Quotes about herring
page 87

“…he often wondered when exactly her feeling for him finally overwhelmed those she'd had for Kevin…
He wasn't sure; capturing a specific instant like that was no more possible than locating a specific drop of water in the ocean.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Travis Parker, Chapter 15, p. 193-194
2000s, The Choice (2007)

Feeling, Water

“Every move she made, the soft turn of her neck, the large breasts swelling under the smock, her fine hands upon the bed, the fingers spread out, these things disturbed me, a sweet painful heaviness dragging me into stupor. Then the sound of her voice, restrained, hinting of mockery, a voice that talked to my blood and bones.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Pain

“But she [Virginia Woolf] is impotently distant from an understanding of the proper relations between literature and society, because she has no clear sense of the functions of literature. She sees writers as individual 'artists' working in mysterious privacy - which from time to time society rudely invades. Her writer, indeed, has all the characteristics of traditional 'femininity' - with society as the big strong male who should protect and cherish his literary womenfolk, but does not. She might - for all the application of her complaint to the relations between society and literature - be talking of the relations between husbands and wives.”

Laura Riding Jackson (1901–1991) poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer

Laura Riding and Harry Kemp from The Left Heresy in Literature and Life (London: Methuen, 1939)

Literature, Understanding, Sense, Strong

“Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 't is prosperous to be just;
Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside,
Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified,
And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.”

James Russell Lowell The Present Crisis

St. 11
The Present Crisis (1844)

Truth, Faith

“This extremely interesting girl, after giving me a single glance from her beautiful eyes, stubbornly refused to look at me again. My vanity at once made me think that it was only so that I would be at full liberty to study her impeccable beauty. It was on this girl that I instantly set my sights, as if all Europe were only a seraglio provided for my pleasures.”

Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice

History of My Life (trans. Trask 1967), 1997 reprint, v. 7, chapter 2, p. 19
Referenced

Pleasure, Beauty, Girl, Thinking

“Franziska (mother of Charlotte): 'In Heaven everything is much more beautiful than here in earth – and when your Mummy has turned into a little angel she'll.... bring a letter, telling her what's like in Heaven..”

Charlotte Salomon (1917–1943) German painter

Franziska was of somewhat sentimental disposition. written text with brush, in her painting JHM no. 4175 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Charlotte_Salomon#/media/File:Charlotte_Salomon_-_JHM_4175.jpg: in 'Life? or Theater..', p. 66 her mother committed suicide when Charlotte was still a young girl - as many in her family did, before or later Charlotte Salomon - Life? or Theater?

Beauty, Angels

“Lord knows I'm not a fool girl
I really shouldn't care
Lord knows I'm not a school girl
In the flurry of her first affair.”

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

Mad About the Boy (1932)

School, Fools, Girl

“The Hindus of this region had been victims of Muslim high-handedness for a long time, particularly in respect of their women. Murshid Qulî Khãn, the faujdãr of Mathura who died in 1638, was notorious for seizing “all their most beautiful women” and forcing them into his harem. “On the birthday of Krishna,” narrates Ma’sîr-ul-Umara, “a vast gathering of Hindu men and women takes place at Govardhan on the Jumna opposite Mathura. The Khan, painting his forehead and wearing dhoti like a Hindu, used to walk up and down in the crowd. Whenever he saw a woman whose beauty filled even the moon with envy, he snatched her away like a wolf pouncing upon a flock, and placing her in the boat which his men kept ready on the bank, he sped to Agra. The Hindu [for shame] never divulged what had happened to his daughter.” Another notorious faujdãr of Mathura was Abdu’n Nabî Khãn. He plundered the people unscrupulously and amassed great wealth. But his worst offence was the pulling down of the foremost Hindu temple in the heart of Mathura and building a Jãmi‘ Masjid on its site. This he did in AD 1660-61. Soon after, in 1665, Aurangzeb imposed a pilgrim tax on the Hindus. In 1668, he prohibited celebration of all Hindu festivals, particularly Holi and Diwali. The Jats who rightly regarded themselves as the defenders of Hindu hounour were no longer in a mood to take it lying. (Jadunath Sarkar, History of Aurangzeb, Vol. III, Calcutta, 1972 )”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume II (1993)

Women, Men, People, Beauty

“And now, as a result of honoring our commitment to our gallant allies, that man Roosevelt has sought from the U. S. Congress a declaration of war not only against England and France but also against the Confederate States of America. His servile lackeys, misnamed Democrats, have given him what he wanted, and the telegraph informs me that fighting has begun along our border and on the high seas. Leading our great and peaceful people into war is a fearful thing, not least because, with the great advances of science and industry over the past half-century, this may prove the most disastrous and terrible of all wars, truly a war of the nations: indeed a war of the world. But right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for those things we have always held dear in our hearts: for the rights of the Confederate States and of the white men who live in them; for the liberties of small nations everywhere from outside oppression; for our own freedom and independence from the vicious, bloody regime to the north. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and fortunes, everything we are and all that we have, with the pride of those who know the day has come when the Confederacy is privileged to spend her blood and her strength for the principles that gave her birth and led to her present happiness. God helping us, we can do nothing else. Men of the Confederacy, is it your will that a state of war should exist henceforth between us and the United States of America?" "Yes!”

