Quotes about herring
page 90

“Like or dislike her, the British Queen is harmless. Her role is purely ceremonial. Conversely, life and death are in the hands of the monarch who sits in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“Mobocracy vs. Monarchy,” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=602 WorldNetDaily.com, May 20, 2011. 2010s, 2011

Life, Death

“I believe that the civilization India evolved is not to be beaten in the world. Nothing can equal the seeds sown by our ancestors, Rome went, Greece shared the same fate; the might of the Pharaohs was broken; Japan has become Westernized; of China nothing can be said; but India is still, somehow or other, sound at the foundation. The people of Europe learn their lessons from the writings of the men of Greece or Rome, which exist no longer in their former glory. In trying to learn from them, the Europeans imagine that they will avoid the mistakes of Greece and Rome. Such is their pitiable condition. In the midst of all this India remains immovable and that is her glory. It is a charge against India that her people are so uncivilized, ignorant and stolid, that it is not possible to induce them to adopt any changes. It is a charge really against our merit. What we have tested and found true on the anvil of experience, we dare not change. Many thrust their advice upon India, and she remains steady. This is her beauty: it is the sheet-anchor of our hope.
Civilization is that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty. Performance of duty and observance of morality are convertible terms. To observe morality is to attain mastery over our mind and our passions. So doing, we know ourselves. The Gujarati equivalent for civilization means “good conduct.””

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Sect. 13
Variant translations: I believe that the civilisation into which India has evolved is not to be beaten in the world. Nothing can equal the seeds sown by our ancestry. Rome went; Greece shared the same fate; the might of the Pharaohs was broken; Japan has become westernised; of China nothing can be said; but India is still, somehow or other, sound at the foundation.
Greece, Egypt, Rome — all have been erased from this world, yet we continue to exist. There is something in us, that our character never ceases from the face of this world, defying global hostility for centuries.
1900s, Hind Swaraj (1908)

Men, Fate, People, World

“He is made one with Nature: there is heard
His voice in all her music, from the moan
Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Adonaïs

St. XLII
Adonais (1821)

Music, Nature, Bird, Night

“Azarius, for his part, had not made her voyage to the depths of pain to understand that death and birth, in that place, have almost the same tragic meaning.”

Gabrielle Roy book The Tin Flute

Source: The Tin Flute (1945), P. 367

Death, Pain, Birth, Understanding

“You want to arrest the clocks, stop everything for half a second, give yourself a chance to do it over again, rewind the life, uncrash the car, run it backward, have her lift miraculously back into the windshield, unshatter the glass, go about your day untouched, some old, lost sweet-tasting time.
But there it was again, the girl's spreading bloodstain.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book One: A Fear of Love

Life, Cars, Girl, Chance

“3523. Neither Fish, nor Flesh, nor good red Herring.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Fish

“There wasn't any answer to that. So he tried harder, and the question got more circumstantial and tentative, and at the same time more precise and exact; and still there were no answers, only the fuller and fuller form of the question, evolving as Auberon had described to her all life evolving, reaching out limbs and inventing organs, reticulating joints, doing and being in more and more complex yet more and more compact and individuated ways, until the question, perfectly asked, understood its own answerlessness.”

John Crowley (1942) American writer

Bk. 2, Ch. 1
Little, Big: or, The Fairies' Parliament (1981)

Life, Way, Question, Time

“Let us not expect Russia to do what she is incapable of, to restrict herself within certain limits, to concentrate her attention upon one point, or bring her conception of life down to one doctrine. Her literary productions must reflect the moral chaos which she is passing through.”

Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé (1848–1910) French diplomat, orientalist, travel writer, archaeologist, philanthropist and literary critic

Russian Novelists (1887), page 214 (translated by Jane Loring Edmands)

Life

“Kunti, like Ahalya with Indra, is curious. She wishes to test whether Durvasa’s boon really works. Significantly, this desire arises in her after she has menstruated. In her account to Vyasa, she frankly states that she had desired (sprihayanti) Surya, again reminding us of Ahalya when approached by Indra. Perceiving a radiant being in the rising sun she invites him, using the mantra. Once summoned, Surya, like Indra, will not return unsatisfied. He cajoles and browbeats the girl, assuring her of unimpaired virginity, and threatening to consume the kingdom and the boon-bestowing sage if denied. A thrilling conflation of desire and fear overpower Kunti’s reluctance, and she stipulates that the son thus born must be like his father.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

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

Fear, Girl, Sun

“"(Guru Mani Madhava Chakiar) began playing the dual role of Parvati and Shiva…sat on a wooden chair…I have never ever seen a Parvati so exquisitely beautiful. I have never seen a Shiva so handsome and so cunning. I sat there and wept as if I were alone in the presence of God. I then realized what theatre was all about — the falsehood of that old man made me arrive at a state where inhibitions and convictions, all became so fluid and beautiful. And this vision has remained with me always"
- Dr. Vijaya Mehta (Executive Director, National Center for Performing Arts- Bombay, acclaimed Indian theatre personality) about her experience of watching 72 year old Guru's Abhinaya of Parvativiraha”

Mani Madhava Chakyar (1899–1990) Indian actor

Abhinaya and Netrābhinaya Source: Theatre is a great lie that gets us to arrive at a great truth- Dr.Vijaya Mehta http://www.rotaryclubofbombay.org/ps121206.htm

God, Beauty, Art, Personality

“In the years when he'd worked full-time, he'd never complained about frozen or takeout or preprepared dinners. To Caroline it probably seemed that he was changing the rules on her. But to Gary it seemed that the nature of family life itself was changing - that togetherness and filiality and fraternity weren't valued the way they were when he was young.”

