Quotes about marble

A collection of quotes on the topic of marble, likeness, time, timing.

Quotes about marble

“It's dangerous & humiliating. The whalers killed whales while green peace watched. Now, you don't walk by a child that is being abused, you don't walk by a kitten that is being kicked to death and do nothing. So I find it abhorrent to sit there and watch a whale being slaughtered and do nothing but "bear witness" as they call it. I think it was best illustrated a few years ago, the contradictions that we have, when a ranger in Zimbabwe shot and killed a poacher that was about to kill a black rhinoceros and uh human rights groups around the world said "how dare you? Take a human life to protect an animal". I think the rangers' answer to that really illustrated a hypocrisy. He said "Ya know, if I lived in, If I was a police officer in Herrari and a man ran out of Bark Place Bank with a bag of money and I shot him in the head in front of everybody and killed him, you'd pin a medal on me and call me a national hero. Why is that bag of paper more valued than the future heritage of this nation?" This is our values. WE fight, WE kill, WE risk our lives for things we believe in… Imagine going into Mecca, walk up to the black stone and spit on it. See how far you get. You’re not going to get very far. You’re going to be torn to pieces. Walk into Jerusalem, walk up to that wailing wall with a pick axe, start whacking away. See how far you’re going to get, somebody is going to put a bullet in your back. And everybody will say you deserved it. Walk into the Vatican with a hammer, start smashing a few statues. See how far you’re going to get. Not very far. But each and every day, ya know, people go into the most beautiful, most profoundly sacred cathedrals of this planet, the rainforests of the Amazonia, the redwood forests of California, the rainforests of Indonesia, and totally desecrate & destroy these cathedrals with bulldozers, chainsaws and how do we respond to that? Oh, we write a few letters and protest; we dress up in animal costumes with picket signs and jump up and down; but if the rainforests of Amazonia and redwoods of California, were as, or had as much value to us as a chunk of old meteorite in Mecca, a decrepit old wall in Jerusalem or a piece of old marble in the Vatican, we would literally rip those pieces limb from limb for the act of blasphemy that we’re committing but we won’t do that because nature is an abstraction, wilderness is an abstraction. It has no value in our anthropocentric world where the only thing we value is that which is created by humans.”

Paul Watson (1950) Canadian environmental activist

Life, Death, Money, People

“Right. I can’t speak to, agree with, even look at someone from a particular political party.
Ppl aren’t human any more.
If you’re black & a Democrat tells u to shove marbles up ur ass, you simply have to.
If another party tells u to look out for that bus, stand there & get hit”

Nicki Minaj (1982) Trinidadian-born American singer, rapper and actress

Source: 15 September 2021 tweet https://twitter.com/NICKIMINAJ/status/1438256221660663812

“The greatest artist does not have any concept
Which a single piece of marble does not itself contain
Within its excess, though only
A hand that obeys the intellect can discover it.”

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet

Source: I Sonetti Di Michelangelo: The 78 Sonnets of Michelangelo with Verse Translation

“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet

Angels

“Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor”

Alexis Carrel (1873–1944) French surgeon and biologist

Suffering, For Men

“You're my bondage and my freedom,
my flesh burning like a naked summer night,
you're my country.
Hazel eyes marbled green,
you're awesome, beautiful, and brave,
you're my desire always just out of reach.”

Nâzım Hikmet (1902–1963) Turkish poet

From You're

Beauty, Freedom, Summer, Night

“What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now.”

Raymond Chandler book The Big Sleep

Source: The Big Sleep (1939), Chapter 32, Phillip Marlowe
Context: What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was. But the old man didn't have to be. He could lie quiet in his canopied bed, with his bloodless hands folded on the sheet, waiting. His heart was a brief, uncertain murmur. His thoughts were as gray as ashes. And in a little while he too, like Rusty Regan, would be sleeping the big sleep.

Sleep, Water, Parting, Dead

“Most people are on the world, not in it — have no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them — undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

July 1890, page 320
John of the Mountains, 1938
Source: John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir

People, World

“And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.”

John Betjeman (1906–1984) English poet, writer and broadcaster

Source: Selected Poems

“He worshipped as much in Hindu temples as he did in gurudwaras. When he was sick and about to die, he gave away cows for charity. What did he do with the diamond Kohi-noor? He did not want to give it to the Darbar Sahib at Amritsar which he built in marble and gold, but to Jagannath Puri as his farewell gift. When he had the Afghans at his mercy and wrested Kashmir from them, he wanted the gates of the temple of Somnath back from them. Why should he be making all these Hindu demands? Whatever the breakaway that had been achieved from Hinduism, this greatest of our monarchs bridged in 40 years.”

Ranjit Singh (1780–1839) founder of Sikh Empire (early 19th century)

Khushwant Singh, quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2002). Who is a Hindu?: Hindu revivalist views of Animism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and other offshoots of Hinduism. ISBN 978-8185990743

“Quite near, one face is looking sadly at me, as it lolls to one side. It is coming out of the bottom of the heap, as a wild animal might. Its hair falls back like nails. The nose is a triangular hole and a little of the whiteness of human marble dots it. There are no lips left, and the two rows of teeth show up like lettering. The cheeks are sprinkled with moldy traces of beard. This body is only mud and stones. This face, in front of my own, is only a consummate mirror.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XV - An Apparition

Animals

“A little while ago, I stood by the grave of the old Napoleon, a magnificent tomb, and I gazed upon the sarcophagus of rare and nameless marble, where rest at last the ashes of that restless man. I leaned over the balustrade and thought about the career of the greatest soldier of the modern world. I saw him walking upon the banks of the Seine, contemplating suicide. I saw him at Toulon—I saw him putting down the mob in the streets of Paris—I saw him at the head of the army of Italy—I saw him crossing the bridge of Lodi with the tri-color in his hand—I saw him in Egypt in the shadows of the pyramids—I saw him conquer the Alps and mingle the eagles of France with the eagles of the crags. I saw him at Marengo—at Ulm and Austerlitz. I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the cavalry of the wild blast scattered his legions like winter's withered leaves. I saw him at Leipsic in defeat and disaster—driven by a million bayonets back upon Paris—clutched like a wild beast—banished to Elba. I saw him escape and retake an empire by the force of his genius. I saw him upon the frightful field of Waterloo, where Chance and Fate combined to wreck the fortunes of their former king. And I saw him at St. Helena, with his hands crossed behind him, gazing out upon the sad and solemn sea. I thought of the orphans and widows he had made—of the tears that had been shed for his glory, and of the only woman who ever loved him, pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition. And I said I would rather have been a French peasant and worn wooden shoes. I would rather have lived in a hut with a vine growing over the door, and the grapes growing purple in the kisses of the autumn sun. I would rather have been that poor peasant with my loving wife by my side, knitting as the day died out of the sky—with my children upon my knees and their arms about me—I would rather have been that man and gone down to the tongueless silence of the dreamless dust, than to have been that imperial impersonation of force and murder, known as 'Napoleon the Great.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Robert G. Ingersoll, The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child
About

