Quotes about last
page 17

Salvador Dalí photo
James Connolly photo
Derren Brown photo

“(DVD introduction) Well, welcome to your very own DVD of me, DVB, and ‘Mind Control’. If you weren’t expecting me and thought you were buying Reginald Perrin, then press eject now before you begin vomiting. Otherwise, please, please ensure that you are sitting in an extreme level of comfort, preferably in pre-worn slippers and, I trust, with your extended family around you. If you have seen the film ‘Signs’ and would like to wear the pointy tin foil hats now would be a good time to put them on you can’t be too careful. Well, pphhh, goodness me, er, it’s been a meteoric rise over these last years. The money and sex are exhausting and I have you the viewer to thank. Thanks. We’ve put together some of the pieces from the specials and series in glistening digital format, each pixel hand picked and gently polished and brought to you in wide-sound, surround-screen enjoyment. I hope you enjoy watching them as much as I’ll enjoy the royalties from this, which is enormously. If you don’t like it and HMV won’t take it back because you’ve got sticky all over it then the disc makes an excellent beer coaster or wheels for a space truck or can be immense fun just putting it on your finger and [waggling it], like that. But I hope you do like it. When I first started developing these techniques I had no idea that they were going to prove at all popular and for all my nancing about and staring I’m actually really excited to have a DVD out and can’t wait to go and find it in Discount Books & Puzzles next to the Dizzie Gillespie CD box sets and disappointing erotica. I hope you like it and if you do, please go and buy another one.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Mind Control (1999–2000) or Inside Your Mind on DVD

Karl Barth photo
Ulysses S. Grant photo
William Morris photo

“Late February days; and now, at last,
Might you have thought that Winter's woe was past;
So fair the sky was and so soft the air.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

"February".
The Earthly Paradise (1868-70)

Jerry Coyne photo
Ben Croshaw photo
Bob Seger photo
Ian Ziering photo
Statius photo

“Love of life, which departs last from the heart.”
Qui mente novissimus exit, lucis amor.

Source: Thebaid, Book VIII, Line 386 (tr. W. J. Dominik)

James Montgomery photo

“Joys too exquisite to last,
And yet more exquisite when past.”

James Montgomery (1771–1854) British editor, hymn writer, and poet

The Little Cloud.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Jean Cocteau photo

“There is always a period when a man with a beard shaves it off. This period does not last. He returns headlong to his beard.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Opium (1929)

Conrad Aiken photo
Jeffrey Montgomery photo
Revilo P. Oliver photo
Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey photo

“The noble lord who moved the address had, in the course of his speech, warned the House not to let an anxiety for liberty lead to a compromise of the safety of the state. He, for his part, could not separate those things. The safety of the state could only be found in the protection of the liberties of the people. Whatever was destructive of the latter also destroyed the former…The discontent existing in the country had been insisted on as a ground for the adoption of some measures…But there was another axiom no less true—that there never was an extensive discontent without great misgovernment…When no attention was paid to the calls of the people for relief, when their petitions were rejected and their sufferings aggravated, was it wonderful that at last public discontents should assume a formidable aspect?”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Speech in the House of Lords (23 November 1819). The Speech from the Throne at the opening of the session of 1819-20 called for strong measures against the seditious spirit shown in the manufacturing districts. Grey moved an amendment in the Lords, calling for an enquiry into the Peterloo Massacre of 16 August, in order to maintain ‘that confidence in the public institutions of the country, which constitutes the best safeguard of all law and government.’ His amendment was defeated by 159 votes to 34. Parliamentary Debates, vol. xli, pp. 7-19, quoted in Alan Bullock and Maurice Shock (ed.), The Liberal Tradition from Fox to Keynes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), pp. 5-6.
1810s

Billy Joel photo
Agatha Christie photo

“We shall not hunt together again, my friend. Our first hunt was here — and our last … They were good days, Yes, they have been good days…”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

Hercule Poirot
Curtain - Poirot's Last Case (1975)

William Caxton photo

“For we Englysshe men ben borne under the domynacyon of the mone, whiche is never stedfaste but ever waverynge, wexynge one season and waneth and dyscreaseth another season. And that comyn Englysshe that is spoken in one shyre varyeth from a-nother, in so moche that in my dayes happened that certayn marchauntes were in a ship in Tamyse for to have sayled over the see into Zelande, and, for lacke of wynde, thei taryed atte Forlond, and wente to lande for to refreshe them. And one of theym named Sheffelde, a mercer, cam in to an hows and axed for mete and specyally he axyd after eggys, and the goode wyf answerde that she could speke no Frenshe. And the marchaunt was angry, for he also coude speke no Frenshe, but wolde have hadde egges; and she understode hym not. And thenne at laste a-nother sayd that he wolde have eyren. Then the good wyf sayd that she understod hym wel. Loo, what sholde a man in thyse dayes now wryte, egges, or eyren?”