Jonathan Franzen book The Corrections

The Corrections (2001)

Life, Family, Way, Nature

“Four days ago I took a special step which brought it about that Russia announced that yesterday that she is ready to sign. The personal contact with Stalin is established. Now Poland is in the position which I wanted her…A beginning has been made for the destruction of England's hegemony. The way is open for the soldier, now that I have made political preparations.”

William L. Shirer book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960)

Way, Personality

“She would rather light a candle than curse the darkness, and her glow has warmed the world.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Remark upon learning of the death of Eleanor Roosevelt, drawing upon the motto of the Christopher Society: "It is better to light one candle than curse the darkness." ; quoted in The New York Times (8 November 1962)

World, Light

“In the last few days I have been thinking very intensively about my art and I believe that things are progressing for me. I even think that I'm beginning to have a liaison with the sun. Not with the sun that divides everything up and puts shadows in everywhere and plucks the image into a thousand pieces, but with the sun that broods and makes things gray and heavy and combines them all in this gray heaviness so that they become one. I'm thinking about all of that very much and it lives within me besides my great love. A time has come when I think that I shall again be able to say something [in her painting] one day; I am again devout and full of expectation..”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

In a letter to her friend, the sculptress Clara Rilke-Westhoff, from Worpswede, 13 May 1901; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 201
1900 - 1905

Love, Art, Thinking, Time

““Don’t worry,” he told her.
“Me?” she said. “I never worry. It’s all going to end badly whether I worry or not.””

Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist

Part Thirteen “Magic Night”, Chapter ii “Shelter from the Storm”, Section 2 (p. 553)
(1987), BOOK THREE: OUT OF THE EMPTY QUARTER

“I'm not going to get married again, I think I'll just find a woman that hates me, then buy her a house.”

Willie Nelson (1933) American country music singer-songwriter.

Also attributed to Lewis Grizzard, among others.
Attributed

Hate, Thinking, Housing

“My Lord St. Albans said that Nature did never put her precious jewels into a garret four stories high, and therefore that exceeding tall men had ever very empty heads.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

No. 17
Apophthegms (1624)

Men, Nature

“Here she drew forth a small pocket-book, took from it a card and a pencil and, after meditating a moment, wrote a few words. It is our privilege to look over her shoulder, and if we exercise it we may read the brief query: […].”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

XLIV
The Portrait of a Lady (1881)

Books, Exercises, Reading

“I love Vermont because of her hills and valleys, her scenery and invigorating climate, but most of all because of her indomitable people. They are a race of pioneers who have almost beggared themselves to serve others. If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the Union, and support of our institutions should languish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont.”

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

1920s, Vermont is a State I Love (1928)

Love, People, Support, Parting

“My grandfather, a teacher of religion, could think of nothing better than to place my father – his eldest son, still a child – as a clerk with a firm of herring wholesalers, and his youngest son with a barber. No, my father was not a clerk, but, for thirty-two years, a plain workman [in the Jewish ghetto of Vitebsk ]. He lifted heavy barrels, and my heart used to twist like a Turkish pretzel as I watched him carrying those loads and stirring the little herrings with his frozen hands... Sometimes my father's clothes would glisten with herring brine. The light played above him, besides him. But his face, now yellow, now clear, would sometimes break into a wan smile.”

Marc Chagall (1887–1985) French artist and painter

Quote in Marc Chagall - the Russian years 1906 – 1922, editor Christoph Vitali, exhibition catalogue, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 1991, p. 23
1920's, My life (1922)

Religion, Smile, Thinking, Light

“Quaking muscles in the act of birth,
Between her legs a pigmy face appear,
And the first murderer lay upon the earth.”

A. D. Hope (1907–2000) Australian poet and essayist

Imperial Adam (l. 42-44).

Birth, Appearance

“So down to Main Street and to Fifth Street, to the long dark bars, to the King Edward Cellar, and there a girl with yellow hair and sickness in her smile. Her name was Jean, she was thin and tubercular, but she was hard too, so anxious to get my money, her languid mouth for my lips, her long fingers at my trousers, her sickly lovely eyes watching every dollar bill.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Love, Money, Smile, Girl

“Pale, cold torchlight.
Slender shadows from a row of tall bamboo
Flicker dimly on the coffin of a child
Carried through the chilling dew.
A sobbing old woman lays bare her heart.
I stare at the countless stars in silence, asking myself:
Since when has my soul been destroyed?
And might that dark coffin of a child
Not contain my corpse as well?
Vaguely, from the immensity of space,
I heard a star cast a soft reply.”

Chế Lan Viên (1920–1989) Vietnamese writer

"The Funeral Procession", as quoted in Understanding Vietnam by Neil Jamieson (University of California Press, 1995), p. 164

Soul, Star, Silence, Heart

“One day I was sitting one side of the fireplace, and my wife was sitting on the other, and I suddenly said to her, “Wouldn’t it be a good idea to write a story about some boys on an island, showing how they would really behave, being boys and not little saints as they usually are in children’s books.” And she said, “That’s a first-class idea! You write it!””

William Golding (1911–1993) British novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate

So I went ahead and wrote it. Introduction to his reading https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYnfSV27vLY of Lord of the Flies in the unabridged audio version (1980)

Children, Books, Boy, Idea

“I could almost smell her fear… Why did it bother me so much? Because she and I were the only women here, and we had to be better than the men. Braver, quicker, whatever. It was a rule for playing with the big boys.”