Love, Fate, Children, World

“Then she generated the light, and the sight of her room, flooded with radiance and studded with electric buttons, revived her. There were buttons and switches everywhere — buttons to call for food for music, for clothing. There was the hot-bath button, by pressure of which a basin of (imitation) marble rose out of the floor, filled to the brim with a warm deodorized liquid. There was the cold-bath button. There was the button that produced literature. and there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world.”

E.M. Forster book The Machine Stops

Source: The Machine Stops (1909), Ch. 1

World, Food, Music, Communication

“They say that that haunting memory-face is modeled from my own, as it was at twenty-five; but upon the marble base is carven a single name in the letters of Attica — HYPNOS.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Fiction, Hypnos (1922)

Memory

“There are a few of us who could scarcely do more than we are doing of our own regular order of work, but there may yet be spare moments for little extra efforts of another sort which in the aggregate, in the run of a year, might produce a great total of real practical result. We must, like goldsmiths, carefully sweep our shops, and gather up the filings of the gold which God has given us in the shape of time. Select a large box and place in it as many cannon-balls as it will hold, it is after a fashion full, but it will hold more if smaller matters be found. Bring a quantity of marbles, very many of these may be packed in the spaces between the larger globes; the box is full now, but only full in a sense, it will contain more yet. There are interstices in abundance into which you may shake a considerable quantity of small shot, and now the chest is filled beyond all question, but yet there is room. You cannot put in another shot or marble, much less another cannon-ball, but you will find that several pounds of sand will slide down between the larger materials, and even then between the granules of sand, if you empty pondering there will be space for all the water, and for the same quantity several times repeated. When there is no space for the great there may be room for the little; where the little cannot enter the less can make its way; and where the less is shut out, the least of all may find ample room and verge enough.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

"A Spur for a Free Horse" in The Sword and the Trowel (February, 1866) http://www.spurgeon.org/s_and_t/spur.htm

God, Way, Fashion, Question

“A change came o'er my Vision - it was night:
We clove a pathway through a frantic throng:
The steeds, wild-plunging, filled us with affright:
The chariots whirled along.

Within a marble hall a river ran -
A living tide, half muslin and half cloth:
And here one mourned a broken wreath or fan,
Yet swallowed down her wrath”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Four Riddles, no. I
Rhyme? and Reason? (1883)

Change, Clothes, Night

“If you wish to make a figure in marble, first make one of clay, and when you have finished it, let it dry and place it in a case which should be large enough, after the figure is taken out of it, to receive also the marble, from which you intend to reveal the figure in imitation of the one in clay.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XI The Notes on Sculpture

“He could boast that he inherited it brick and left it marble.”

Augustus (-63–14 BC) founder of Julio-Claudian dynasty and first emperor of the Roman Empire

Suetonius, of Augustus and the city of Rome, in Lives of the Caesars, Divus Augustus, XXVIII, 3.

“I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble.”

Augustus (-63–14 BC) founder of Julio-Claudian dynasty and first emperor of the Roman Empire

Marmoream relinquo, quam latericiam accepi.
Quoted in Svetonius, Lives of the Cesars, Aug., XXVIII, 3

“The sculptor produces the beautiful statue by chipping away such parts of the marble block as are not needed - it is a process of elimination.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Beauty, Parting

“Convince yourself that you are working in clay, not marble, on paper not eternal bronze: Let that first sentence be as stupid as it wishes.”

Jacques Barzun (1907–2012) Historian

Stupidity

“Marble, I perceive, covers a multitude of sins.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

“In all ages the people have honored those who dishonored them. They have worshiped their destroyers; they have canonized the most gigantic liars, and buried the great thieves in marble and gold. Under the loftiest monuments sleeps the dust of murder.”

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

Source: Humboldt From 'The Gods and Other Lectures'

People, Age, Sleep

“Luke moved as silently as fog, while Maryse's heels sounded like gunshots on the marble floor. Clary wondered if Isabelle's propensity for unsuitable footwear was genetic.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

“I laid my face to the smooth face of the marble and howled my loss into the cold salt rain.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Loss

“Poor Kate,” said Constance, “she’s lost her marbles.”

Trenton Lee Stewart The Mysterious Benedict Society

Source: The Mysterious Benedict Society

“Character is not cut in marble - it is not something solid and unalterable. It is something living and changing, and may become diseased as our bodies do.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Source: Middlemarch

Disease, Change

“After all, what was the whole wide world but a place for people to yearn for their heart's impossible desires, for those desires to become entrenched in defiance of logic, plausibility, and even the passage of time, as eternal as polished marble.”

Richard Russo Empire Falls

Source: Empire Falls

People, World, Time, Heart

“They desecrate Riora’s sacred temple! She will be enraged.”
“Oh, gods, look at the marble. We are all beyond doomed.”
“Somebody put a plant in front of it!”

Kresley Cole book No Rest for the Wicked

Source: No Rest for the Wicked

God

“Keeping up the appearance of having all your marbles is hard work, but important.”

Sara Gruen book Water for Elephants

Source: Water for Elephants

Appearance

“The water rose further and dressed Simon's coarse hair with brightness. The line of his cheek silvered and the turn of his shoulder became sculptured marble…”

William Golding book Lord of the Flies

Source: Lord of the Flies

Water

“The great doctors all got their education off dirt pavements and poverty — not marble floors and foundations.”

Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962) American university teacher (1879-1962)

Fischerisms (1944)

Education

“It would be different if there were some great widespread public indigonation and demand: "Away with the prescriptive upper house of Parliament". There is not. There was recently carried out by Mr. McKenzie and a colleague of his a survey of working-class political attitudes called Angels in Marble. They found that "only one-third of the entire working class sample, and only a slightly higher proportion of Labour voters, favoured abolishing the Lords or altering it in any way…About a third of the whole sample" of working-class voters in the country "see the Lords as an intrinsic part of the national tradition or of the government of the country." As so often, the ordinary rank and file of the electorate have seen a truth, an important fact, which has escaped so many more clever people—the underlying value of that which is traditional, of that which is prescriptive.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech in the House of Commons http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1968/nov/19/house-of-lords-reform#S5CV0773P0_19681119_HOC_305 (19 November 1968) regarding proposals for reforming the House of Lords. <br class="br">1960s

People, Truth, Angels, Way

“I spoke with him [Brandeis] at length, in German. I saw he's a very great man who can't bear injustice being done to anyone, anywhere…His soul is hewn of the purest marble.”

Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) American Supreme Court Justice

Abraham Isaac Kook, Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution, Yehuda Mirsky (2014).

Soul

“I heard the trailing garments of the Night
Sweep through her marble halls!
I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light
From the celestial walls!”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

Hymn to the Night, st. 1 (1839).

Light, Night

“Being happy with less is what makes a great human being, not a big house with marble floors, or everyone knowing who you are.”

Yanni (1954) Greek pianist, keyboardist, composer, and music producer

Yanni in Words. Miramax Books. Co-author David Rensin

Happiness, Housing

“Carter had been doubtful about using the black box, pointing out that this was not a Vigils meeting. How can we make Archie try for the marbles? Obie had the answer, the kind of answer Archie himself would have given. "Because there are four hundred kids out there yelling for blood. And they don't care whose blood it is anymore. Everybody in the school knows about the black box- how can Archie back down?"”

Robert Cormier book The Chocolate War

The Chocolate War (1974)

School, Box

“The laurel-tree grew large and strong,
Its roots went searching deeply down;
It split the marble walls of Wrong,
And blossomed o'er the Despot's crown.”

Richard Henry Horne (1802–1884) English poet and critic

The Laurel Seed; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 439.

Search, Tree, Strong

“At last the bourgeois has a theatre of his own in which he really feels at home. In every little town there is a modest building, and in the big cities those new palaces of stone or marble whose remains still survive.”

Arnold Hauser (1892–1978) Hungarian art historian

The Social History of Art, Volume I. From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages, 1999, Chapter III. Greece and Rome

Feeling, Home

“Do you see all those beautiful trees there? I sketched them all thirty years ago; I have had all their portraits. Look at that beech there, the sun lights it up and makes of it a marble column, a column that has muscles, limbs, hands and a fair skin, white and pallid... See the modest green of the heath and its plants, rosy, amaranthine, which distil honey for the bees and fragrance for the butterflies. The sun lights them up and gives them a diapason of extraordinary color. Ah, the sun..”

Théodore Rousseau (1812–1867) French painter (1812-1867)

Quote of Th. Rousseau, Sept. 1867; recorded by fr:Alfred Sensier; as cited by Charles Sprague Smith, in Barbizon days, Millet-Corot-Rousseau-Barye; publisher, A. Wessels Company, New York, July 1902, p. 164
In September 1867 (two months before Rousseau’s death, when already half paralyzed), Th. Rouseau took a ride with Sensier to look once more at the heather. He was pointing to the Sully, a giant of the wood
1851 - 1867

Beauty, Color, Tree, Light

“…Sooltan Mahmood now attacked one of the forts in the Koombulmere district, defended by Beny Ray, the deputy of Rana Koombho of Chittor. In front of the gateway was a large temple which commanded the lower works. This building was strongly fortified, and employed by the enemy as a magazine. Sooltan Mahmood, aware of its importance, determined to take possession of it at all hazards; and having stormed it in person, carried it, but not without heavy loss; after which, the fort fell into his hands, and many Rajpoots were put to death. The temple was now filled with wood, and being set on fire, cold water was thrown on the, stone images, which causing them to break, the pieces were given to the butchers of the camp, in order to be used as weights in selling meat. One large figure in particular, representing a ram, and formed of solid marble, being consumed, the Rajpoots were compelled to eat the calcined parts with pan, in order that it might be said that they were made to eat their gods…”

Firishta (1560–1620) Indian historian

Sultãn Mahmûd Khaljî of Malwa (AD 1435-1469) Kumbhalgadh (Rajasthan)
Tãrîkh-i-Firishta

Death, God, Water, Loss

“Every speech, for Olivier, is like a mass of marble at which the sculptor chips away until its essential form and meaning are revealed. No matter how ignoble the character he plays, the result is always noble as a work of art.”

Kenneth Tynan (1927–1980) English theatre critic and writer

"Laurence Olivier" (1966), p. 208
Profiles (1990)

Art

“If we work upon marble, it will perish; if we work upon brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble to dust; but if we work on men's immortal minds, if we impress on them with high principles, the just fear of God and love for their fellow-men, we engrave on those tablets something which no time can efface, and which will brighten and brighten to all eternity.”

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

Address Delivered by the Hon. Daniel Webster in Faneuil Hall (22 May 1852), at the Request of the City Council of Boston; City Document No. 31. Boston: J.H. Eastburn (1852)

Love, Men, God, Fear

“It was the test of loyal citizenship among the Romans to seek out in every part of the world that which was most rare and valued, and bring it back to Rome as a gift. Thus her sons went forth and returned laden with richest trophies to lay at her feet. They brought to her pearls from India, gold chariots from Babylon, elephants from interior Africa, high-breasted virgins from the Greek isles, Phidian marbles from Athens. Paul also would be a bringer of gifts to the Rome that had honored him and his fathers with the high honor of citizenship. And the gift he would bring and lay at her feet would be the richest of them all—a religion.”

Bouck White (1874–1951) American author and novelist

Source: The Call of the Carpenter (1914), p. 229

World, Religion, Parting

“My heart is wax molded as she pleases, but enduring as marble to retain.”

