venice, the eldest Child of Liberty.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic, l. 1 (1807).

Birth

“Such a darling child, they would say, and pat her head. And Miriam would answer in her heart: you made my father a slave. You want us all dead. You are the river, you and all of Egypt. You are the river and as long as we stay beside you we are in danger of drowning.”

Orson Scott Card book Stone Tables

Stone Tables (1997)

Heart, Dead

“It's like you put a turd in her mouth.”

Kerry Jackson

Radio From Hell (February 9, 2007)

“Away, the partial love
That ‘boldens Nature to sit above
Her Maker!”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

Songs of the Soul by Paramahansa Yogananda, Quotes drawn from the poem "Nature’s Nature"

Love, Nature

“Cynicism did not seem nearly so impressively daring to her now as it had when she was twenty.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, Komarr (1998)

“The sight of the intuitive and ravishing Beauty of God holds her as if asleep in its delectable bosom…This state surpasses all human definition and comparison.”

John of St. Samson (1571–1636)

From The Goad, the Flames, the Arrows and the Mirror of the love of God

God, Beauty

“Sketches indeed, from that most passionate page,
A woman's heart, of feelings, thoughts, that make
The atmosphere in which her spirit moves;”

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

A History of the Lyre
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

Feeling, Passion, Heart

“O like Venus attended by a thousand tender Cupids, setting foot upon the sea that gave her birth.”
Aut patrio qualis ponit vestigia ponto Mille Venus teneris cincta Cupidinibus.

Propertius (-47–-16 BC) Latin elegiac poet

II, ii, 9-10.
Elegies

Birth, Sea

“Her and her colostomy bag look forward to spending the holidays together.”

Bill Allred

Radio From Hell (December 6, 2006)

Holiday

“I know what Claire is. You know I know it. I told you the first minute I met you. But did you ever stop to think it’s all worth it to me? Every time she makes a pass at another man, I know she’s comparing. She’s out on the open market, shopping. And being shopped for. I don’t have any collar around her neck She’s not tame. I’m not a habit to her. I’m not something she’s tied to by any law. And every time she winds up coming back to me, you know what that proves. It proves I’m still the toughest man in the pack. Because she wouldn’t stay if I wasn’t.”

Algis Budrys book Rogue Moon

Source: Rogue Moon (1960), Chapter 5, Section 6 (p. 113)

Law, Thinking, Time

“Why like a tender girl dost thou complain!
That strives to reach the mother's breast in vain;
Mourns by her side, her knees embraces fast,
Hangs on her robes, and interrupts her haste;
Yet, when with fondness to her arms she's rais'd,
Still mourns and weeps, and will not be appeas'd!”

Thomas Yalden (1670–1736) English poet

"Patroclus's Request to Achilles for his Arms; Imitated from the Beginning of the Sixteenth Iliad of Homer", in Tonson's The Annual Miscellany for the Year 1694.

Girl

“When a woman forgets gossip, McGee, she is nearing the end of her road.”

John D. MacDonald (1916–1986) writer from the United States

Travis McGee series, (1964)

Forgetting

“If Britons love England with all her faults, why should we fail to love India whose faults were whittled down to an irreducible minimum till foreign conquests threw the whole society out of gear? But instead of being dominated by the natural ambition of carrying the banner of such a civilisation all over the world, we are unable to maintain its integrity in its own native home. This is betraying a trust. This is unworthiness of the worst type. We have not been able to add anything to this precious bequest; on the contrary we have been keeping ourselves and generations yet unborn from a full enjoyment of their lawful heritage….. This was Swami Vivekananda's plan of campaign. India can once more be made conscious of her greatness by an overmastering sense of the greatness of her spirituality. This sense of greatness is the main feeder of all patriotism. This only can put an end to all self-depreciation and generate a burning desire to recover the lost ground.”

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

Bande Mataram, 1907
India's Rebirth

Love, World, Law, Home

“I will talk to my sister, my daughter and my mother, the women, in July 24, when I asked you to gave me the mandate and the order to combat possible terrorism, The Egyptian woman with all her plainness, took her husband, her children, her food during Ramadan and took the streets. and the world watched her. take them again and let the world see you again.”

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (1954) Current President of Egypt

Remarks by el-Sisi asking Egyptian women to go vote on the referendum during a cultural symposium organized by MOD Department of Moral Affairs on 11 January 2014 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w50oWry07E. <br class="br">2014

Women, Children, World, Food

“Too young for wife, too old for child, but the ripe age for comrade — and such a comrade, for there was a boy's gallantry in her eyes and something of a child's confident fearlessness.”