Laurell K. Hamilton (1963) Novelist

Anita
Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series, The Laughing Corpse (1994)

Women, Men, Fear, Boy

“Poetry is not a branch of analytical philosophy. It is a primal, holistic kind of human communication. A poet needs innocence as much as knowledge, emotion as much as intelligence, vulnerability as much as rigor. A poet can become too smart for his or her own good and forget the childlike pleasures of sound and story, sense, and sensuality that poetry should provide. The challenge for a writer is to master the medium of poetry without losing that inner innocence.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

"Paradigms Lost," interview with Gloria Brame, ELF: Eclectic Literary Forum (Spring 1995)
Interviews

Pleasure, Intelligence, Communication, Knowledge

“Is it all in that pretty little head of yours?
What goes on in that place in the dark?
Well I used to know a girl and I would have
sworn that her name was Veronica
Well she used to have a carefree mind of her
own and a delicate look in her eye
These days I'm afraid she's not even sure if her
name is Veronica.”

Elvis Costello (1954) English singer-songwriter

Veronica, written by Elvis Costello and Paul McCartney
Song lyrics, Spike (1989)

Girl

“T was Slander filled her mouth with lying words,
Slander, the foulest whelp of Sin.”

Robert Pollok book The Course of Time

Book iv, line 725.
The Course of Time (published 1827)

Lying

“But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Kubla Khan

Kubla Khan (1797 or 1798)

Lovers

“Sometimes a woman's love of being loved gets the better of her conscience, and though she is agonized at the thought of treating a man cruelly, she encourages him to love her while she doesn't love him at all. Then, when she sees him suffering, her remorse sets in, and she does what she can to repair the wrong.”

Thomas Hardy book Jude the Obscure

Pt. IV, ch. V
Jude the Obscure (1895)

Love, Suffering

“Tying her bonnet under her chin,
She tied her raven ringlets in;
But not alone in the silken snare
Did she catch her lovely floating hair,
For, tying her bonnet under her chin,
She tied a young man’s heart within.”

Nora Perry (1831–1896) American writer

The Love-knot, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Love, Heart

“The stories of the Manet brothers [ Edouard and her future husband Eugène Manet ] tell about all the horrors we are likely to face, they [in Paris, during the war between France and Germany] are almost enough to discourage even the bravest of us. [But] you know they [the Manet brothers] always exaggerate, and at the moment they see everything in the blackest possible light.”

Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) painter from France

In a letter of Berthe, from Paris, to Edma who stayed then in Brittany, 1870; as quoted in The Private Lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe; Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 2006, p. 72
1860 - 1870

War, Light, Future

“Happily common sense, though she is by nature the gentlest creature living, when she feels the knife at her throat, is apt to develop unexpected powers of resistance, and to send doctrinaires flying, even when they have bound her down and think they have her at their mercy.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 26

Feeling, Nature, Thinking, Sense

“I am certain that each of us has his or her memories of that terrible day in 1968. For me it was the final straw in the struggle to retain my vocation to become a Catholic priest. Suddenly, this cataclysmic event ripped me from the moorings of my grandparents, my youth and my faith, and catapulted me headlong into the abyss that Richard Wright seemed to describe years earlier.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

Youth, Faith, Memory

“I find it hard living on my own, but I imagine I would find it difficult not living on my own. Perhaps I could still change my mind. That's everyone's drama. We all make different compromises. And, no, I don't regret not having children. Given my painting, children could have suffered. A mother must make her children come first: young children are helpless. Well, paintings are objects but they're also helpless.”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

In 1958 (three years after breaking up with Greenberg, Frankenthaler married Robert Motherwell; their marriage ended in 1971.
1970s - 1980s, interview with Deborah Salomon in 'New York Times', 1989

Children, Imagination, Suffering, Change

“That’s the words: "So I’m back to the velvet underground"—which is a clothing store in downtown San Francisco, where Janis Joplin got her clothes, and Grace Slick from Jefferson Airplane, it was this little hole in the wall, amazing, beautiful stuff—”back to the floor that I love, to a room with some lace and paper flowers, back to the gypsy that I was."”

Stevie Nicks (1948) American singer and songwriter, member of Fleetwood Mac

(on the inspiration for "Gypsy") Leah Greenblatt, "Stevie Nicks On Her Favorite Songs: A Music Mix Exclusive", http://music-mix.ew.com/2009/03/31/stevie-nicks-in/ Entertainment Weekly, 31 March 2009

Love, Beauty, Flowers, Clothes

“My brother, Toby, is six-foot-six, [and] he [went to] Vassar; my other brother, Brown; my sister, without one penny from me or my [step]dad, NYU Law, number one in her class—Jesus, it's such a functional family, I don't know where I came from.”

Courtney Love (1964) American punk singer-songwriter, musician, actress, and artist

On her siblings, The David Letterman Show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzX8Zv_dosM (17 March 2004) 1996–2005

Family, Law, Sister

“We are of the earth,
To her we do return”

Thom Yorke (1968) English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter

The Numbers
Lyrics, A Moon Shaped Pool (2016)

“Who will not commend the wit of astrology? Venus, born out of the sea, hath her exaltation in Pisces.”

Thomas Browne (1605–1682) English polymath

Commonplace notebooks, Part I

Sea

“I hate it when something I’ve had published "inspires" some nut to imitate what I’ve written, or some teacher gets fired for having her students read one of my stories or novels.”

Richard Matheson (1926–2013) American fiction writer

"Ed Gorman Calling: We Talk to Richard Matheson" http://www.mysteryfile.com/Matheson/Interview.html (2004)

Hate, Teachers, Reading

“People-problems did not interest her. Data seemed to her a larger, purer, more transcendent quantity than Homo sapiensness. Human-to-human interactions were, effectively, all just politics, and politics bored her.”