Miguel de Cervantes book La gitanilla

La Gitanilla (The Little Gypsy) (c. 1590–1612; published 1613)

Heart

“Time past on as lightly as he always steps over flowers, Brussels carpets, marble terraces, green turfs, or whatever simile may best express a path without an impediment.”

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

Other Gift Books

Flowers, Time, Past

“The next monument visited was the great Jain temple built only a few years before by Shantidas Jhaveri, one of the wealthiest men of Gujarat in his day and high in favour both with Shah Jahan and after him with Aurangzeb. …In 1638, however, when Mandelslo visited the place, this temple which he calls ‘ the principal mosque of the Banyas ’ was in all its pristine splendour and ‘ without dispute one of the noblest structures that could be seen’. ‘It was then new,’ he adds, ‘ for the Founder, who was a rich Banya merchant, named Shantidas, was living in my time.
As Mandelslo’s description is the earliest account we have of this famous monument, which was desecrated only seven years after visit by the Orders of Aurangzeb, then viceroy of Gujarat (1645), we shall reproduce it at some length. It stood in the middle of a great court which was enclosed by a high wall of freestone. All about this wall on the inner side was a gallery, similar to the cloisters of the monasteries in Europe, with a large number of cells, in each of which was placed a statue in white or black marble. These figures no doubt represented the Jain Tirthankars, but Mandelslo may be forgiven when he speaks of each of them as ‘ representing a woman naked, sitting, and having her legs lying cross under her, according to the mode of the country. Some of the cells had three statues in them, namely, a large one between two smaller ones.’ At the entrance to the temple stood two elephants of black marble in life- size and on one of them was seated an effigy of the builder. The walls of the temple were adorned with figures of men and animals. At the further end of the building were the shrines consisting of three chapels divided from each other by wooden rails. In these were placed marble statues of the Tirthankars with a lighted lamp before that which stood in the central shrine. One of the priests attending the temple was busy receiving from the votaries flowers which were placed round the images, as also oil for the lamps that hung before the rails, and wheat and salt as a sacrifice. The priest had covered his mouth and nose with a piece of linen cloth so that the impurity of his breath should not profane the images.”

Shantidas Jhaveri (1580–1659) Indian jewellery and bullion trader during Mughal era

Description of the temple built by Shantidas Jhaveri. Mandelslo’s Travels In Western India (a.d.1638-9) https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.531053 p. 23-25

Life, Men, Flowers, Lying

“Some write their wrongs in marble: he more just,
Stoop’d down serene and wrote them in the dust,—
Trod under foot, the sport of every wind,
Swept from the earth and blotted from his mind.
There, secret in the grave, he bade them lie,
And grieved they could not ’scape the Almighty eye.”

Samuel Madden (1686–1765) Irish writer

Boulter's Monument (1745), dedicated to Frederick, Prince of Wales, who had been Madden's student.

Lie, Secret, Sport

“There is no necessary connection between the important events of a life and the records of it that have been preserved in memory, in documents, in memorials, or in living testimony. The biographer must compose his life of what he has, just as the archeologist must restore his temple or his statue with such fragments as thieving time and careless men have left him; but fate often ironically leaves him a well-preserved leg and a dismembered torso, while the head, which would supply the main clue to the body, is missing. Hence, in addition to the purposive selection exercised by the subject himself and by the biographer in making use of such materials as are left, there exists a purely external selection dominated by chance, which cuts across the evidence in an arbitrary fashion. To correct for such distortions the biographer must be an anatomist of character: he must be able to restore the missing nose in plaster, even if he does not find the original marble.”

Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic

Source: My Works and Days (1979), Ch. 14

Life, Men, Fate, Exercises

“Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honor turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.”

Andrew Marvell To His Coy Mistress

To His Coy Mistress (1650-1652)

Beauty, Thinking

“There was a sculptured form; the feet were placed
Upon a finely-carved rose wreath; the arms
Were raised to Heaven, as if to clasp the stars
EULALIA leant beside; 'twas hard to say
Which was the actual marble: when she spoke,
You started, scarce it seem'd a human sound;
But the eyes' lustre told life linger'd still;
And now the moonlight seem'd to fill their depths.”

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

A History of the Lyre
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

Life, Star

“A Prophetess inspir'd thou shalt behold
Down in a Cave, who long hath Fate foretold;
Which writ in Leaves, the Maid in order puts,
And to secure, in hollow Marble shuts.
They keep their Stations just as she design'd:
But the Door op'ning, with the smallest Wind,
The slender leaves do every way disperse.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro (2nd ed. 1654), Virgil's Æneis

Fate, Way

“They were cold, professionally polished, and well on their way up a career ladder that would ensure that despite the uniforms they wore, they would never have to come within a thousand kilometers of a genuine firefight. The only problem they had, as they cruised sharkishly back and forth across the cool marble floor of the court, was in drawing the fine differences between war—mass murder of people wearing a uniform not your own; justifiable loss—mass murder of your own troops, but with substantial gains; and criminal negligence—mass murder of your own troops, without appreciable benefit.”

Richard K. Morgan book Altered Carbon

Source: Altered Carbon (2002), Chapter 18 (p. 236)

War, People, Way, Problem

“Lenin is an artist who has worked men, as other artists have worked marble or metals. But men are harder than stone and less malleable than iron. There is no masterpiece. The artist has failed. The task was superior to his capacities.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

Popolo d'Italia (14 July 1920) "The Artificer and the Material," quoted in Mussolini in the Making (1938) by Gaudens Megaro, p. 326
1920s

Men

“Men live by production, but the State lives by appropriation. While the haves and the have-nots struggle over the division of existing wealth, it is the business of the State to improve itself at the expense of both; it picks up the marbles while the boys are fighting. That has been the story of men in organized society since the beginning.”

Frank Chodorov (1887–1966) American libertarian thinker

Source: The Income Tax: Root of All Evil (1954), p. 36

Men, Boy, Business, Fight

“Sleep sweetly in your humble graves,
Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause;
Though yet no marble column craves
The pilgrim here to pause. Stoop, angels, hither from the skies!
There is no holier spot of ground
Than where defeated valor lies,
By mourning beauty crowned!”