Harry Turtledove book The Great War: American Front

The answer roared from Reginald Bartlett's throat, as from those of the other tens of thousands of people jamming the Capitol Square. Someone flung a straw hat in the air. In an instant, hundreds of them, Bartlett's included, were flying. A great chorus of "Dixie" rang out, loud enough, Bartlett thought, for the damnyankees to hear it in Washington.
Source: The Great War: American Front (1998), p. 33

Men, God, War, People

“As I was writing about Grace Marks, and about her interlude in the Asylum, I came to see her in context — the context of other people's opinions, both the popular images of madness and the scientific explanations for it available at the time. A lot of what was believed and said on the subject appears like sheer lunacy to us now. But we shouldn't be too arrogant — how many of our own theories will look silly when those who follow us have come up with something better? But whatever the scientists may come up with, writers and artists will continue to portray altered mental states, simply because few aspects of our nature fascinate people so much. The so-called mad person will always represent a possible future for every member of the audience — who knows when such a malady may strike? When "mad," at least in literature, you aren't yourself; you take on another self, a self that is either not you at all, or a truer, more elemental one than the person you're used to seeing in the mirror. You're in danger of becoming, in Shakespeare's works, a mere picture or beast, and in Susanna Moodie's words, a mere machine; or else you may become an inspired prophet, a truth-sayer, a shaman, one who oversteps the boundaries of the ordinarily visible and audible, and also, and especially, the ordinarily sayable. Portraying this process is deep power for the artist, partly because it's a little too close to the process of artistic creation itself, and partly because the prospect of losing our self and being taken over by another, unfamiliar self is one of our deepest human fears.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Ophelia Has a Lot to Answer For (1997)

People, Truth, Fear, Literature

“Those wise men knew God to be in things, and Divinity to be latent in Nature, working and glowing differently in different subjects and succeeding through diverse physical forms, in certain arrangements, in making them participants in her, I say, in her being, in her life and intellect.”

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) Italian philosopher, mathematician and astronomer

As translated by Arthur Imerti (1964)
The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast (1584)

Life, Men, God, Nature

“Most imprisoned writers have been shut away for their activities as citizens striving for liberation against the oppression of the general society to which they belong. Others have been condemned by repressive regimes for serving society by writing as well as they can; for this aesthetic venture of ours becomes subversive when the shameful secrets of our times are explored deeply, with the artist's rebellious integrity to the state of being manifest in life around her or him; then the writer's themes and characters inevitably are formed by the pressures and distortions of that society as the life of the fisherman is determined by the power of the sea.”

Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) South african Nobel-winning writer

Writing and Being (1991)

Life, Secret, Time, Sea

“Large-eyed and well endowed, as her name Pritha connotes, she is strikingly lovely, and Kuntibhoja exhorts her not to neglect any service out of pride in her beauty. Kunti’s relationship with Durvasa does not appear to have been easy. In the account she gives much later to Vyasa, she tells him that despite Durvasa’s conduct having been such as to provide abundant cause for anger, she had not given way to it. She further states that she was constrained at the sage’s insistence to accept his boon, whereby any god would be compelled to answer her summons, and that she obeyed out of fear of his curse. The interaction that she describes after this between her and the sun god, Surya, is exactly similar – the same insistence and the same fear.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

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

Love, God, Fear, Beauty

“More important than these two considerations was the fact that Russia was at no time concerned with the two policies ‑ the forcing of opium on China and the trade in human flesh ‑ which both the people and Government of China resented and which brought her untold humiliation. … In the `pig trade' ‑ that is, the forcible transportation of Chinese workers to plantations and mines again, in defiance of the orders of Government and of the protests of the people ‑ in this new slave trade, where sometimes forty per cent of those transported died on the way, all Western Powers including America were deeply involved. Russia, for whatever reason, was no party to it. It was these two, the `poison trade' and the `pig trade', that made the iron enter the soul of the Chinese and made them bitterly anti‑foreign.”

K. M. Panikkar (1895–1963) Indian diplomat, academic and historian

Asia and Western Dominance: a survey of the Vasco Da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498–1945

People, Way, Soul, Time

“There is an oval sculpture of 1943. I was in despair because my youngest daughter, one of the triplets, had osteomyelitis. In those days the war was on and you couldn't get anything. She was ill for four years. I thought the only thing I can do to help this awful situation, because we never knew if it would worsen, is to make some beautiful object. Something as clean as I can make it as a kind of present for her. It's happened again and again. When my son died, he was killed [in the war], it's the only way I can go on.”

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) English sculptor

Source: 1961 - 1975, Art Talk, conversations with 15 woman artists', (1975), p. 19

War, Beauty, Way, Help

“I've spoken many times about the Japanese woman. I've praised her again and again. But I have to tell you that I think the Japanese man is the worst. The women are such delicate creatures and they're treated abominably by the men. The Japanese men are pigs - even worse than American men.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Reflections (1981)

Women, Men, Thinking, Time

“Of the Corporation of the Goosequill — of the Press, my boy, … of the fourth estate … There she is — the great engine — she never sleeps. She has her ambassadors in every quarter of the world — her couriers upon every road. Her officers march along with armies, and her envoys walk into statesmen's cabinets. They are ubiquitous.”

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) novelist

Source: The History of Pendennis (1848-1850), Ch. 30.

World, Boy, Sleep

“The odd thing is not that we are in the business of overthrowing other people's governments, but that we can still be surprised when somebody reminds us of it. In Asia, in Latin America, Africa, the Mediterranean and the Middle East we have been propping up and knocking down governments more or less openly for the past twenty-five years.
It is an established policy. Everybody knows it. It is supposed to be done covertly, which is only sensible if you hope to succeed since publicity in matters of this sort can only make the natives restless and defeat the project. Imagine the chauvinistic rallying around President Nixon that would have occurred if Canada, say, had announced that her agents were going to destabilize United States society so that discontented Americans could heave the Nixon Administration out of office.”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

"Our Uncle Is Now Dorian Sam" (p.93)
So This Is Depravity (1980)

People, Hope, Imagination, Business

“When the cabin port-holes are dark and green
Because of the seas outside;
When the ship goes wop (with a wiggle between)
And the steward falls into the soup-tureen,
And the trunks begin to slide;
When Nursey lies on the floor in a heap,
And Mummy tells you to let her sleep,
And you aren't waked or washed or dressed,
Why, then you will know (if you haven't guessed)
You're ‘Fifty North and Forty West!”