Adam Roberts book Jack Glass: The Story of a Murderer

Part 2, Chapter 4, “The Mystery of the Champagne Supernovae” (p. 122).
Jack Glass (2012)

People, Problem

“Kentucky woman
She shines with her own kind of light.
She'd look at you once
And a day that's all wrong looks all right.
And I love her, God knows, I love her.Kentucky woman,
If she get to know you,
She goin' to own you.
Kentucky woman.”

Neil Diamond (1941) American singer-songwriter

Kentucky Woman (1967)
Song lyrics

Love, God, Light

“Truth can never suffer from argument and inquiry; but may be essentally injured by the tyrannous interference of her pretended advocates. Impede her energies by the pains and penalties of law, and, like the Fame of Virgil, she will creep along the ground, diminutive in stature, and shrunk with apprehension: give free scope to all her tendencies, and she will soon collect her might, dilate herself to the fullness of her dimensions, and reach the stars.”

Gilbert Wakefield (1756–1801) English scholar

A Letter to Sir John Scott https://books.google.com/books?id=L8NbAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA24&dq=%22Truth+can+never%22 (21 July 1798), page 24. Cf. Aeneid 4.174–177.

Pain, Truth, Law, Penalty

“In the last decade, the backlash has moved through the culture's secret chambers, traveling through passageways of flattery and fear. Along the way, it has adopted disguises: a mask of mild derision or the painted face of deep “concern”. Its lips profess pity for any woman who won't fit the mold, while it tries to clamp the mold around her ears. It pursues a divide-and-conquer strategy: single versus married women, working women versus homemakers, middle- versus working-class. It manipulates a system of rewards and punishments, elevating women who follow its rules, isolating those who don't. The backlash remarkets old myths about women as new facts and ignores all appeals to reason. Cornered, it denies its own existence, points an accusatory finger at feminism, and burrows deeper underground.”

Susan Faludi book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women

Pages 16-17.
Backlash (1992)

Women, Secret, Fear, Way

“I grew up with an alcoholic father. He never beat me, he never raised a hand against my mother or anything like that, but I'd seen enough stupid and ridiculous things between that, my mother and her prescription pills, and just hanging out with an older crowd when I was a kid, that I didn't understand a lot of the fun to what partying was, so I just never did it. I didn't understand waking up next to somebody you don't remember going to bed with; I didn't understand getting, you know, blackout drunk and not remembering the good times you have with your buddies; and I feel so strongly about it that I've just always been this way—it just made sense.”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

CM Punk — One Life One Chance http://www.onelifeonechance.com/?p=873 Personal

Alcohol, Stupidity, Way, Feeling

“The moon, full-orbed, forsakes her watery cave,
And lifts her lovely head above the wave;
The snowy splendours of her modest ray
Stream o'er the glistening waves, and quivering play;
Around her, glittering on the heaven's arched brow,
Unnumbered stars, enclosed in azure, glow,
Thick as the dew-drops of the April dawn,
Or May-flowers crowding o'er the daisy lawn;
The canvas whitens in the silvery beam,
And with a mild pale-red the pendants gleam;
The masts' tall shadows tremble o'er the deep;
The peaceful winds a holy silence keep;
The watchman's carol, echoed from the prows,
Alone, at times, awakes the still repose.”

William Julius Mickle (1734–1788) British writer

Book I, lines 417–430 (pp. 23–24)
The Lusiad; Or, The Discovery of India: an Epic Poem (1776)

Love, Peace, Star, Flowers

“He kissed her anyway, lightly on the cheek, before she turned to get her coat, thinking how long he had known her and how little he knew her and how little he knew of how much or little there was in her to know.”

Patricia A. McKillip (1948) American fantasy writer

The Snow Queen in Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (eds.) Snow White, Blood Red (1993), p. 363
Short fiction

Kiss, Thinking

“[While her father was a political prisoner in Cuba] I was always singing and dancing and reciting poems -- that was how I used to do my crying over my father. There were a lot of negotiations between the US and Cuban governments over the next couple of years [1961 - 1963]. [Castro proposed an exchange of prisoners for food, medicine and building machinery], and eventually my dad was released. It was wonderful to have him home -- it was probably the happiest time in my life. For once, the whole family was together, living a normal life. That was when my sister, Becky, was born [1964], and it was also when I started guitar lessons. I would lock myself away in my room for days, learning how to play. Even then I was beginning to work out that music was a way to cut throught all the BS.”

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

he [London] Sunday Times (November 17, 2006)
2007, 2008

Life, Family, Food, Music

“I haven't spoken to my mother-in-law for 18 months. I don't like to interrupt her.”

Ken Dodd (1927–2018) English comedian, singer-songwriter and actor

Law

“[Charity] conceals a stupid cruelty, because it is not courageous enough to face unpleasant facts. Aside from the question of the unfitness of many women to become mothers, aside from the very definite deterioration in the human stock that such programs would inevitably hasten, we may question its value even to the normal though unfortunate mother. For it is never the intention of such philanthropy to give the poor over-burdened and often undernourished mother of the slum the opportunity to make the choice herself, to decide whether she wishes time after time to bring children into the world. It merely says 'Increase and multiply: We are prepared to help you do this.' Whereas the great majority of mothers realize the grave responsibility they face in keeping alive and rearing the children they have already brought into the world, the maternity center would teach them how to have more. The poor woman is taught how to have her seventh child, when what she wants to know is how to avoid bringing into the world her eighth. … Such philanthropy, as Dean Inge has so unanswerably pointed out, is kind only to be cruel, and unwittingly promotes precisely the results most deprecated. It encourages the healthier and more normal sections of the world to shoulder the burden of unthinking and indiscriminate fecundity of others; which brings with it, as I think the reader must agree, a dead weight of human waste. Instead of decreasing and aiming to eliminate the stocks that are most detrimental to the future of the race and the world, it tends to render them to a menacing degree dominant.”