Henry Timrod (1828–1867) Poet from the American South

"Ode: Sung on the Occasion of Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead at Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, S.C., 1867", st. 1 & 5

Beauty, Angels, Sleep

“Why you think I play this game? I play to win. Competition is the thing. I want to play on a winning team. I don't want to play for sixth place. I like to play for all the marbles, where every game means something. I like to play for real, not for fun.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "Clemente Says Hitting Does Not Come Easy"
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1968</big>

Game, Thinking

“He wedded a wife of richest dower,
Who lived for fashion, as he for power.
Yet oft, in his marble hearth's bright glow,
He watched a picture come and go:
And sweet Maud Muller's hazel eyes
Looked out in their innocent surprise.”

John Greenleaf Whittier Maud Muller

Maud Muller (1856)

Fashion, Wedding

“Fine Art then, records by idealised imitation the glorious works of good men, whilst it holds those of bad men up to our abhorrence — it gives to posterity their images, either on the tinted canvass or the sculptured marble — it imitates the beautiful effects of nature as seen in the glowing landscape or the rising storm, and perpetuates the appearance of those beauteous gems of the seasons — flowers and fruits, which, though fading whilst the painter catches their tints, yet live after decay by and through his genius.
Industrial Art, on the contrary, aims at the embellishment of the works of man, by and through that power which is given to the artist for the investigation of the beautiful in nature; and in transferring it to the loom, the printing machine, the potter's wheel, or the metal worker's mould, he reproduces nature in a new form, adapting it to his purpose by an intelligence arising out of his knowledge as an artist and as a workman. In short, the adaptation of the natural type to a new material compels him to reproduce, almost create, as well as imitate — invent as well as copy”

George Wallis

design as well as draw! <br class="br">George Wallis. " Art Education for the people. No IV. The principles of Fine Art as Applied to Industrial Purposes http://books.google.com/books?id=l55GAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA231." In: People's & Howitt's Journal: Of Literature, Art, and Popular Progress, Vol. 3. John Saunders ed. 1847, p. 231.

Men, Beauty, Art, Intelligence

“Every human being has within him an ideal man, just as every piece of marble contains in a rough state a statue as beautiful as the one that Praxiteles the Greek made of the god Apollo.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

Martí : Thoughts/Pensamientos (1994)

God, Beauty

“Your only safety lies in placing yourself in circumstances which will make exertion necessary, and which will secure Divine assistance. Never mind your infirmities. You have nothing to do with them. Your business is to trust, and to go forward. If you wait till the sea becomes land, you will never walk on it. You must leave the ship, and, like Peter, set your feet upon the waves, and you will find them marble.”

Edward Payson (1783–1827) American religious leader

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 125.

Business, Waiting, Sea

“A dumb halo of sorrow lurks in Shirin's cold gaze,
Reclining on the marble columns of the veranda,
A pregnant cat is sleeping on her lap
And slowly snores.

The Shirin's image north of the garden
Is hanging on an apple tree;
Khosrow, in love with another mistress, mockingly mutters;
How can the eye in this image
Show the trace of lover breathing eye of Shirin?…??
For a moment Khosrow beats at the bow and says:
Shirin's eye is a good target, I have ordained
That this new bow should be tried on it.

Khosrow, the king of the world,
The master of archers,
Pulled out an arrow from his quiver.
This Parthian arrow, this nimble flying hawk,
Is familiar with the bow and the thumb.

A spark rose from Mount Bistoun,
Was it the lightening from Farhad's ax?
An angry flame is blazing in the image's eye,
The loud uproar,
The loud clamor of Farhad's heart,
Is robing sleep from the cat's eye.”

Farrokh Tamimi (1934–2003) Iranian poet and translator

Poet, Farhad

Love, World, Cats, Lovers

“Ahmadabad is one of the largest towns in India, and there is a considerable trade in silken stuffs, gold and silver tapestries, and others mixed with silk; saltpetre, sugar, ginger, both candied and plain, tamarinds, mirabolans, and indigo cakes, which are made at three leagues from Ahmadabad, at a large town called Suarkei. There was formerly a pagoda in this place, which the Musalinans seized and converted into a mosque. Before entering it you traverse three great courts paved with marble, and surrounded by galleries, but you are not allowed to place foot in the third without removing your shoes. The exterior of the mosque is ornamented with mosaic, the greater part of which consists of agates of different colours, obtained from the mountains of Cambay, only two days’ journey thence.”

Shantidas Jhaveri (1580–1659) Indian jewellery and bullion trader during Mughal era

Description of the temple built by Shantidas Jhaveri. Travels In India Vol.-i by Tavernier Jean-baptiste https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.2546/2015.2546.Travels-In-India-Vol-i_djvu.txt Cited in Harsh Narain, The Ayodhya Temple Mosque Dispute: Focus on Muslim Sources, Appendix VI

Shoe, Mountain, Parting

“Since such very powerful kings have not disdained walls built of brick, although… they might often have had them not only of masonry or dimension stone but even of marble, I think that one ought not to reject buildings made of brick-work, provided that they are properly "topped."”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter VIII, Sec. 16

Thinking

“There are many who write good deeds in the dust, and injuries on marble.”

Stefano Guazzo (1530–1593) Italian writer

Ve ne sono molti che scrivono i beneficii nella polvere, e l'ingiurie nel marmo.
Del Prencipe di Valacchia, p. 79.
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 436.

“Industry is the only true source of wealth, and there was no industry in Rome. By day the Ostia road was crowded with carts and muleteers, carrying to the great city the silks and spices of the East, the marble of Asia Minor, the timber of the Atlas, the grain of Africa and Egypt; and the carts brought nothing out but loads of dung. That was their return cargo. London turns dirt into gold. Rome turned gold into dirt.”

William Winwood Reade (1838–1875) British historian

Source: The Martyrdom of Man (1872), Chapter IV, "Intellect", pp. 383-4.

Wealth

“"Could you try not aiming so much?" he asked me, still standing there. "If you hit him when you aim, it'll just be luck." He was speaking, communicating, and yet not breaking the spell. I then broke it. Quite deliberately. "How can it be luck if I aim?" I said back to him, not loud (despite the italics) but with rather more irritation in my voice than I was actually feeling. He didn't say anything for a moment but simply stood balanced on the curb, looking at me, I knew imperfectly, with love. "Because it will be," he said. "You'll be glad if you hit his marble — Ira's marble — won't you? Won't you be glad? And if you're glad when you hit somebody's marble, then you sort of secretly didn't expect too much to do it. So there'd have to be some luck in it, there'd have to be slightly quite a lot of accident in it."”