Rudyard Kipling book Just So Stories

How the Whale Got His Throat.
Just So Stories (1902)

Sleep, Sea

“In physical pursuits Luli was considerably less passionate. Her idea of a good time in bed was breakfast.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: The Wine of Violence (1981), Chapter 2 (p. 21)

Idea, Passion, Time

“A tiny whisper at the back of her mind warned her to be wary of what one asked the gods for, lest they grant it.”

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

Source: Wagers of Sin (1996), Chapter 18 (p. 366)

God

“Does a social worker have an obligation to preserve confidentiality if an HIV positive client refuses to inform his/ her sexual partner of the infection (while persisting in behavior that puts the person at risk), or does the social worker have an obligation to warn the partner of the peril?”

Charles Zastrow (1942) American sociologist

Source: The practice of social work. (1995), p. 70

Behavior, Personality

“You may as well know, Philip — you'll soon find out, anyhow — the truth is she will flirt with any man that she doesn't actively dislike. She's so brimful of life she can't hold herself in — or she won't, rather; she says there's no harm in it, and she doesn't care if there is. Before her marriage she didn't go on in that way, but since it turned out badly she has been simply uncivilized on that point. And her being perfectly clear-headed about it makes it so much worse.”

Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875–1956) British writer

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

Life, Marriage, Truth, Way

“When Holy Church occasionally hinted that she still considered her authority to be supreme over all nations and superior to the authority of states, men in these times tended to snicker.”

Walter M. Miller, Jr. book A Canticle for Leibowitz

Ch 28
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), Fiat Voluntas Tua

Men, Time

“It is not her body that he wants but it is only through her body that he can take possession of another human being, so he must labor upon her body, he must enter her body, to make his claim.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

"In the Founders’ Room," Unholy Loves (1979)

“[JawlenskyPickWerefkin] Yes, we [ Marianne Werefkin and Gabriéle] shared very much the same tastes and ideas, when we lived together in this house (the so-called 'Russian house' in Murnau]. She was extremely perceptive and intelligent, but Jawlensky [living with Marianne Werefkin] didn't always approve her work... Suddenly Jawlensky would pick on some tiny detail of one of Marianne's best and most original pictures and exclaim: 'That patch of color, there, is laid on much too flat and smoothly. It's just like old Riepin' [famous Russian painter Ilya Repin ] and their common former teacher in Russia]. Of course it was nonsense and he was only saying it to annoy her. But Jawlensky really was a devotee of the 'touche de peinture' of the French Fauvists, rather than an innovator, a believer in a new kind of art of the future.”

Gabriele Münter (1877–1962) German painter

Source: Interview by Edouard Roditi (1958), pp. 118-119

Art, Color, Intelligence, Idea

“Now had Aurora displayed her mantle over the blushing skies, and dark night withdrawn her sable veil.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part I, Book III, Ch. 6.

Night

“What right had I to value her less than the bodies in the square? Suffering is not increased by numbers; one body can contain all the suffering the world can feel. I had judged like a journalist, in terms of quantity, and I had betrayed my own principles; I had become as engage as Pyle, and it seemed to me that no decision would ever be simple again.”

Graham Greene book The Quiet American

Pt. IV, ch. 2, pg 242
The Quiet American (1955)

World, Feeling, Decision, Suffering

“Three days later the little princess was buried, and Prince Andrei went up the steps to where the coffin stood, to give her the farewell kiss. And there in the coffin was the same face, though with closed eyes. "Ah, what have you done to me?" it still seemed to say, and Prince Andrei felt that something gave way in his soul and that he was guilty of a sin he could neither remedy nor forget.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Bk. IV, ch. 9
War and Peace (1865–1867; 1869)

Way, Soul, Kiss, Princess

“Take courage, lover!
Could you endure such pain
At any hand but hers?”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"Symptoms of Love" from More Poems (1961).
Poems

Pain, Lovers, Courage

“My mother saw herself as a victim. Once upon a time she had shaped her future and made decisions -- she had left Somalia for Aden, divorced her first husband and chosen my father--but at some point, it seemed, she lost hope. Many Somali women in her position would have worked, would have taken control of their lives, but my mother, having absorbed the Arab attitude that pious women should not work outside the home, felt that this would not be proper. It never occurred to her to go out and create a new life for herself, although she can't have been older than thirty-five or forty when my father left. Instead, she remained completely dependent. She nursed grievances; she was resentful; she was often violent; and she was always depressed.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Ch. 5

Life, Women, Hope, Home

“Back and forth the fantastic tableaux would spin, past his cruel plebe hazing, the self-discovery at the West Texas Military Academy, the patriarchal Judge MacArthur, all beard and cigar smoke, presiding over dynastic feats at Washington's 1201 N Street; the chimes of the drawing-room clock there telling off the quarters; the ceremonial changing of the guard at Leavenworth; his father's tales of Sherman's dauntless Boys in Blue; his mother's imperious commands to fight and fight and never lower his blade short of victory; the clean crack of Krag rifles and the warm prickling of desert sand as he played with his brother outside the fort stockade; the rumbling of the sunset gun and Pinky's face tilting downward, her lambent smile gilding the child's upturned features while he clutched at her cascading skirts; the yellow notes of the bugles as he stirred in his cradle; the chant of sergeants hawking cadence on the parade ground outside; and, snapping proudly in the overarching sky above him, the flag, and the flag, and the flag.”