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse

Source: The Pivot of Civilization, 1922, Chapter 5, "The Cruelty of Charity"

Women, Children, Stupidity, World

“Don't worry! I bring to it all the necessary objectivity, don't be alarmed.... dirty machinists, very dumb musicians, a very old [choreographer] Monsieur Auber, and everyone only thinks about getting her job done as quickly as possible to earn a living.”

Frédéric Bazille (1841–1870) French painter

about a 'backstage-scene' of the Paris Opera, from his letter to Bazille's mother c. 1866; as cited in The private lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe, Harpen Collins Publishers, New York 2006, p. 49
1866 - 1870

Thinking

“Just as 'beauty' is not related to sex, neither is it related to love. Even having it does not bestow love on a woman, though the beauty myth claims that it must. It is because 'beauty' is so hostile to love that many beautiful women are so cynical about men. […] The beautiful woman is excluded forever from the rewards and responsibilities of particular human love, for she cannot trust that any man will love her 'for herself alone.' A hellish doubt inheres in the myth that makes impersonal 'beauty' a prerequisite for love: Where does love go when beauty vanishes? And, if a woman cannot be loved 'for herself alone,' for whom is she being loved?”

Naomi Wolf book The Beauty Myth

Source: The Beauty Myth (1991), Chapter 5 : 'Sex', p. 172

Love, Women, Men, Hostility

“Prayer sometimes dulls the hunger of the pauper, like a mother's finger thrust into the mouth of her starving baby.”

Isaac Leib Peretz (1852–1915) Yiddish language author and playwright

Quoted in M. Samuel. Prince of the Ghetto. Alfred A. Knopf, 1948, p. 162.

Hunger, Baby

“A simple way to determine whether the right to dissent in a particular society is being upheld is to apply the town square test: Can a person walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm? If he can, then that person is living in a free society. If not, it's a fear society.”

Natan Sharansky book The Case for Democracy

Pages 40-1.
The Case for Democracy (2004, with Ron Dermer)

Fear, Way, Personality

“Earth, the mother of all,
Moves on her stedfast way,
Gathering, flinging, sowing.
Mortals, we live in her day,
She in her children is growing.”

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

Ode to the Spirit of Earth in Autumn, st. 14.

Children, Way

“The prospect of a Russian conquest of Western Europe is one for which history affords no material. The theory that the Russians have not advanced from the Elbe to the Atlantic because of the nuclear deterrent is not more convincing than the theory that they have not done so because they do not want to do so and have never envisaged, unless perhaps in terms of world revolution, a Russian hegemony in Western Europe… Of all the nations of Europe, Britain and Russia are the only ones, though for opposite reasons, which have this thing in common: that they can be defeated in the decisive land battle and still survive. This characteristic, which Russia owes to her immensity, Britain owes to her moat.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech to The Hague (17 May 1971), from The Common Market: Renegotiate or Come Out (Elliot Right Way Books, 1973), p. 97, p. 100.
1970s

World, History, Decision

“The joker in the deck of lesbian fidelity is female vanity: no woman of fifty is going to undress in front of a woman of twenty no matter how much she might lust for her.”

Florence King (1936–2016) American writer

The Florence King Reader (1995)

“[Alvine] Oh, that sweet ring of graceful figures! one
Flings her white arms on high, and gaily strikes
Her golden cymbals — I can almost deem
I hear their beatings; one with glancing feet
Follows her music, while her crimson cheek
Is flushed with exercise, till the red grape
'Mid the dark tresses of a sister nymph
Is scarcely brighter; there another stands,
A darker spirit yet, with joyous brow,
And holding a rich goblet;”

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

The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Music, Exercises, Sister

“The King's colours were white and black, which he always wore in honour of the Duchess of Valentinois, who was a widow. The Duke of Ferrara and his retinue had yellow and red. Monsieur de Guise's carnation and white. It was not known at first for what reason he wore those colours, but it was soon remembered that they were the colours of a beautiful young lady whom he had been in love with, while she was a maid, and whom he yet loved though he durst not show it. The Duke de Nemours had yellow and black; why he had them could not be found out: Madam de Cleves only knew the reason of it; she remembered to have said before him she loved yellow, and that she was sorry her complexion did not suit that colour. As for the Duke, he thought he might take that colour without any indiscretion, since not being worn by Madam de Cleves it could not be suspected to be hers.”

Madame de La Fayette book La Princesse de Clèves

La Princesse de Clèves (1678) (Kessinger Publishing, 2004, ISBN 1419178717), p. 89

Love, Beauty

“See the kind seed-receiving earth
To every grain affords a birth:
On her no showers unwelcome fall,
Her willing womb retains ‘em all,
And shall my Caelia be confined?
No, live up to thy mighty mind,
And be the mistress of Mankind!”