Jerome David Salinger book Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963), Seymour: An Introduction (1959)

Love, Feeling, Communication

“I consider an human soul without education like marble in the quarry, which shews none of its inherent beauties till the skill of the polisher fetches out the colours, makes the surface shine, and discovers every ornamental cloud, spot and vein that runs through the body of it.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 215 (6 November 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

Education, Beauty, Soul

“Yes. There was a period when I tried to avoid looking at Greek – and Renaissance – sculpture of any kind; when I thought that the Greek and Renaissance were the enemy and that one had to throw all that over and start again from the beginning of primitive art. It's only in the last ten or fifteen years that I've begun to know how wonderful the elgin Marbles are.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Quote from 'Henry Moore', an interview by Donald, in 'Horizon', New York, Nov. 1960
1955 - 1970

Art

“Donald Trump is the steadfast leader our nation needs. He has spoken passionately to me of his belief in our American system of justice, and he speaks to the values that are at the foundation of our social contract. Throughout his campaign, and over many years before, he has consistently and constantly raised his voice — not only in defense of the character of the American police officer, but the need for all people to feel they are being treated fairly and respectfully by law enforcement. You see, Donald Trump understands that what can make our nation safe again is a recommitment to a system of justice in which no government official, not even those who have fought their way to the marble and granite halls of Washington; no private citizen, not even Hillary Clinton; and no group of people, despite the fervor with which they press forward their grievances, can claim privilege above the law. It cannot happen in the United States.”

David A. Clarke Jr.

Speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention (July 19, 2016)

People, Justice, Law, Way

“Excessively precise economic analysis can lead to assessing everything in terms of its easily measurable melt value - the value that thieves get from stealing copper wiring from isolated houses, that vandals got from tearing down Greek temples for the lead joints holding the marble blocks together, that shortsighted timber companies get from liquidating their forests. The standard to insist on is live value. What is something worth when it's working?”

Stewart Brand book Whole Earth Discipline

Whole Earth Discipline (2009), page 277.

Tear, Housing

“Now, when our Lord was come to eighteen years,
The King commanded that there should be built
Three stately houses, one of hewn square beams
With cedar lining, warm for winter days;
One of veined marbles, cool for summer heat;
And one of burned bricks, with blue tiles bedecked,
Pleasant at seed-time, when the champaks bud--
Subha, Suramma, Ramma, were their names.
Delicious gardens round about them bloomed,
Streams wandered wild and musky thickets stretched,
With many a bright pavilion and fair lawn
In midst of which Siddartha strayed at will,
Some new delight provided every hour;
And happy hours he knew, for life was rich,
With youthful blood at quickest; yet still came
The shadows of his meditation back,
As the lake's silver dulls with driving clouds.”

Edwin Arnold book The Light of Asia

Book The Second.
The Light of Asia (1879)

Life, Happiness, Youth, Winter

“For Beethoven, music was still shape, realized and inflected by instrumental sonority: other realizations may be as absurd as arrangements of the Hammerklavier, for example, always are, but the musical conception takes precedence over its realization in sound. The sonority serves the music. For Schumann, however, as for Chopin and Liszt, the conception was worked out directly within the sonority as a sculptor works directly in clay or marble. The instrumental sound is shaped into music.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 1 : Music and Sound

Music

“Once upon a time…
When the cold wind that blows,
when the cold wind that blows in my heart,
it was a summer breeze and she would meet me in Chinatown,
for opium and tea
and she always brought me flowers
but I spared you those old ballads
All those songs I couldn’t play
But every giro day she’d dress me like a lady boy
And take me high out of the way
Don’t let the horse chase the new deal away, no
If we make love in the morning
I see your eyes look like two marbles in your head”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

"Lady Don't Fall Backwards"
Lyrics and poetry

Love, Making love, Way, Boy

“I remember one vivid winter’s day at Versailles. Silence and calm reigned supreme,. Everything gazed at me with mysterious, questioning eyes. And then I realized that every corner of the palace, every column, every window possessed a spirit, an impenetrable soul. I looked around at the marble heroes, motionless in the lucid air, beneath the frozen rays of that winter sun which pours down on us 'without love', like perfect song.”

Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) Italian artist

as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Ghiberti to Gainsborough, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 232
1908 - 1920, On Mystery and Creation, Paris 1913

Love, Soul, Question, Silence

“I am sure I do not know why the beauty of Monte Carlo should not satisfy more than it does. The bluest of all seas is nowhere bluer than when you see it between the marble balustrades of the long white terrace before the casino, palms are nowhere greener than in that high garden which the mountain screen from every unkind breath, no colours could be more rich and various than those of the red and purple Alps that tower up behind the town, on whose summit such violent thunderstorms gather and break. But for me, at least, there was not at all the pleasure I had anticipated in this dazzling white and blue, these feathery palms and ragged Alps. …I had a continual restless feeling that there was nothing at all real about Monte Carlo; that the sea was too blue to be wet, the casino too white to be anything but pasteboard, and that from their very greenness the palms must be cotton. … in atmosphere and spirit the entire kingdom of Monaco is an extension of the casino.”

Willa Cather (1873–1947) American writer and novelist

Source: Willa Cather in Europe (1956), Ch. 14 (16 September 1902)

Pleasure, Beauty, Feeling, Mountain

“The modest front of this small floor,
Believe me, reader, can say more
Than many a braver marble can,—
“Here lies a truly honest man!””

Richard Crashaw (1612–1649) British writer

Epitaph upon Mr. Ashton, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“Christians well know that the much-decorated statue of the Church, as it now stands, is not of pure chiseled marble, but of clay, cemented together by blood and tears and hardened in the fires of hatred and persecution.”