William Caxton (1422–1491) English merchant, diplomat, writer and printer

Certaynly it is hard to playse every man, by-cause of dyversite and chaunge of langage.
For we Englishmen are born under the domination of the moon, which is never steadfast but ever wavering, waxing one season and waning and decreasing another season. And that common English that is spoken in one shire varies from another, so that in my days it happened that certain merchants were in a ship on the Thames to sail over the sea to Zealand, and for lack of wind, they tarried at Foreland, and went to land to refresh themselves. And one of them named Sheffelde, a mercer, came to a house and asked for food, and especially he asked for egges, and the good woman answered that she could speak no French. And the merchant was angry, for he also could speak no French, but wanted to have egges, and she did not understand him. And then at last another said that he wanted eyren. Then the good woman said that she understood him well. Lo, what should a man in these days now write, egges or eyren? Certainly it is hard to please every man, because of diversity and change of language.
Preface to the Eneydos, 1490.

Lucy Aharish photo

“One of the topics [on the show last week] was the murder of women in the Arab sector, what is referred to, unfortunately, […] as 'honor killing' and has nothing to do with [anything worthy of] honor. The guest in the studio was a woman who had 20 years of experience working for the sake of those same women who die for no good reason, a woman whose everyday job was a holy work for the sake of thousands of Arab women who need a voice that will shout out and cry out their cries. After she had accused the government and the police and everyone of incompetence, I asked her, in a somewhat aggressive manner, as it were, '[…] Where are we in all of this? Where are we Arab women to teach and discipline our sons that a man has no right over a woman? […]' During the commercial break, she got up and told me that I had to learn how to talk to Arabs because the tone that I adopted and the things that I said were said to gain approval from Jews. So I've come to tell you today that I haven't come for approval from you; that I haven't come for approval from anyone; and this is the message that I want you to digest very, very well. In my life I have been accused of many things: that I am the fifth column; that an Arab will always stay an Arab, no matter how liberal he may look; that I bring shame on my family for being in a relationship with a person outside my religion. I've received threats after asking Palestinian residents live on the show why they don't go out against Hamas men, who use them and bring them to their slaughter; I've been attacked on Yom ha-Shoah and Yom ha-Zikaron that the managers at Arutz 2 dared to put an Arab on a show such as that as the host on a day such as that; I've been told that I make Arab women stray off the path of proper behavior; and that I've forgotten where I come from being an 'Ashkenazified', 'Judaized' Arab. So they blamed and they talked—as if that, in itself, made them right.”

Lucy Aharish (1981) Arab-Israeli journalist

Source: Lucy Aharish's campus speech http://www.onlife.co.il/%D7%A2%D7%91%D7%95%D7%93%D7%94/%D7%9E%D7%A0%D7%94%D7%99%D7%92%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%94%D7%99%D7%95%D7%9D-%D7%90%D7%AA-%D7%94%D7%9E%D7%97%D7%A8/85312/%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%A1%D7%99-%D7%90%D7%94%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%A9-%D7%9C%D7%90-%D7%91%D7%90%D7%AA%D7%99-%D7%9C%D7%9E%D7%A6%D7%95%D7%90-%D7%97%D7%9F-%D7%91%D7%A2%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%99-%D7%90%D7%A3-%D7%90%D7%97%D7%93 at "מנהיגות היום את המחר". Onlife. 9 November 2014. Retrieved 27 January 2015. Video available.

Charles Brockden Brown photo
Henry Miller photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
David Attenborough photo
Maithripala Sirisena photo
Henry R. Towne photo
Ted Williams photo

“I hope somebody hits.400 soon. Then people can start pestering that guy with questions about the last guy to hit.400.”