John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (1647–1680) English poet, and peer of the realm

Upon Leaving His Mistress, ll. 15-21.
Other

Birth

“An efficient woman secretary is the perfect assistant. Her role is not confined to taking dictation and "tapping out" letters; she must also file letters and replies, memorize addresses, and turn herself into a walking index. She must possess all the virtues of a departmental head, as well as those of a woman. Being a woman, she has intuition; she can keep intact the self-esteem of her superiors, and she spreads and agreeable atmosphere about the office. At the same time she must not make her femininity obvious, for if one of her superiors should become too conscious of it, the work would suffer. A difficult balance, but one that can be maintained.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Working

Suffering, Time, Perfection

“My own mother was a housewife all her life. And yet it's turned out that I've hired a lot of women for top jobs, and they've been among my best people. Often, in fact, they are far more effective than the men around them.”

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

Source: 1980s, Trump: The Art of the Deal (1987), p. 173

Life, Women, Men, People

“If England led the rest of the world in the Industrial Revolution, it was despite, not because of her formal education system.”

Joel Mokyr (1946) Israeli American economic historian

Source: The lever of riches: Technological creativity and economic progress, 1992, p. 240

World, Education

“It is claimed that God wrote a book called the Bible, and it is generally admitted that this book is somewhat difficult to understand. As long as the church had all the copies of this book, and the people were not allowed to read it, there was comparatively little heresy in the world; but when it was printed and read, people began honestly to differ as to its meaning. A few were independent and brave enough to give the world their real thoughts, and for the extermination of these men the church used all her power. Protestants and Catholics vied with each other in the work of enslaving the human mind. For ages they were rivals in the infamous effort to rid the earth of honest people.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Heretics and Heresies (1874)

Men, God, People, Books

“Backstage the girls were playin' five-card stud by the stairs,
Lily had two queens, she was hopin' for a third to match her pair.
Outside the streets were fillin' up, the window was open wide,
A gentle breeze was blowin', you could feel it from inside.
Lily called another bet and drew up the Jack of Hearts.”

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

Song lyrics, Blood on the Tracks (1975), Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts

Feeling, Girl, Heart

“My words in her mind: cold polished stones sinking through a quagmire.”

James Joyce book Giacomo Joyce

Giacomo Joyce (1968)

“She didn't seem dead. There was only a swelling of the lips, as if she were angry. The strange thing was her idea of renting a painter's studio, having an armchiar, no less, drawn up s she could die in front of the window that looked toward Superga. A cat had given her away–it was in the room with her, and the next day, miaowing and scratching the door, it had made them open.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

Ending words
Among women only (1949)

Cats, Idea, Dead

“I'm gonna give her all my soul.
I'm gonna play her Rock 'N' Roll.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Jack
Lyrics, Highway Companion (2006)

Soul

“Elinor was still staring at this missive, her plucked brows drawn together in distaste, when the door opened. The maid announced, "Mr Welman," and Roddy came in.”

Agatha Christie book Sad Cypress

Sad Cypress (1940)

“Far away in the thirties and forties she (the girl you want to be) is waiting her turn. Her body, brain, her soul are in your girlish hands. She cannot help herself. What will you leave for her? … Will you throw away her inheritance?”

David Starr Jordan (1851–1931) American ichthyologist and educator

As quoted in M. Leonard, The Chaperon and Housemother, Builders of Youth (1947), p. 51

Soul, Girl, Waiting, Help

“With enigmatic clarity, Life gives us a different answer each time we ask her the same question.”

Yahia Lababidi (1973)

Signposts to Elsewhere (2008)

Life, Question, Time

“But oh! may Earth her dreadful gulf display,
And gaping snatch me from the golden day;
May I be hurled, by Heaven's almighty fire,
Transfixed with thunder, and involved in fire,
Down to the shades of Hell, from realms of light,
The deep, deep shades of everlasting night.”

Christopher Pitt (1699–1748) English poet

Book III, line 35
The Æneid of Virgil (1740)

Hell, Light, Night

“What we desire is not to possess a woman, but to be the only one to possess her.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

“A favourite saying in China—which she had heard on occasion from her own grandmother—was that the threads of life are easy to weave, but difficult to untangle.”

Stephen R. Lawhead (1950) American writer

Source: The Bone House (2011), p. 130

Life

“One event has been adduced in evidence of the uncertainty of his condition, which ought to excite interest in his behalf. He parted from his wife in 1779, because she would not agree to join him in converting some landed property into money, for the sale of which her consent was required by law. The property was worth, it is said, little more than four hundred pounds. Mrs. Arkwright entertained a high esteem for her husband, and always spoke of him with respect; yet she preferred separating from him, to the chance of being beggared by placing her dowry in so precarious a concern as she then thought the water-spinning frame to be. For some years after this event she lived altogether upon her own means. Mr. Arkwright was justly indignant at this want of sympathy in one so nearly related to him, and in consequence allowed her only thirty pounds a year, out of his own pocket, even when he had realized great opulence. These particulars are given by Mr. Guest on the authority of Sir Richard Arkwright’s niece, probably a disappointed and prejudiced person”

Andrew Ure (1778–1857) Scottish doctor and chemist

Source: The Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain, 1836, p. 234

Money, Law, Disappointment, Water

“In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror, I spent seventeen months in the prison lines of Leningrad. Once, someone "recognized" me. Then a woman with bluish lips standing behind me, who, of course, had never heard me called by name before, woke up from the supor to which everyone had succumbed and whispered in my ear (everyone spoke in whispers there):
"Can you describe this?"
And I answered: "Yes, I can."
Then something that looked like a smile passed over what had once been her face.”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

Leningrad, 1 April 1957
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), Instead of a Preface

Smile

“As much as I love her, I admit that she has always remained somewhat of an enigma to me…
I liked this about her. I liked the mystery she added to my life. I liked the occasional silence between us, for ours was a comfortable silence. It was a passionate silence, one that had its roots in comfort and desire.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Ira Levinson, Chapter 17 Ira, p. 222-223
2009, The Longest Ride (2013)

Love, Life, Silence, Passion

“Aglionby Academy was the number one reason Blue had developed her two rules: One, stay away from boys because they were trouble. And two, stay away from Aglionby boys, because they were bastards.”