Virchand Gandhi (1864–1901) Jain scholar who represented Jainism at the first World Parliament of Religions in 1893

Christian Missions: A Triangular Debate, Before the Nineteenth Century Club of New York (1895)

Tear

“The sun, as we have already said, is placed in the middle of our system, as a source of light and heat, to illuminate and vivify all the planets subordinate to it. Without his benign influence the earth would be a mere block, which in hardness would surpass marble and the most compact substances with which we are acquainted; no vegetation, no motion would be possible: in a word, it would be the abode of darkness, inactivity and death. The first rank therefore among inanimate beings cannot be refused to the sun; and if the error of addressing to a created object that adoration which is due to the Creator atone could admit of excuse, we might be tempted to excuse the homage paid to the sun by the ancient Persians, as is still the ease among the Guebres, their successors, and some savage tribes in America.”

Jacques Ozanam (1640–1718) French mathematician

Jacques Ozanam, Recreations in mathematics and natural philosophy : Volume 3 van Recreations in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. Published 1803. p. 140

Death, Error, Light, Sun

“Where the statue stood
Of Newton with his prism and silent face,
The marble index of a mind forever
Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone.”

William Wordsworth book The Prelude

Bk. III, l. 60.
The Prelude (1799-1805)

Sea

“His heart was one of those which most enamour us,
Wax to receive, and marble to retain:
He was a lover of the good old school,
Who still become more constant as they cool.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Stanza 34; this can be compared to: "My heart is wax to be moulded as she pleases, but enduring as marble to retain", Miguel de Cervantes, The Little Gypsy.
Beppo (1818)

School, Lovers, Heart

“I intend to make this day forward the first day of the rest of my life. We can change our lives. You say, 'Well, what's wrong with your life, Michael?' Well, it's not that there's anything wrong with my life, but it's not what I want it to be. I don't feel that I'm inspiring people in the way I want to inspire them. You see, you can inspire through hate; you can inspire through love, hope, humor – the positives. I look at the history of the world, and I look at the world today, and I realize that if we don't inspire each other through positive attributes – love, hope and humor – we're gonna descend into the barbarism of the Left and the barbarism of ISIS. You like me to be hard, you like me to be tough, you like me to give you the breaking news, you like me to be cynical, you like me to analytical, you like me to give you stuff that you don't hear anywhere else – I get that. But there's a limit to that. There's a lot of area beyond all that.I think of Christmas. Christianity is the religion of peace. Christianity is the true religion of peace. 'Turn the other cheek.' 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' These are messages that come from Christianity. What can you do in an age of deceit and lies and terror? You can go to church again. However un-needing you think you really are, you know in your heart that there's something missing in you. You know that you crave something greater. Because the human being is not a dog. We are unique creatures. And we need something different than the bear, the dog, the snake and the eagle. What is that thing that we need? It's that 'thing' called God.The media has promulgated the idea, and promoted the idea, that we only need food and fornication. And so when people are empty that's what they seek. And when they are really empty, what happens? They become drug addicts. They start with marijuana, they end up with heroin, crack, you name it. As God has been driven out of America, drugs have entered America. What does an empty soul look to do? An empty soul looks to fill itself. Just as an empty vessel needs to be filled with a liquid to be complete, an empty human being needs to fill itself to be complete. And how does it fill itself? I know, again, many of you will laugh because you're cynical; it's through those things I'm talking about – inspiration. Do you think a musician can play one day without inspiration from somewhere? The greatest artists in the history of the world were not drug-addicts. They were usually God-addicts. Look at the greatest art in history, you'll find most of them were super religious people, who literally saw God in their living room, and they took the power of God and that was transmitted through the paintbrush, or through that piece of marble. How could a man like Rodin take a piece of inert stone, and inside that stone see the essence of the human form, and sculpt from that block of inert stone, a marble, the portrait of a human being that looks so real – a hundred years later I go and look at them in the museum, and literally inside that carved eye I can see the person; how is that possible? How? It's a different show than I've ever done in my 21 years, because each day to me – I must tell you – I see as my last day, my last day on Earth.”

Michael Savage (1942) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, and Author

The Savage Nation (1995- ), 2015

Love, Life, God, Hate

“The ceremony took only a minute or so because Archie insisted on getting it over with quickly before anyone knew what was going on. The less drama, the better. Don't let Obie and Carter build it up. Thus, before any protest could be made, Archie had shot out his hand and pulled a marble from the box. White. Obie's jaw dropped in surprise. Things were moving too fast. He'd wanted Archie to squirm; he'd wanted the audience to realize what was going on here. He'd wanted to prolong the ceremony, to get as much of the drama and suspense out of the situation as possible. Archie's hand shot out again and it was too late for Obie to prevent the action. He drew in his breath. The marble was hidden in Archie's closed fist. He held the fist out, toward the audience. Archie held his back stiff. The marble had to be white. He hadn't come this far to be denied at the last moment. He let a smile play over his lips as he faced the audience, gambling everything in his show of confidence. He opened his palm and held up the marble for all to see. White.”

Robert Cormier book The Chocolate War

Source: The Chocolate War (1974), p. 245-246

Smile, Confidence, Box

“The soft droppes of rain perce the hard marble; many strokes overthrow the tallest oaks.”

John Lyly book Euphues

Source: Euphues (Arber [1580]), P. 81. Compare: "Water continually dropping will wear hard rocks hollow", Plutarch, Of the Training of Children; "Stillicidi casus lapidem cavat" (translation: "Continual dropping wears away a stone"), Lucretius, i. 314; "Many strokes, though with a little axe,/ Hew down and fell the hardest-timber'd oak", William Shakespeare, 3 Henry VI, act ii, sc. 1.

“These buildings are just right for the excesses of post-modernism -- decorative, frivolous -- serving to obviously excite and attract -- every feature using the architectural vocabulary freely without too much regard for serious function -- open glass atriums and shining metals and expensive and artificial marbles, zany letterings and excess neon.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

8 1/2 Women

“I'm king of the dead—and I make my throne
On a monument slab of marble cold;
And my scepter of rule is the spade I hold:
Come they from cottage or come they from hall,
Mankind are my subjects, all, all, all!
Let them loiter in pleasure or toilfully spin—
I gather them in, I gather them in!”

Park Benjamin, Sr. (1809–1864) American journalist

The Old Sexton, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Pleasure, Dead

“O wondrous sphinx! within thy marble breast
What undreamed secrets lie concealed!
Hast thou no pity for my wild unrest
My maddening longing for the unrevealed?”