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

Source: American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964 (1978), p. 709

Smile, Boy, Change, Past

“The civil war which was started by the Cadet-Kaledin counter-revolutionary revolt against the Soviet authorities, against the workers’ and peasants’ government, has finally brought the class struggle to a head and has destroyed every chance of setting in a formally democratic way the very acute problems with which history has confronted the peoples of Russia, and in the first place her working class and peasants.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Collected Works, Vol. 26, pp. 379–383.
Collected Works

War, People, Way, History

“Man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man. And man was not created for the cause of the woman, but the woman for the cause of man; and therefore ought the woman to have a power upon her head.”

Paul of Tarsus book First Epistle to the Corinthians

I Corinthians 11:8-10
First Epistle to the Corinthians

“If the Church were to start transforming herself into a directly political subject, … she would do less, not more, for the poor and for justice, because she would lose her independence and her moral authority, identifying herself with a single political path and with debatable partisan positions. The Church is the advocate of justice and of the poor, precisely because she does not identify with politicians nor with partisan interests. Only by remaining independent can she teach the great criteria and inalienable values, guide consciences and offer a life choice that goes beyond the political sphere. To form consciences, to be the advocate of justice and truth, to educate in individual and political virtues: that is the fundamental vocation of the Church in this area. And lay Catholics must be aware of their responsibilities in public life; they must be present in the formation of the necessary consensus and in opposition to injustice.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

in Origins, published by National Catholic News Service, vol. 37, p. 22

Life, Truth, Education, Justice

“The narcissistic, the domineering, the possessive woman can succeed in being a "loving” mother as long as the child is small. Only the really loving woman, the woman who is happier in giving than in taking, who is firmly rooted in her own existence, can be a loving mother when the child is in the process of separation.”

Erich Fromm book The Art of Loving

Source: The Art of Loving (1956), Ch. 2

Love

“Michael believed longer than the other boys, though they jeered at him; so he was with Wendy when Peter came for her at the end of the first year. She flew away with Peter in the frock she had woven from leaves and berries in the Neverland, and her one fear was that he might notice how short it had become; but he never noticed, he had so much to say about himself.
She had looked forward to thrilling talks with him about old times, but new adventures had crowded the old ones from his mind.”

J. M. Barrie book Peter Pan

Source: Peter and Wendy (1911), Ch. 17

Fear, Boy, Time

“I’d always thought her half-baked, but now I think they didn’t even put her in the oven.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Jeeves in the Offing

Jeeves in the Offing (1960)

Thinking

“Morgot and Myra would tell her there wasn’t any reason to make promises or seek changes because the Great Mother didn’t bargain. The deity didn’t change her mind for women’s convenience. Her way was immutable. As the temple servers said, “No sentimentality, no romance, no false hopes, no self-petting lies, merely that which is!””

Sheri S. Tepper book The Gate to Women's Country

Which left very little room, Stavia thought, for womanly initiative.
Source: The Gate to Women's Country (1988), Chapter 2 (p. 9)

Women, Hope, Way, Change

“The sound is beautiful, it's perfect!
The sound of her young legs in stockings,
The rhythm of her walk, it's beautiful!
Just let it twist, let it break,
Let it buckle, let it bend,
I want to hear the noise of my Zoo-Music Girl.”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Song lyrics, Prayers on Fire (1981), Zoo-Music Girl

Beauty, Music, Girl, Perfection

“O ah hear her walkin',
Walkin' barefoot 'cross the floor-boards,
All thru this lonesome night,
And ah hear her crying too.
Hot-tears come splashin' down,
Leaking thru the cracks,
Down upon my face, ah catch'em in my mouth!”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Song lyrics, From Her to Eternity (1984), From Her to Eternity

Tear, Cry, Night

“The beautiful, architectonically constructed, severely formed bodies of these women [his girlfriend in Berlin and life companion, Erna with her sister Gerda] replaced the soft Saxon physique.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

In an unpublished manuscript 'Die Arbeit E. L. Kirchners', by E. L. Kirchner 1925–1926; as quoted in Kirchner and the Berlin street, ed. Deborah Wye, Moma, New York, 2008, p. 36
1920's

Life, Women, Beauty, Sister

“I paint all day. First Becka Brotmann with her loose yellow hair and just a suggestion of dahlias in the background. Then I painted Anni Brotmann at the clay pit, where the sun nearly baked us. In the afternoon I painted Rieke Gefken holding red lilies. I think it is the best thing I've done so far – I'll show it to Mackensen [her teacher in Worpswede] tomorrow. I spent another hour with Vogeler, yesterday.... he showed us a sketchbook full of his ideas for etchings.... many really fine and original things.”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

in a letter to her mother, from Worpswede, c. 28 August 1897; as quoted in Paula Modersohn-Becker, The Letters and Journals by Paula Modersohn-Becker, eds. Günter Busch, Liselotte von Reinken, Arthur S. Wensinger, Carole Clew Hoey - Northwestern University Press, 1998, p. 81
1897

Idea, Thinking, Teachers, Sun

“Reconstruction is merely a special case of economic progress. If we are to understand its problems thoroughly, we must examine what is meant by economic progress and try to discover how it comes about… Economic progress is not altogether easy to define and is even more difficult to measure. Nevertheless, the phrase clearly corresponds to a meaningful idea. We have only to contrast a savage society with our own. In a savage society, the same customs, the same techniques, the same ways of doing everything, from ploughing to praying, are maintained generation after generation, son following exactly in the footsteps of his father and daughter in the footsteps of her mother, without deviating an inch from the well-trodden way. In modern civilized society, on the other hand, there is constant change and flux; we are constantly improving on the methods of our ancestors, and indeed one of the surest ways to discredit anything is to call it "old-fashioned!"”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1940s, The Economics of Peace, 1945, p. 73

Way, Idea, Fashion, Understanding

“She recalled her absurd attempt to construct an example—an image that, because it was constructed of things it simply did not fit, reversed the idea into an idea silly by itself, ridiculous in application—a ridiculousness that could easily, she saw, have strayed into the pernicious, the odious, or the destructive, depending on how widely one had insisted on applying it.”