Maggie Stiefvater (1981) American writer

Blue
The Raven Cycle Series, The Raven Boys (2012)

Boy

“Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem
too insignificant for our concern?
Yet in my heart I never will deny her,
who suffered death because she chose to turn.”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

Who'll mourn her as one of Lot's family members?
Doesn't she seem the smallest of losses to us?
But deep in my heart I will always remember
One who gave her life up for one single glance.
Translated by Tanya Karshtedt (1996)
A loss, but who still mourns the breath
of one woman, or laments one wife?
Though my heart never can forget,
how, for one look, she gave up her life.
Translated by A.S.Kline
Who would waste tears upon her? Is she not
The least of our losses, this unhappy wife?
Yet in my heart she will not be forgot
Who, for a single glance, gave up her life.
Translator unknown
Lot's Wife

Death, Suffering, Heart

“1597. For whom does the blind Man's Wife paint her self?”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Compare Poor Richard's Almanack (1736) : Why does the blind man's wife paint herself?
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Painting

“The sheer waste of human potential that was the New Republic’s raison d’être offended her sensibilities as badly as a public book-burning, or a massacre of innocents.”

Charles Stross book Singularity Sky

Source: Singularity Sky (2003), Chapter 2, “Preparations for Departure” (p. 33)

Books

“Tell her about it
Let her know how much you care
When she can't be with you
Tell her you wish you were there.
Tell her about it.
Every day before you leave
Pay her some attention
Give her something to believe.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Tell Her About It.
Song lyrics, An Innocent Man (1983)

“If Miller had ever been called upon to describe her, the phrase deceptive coloration would have figured in.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 2 (p. 21)

Color

“…"the only intrinsic nett worth, in my possession, is Mrs. Sancho- who I can compare to nothing so properly as to a diamond in the dirt- but, my friend, that is Fortune's fault, not mine- for, had I power, I would case her in gold."”

Ignatius Sancho (1729–1780) British composer, writer and grocer

(from vol 1, letter 21: probably summer 1775, to Mr R___ ).

“People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father's blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day. I was just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name of Tom Chaney shot my father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robbed him of his life and his horse and $150 in cash money plus two California gold pieces that he carried in his trouser band.”

Charles Portis book True Grit

Source: True Grit (1968), Chapter 1, p. 9 : thoughts of 'Mattie Ross'

Life, Money, People, Age

“They talk of short-lived pleasures—be it so—
pain dies as quickly: stern, hard-featured pain
Expires, and lets her weary prisoner go.
The fiercest agonies have shortest reign;
And after dreams of horror, comes again
The welcome morning with its rays of peace.”

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

Mutation. A Sonnet http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16341/16341-h/16341-h.htm#page73 (1824)

Pain, Pleasure, Peace, Dreams

“A woman whose lover resigns her, and as if for her own sake, though without consulting her, is placed in a most awkward situation. What can she do? Take him at his word? That is easy to say, but hard to do, when all the hopes and affections are garnered in his love.”

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

The Monthly Magazine

Love, Hope, Lovers

“Carmelita Montiel, a twenty-year-old virgin, had just bathed in orange-blossom water and was strewing rosemary leaves over Pilar Ternera's bed when the shot rang out. Aureliano Jose had been destined to find with her the happiness that Amaranta had denied him, to have seven children, and to die in her arms of old age, but the bullet that entered his chest had been directed by a wrong interpretation of the cards.”

Gabriel García Márquez book One Hundred Years of Solitude

Source: One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), p. 153

Children, Age, Water, Happiness

“When we arrived at New York I went, straight after clearing customs, to the Algonquin Hotel. I would not claim as of right a room in my own flat, since Hortense must now regard it as hers. After a couple of whisky sours in the Blue Bar I walked up Fifth Avenue. The September heat was intense and the air was all woollen shirts aboil. The town was full of jumbo steaks and ice cream, the shops pleaded that we buy useless gadgets. This was not Europe. This was very far from being Europe. Victory in Europe and Asia confirmed the excellence of the American way of life. Strong appetite and inviolable health. The afternoon sun was higher here than in any town of Europe, forced upwards by the skyscrapers. The place was rife with life.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Earthly Powers (1980)

Life, Health, Way, Strong

“Men and women meet now to be idle. Is it extraordinary that they do not know each other, and that, in their mutual ignorance, they form no surer friendships? Did they meet to do something together, then indeed they might form some real tie.
But, as it is, they are not there, it is only a mask which is there — a mouth-piece of ready-made sentences about the "topics of the day"; and then people rail against men for choosing a woman "for her face"”

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

why, what else do they see?
Cassandra (1860)

Women, Men, Friendship, People

“Like a good and happy man increasing his virtue, he kissed her. She did not move away from him. She remained in the embrace of his right arm, her face nuzzling his shoulder, her eyes closed. He tipped her chin to look and measure opportunity. She could not open her eyes. Honorably he searched, but on her face he met no quarrel.”