John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician

Source: Midwinter (1923), Ch. XVII

Age, Confidence, Boy

“I didn't even know that chickens could fly, and suddenly one was landing on me. It happened when I was visiting a farm sanctuary. If I had been younger I would have asked my parents if I could take her home, please! After all, she chose me. Never mind that she chose everybody; she was a particularly friendly chicken. She made soft, strange cooing sounds and nestled into my arms like a happy kitten. … In fact she was an ordinary chicken, but simply one who had no reason to believe that people were after her. This is how chickens and humans would relate to one another if one was not exploited and the other doing the exploiting. Very much like cats and dogs. They just wait for the chance.”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (1941) American writer and activist

Source: The Pig Who Sang to the Moon (2003), Ch. 2, p. 57

People, Dogs, Home, Cats

“The opera world was shocked! But the image is very classical. It's taken from Botticelli's portrait of Venus, who's standing in a seashell with her hair covering her body. It's very sensual. It represents the vulnerable side of me. Although I'm not wearing any clothes, it comes across very well.”

Sarah Brightman (1960) British soprano, musical theatre actress, and dancer

The Straits Times (Singapore) (2001); On the promotional photos for her Classics CD.

World, Clothes

“The Goober looked frightened. He was one of those kids who always wanted to please everybody. The guy who never got the girl but worshipped her in secret while the big shot hero rode off in the sunset with her in the end.”

Robert Cormier book The Chocolate War

Source: The Chocolate War (1974), p. 32

Secret, Guy, Girl

“By incestuous symbiosis is meant the tendency to stay tied to the mother and to her equivalents — blood, family, tribe — to fly from the unbearable weight of responsibility, of freedom, of awareness, and to be protected and loved in a state of certainty dependence that the individual pays for with the ceasing of his own human development.”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

Credo (1965)

Love, Family, Freedom, Dependency

“This acquaintance [with Marianne Werefkin ] would change my life. I became a friend of hers, of this clever woman gifted with genius.”

Alexej von Jawlensky (1864–1941) Russian painter

from his memoirs, 1936/41: in Lebenserinnerungen (Memories), Alexej Jawlensky - Köpfe-GesichteMeditationen (Heads-Faces-Meditations), ed. Clemens Weiler (Hanau: H. Peters, 1970), p. 106
1936 - 1941

Life, Change

“What really happened to her? How did she die?”

Sukarno (1901–1970) first President of the Republic of Indonesia

Reaction to Marilyn Monroe's death, Sarge: The Life and Times of Sargent Shriver, p. 433

“The stewardess reached down to fasten Bloor's seatbelt. I saw his left arm snake out and settle affectionately around her shoulders. Good God! I thought. This is it. I could see the headlines in tomorrow's News. But the stewardess only smiled and backed off a few steps, dismissing Bloor's crude advance with a slap at his arm and an icy professional smile. I tried to return it, but my face was not working properly.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

1990s, The Rum Diary (1998)

God, Smile

“A girl should not expect special privileges because of her sex but neither should she 'adjust' to prejudice and discrimination.”

Betty Friedan book The Feminine Mystique

Source: The Feminine Mystique (1963), Ch. 14 "A New Life Plan for women".

Powerful, Sex, Girl

“With our grandmother staying behind in Somalia, my mother had nobody with whom to share tasks and plans. She could do nothing on her own. She wasn't supposed to go out on the street without these new guardians of ours, our uncles, and neither were we. To phone them she had to scuttle down to the corner grocer, with my ten-year-old brother in tow acting as her protective male.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Ch. 3

“If there's a power above us,
(And that there is all nature cries aloud
Through all her works) he must delight in virtue.”

Joseph Addison book Cato

Act V, scene i.
Cato, A Tragedy (1713)

Nature

“If your wife gives you her heart, you must take it, thankfully, and use it well, and not pull it in pieces, and laugh in her face, because she cannot snatch it away.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XXIV : First Quarrel; Helen to Arthur

Heart

“She must have walked through life with men like him falling at her feet, squashing them underfoot like autumn leaves. It probably happened so often that all she noticed was that nice crunching sound.”