Samuel R. Delany book Tales of Nevèrÿon

Section 2 (p. 104)
Tales of Nevèrÿon (1979)

Idea, Dependency

“But, the notion of an American citizen going to jail for a nonviolent political protest is utterly antithetical to what this country is all about. It is a disgrace. Officer Coronado is a disgrace for arresting her. The prosecutor is a disgrace for charging her. The jurors are disgraces for convicting her.”

Marc Randazza (1969) American writer

Country

“Nothing can well be imagined more painful than the present position of woman, unless, on the one hand, she renounces all outward activity and keeps herself within the magic sphere, the bubble of her dreams; or, on the other, surrendering all aspiration, she gives herself to her real life, soul and body. For those to whom it is possible, the latter is best; for out of activity may come thought, out of mere aspiration can come nothing.”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Cassandra (1860)

Life, Pain, Dreams, Soul

“When my daughter wakes up on her first morning in God's City of Zion, the sun will rise over Sierra Benida and shine upon the saints: the sun of the All-Wisdom; the sun of the Beehive, the Sego-lily, and Seagull... My son will understand that Egill Skallagrímsson and the Norse kings live here in Spanish Fork, but that they now have the gleam of righteousness in their eyes and have become leaders in the Stake, Seventies, and High Priests.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Steinar
Paradísarheimt (Paradise Reclaimed) (1960)

Wisdom, God, Daughters, Sun

“And their mouths are cut like razor blades, and their eyes are like stilettos, and her radiator's steaming and her teeth are in a wreck, she won't let you kiss her, but what in the hell do you expect?”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

"Small Change", Small Change (1976).

Hell, Kiss

“Judging others by themselves, the English, who are blinded by their loyalty, have always thought that the Germans did not abide by their pledges inscribed in the Versailles Treaty because they had not frankly agreed to them… We, on the contrary, believe that if Germany, far from making the slightest effort to carry out the treaty of peace, has always tried to escape her obligations, it is because until now she has not been convinced of her defeat… We are also certain that Germany, as a nation, resigns herself to keep her pledged word only under the impact of necessity.”

Raymond Poincaré (1860–1934) 10th President of the French Republic

Letter to Charles de Saint-Aulaire, French ambassador to Britain (c. December 1922), quoted in Leopold Schwarzschild, World in Trance (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1943), p. 140.

Peace, Effort, Loyalty

“She believed herself to be completely normal. Two very simple reasons lay behind her decision to die, and she was sure that, were she to leave a note explaining, many people would agree with her.
The first reason: everything in her life was the same and, once her youth was gone, it would be downhill all the way, with old age beginning to leave irreversible marks, the onset of illness, the departure of friends. She would gain nothing by continuing to live; indeed, the likelihood of suffering only increased. The second reason was more philosophical: Veronika read the newspapers, watched TV, and she was aware of what was going on in the world. Everything was wrong, and she had no way of putting things right — that gave her a sense of complete powerlessness.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Veronika Decides to Die (1998)

Life, People, Youth, Age

“To know to know to love her so.
Four saints prepare for saints.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

Four Saints in Three Acts (1927)
Operas and Plays (1932)

Love

“The spider-men came first, and presented her Majesty with a table full of mathematical points, lines and figures of all sorts of squares, circles, triangles, and the like; which the Empress, notwithstanding that she had a very ready wit, and quick apprehension, could not understand; but the more she endeavoured to learn, the more was she confounded”

Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673) English aristocrat, a prolific writer, and a scientist

Description of a New World, Called The Blazing World (1666)

Men, Mathematics, Understanding, Learning

“"If you believe," he shouted to them, "clap your hands; don't let Tink die."
Many clapped.
Some didn't.
A few beasts hissed.
The clapping stopped suddenly; as if countless mothers had rushed to their nurseries to see what on earth was happening; but already Tink was saved. First her voice grew strong, then she popped out of bed, then she was flashing through the room more merry and impudent than ever. She never thought of thanking those who believed, but she would have like to get at the ones who had hissed.”

J. M. Barrie book Peter Pan

Source: Peter and Wendy (1911), Ch. 13

Strong

“In the stupendous rush of change which is coming on the human world as a result of the present tornado of upheaval, ancient India's culture, attacked by European modernism, overpowered in the material field, betrayed by the indifference of her children, may perish for ever along with the soul of the nation that holds it in its keeping…. Each nation is a Shakti or power of the evolving spirit in humanity and lives by the principle which it embodies. India is the Bharata Shakti, the living energy of a great spiritual conception, and fidelity to it is the very principle of her existence…. To follow a law or principle involuntarily or ignorantly or contrary to the truth of one's consciousness is a falsehood and a self-destruction. To allow oneself to be killed, like the lamb attacked by the wolf, brings no growth, farthers no development, assures no spiritual merit. Concert or unity may come in good time, but it must be an underlying unity with a free differentiation, not a swallowing up of one by another or an incongruous and inharmonious mixture. Nor can it come before the world is ready for these greater things. To lay down one's arms in a state of war is to invite destruction and it can serve no compensating spiritual purpose…. India is indeed awaking and defending herself, but not sufficiently and not with the whole-heartedness, the clear sight and the firm resolution which can alone save her from the peril. Today it is close; let her choose,… for the choice is imperatively before her, to live or to perish.”