Grace Paley (1922–2007) American writer and activist

"The Pale Pink Roast" (1959)

Search, Kiss, Happiness

“The history of the American kings of capital and authority is the history of repeated crimes, injustice, oppression, outrage, and abuse, all aiming at the suppression of individual liberties and the exploitation of the people. A vast country, rich enough to supply all her children with all possible comforts, and insure well-being to all, is in the hands of a few, while the nameless millions are at the mercy of ruthless wealth gatherers, unscrupulous lawmakers, and corrupt politicians.
The reign of these kings is holding mankind in slavery, perpetuating poverty and disease, maintaining crime and corruption; it is fettering the spirit of liberty, throttling the voice of justice, and degrading and oppressing humanity. It is engaged in continual war and slaughter, devastating the country and destroying the best and finest qualities of man; it nurtures superstition and ignorance, sows prejudice and strife, and turns the human family into a camp of Ishmaelites.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

A New Declaration of Independence (1909)

War, Children, People, Disease

“My background in music came from me playing drums and piano as a young child. My grandmother was a pianist and I was influenced by her and my parents were playing rock records which influenced my drumming. I was a fan of film scores, rock, classical, jazz, and hip-hop in my early years and tried to learn as much about each of those genres as possible. I began writing music in a serious way in my teen years while I was playing in various bands and orchestras.”

Brian Tyler (1972) American composer, producer, conductor, and film producer

Interview with Brian Tyler https://8dio.com/2012/12/05/interview-with-brian-tyler/ (December 5, 2012)

Music, Way, Parent, Learning

“My mother was a strong, domineering woman, probably scared to death of the position she found herself in She was psychotic, attempting suicide several times and scaring the devil out of me as a kid with threats... One day [she] would say that she loved me, and the next day she'd scream that she was sorry I'd ever been born -- that I'd ruined her life... [She] would often stuff her mouth with cotton and hold her breath, pretending that she was dead, to scare me when I was small. Sometimes she'd tell me she really could walk and during the night she was going to get up, turn on the gas jets, and kill us both. I would be absolutely terrified... And yet... she encouraged my writing and would tell me that I was a good kid and she didn't know why she acted that way... but then she'd do it again.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Elmira Star Gazette (1973), Interview with Jane Roberts, quoted on p. 14 of Susan M. Watkins' Speaking of Jane Roberts (2001)

Love, Life, Death, Way

“You say, "That man ought to die for transgressing the law of God." Let me suppose a case. Suppose you found your brother in bed with your wife, and put a javelin through both of them, you would be justified, and they would atone for their sins, and be received into the kingdom of God. I would at once do so in such a case; and under such circumstances, I have no wife whom I love so well that I would not put a javelin through her heart, and I would do it with clean hands. But you who trifle with your covenants, be careful lest in judging you will be judged. Every man and women has got to have clean hands and a pure heart, to execute judgment, else they had better let the matter alone. Again, suppose the parties are not caught in their iniquity, and it passes along unnoticed, shall I have compassion on them? Yes, I will have compassion on them, for transgressions of the nature already named, or for those of any other description. If the Lord so order it that they are not caught in the act of their iniquity, it is pretty good proof that He is willing for them to live; and I say let them live and suffer in the flesh for their sins, for they will have it to do.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses, 3:247 (March 16, 1856)
1850s

Love, Women, God, Law

“Gertrude Stein, all courage and will, is a soldier of minimalism. Her work, unlike the resonating silences in the art of Samuel Beckett, embodies in its loquacity and verbosity the curious paradox of the minimalist form. This art of the nuance in repetition and placement she shares with the orchestral compositions of Philip Glass.”

Elizabeth Hardwick (1916–2007) Novelist, short story writer, literary critic

"Gertrude Stein" (p. 103)
American Fictions (1999)

Art, Courage, Silence

“I found an old baby picture of me… and it was somebody else - not me. It was somebody pink and fat. Who never heard of sick or lonely. Somebody who cried and got fed. And reached up and got held. Slept whenever she wanted to just by closing her eyes. Somebody who mainly just laid there and laughed at the colors waving over, round her head. And chewed on a polka-dot whale. And woke up knowing some new trick nearly every day. Rolled over and drooled on a sheet. Felt your hand pull the quilt back up over me. That's who I started out. And this is who's left.”

Marsha Norman (1947) American playwright, screenwriter and novelist

Jessie
night Mother (1983)

Color, Baby

“Sometimes the duck is tormented in a different manner, without the assistance of the dogs; by having an owl tied upon her back, and so put into the water, where she frequently dives in order to escape from the burden, and on her return for air, the miserable owl, half drowned, shakes itself, and hooting, frightens the duck; she of course dives again, and replunges the owl into the water; the frequent repetition of this action soon deprives the poor bird of its sensation, and generally ends in its death, if not in that of the duck also.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 285
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Public entertainment

Death, Dogs, Bird, Water

“If someone kisses a woman and goes no further once they are alone together, then in my opinion it's his own fault. A woman who freely surrenders her lips gives the rest very readily.”

Chrétien de Troyes French poet and trouvère

Qui baise feme et plus n'i fait,
Des qu'il sont sol a sol andui,
Dont quit je qu'il remaint en lui.
Feme qui se bouche abandone
Le sorplus molt de legier done.
Source: Perceval or Le Conte du Graal, Line 3860.

Kiss

“History tells us that our first woman head of state was far more than a "mere housewife," but an uplifting figure who inspired her countrymen to begin the arduous task of rebuilding our nation. Experience shows us that an honorable and virtuous president who leads by example will always enjoy the respect of her fellow leaders and her people. And Cory's life teaches us that with an unwavering faith and a sincere desire to serve the nation, any Filipino can make a difference.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

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

Life, People, Faith, History

Quotes about herring page 90

Quotes about herring
page 90