Ted Williams (1918–2002) American professional baseball player

As quoted in "The Braves' Chipper Jones carries weight of .400" in The Los Angeles Times (13 June 2008) http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jun/13/sports/sp-jones13

Rob Pike photo
Vanna Bonta photo

“Evil's last voice croaked to me, "How did you know I was only bluffing?" Because he wept. Because he wept.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

Degrees: Thought Capsules and Micro Tales (1989)

Gerard Manley Hopkins photo

“Economists can take a good deal of credit for the stabilization policies which have been followed in most Western countries since 1945 with considerable success. It is easy to generate a euphoric and self-congratulatory mood when one compares the twenty years after the first World War, 1919-39, with the twenty years after the second, 1945-65. The first twenty years were a total failure; the second twenty years, at least as far as economic policy is concerned, have been a modest success. We have not had any great depression; we have not had any serious financial collapse; and on the whole we have had much higher rates of development in most parts of the world than we had in the 1920’s and 1930’s, even though there are some conspicuous failures. Whether the unprecedented rates of economic growth of the last twenty years, for instance in Japan and Western Europe, can be attributed to economics, or whether they represent a combination of good luck in political decision making with the expanding impact of the natural and biological sciences on the economy, is something we might argue. I am inclined to attribute a good deal to good luck and non-economic forces, but not all of it, and even if economics only contributed 10 percent, this would amount to a very handsome rate of return indeed, considering the very small amount of resources we have really put into economics.”

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

Source: 1960s, The economics of knowledge and the knowledge of economics, 1966, p. 9

Raymond Poincaré photo

“Jaurès had over the last 8 days expiated many faults. He had helped the government in its diplomacy and, if war breaks out, he would have been amongst those who would have known how to do their duty…Quel crime abominable et sot!”

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

Diary entry (31 July 1914), quoted in John Keiger, 'France' in Keith Wilson (ed.), Decisions for War 1914 (London: University College London Press, 1995), p. 130.

Mason Weems photo

“Feeling that the silver chord of life is loosing, and that his spirit is ready to quit her old companion the body, he extends himself on his bed — closes his eyes for the last time, with his own hands — folds his arms decently on his breast, then breathing out "Father of mercies! take me to thyself," — he fell asleep. Swift on angels' wings the brightening saint ascended; while voices more than human were heard (in Fancy's ear) warbling through the happy regions, and hymning the great procession towards the gates of heaven. His glorious coming was seen far off, and myriads of mighty angels hastened forth, with golden harps, to welcome the honored stranger.”

Mason Weems (1759–1825) fictionalizing biographer of George Washington

Description of Washington's death in Life of Washington (1800); this fanciful account bears no relation to the report of Washington's last words by his personal secretary Tobias Lear, who wrote in his journal (14 December 1799) http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/project/exhibit/mourning/lear.html: About ten o'clk he made several attempts to speak to me before he could effect it, at length he said, — "I am just going. Have me decently buried; and do not let my body be put into the Vault in less than three days after I am dead." I bowed assent, for I could not speak. He then looked at me again and said, "Do you understand me? I replied "Yes." "Tis well" said he.

Charles Lyell photo
Rex Stout photo
Fritjof Capra photo
Robert Charles Wilson photo
William Ernest Henley photo
J. M. Barrie photo

“The last book, the one on the bottom, was a copy of the 1,500-page Gray’s Anatomy. The weight was all wrong in her hands. She opened the cover, revealing a space hollowed out with surgical precision.”

Lis Wiehl (1961) American legal scholar

Source: Heart of Ice A Triple Threat Novel with April Henry (Thomas Nelson), p. 130

Iwane Matsui photo
John Updike photo
Aron Ra photo
H. G. Wells photo
Michael McIntyre photo
Ernst Hanfstaengl photo
Oscar Levant photo

“My last picture for Warners was Romance on the High Seas. It was Doris Day's first picture; that was before she became a virgin.”

The Memoirs of an Amnesiac (1965) http://books.google.com/books?&id=yWcIAQAAMAAJ&q=%22My+last+picture+for+Warners+was+Romance+on+the+High+Seas+It+was+Doris+Day%27s+first+picture+that+was+before+she+became+a+virgin%22&pg=PA192#v=onepage
A later paraphrase of this appeared in The Wit and Wisdom of Hollywood (1972) by Max Wilk: "I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin."