Alastair Reynolds book Century Rain

Source: Century Rain (2004), Chapter 21 (p. 357)

Life, Men, Autumn

“I saw Eternity the other night
Like a great ring of pure and endless light.
All calm, as it was bright;
And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years,
Driv'n by the spheres
Like a vast shadow moved; in which the world
And all her train were hurled.”

Henry Vaughan (1621–1695) Welsh author, physician and metaphysical poet

"The World".
Silex Scintillans (1655)

World, Light, Time, Training

“Freedom consists not only in the absence of restraint but also in the presence of opportunity. Liberty is not a single and simple conception. It has four elements – national, political, personal and economic. The man who is fully free is one who lives in a country which is independent; in a state which is democratic; in a society where laws are equal and restrictions at a minimum; in an economic system in which national interests are protected and the citizen has the scope of secure livelihood, an assured comfort and full opportunity to rise by merit.

This freedom, so truly and courageously defined, is not ours today and until this condition is reached, India will never achieve true greatness or happiness, based on the glorious features of her past civilisation.”

Syama Prasad Mookerjee (1901–1953) Indian politician

Speech delivered at Patna University Convocation on 27th November 1937.

Law, Courage, Freedom, Past

“Love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

pg 209
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part Five: Lightness and Weight

Love, Memory

“Don’t press her,” said Cooper. “If someone decides to leave something unsaid, my experience is that everyone is happier if they don’t insist on his saying it.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 5.

“Elyot: I met her on a house party in Norfolk.
Amanda: Very flat, Norfolk.
Elyot: There's no need to be unpleasant.
Amanda: That was no reflection on her, unless of course she made it flatter.”

Noel Coward Private Lives

Private Lives (1930)

Housing

“Had Kala lived, Tarzan would have sacrificed all else to remain near her, but now that she was dead, and the playful friends of his childhood grown into fierce and surly brutes he felt that he much preferred the peace and solitude of his cabin to the irksome duties of leadership amongst a horde of wild beasts.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 12 : Man's Reason

Peace, Solitude, Childhood, Dead

“The real thing she wanted was to play women with real depth, and a challenge, and something that she could resonate with – women that had intelligence and strength, and maturity and passion. […] She's very close to her family – her parents, and her sisters, and her brother; very, very bonded. At some point she became aware that this is where her roots are. […] She was always a wonderful mother. And it didn't make any difference how difficult the scene was, after the meal, Jessica spent that lunchtime with Shura, and was totally into Shura. […] Anyone would be attracted to Sam, I would think. He's a very intelligent person and a very sweet person, first; and then he's so talented; and, on top of that, he looks great. He has a look like a pioneer, and that's very exciting. Maybe not for everybody, but it certainly would be for Jessica.”

Sandra Seacat (1936) American acting teacher and actress

Commenting, respectively, on Jessica Lange's participation in Postman Always Rings Twice, on her decision to purchase land in Minnesota, on the absolute priority placed on parenting throughout the intense Frances shoot, and on the beginning of Lange's relationship with Sam Shepard; as heard in "Jessica Lange: On Her Own Terms," https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KvxVFiDVls on A&E's Biography; broadcast November 26, 2001

Women, Family, Intelligence, Thinking

“Sappho is a great poet because she is a lesbian, which gives her erotic access to the Muse. Sappho and the homosexual-tending Emily Dickinson stand alone above women poets, because poetry's mystical energies are ruled by a hierach requiring the sexual subordination of her petitioners. Women have achieved more as novelists than as poets because the social novel operates outside the ancient marriage of myth and eroticism.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 672

Women, Marriage

“What's funny?' said Pin, shifting uncomfortably in the hospital bed.
'I was looking at your mouth. It's exactly the same as mine.'
'Small and mean,' said Pin, whose devotion to the church did not damp her vulgar sense of humour. 'Wanna see a cat's bum?' She pursed her lips into a tight bunch. They snickered in the quiet ward.
'You'll never go to heaven,' said Kathleen. 'You're rude.”

Helen Garner (1942) Australian author

Page 21.
Honour (1980)

Cats, Sense

“I asked a thief to steal me a peach:
He turned up his eyes.
I asked a lithe lady to lie her down:
Holy and meek, she cries.