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

December, 1918
India's Rebirth

War, Children, Truth, World

“Bodybuilders party a lot, and once, in Gold's — the gym in Venice, California, where all the top guys train — there was a black girl who came out naked. Everybody jumped on her and took her upstairs, where we all got together.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947) actor, businessman and politician of Austrian-American heritage

1970s, Oui interview (1977)

Guy, Girl, Training

“I'd never seen anyone go truly, old-school berserkergang, but that scream…It was like hearing an echo rolling down through the centuries from an ancient world, a more savage world, now lost to the mists of time. And suddenly I had no trouble at all believing her age.”

Jim Butcher book Heorot

The Dresden Files short stories, Heorot

Age, World, School, Time

“Though Bernie is exhausted and has given up on his revolution, many of his voters still want to keep up the fight. I expect that millions of Bernie voters will refuse to vote for Hillary because of her support for the War in Iraq, the invasion of Libya, NAFTA and TPP, and of course because she is totally bought and sold by special interests. She and her husband have been paid millions and millions by global corporations and powerful interests who will control her every decision. She is their puppet, and they pull the strings. We welcome with open arms all voters who want an honest government and to fix our rigged system so it works for the people. This includes fixing one of Bernie's biggest issues, our terrible trade deals that strip our country of its jobs and wealth.”

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

How Donald Trump Beat Reddit http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/donald-trump-reddit-ama-ask-me-anything/493361/, The Atlantic (July 28, 2016) 2010s, 2016, July

War, People, Support, Decision

“Ridiculous as the idea may have been for her bluestocking mother to send brother and sister over alone like this, the fact was that Judy was protected as much by her curiosity as by her innocence. And then there was this other thing about her, too. You know all that razzle-dazzle about people being born in Original Sin and all that rot? Well, maybe it’s rot and maybe it isn’t. I mean I wouldn’t slit my throat from ear to ear, just because I’d found out for sure that most people are. But she wasn’t. That was the thing. She simply wasn’t.”

Elaine Dundy (1921–2008) American journalist, actress

I’m positive of that.
Part One, Two
The Dud Avocado (1958)

People, Idea, Sister

“She leant upon her harp, and thousands looked
On her in love and wonder—thousands knelt
And worshipp'd in her presence—burning tears,
And words that died in utterance, and a pause
Of breathless, agitated eagerness,
First gave the full heart's homage: then came forth
A shout that rose to heaven; and the hills,
The distant valleys, all rang with the name
Of the Æolian Sappho—every heart
Found in itself some echo to her song.”

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

Sappho from The London Literary Gazette (4th May 1822) Poetic Sketches. 2nd Series - Sketch the First
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Love, Tear, Distant, Heart

“[W]hat bothers the New York Times is not racism per se, but who is the racist and who are her targets.”

Victor Davis Hanson (1953) American military historian, essayist, university professor

2010s, The Double Standards of Postmodern Justice (2018)

Time

“What I want in a woman is protection. Loyalty. Companionship. Loyalty, friendship, companionship, ferociousness. I want her to protect me, and have my back to the bitter end. If I have a fight, I want her to jump in. Even if I'm winning; even if she's ninety pounds. I like strong women—not necessarily a masculine woman—but I like strong women. I like strong, say a woman who runs a C. E. O. corporation. I like a strong woman with confidence—massive confidence—and then I want to dominate her sexually.”

Mike Tyson (1966) American boxer

As stated in documentary film, Tyson.
On women

Women, Friendship, Confidence, Strong

“and here I give it under my hand that I will most willingly begin upon a new canvas [after his first portrait of Lady Dartmouth was criticized and rejected]. But I only for the present beg your Lordship will give me leave to try an experiment upon that picture to prove the amazing effect of dress. I meant to treat it as a cast-off picture and dress it (contrary, I know, to Lady Dartmouth's taste) in the modern way; the worst consequence that can attend it will be her ladyship's being angry with me for a time. I am vastly out in my notion if the face does not immediately look like; but I must know if Lady Dartmouth powders or not in common. I only beg to know that and to have the [first] picture sent down [back] to me..”

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) English portrait and landscape painter

Quote from Gainborough's letter to Lord Dartmouth, 13 April 1771; as cited in Thomas Gainsborough, by William T, Whitley https://ia800204.us.archive.org/6/items/thomasgainsborou00whitrich/thomasgainsborou00whitrich.pdf; New York, Charles Scribner's Sons – London, Smith, Elder & Co, Sept. 1915, p. 74 1770 - 1788

Way, Time

“I've always had a crush on Anne Murray, since I was like 9 years old. But no, [Ingenue]'s not about her.”

Anne Murray (1945) Canadian singer

k.d. lang, Canadian singer regarding the rumours that her album "Ingenue" might be about Anne Murray, as quoted in "HANGING WITH K. D. LANG", MTV.com, as reported by ATN Toronto correspondent (and Toronto Star staff writer) Peter Howell, 18 October 1995 http://www.mtv.com/news/504788/hanging-with-k-d-lang/

“I was horrified by the attacks against her, [but] Madonna knew the situation in Malawi, where he was born. In that country, there isn't really a legal framework for adopting. Personally, I prefer to stay on the side of the law.”

Angelina Jolie (1975) American actress, film director, and screenwriter

"Jolie shocked by Madonna attacks" Reuters report, via CNN.com (8 January 2007) http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/01/08/jolie.madonna.reut/index.html

Law, Personality, Country

“Farewell, false love, I took you for
The woman that I lost last year
Forever as I think:
I loved her but I will not see
Her any more in Germany.
O Milky Way, sister in whiteness
To Canaan's rivers and the bright
Bodies of lovers drowned,
Can we follow toilsomely
Your path to other nebulae?”