Charles Wesley photo
George William Russell photo
Andrew Sullivan photo
Robert E. Howard photo
Ralph Steadman photo
Laurell K. Hamilton photo

“Always needing to have the last word is a bad trait Ms. Blake, pisses people off.”

Laurell K. Hamilton (1963) Novelist

Titus to Anita
Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series, The Lunatic Cafe (1996)

Susan Kay photo
Jim Morrison photo
Roberto Clemente photo

“I was mad last year. I played as well as anyone else on our team and I didn't receive one vote for MVP. Don't get me wrong; I didn't say I was the best last year or that I should have won the MVP award. But nobody seemed to care about me. But you win the batting title yourself. They can't take that away from you.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "Clemente Will Seek Raise in Pay Next Year" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=eHQlAAAAIBAJ&sjid=zfIFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1095%2C1859848 by Lou Prato, in The Gettysburg Times (Tuesday, October 3, 1961), p. 5
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1961</big>

Jimmy Kimmel photo

“Let hopes and sorrows, fears and angers be,
And think each day that dawns the last you'll see;
For so the hour that greets you unforeseen
Will bring with it enjoyment twice as keen.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Book I, epistle iv, p. 108
Translations, The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry of Horace (1869), Epistles

James Joyce photo

“Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honoured by posterity because he was the last to discover America.”

James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish novelist and poet

"The Mirage of the Fisherman of Aran: England's Safety Valve in Case of War," Piccolo della Sera (Trieste, 5 September 1912), printed in James Joyce: Occasional, Critical and Political Writing (2002) edited by Kevin Barry [Oxford University Press, <small> ISBN 0-192-83353-7</small>], p. 203

John Donne photo

“So, so, break off this last lamenting kiss,
Which sucks two souls, and vapors both away.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

The Expiration, stanza 1

Friedensreich Hundertwasser photo

“We must at last put a stop to having people move into their quarters like chickens and rabbits into their coops.”

Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928–2000) Austrian artist

Mould Manifesto against Rationalism in Architecture (1958)

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“It was his last, his only field:
They brought him back upon his shield,
But victory was won.
I cannot weep when I recall
Thy land has cause to bless thy fall.”

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

An Old Man Over the Body of his Son from The London Literary Gazette (1st March 1823) Medallion Wafers
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Jeffrey D. Sachs photo
Harry Turtledove photo

“The crowd of ragged Confederates on the White House lawn had doubled and more since he went in to confer with Lincoln. The trees were full of men who had climbed up so they could see over their comrades. Off in the distance, cannon occasionally still thundered; rifles popped like firecrackers. Lee quietly said to Lincoln, "Will you send out your sentries under flag of truce to bring word of the armistice to those Federal positions still firing upon my men?" "I'll see to it," Lincoln promised. He pointed to the soldiers in gray, who had quieted expectantly when Lee came out. "Looks like you've given me sentries enough, even if their coats are the wrong color." Few men could have joked so with their cause in ruins around them. Respecting the Federal President for his composure, Lee raised his voice: "Soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia, after three years of arduous service, we have achieved that for which we took up arms-" He got no further. With one voice, the men before him screamed out their joy and relief. The unending waves of noise beat at him like a surf from a stormy sea. Battered forage caps and slouch hats flew through the air. Soldiers jumped up and down, pounded on one another's shoulders, danced in clumsy rings, kissed each other's bearded, filthy faces. Lee felt his own eyes grow moist. At last the magnitude of what he had won began to sink in.”

Source: The Guns of the South (1992), p. 180

Gabrielle Roy photo
Bhakti Tirtha Swami photo
Scott Adams photo

“Biblical scholars tell us that this is the same meal that Jesus ate at the last supper. But hey, I’m sure you have a good reason for ordering something else.”

Scott Adams (1957) cartoonist, writer

"Menus: Jambalaya", Stacey's at Waterford, 2008-01-14 http://www.eatatstaceys.com/staceys-waterford/menus-lunch.php,
Restaurant menus

Donald J. Trump photo

“I'm going to fight for every American in every last part of this nation. We have a president who doesn't fight. He goes out and plays golf all the time.”