As soon as I went
An angel came.
He winked at the thief
And smiled at the dame—

And without one word said
Had a peach from the tree,
And still as a maid
Enjoyed the lady.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

I Asked a Thief
1790s, Poems from Blake's Notebook (c. 1791-1792)

Lie, Smile, Angels, Tree

“There were times apart, there were times together.
I was pledged to her for worse or better.
When it mattered most I let her down.
That's the way it goes, it'll all work out.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

It'll All Work Out
Lyrics, Let Me Up (I've Had Enough) (1987)

Way, Time

“We are stripped of authority and reduced and devaluated and silenced. Silenced here means that the purposes of the First Amendment, premised upon conditions presumed and promoted by protecting free speech, do not pertain to women because they are not our conditions. Consider them: individual self-fulfillment – how does pornography promote our individual self-fulfillment? How does sexual inequality even permit it? Even if she can form words, who listens to a woman with a penis in her mouth?”

Catharine A. MacKinnon (1946) American feminist and legal activist

"Francis Biddle's Sister: Pornography, Civil Rights, and Speech" (1984), p. 193
Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (1987)

Women, Silence

“"Wouldn't you like to come in and have a cup of tea and dry off?"
"Lady, don't you realize that we don't even have time to pull up our shorts?"
"Pull up your shorts?"
"YES, PULL UP OUR SHORTS!" I screamed at her and walked off into the wall of water.”

Charles Bukowski book Post Office

Post Office (1971)

Water, Time, Tea

“Like Andromach, Hector's wife,
Was weary of her life,
When she had lost her joy,
Noble Hector of Troy;
In like manner alsó
Increaseth my deadly woe,
For my sparrow is go.”

John Skelton (1460–1529) English poet

Source: Jane Scroop (her lament for Philip Sparrow) (likely published c. 1509), Lines 64-70.

Life, Joy

“Now that Marilyn Monroe is kosher, Arthur Miller can eat her.”

Oscar Levant (1906–1972) American comedian, composer, pianist and actor

Quip about Monroe's conversion to Judaism, on The Oscar Levant Show, as quoted in They Knew Marilyn Monroe: Famous Persons in the Life of the Hollywood Icon (2012) by Les Harding

“We do not “look” at something or someone; we “eat” it: we are like “cannibals” consuming the world for our own benefit. “The only people who have any hope of salvation are those who occasionally stop and look for a time, instead of eating.” Here we have Weil’s version of changing from a position of egocentrism to egolessness. … Weil is claiming that it all starts with paying attention to the other—any other—as the way to form our appropriate stance toward the world and all its creatures. Her essay titled “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God” joins what appear to be opposites—a child’s concentration on working on a math problem and training for loving God. From her own earliest days, she saw the value of studying math and science, disciplines that demanded an openness and patience to a subject outside of oneself and whose truth did not rest with one’s own interpretation.”

Sallie McFague (1933–2019) American feminist and theologian

describing Simone Weil’s view, Blessed Are the Consumers

Love, God, People, Truth

“The maid glanced at her employer. "Oh, you have heard of me," she said. "I am glad that he speaks of me. I would not like to think that nobody speaks of me." "No," said Mma Ramotswe. "It is better to be spoken of than not to be spoken of. Except sometimes, that is."”

Alexander McCall Smith book Tears of the Giraffe

Tears of the Giraffe, chapter 1.
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series

Thinking

“How could she tell, he deceived her so well;
Pity, she'll be the last one to know.
Silence is golden, but my eyes still see;
Silence is golden, golden,
But my eyes still see.”

Bob Gaudio

Song Silence is Golden http://www.lyricsdownload.com/tremeloes-silence-is-golden-lyrics.html

Silence

“Without coming fully awake, Rhin felt his presence beside her, experienced a primitive demand for his protective masculinity. She nestled against him, murmured, "its so hot. Doesn’t it ever cool off?"”

Frank Herbert book The Green Brain

The Green Brain (1966)

“Indeed, until she had met Lev at school, it had not occurred to her that anyone might prefer to speak a plain fact rather than a lie that sounded well. People said what suited their purposes, when they were serious; and when they weren’t serious, they talked without meaning anything at all.”

Ursula K. Le Guin book The Eye of the Heron

Source: The Eye of the Heron (1978), Chapter 2 (p. 23)

People, Lie, School

“Has not the famous political Fable of the Snake, with two Heads and one Body, some useful Instruction contained in it? She was going to a Brook to drink, and in her Way was to pass thro’ a Hedge, a Twig of which opposed her direct Course; one Head chose to go on the right side of the Twig, the other on the left, so that time was spent in the Contest, and, before the Decision was completed, the poor Snake died with thirst.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Queries and Remarks Respecting Alterations in the Constitution of Pennsylvania reported in Albert H. Smyth, ed., The Writings of Benjamin Franklin (1907), vol. 10, pp. 57–58.
Decade unclear

Way, Drink, Decision, Time

“She's here with her girlfriend. She's half a man.”