Clara Jessup Moore (1824–1899) American writer and philanthropist

Death

Lie, Secret

“For men use, if they have an evil turn, to write it in marble: and whoso doth us a good turn we write it in dust.”

Thomas More (1478–1535) English Renaissance humanist

Richard III and His Miserable End (1543)

Men, Evil

“Romantic Switzerland! thy scenes are traced
With characters of strange wild loveliness,
Beauty and desolation, side by side;
Here lofty rocks uprise, where nature seems
To dwell alone in silent majesty;
Rob'd by the snow, her stately palace fram'd
Of the white hills; towering in all their pride,
The frost's gigantic mounds are lost in clouds,
Like to vast castles rear'd in middle air.
The ice has sculptur'd too strange imagery—
Obelisks, columns, spires, fantastic piles;
Some like the polish'd marble, others clear
As the rock crystal, others sparkling with
The hues that melt along the sunborn bow.”

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

Canto I, I opening lines
The Fate of Adelaide (1821)

Beauty, Nature

“Black (for such the quarries yield
Where the sun hath never shone,
Which night only rests upon,
Was the marble floor, which gave
Mirror like some clear dark wave.”

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

The London Literary Gazette, 1831

Sun, Night

“As an attorney, I assure you the law isn't a line engraved in marble, immovable and unchangeable through the centuries. Rather… the law is like a string, fixed at both ends but with a great deal of play in it — very loose, the line of the law — so you can stretch it this way or that, rearrange the arc of it so you are nearly always — short of blatant theft or cold-blooded murder — safely on the right side. That's a daunting thing to realize but true.”

Dean Koontz book Watchers

Part 1, Chapter 7.8; Garrison Dilworth reassuring the Cornells during their flight
Watchers (1987)

Law, Way

“In such fundamental considerations it would be surprising if many new concepts appear, for countless good minds have worked long on these matters over many years. Indeed, new original ideas should at first be suspect, though if they withstand examination they should be welcomed. My intent is not to create a new school or art form but to discern the pattern of a mosaic which lies hidden in the cluttered, colored marble chips of today's empirical facts.”

James Grier Miller (1916–2002) biologist

Source: Living Systems: Basic Concepts (1969), p. 126-127

School, Art, Color, Idea

“Aware that the city was architecturally unworthy of her position as capital of the Roman Empire, besides being vulnerable to fire and river floods, Augustus so improved her appearance that he could justifiably boast: "I found Rome built of bricks; I leave her clothed in marble."”
Urbem neque pro maiestate imperii ornatam et inundationibus incendiisque obnoxiam excoluit adeo, ut iure sit gloriatus marmoream se relinquere, quam latericiam accepisset.

Sueton book The Twelve Caesars

Source: The Twelve Caesars, Augustus, Ch. 28

Appearance, Clothes

“The first-century church in Jerusalem clearly had it. And they didn't have any fancy accoutrements. So it can't possibly be stained-glass windows, hand-carved cherubs, custom silk tapestries, gold-inlaid hymnals, thousand-pipe organs, marble floors, mile-high steeples, hand-painted ceilings, mahogany pews, giant cast-iron bells, and a three-piece, thousand dollar suit. It doesn't stick any better to a young, hip, shaved-headed pastor with rimmed glasses, a goatee, and tattoos than it does to an older, stately gentleman in a robe. Nor is it spotlights and lasers, video production, satellite dishes, fog machines, shiny gauze backdrops, four-color glossy brochures, sexy billboards, loud "contemporary" music, free donuts, coffee shops, hip bookstores, break dancing or acrobatics, sermon series named after television shows, a retro-modern matching chair and table onstage, or blue jeans and Heelys. It is not being on television, being on the Internet, or being on book and magazine covers. It is real. It is genuine.”

Craig Groeschel (1967) American priest

It – How Churches and Leaders Can Get It and Keep It (2008, Zondervan)

Books, Music, Color, Coffee

“Muhammad Kasim then entered and all the town people came to the temple of Nobhar, and prostrated themselves before an idol. Muhammad Kasim enquired: 'Whose house is this, in which all the people high and low are respectfully kneeling and bowing down.' They replied: 'This is an idol-house called Nobhar.' Then, by Muhammad Kasim's order, the temple was opened. Entering it with his officers he saw an equestrian statue. The body of the idol was made of marble or alabaster, and it had on its arms golden bracelets, set with jewels and rubies. Muhammad Kasim stretched his hand and took off a bracelet from one of the idol's arms. Then he asked the keeper of the Budh temple Nobhar: 'Is this your idol?' 'Yes,' he replied, 'but it had two bracelets on, and one is missing.' 'Well' said Muhammad Kasim, 'cannot your god know who has taken away his bracelet?”

Muhammad bin Qasim (695–715) Umayyad general

The keeper bent his head down. Muhammad Kasim laughed and returned the bracelet to him, and he fixed it again on the idol's arm.'
Alor (Sindh) . The Chach Nama, translated into English by Mirza Kalichbeg Fredunbeg. Delhi Reprint, 1979, pp. 179-80.
Quotes from The Chach Nama

God, People, Housing

“Questions of convergence under an infinite time horizon will depend so much on epsilontic refinements in the system of assumptions — and on the infinite constancy of these refinements — that we are humanly speaking absolutely certain of getting infinite time horizon results which have no relevance to concrete reality. And in particular we are absolutely certain of getting irrelevant results if such epsilontic exercises are made under the assumption of a constant technology. 'In the long run we are all dead.' These words by Keynes ought to be engraved in marble and put on the desk of all epsilontologists, in growth theory under an infinite horizon.”

Ragnar Frisch (1895–1973) Norwegian economist

Ragnar Frisch (1970) "Econometrics in the World of Today." University of Oslo, Institute of Economics, 1971; As quoted in Robert Johnston, Graham Clark. Service Operations Management: Improving Service Delivery. Pearson Education, 2005. p. 347
1970s and later

Exercises, Question, Reality, Time

“Like a marble statue placed,
Looking o'er the watery waste,
With its white fixed gaze;
There the Goddess sits, her eye
Raised to the unpitying sky;”

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

The Monthly Magazine