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

Hardball with Chris Matthews, August 4, 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cC_3IxKcQIA October 23 rally
2010s, 2016, October

Vladimir Lenin photo

“Our business is to help get everything possible done to make sure the "last" chance for a peaceful development of the revolution, to help by the presentation of our programme, by making clear its national character, its absolute accord with the interests and demands of a vast majority of the population.”

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

"The Tasks of the Revolution" (9 October 1917) http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/oct/09.htm; Collected Works, Vol. 26, 1972, pp. 59 - 68.
1910s

“Good behavior is the last refuge of mediocrity.”

Henry S. Haskins (1875–1957)

Variant: Sedate ignorance is the last stage of deterioration.
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 135

Wilhelm Canaris photo
Francisco Varela photo
Carole King photo
Benoît Mandelbrot photo
Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“4706. The Pitcher, that goes often to the Well, comes home broken at last.”

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

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

Johannes Grenzfurthner photo

“Contemporary art -- the field we are usually working in because there's money -- is mostly concerned with systems or systematic concepts. In the context of their work, artists adapt models of individual art-specific or economic or political systems like in a laboratory, to reveal the true nature of these systems by deconstructing them. So would it be fair to say that by their chameleon-like adaptation they are attempting to generate a similar system? Well… the corporate change in the art market has aged somewhat in the meantime and looks almost as old as the 'New Economy'. Now even the last snotty brat has realized that all the hogwash about the creative industries, sponsoring, fund-raising, the whole load of bullshit about the beautiful new art enterprises, was not much more than the awful veneer on the stupid, crass fanfare of neo-liberal liberation teleology. What is the truth behind the shifting spheres of activity between computer graphics, web design and the rest of all those frequency-orientated nerd pursuits? A lonely business with other lonely people at their terminals. And in the meantime the other part of the corporate identity has incidentally wasted whole countries like Argentina or Iceland. That's the real truth of the matter.”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

Interview on Furtherfield http://www.furtherfield.org/interviews/interview-johannes-grenzfurthner-monochrom-part-1

Julian of Norwich photo
Thomas Jefferson photo
Charles Kingsley photo
William Hazlitt photo

“The truly proud man knows neither superiors nor inferiors. The first he does not admit of: the last he does not concern himself about.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

No. 112
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)

Robinson Jeffers photo
Anne Brontë photo

“Dear Halford,
When we were together last, you gave me a very particular and interesting account of the most remarkable occurrences of your early life…”

Prologue; Gilbert Markham, in the opening line of the novel
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)

Mel Gibson photo
Joseph Conrad photo
Lindsay Lohan photo
George Robert Sims photo

“Lor’, but women’s rum cattle to deal with, the first man found that to his cost,
And I reckon it’s just through a woman the last man on earth’ll be lost.”

George Robert Sims (1847–1922) English journalist, poet, dramatist, novelist

Dagonet Ballads. Moll Jarvis o’ Morley.

Frederick Douglass photo

“Happily for the country, happily for you and for me, the judgment of James Buchanan, the patrician, was not the judgment of Abraham Lincoln, the plebeian. He brought his strong common sense, sharpened in the school of adversity, to bear upon the question. He did not hesitate, he did not doubt, he did not falter; but at once resolved that at whatever peril, at whatever cost, the union of the States should be preserved. A patriot himself, his faith was strong and unwavering in the patriotism of his countrymen. Timid men said before Mister Lincoln’s inauguration, that we have seen the last president of the United States. A voice in influential quarters said, 'Let the Union slide'. Some said that a Union maintained by the sword was worthless. Others said a rebellion of eight million cannot be suppressed; but in the midst of all this tumult and timidity, and against all this, Abraham Lincoln was clear in his duty, and had an oath in heaven. He calmly and bravely heard the voice of doubt and fear all around him; but he had an oath in heaven, and there was not power enough on earth to make this honest boatman, backwoodsman, and broad-handed splitter of rails evade or violate that sacred oath. He had not been schooled in the ethics of slavery; his plain life had favored his love of truth. He had not been taught that treason and perjury were the proof of honor and honesty. His moral training was against his saying one thing when he meant another. The trust that Abraham Lincoln had in himself and in the people was surprising and grand, but it was also enlightened and well founded.”

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

He knew the American people better than they knew themselves, and his truth was based upon this knowledge.
1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)

Joel Fuhrman photo