Guillaume Apollinaire book Alcools

Adieu faux amour confondu
Avec la femme qui s'éloigne
Avec celle que j'ai perdue
L'année dernière en Allemagne
Et que je ne reverrai plus
Voie lactée ô sœur lumineuse
Des blancs ruisseaux de Chanaan
Et des corps blancs des amoureuses
Nageurs morts suivrons-nous d’ahan
Ton cours vers d'autres nébuleuses
"La Chanson du Mal-Aimé" (Song of the Poorly Loved), line 56; translation by William Meredith, from Francis Steegmuller Apollinaire: Poet Among the Painters (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973) p. 95.
Alcools (1912)

Love, Way, Lovers, Thinking

“[Fox] exhibited two pictures of this country; the one representing her at the end of the last glorious war, the other at the present moment. At the end of the last war this country was raised to a most dazzling height of splendour and respect. The French marine was in a manner annihilated, the Spanish rendered contemptible; the French were driven from America; new sources of commerce were opened, the old enlarged; our influence extended to a predominance in Europe, our empire of the ocean established and acknowledged, and our trade filling the ports and harbours of the wondering and admiring world. Now mark the degradation and the change, We have lost thirteen provinces of America; we have lost several of our Islands, and the rest are in danger; we have lost the empire of the sea; we have lost our respect abroad and our unanimity at home; the nations have forsaken us, they see us distracted and obstinate, and they leave us to our fate. Country! …This was your situation, when you were governed by Whig ministers and by Whig measures, when you were warmed and instigated by a just and a laudable cause, when you were united and impelled by the confidence which you had in your ministers, and when they were again strengthened and emboldened by your ardour and enthusiasm. This is your situation, when you are under the conduct of Tory ministers and a Tory system, when you are disunited, disheartened, and have neither confidence in your ministers nor union among yourselves; when your cause is unjust and your conductors are either impotent or treacherous.”

Charles James Fox (1749–1806) British Whig statesman

Speech in the House of Commons (27 November 1781), reprinted in J. Wright (ed.), The Speeches of the Rt. Hon. C. J. Fox in the House of Commons. Volume I (1815), p. 429.
1780s

Fate, War, World, Home

“Ibn 'Umar reported that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "All of you are shepherds. Each of you is responsible for his flock. An amir is a shepherd. A man is a shepherd in respect of his family. The woman is a shepherd in respect of her husband's house and children. All of you are shepherds and each of you is responsible for his flock."”

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

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 2, hadith number 283
Sunni Hadith

Children, Family, Peace, Housing

“So when ebbing Nile hides himself in his great caverns and holds in his mouth the liquid nurture of an eastern winter, the valleys smoke forsaken by the flood and gaping Egypt awaits the sounds of her watery father, until at their prayers he grants sustenance to the Pharian fields and brings on a great harvest year.”
Sic ubi se magnis refluus suppressit in antris Nilus et Eoae liquentia pabula brumae ore premit, fumant desertae gurgite valles et patris undosi sonitus expectat hiulca Aegyptos, donec Phariis alimenta rogatus donet agris magnumque inducat messibus annum.

Statius book Thebaid

Source: Thebaid, Book IV, Line 705

Winter

“At dawn she lay with her profile at that angle
Which, when she sleeps, seems the carved face of an angel.”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

"Daybreak"

Angels, Sleep

“There was no doubt about Sandra's experience and lack of inhibition. She spread herself and I entered her. She wasn't unresponsive. Yet, when I asked her softly if she was liking it, she resorted to her favorite expression: ‘It’s all right.”

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

Roman by Polanski (1984)

“Uptown girl
She's been living in her uptown world.
I bet she never had a backstreet guy
I bet her mama never told her why.
I'm gonna try for an uptown girl.
She's been living in her white bread world
As long as anyone with hot blood can
And now she's looking for a downtown man
That's what I am.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Uptown Girl.
Song lyrics, An Innocent Man (1983)

World, Guy, Girl

“I have been living a hermit-life, though always with my pencil in my hand... How much real delight have I had with the study of landscape this summer! Either I am myself improved in the art of seeing nature, which Sir Joshua call painting, or nature has unveiled her beauties to me less fastidiously. Perhaps there is something of both, so we will divide the compliment.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Quote from Constable's letter to Rev. John Fisher (22 July 1812), as quoted in Richard Friedenthal, Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock (Thames and Hudson, London, 1963), p. 40
1800s - 1810s

Life, Beauty, Art, Nature

“And then, all of a sudden, it was as though through those dark eyes an electrical circuit had been struck. She sat fascinated. Snake-and-bird fascinated. Afterwards she could not recall the details of what he had said. She remembered only that she had been absorbed, rapt, lost, for over ten minutes by the clock. She had perceived images conjured up from the dead past: a hand trailed in clear river water, deliciously cool, while the sun smiled and a shoal of tiny fishes darted between her fingers; the crisp flesh of a ripe apple straight from the tree, so juicy it ran down her chin; grass between her bare toes, the turf like springs so that she seemed not to bear the whole of her weight on her soles but to be floating, dreamlike, in slow motion, instantly transported to the moon; the western sky painted with vast heart-tearing slapdash streaks of red below the bright steel-blue of clouds, and stars coming snap-snap into view against the eastern dark; wind gentle in her hair and on her cheeks, bearing flower perfumes, dusting her with petals; snow cold to the palm as it was shaped into a ball; laughter echoing from a dark lane where only lovers walked, not thieves and muggers; butter like an ingot of soft gold; ocean spray sharp and clean as the edge of an axe; with the same sense of safe, provided rightly used; round pebbles polychrome beside a pool; rain to which a thirsty mouth could open, distilling the taste of a continent of air... And under, and through, and in, and around all this, a conviction: “Something can be done to get that back!”
She was crying. Small tears like ants had itched their paths down her cheeks. She said, when she realized he had fallen silent, “But I never knew that! None of it! I was born and raised right here in New York!””