Martina Hingis (1980) Swiss tennis player

International Herald Tribune, Sports https://web.archive.org/web/20051027113109/http://www.iht.com/articles/1999/02/02/tennis.t_0.php (1999)

“When the Law shows her teeth, but dares not bite.”

Edward Young (1683–1765) English poet

Satire I, l. 17.
Love of Fame (1725-1728)

Law

“O Beer! O Hodgson, Guinness, Allsop, Bass!
Names that should be on every infant's tongue!
Shall days and months and years and centuries pass,
And still your merits be unrecked, unsung?
Oh! I have gazed into my foaming glass,
And wished that lyre could yet again be strung
Which once rang prophet-like through Greece, and taught her
Misguided sons that "the best drink was water."”

Charles Stuart Calverley (1831–1884) British poet

Beer, from Verses and Translations (1862).

Drink, Beer, Water

“The girl can look forward to little else than the chance of having a good man for her husband; — a good man, or if her tastes lie in that direction, a rich man.”

Anthony Trollope book The Prime Minister

Source: The Prime Minister (1876), Ch. 5

Lie, Girl, Chance

“If her hunch was right, the earl’s explorations were connected in some way to ley travel: that peculiar phenomenon that had plucked her from the twenty-first century and dropped her so rudely into the seventeenth.”

Stephen R. Lawhead (1950) American writer

Source: The Bone House (2011), p. 105

Way, Travel

“There was a time when even brave men might look fearfully upon the destiny of the Republic; when our country was involved in a tangled network of contradictions; when vast and irreconcilable social forces fiercely disputed for ascendency and control; when a heavy curse rested upon our very soil, defying alike the wisdom and the virtue of the people to remove it; when our professions were loudly mocked by our practice, and our name was a reproach and a byword to a mocking; when our good ship of state, freighted with the best hopes of the oppressed of all nations, was furiously hurled against the hard and flinty rocks of derision, and every cord, bolt, beam and bend in her body quivered beneath the shock, there was some apology for doubt and despair. But that day has happily passed away. The storm has been weathered, and the portents are nearly all in our favor.”

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

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Wisdom, Men, People, Hope

“It takes one woman twenty years to make a man of her son—and another woman twenty minutes to make a fool of him.”

Helen Rowland (1875–1950) American journalist

Overture: Prelude http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30630/30630-h/30630-h.htm#Page_20 <br class="br">A Guide to Men (1922)

Fools

“A girl's coquetry is of the simplest, she thinks that all is said when the veil is laid aside; a woman's coquetry is endless, she shrouds herself in veil after veil, she satisfies every demand of man's vanity, the novice responds but to one.
And there are terrors, fears, and hesitations — trouble and storm in the love of a woman of thirty years, never to be found in a young girl's love. At thirty years a woman asks her lover to give her back the esteem she has forfeited for his sake; she lives only for him, her thoughts are full of his future, he must have a great career, she bids him make it glorious; she can obey, entreat, command, humble herself, or rise in pride; times without number she brings comfort when a young girl can only make moan.”

Honoré de Balzac book A Woman of Thirty

La jeune fille n'a qu'une coquetterie, et croit avoir tout dit quand elle a quitté son vêtement; mais la femme en a d'innombrables et se cache sous mille voiles; enfin elle caresse toutes les vanités, et la novice n'en flatte qu'une. Il s'émeut d'ailleurs des indécisions, des terreurs, des craintes, des troubles et des orages chez la femme de trente ans, qui ne se rencontrent jamais dans l'amour d'une jeune fille.Arrivée à cet âge, la femme demande à un jeune homme de lui restituer l'estime qu'elle lui a sacrifiée; elle ne vit que pour lui, s'occupe de son avenir, lui veut une belle vie, la lui ordonne glorieuse; elle obéit, elle prie et commande, s'abaisse et s'élève, et sait consoler en mille occasions, où la jeune fille ne sait que gémir.
Source: A Woman of Thirty (1842), Ch. III: At Thirty Years.

Love, Fear, Girl, Lovers