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

”But don’t you think you should have known it?” Austin Train inquired gently.
September “MINE ENEMIES ARE DELIVERED INTO MY HAND”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Smile, Star, Spring, Flowers

“To the question how she can be the image of God, [Augustine] answers as follows: "Woman," says he, "compared to other creatures, is the image of God, for she bears dominion over them. But compared unto man, she may not be called the image of God, for she bears not rule and lordship over man, but ought to obey him," etc. [57] And how that woman ought to obey man, he speaks yet more clearly in these words, "The woman shall be subject to man as unto Christ. For woman," says he, "has not her example from the body and from the flesh, that so she shall be subject to man, as the flesh is unto the Spirit, because that the flesh in the weakness and mortality of this life lusts and strives against the Spirit, and therefore would not the Holy Ghost give example of subjection to the woman of any such thing," etc. This sentence of Augustine ought to be noted of all women, for in it he plainly affirms, that woman ought to be subject to man, that she never ought more to desire preeminence [over] him, than that she ought to desire above Christ Jesus”

John Knox (1514–1572) Scottish clergyman, writer and historian

The First Blast to Awaken Women Degenerate

Life, Women, God, Question

“The thought came and went, more wish than thought. Maria wasn’t good at considering her own emotions. Most of the time the girl found it hard to believe that what she felt might matter.”

Jon Courtenay Grimwood (1953) British writer

Source: Stamping Butterflies (2004), Chapter 50 (p. 308)

Girl, Time

“No one else knew how she'd longed for extinction, how much part of her had hungered simply to quit. To end. She'd once intended, coldly and logically, to do just that… She'd sacrificed her naval career… and a corner of her mind suspected she'd actually wanted to sacrifice it — that she'd planned to use the loss of the vocation she loved so much as one more reason to end her dreary existence. It had seemed only reasonable then; now the memory was one more coal of contempt for her own weakness, her willingness to surrender to her own pain when she'd always refused to surrender to anyone else.”

David Weber (1952) author

"Honorverse", Flag in Exile (1995)

Love, Hunger, Pain, Memory

““Conscience is only social pressure,” he told her, tense without quite knowing why, “the impulse to submerge your ego in that of the herd, and do what other people want you to because you’re afraid of their censure. Realistic self-interest frees a person from the childish restrictions of conscience.”
“Are you sure of that, Jarles? What about your dreams? Conscience may be partly what you say it is, but it’s more than that. It’s hearkening to the wisest thoughts that have occurred to the minds of the human race.””

Fritz Leiber book Gather, Darkness!

Source: Gather, Darkness! (1950), Chapter 14 (pp. 145-146)

People, Dreams, Personality

“So many times, I've seen men and women get into trouble when they travel away from home because they believe that no one will ever know what they do when away. This is a lie, and it will always come back to haunt you. In Genesis 38, the Bible tells the story of Judah, who went on a business trip. When he arrived at a distant town, he saw a prostitute and approached her to sleep with her. But he didn't have any money to pay her, so he had to give her some personal items as a down payment. Of course, everyone knew those items belonged to him, and soon what he had done in secret, far away from home, was a public matter. And, again, we're reading about his hypocrisy thousands of years later. His actions have brought shame to his entire famiy for many generations. It's just not worth it. I remember an old tent preacher saying, sin will take you further than you want to go; cost you more than you want to pay; and keep you longer than you want to stay.”

Ted Haggard (1956) American minister

[Haggard, Ted, Letters from Home, Regal Books, March 2003, p. 20, ISBN 0830730583]

Women, Men, Money, Lie

“As far as talent goes, Marilyn Monroe was so minimally gifted as to be almost unemployable, and anyone who holds to the opinion that she was a great natural comic identifies himself immediately as a dunce…As a natural silent comedian Marilyn might possibly have qualified, with the proviso that she was not to be depended on to invent anything. But as a natural comedian in sound she had the conclusive disadvantage of not being able to speak. She was limited ineluctably to characters who rented language but could not possess it, and all her best roles fell into that category. She was good at being inarticulately abstracted for the same reason that midgets are good at being short.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Mailer's Marilyn
Essays and reviews, At the Pillars of Hercules (1979)

Nature, Dependency

“Janaki was one of the daughters of King Dahir of Sindh. She was captured along with her sister and sent to the Khalifa at Baghdad. When the Khalifa invited Janaki to share his bed, she lied to him that she had already been violated by Muhammad bin Qasim. Her sister supported her statement. The Khalifa ordered that Muhammad be sewed up in raw hide and sent to his court. Muhammad was already dead when the chest containing him arrived in Baghdad. Janaki accused the Khalifa of having killed one of his great generals without making proper enquiry. She said, 'The king has committed a very grievous mistake, for he ought not, on account of two slave girls, to have destroyed a person who had taken captive a hundred thousand modest women like us,… and who instead of temples had erected mosques, pulpits and minarets.”

Muhammad bin Qasim (695–715) Umayyad general

Elliot and Dowson, Vol. I : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. p. 211
Quotes from The Chach Nama

Women, Girl, Support, Sister

“Past are three summers since she first beheld
The ocean; all around the child await
Some exclamation of amazement here.
She coldly said, her long-lasht eyes abased,
Is this the mighty ocean? is this all?
That wondrous soul Charoba once possest,—
Capacious, then, as earth or heaven could hold,
Soul discontented with capacity,—
Is gone (I fear) forever. Need I say
She was enchanted by the wicked spells
Of Gebir, whom with lust of power inflamed
The western winds have landed on our coast?
I since have watcht her in lone retreat,
Have heard her sigh and soften out the name.”

Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) British writer

Gebir, Book I (1798). It is reported that "these lines were specially singled out for admiration by Shelley, Humphrey Davy, Scott, and many remarkable men"; Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), citing Forster, Life of Landor, vol. i. p. 95.

Fear, Soul, Past, Summer