Quotes about nod
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“Don Donald was clearly accustomed to addressing people whose only way of responding was to nod worshipfully and take notes. He did not, in other words, leave a lot of breaks in his testimony to allow for discussion. For the moment, that was fine, since it made it easier for Richard to drink.”

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

Day 2
Reamde (2011), Part I: Nine Dragons

People, Way, Drink

“iPhone 7 — We will again watch people line up to buy an iconic product that is only marginally better than the paid-for product they already have. … We'll smile, nod our heads, and ask Siri to remind us to check to see if our medical plan covers mental health.”

Rob Enderle (1954) American financial analyst

Looking Ahead to 2016 or Why I Now Want My Own Bunker http://itbusinessedge.com/blogs/unfiltered-opinion/looking-ahead-to-2016-or-why-i-now-want-my-own-bunker.html in IT Business Edge (31 December 2015)

People, Health, Smile

“A naturall foole that could never learn by heart the order of numerall words, as one, two, and three, may observe every stroak of the Clock, and nod to it, or say one, one, one; but can never know what houre it strikes.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The First Part, Chapter 4, p. 14
Leviathan (1651)

Fools, Learning, Heart

“I had once a beautiful fatherland.
The oak tree
Grew so high there, violets nodded softly.
It was a dream.It kissed me in German and spoke in German
(You would hardly believe
How good it sounded) the words: "I love you!"
It was a dream.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

Ich hatte einst ein schönes Vaterland.
Der Eichenbaum
Wuchs dort so hoch, die Veilchen nickten sanft.
Es war ein Traum.Das küßte mich auf deutsch und sprach auf deutsch
(Man glaubt es kaum
Wie gut es klang) das Wort: "Ich liebe dich!"
Es war ein Traum.
In Der Fremde (In a Foreign Land)

Love, Beauty, Dreams, Kiss

“[S]egments of the Right, who denounced phrases like “economic patriotism” when it passed Barack Obama’s lips but nod and cheer when similar phrases come out of the mouths of “nationalists.” They see the state as the key to fostering a new social solidarity because it alone speaks for their new idol — or “strong god” — of the Nation. Passionate nationalists, like passionate socialists, ultimately believe that the State can love you, and if the right people take it over, the divisions that are inevitable in a free society will be knitted together by some government initiative. But that is not love, it is lust. It is a lust for power and victory for your vision over all others.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

2010s, 2018, The Government Can’t Love You (2018)

Love, God, People, Strong

“You’ve no appreciation of high romance, that’s your trouble,” Lewis said, climbing in and starting the motor.
Joseph nodded somberly. “Boy meets girl, girl loses boy, everybody dies. I just don’t get it.”

Kage Baker book The Graveyard Game

Source: The Graveyard Game (2001), Chapter 10, “Yorkshire” (p. 82)

Girl, Boy

“It didn’t happen that way,” Roger Stone cut in, “so there is no use talking about other possibilities. They probably aren’t really possibilities at all, if only we understood it.”
Pollux: “Predestination.”
Castor: “Very shaky theory.”
Roger grinned. “I’m not a determinist and you can’t get my goat. I believe in free will.”
Pollux: “Another very shaky theory.”
“Make up your minds,” their father told them. “You can’t have it both ways.”
“Why not?” asked Hazel. “Free will is a golden thread running through the frozen matrix of fixed events.”
“Not mathematical,” objected Pollux.
Castor nodded. “Just poetry.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Rolling Stones

“And not very good poetry.”
Source: The Rolling Stones (1952), Chapter 14, “Flat Cats Factorial” (p. 182)

Way, Mathematics

““Mundo, you start paying closer attention to our mama and papa. They didn’t get this far in life because their eyes are closed.” I nodded. I’d never had a conversation like this before with my brother Joseph”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

Life

“Speaking of secrets, how are your negotiations with the Obin going?”
Both Mattson and Robbins looked at Szilard warily. “There are no negotiations with the Obin,” Robbins said.
“Of course not,” Szilard said. “You’re not negotiating with the Obin to continue Boutin’s consciousness program for them. And the Obin are not negotiating with us to knock down whichever of the Rraey or Eneshans is still left standing after their upcoming little war. No one’s negotiating with anyone about anything. And how are these non-negotiations not going?”
Robbins looked at Mattson, who nodded. “They’re not going surprisingly well,” Robbins said. “We probably won’t reach an agreement in the next couple of days.”

John Scalzi book The Ghost Brigades

“How not wonderful,” Szilard said.
Source: The Ghost Brigades (2006), Chapter 15 (pp. 335-336)

War, Secret

“He spoke, the son of Kronos, and nodded his head with the dark brows,
and the immortally anointed hair of the great god
swept from his divine head, and all Olympos was shaken.”

Homér Iliad

I. 528–530 (tr. Richmond Lattimore).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

God

“From time to time some denigrator or critic with umbrage will say of my work, "He only wrote that to shock." I smile and nod. Precisely.”

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) American writer

Quoted by Stephen King in his book Danse Macabre (1981)
Context: I am anti-entropy. My work is foursquare for chaos. I spend my life personally, and my work professionally, keeping the soup boiling. Gadfly is what they call you when you are no longer dangerous; I much prefer troublemaker, malcontent, desperado. I see myself as a combination of Zorro and Jiminy Cricket. My stories go out from here and raise hell. From time to time some denigrator or critic with umbrage will say of my work, "He only wrote that to shock." I smile and nod. Precisely.

Smile, Time

“Marriage is the clue to human life, but there is no marriage apart from the wheeling sun and the nodding earth, from the straying of the planets and the magnificance of the fixed stars.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover (1929)
Context: Marriage is the clue to human life, but there is no marriage apart from the wheeling sun and the nodding earth, from the straying of the planets and the magnificance of the fixed stars. Is not a man different, utterly different, at dawn from what he is at sunset? And a woman too? And does not the changing harmony and discord of their variation make the secret music of life?

Life, Marriage, Star, Sun

“Jove almighty,
nod assent to the daring work I have in hand!”
Iuppiter omnipotens, audacibus adnue coeptis.

Virgil book Aeneid

Compare: Annuit cœptis ("[God] has favored our undertaking"), motto on the reverse side of the Great Seal of the United States.
Source: Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book IX, Line 625 (tr. Fagles)

“Only a man harrowing clods
In a slow silent walk
With an old horse that stumbles and nods
Half asleep as they stalk.”

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English novelist and poet

" In Time of 'The Breaking Of Nations'" http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/hardy/poems/breaking.html (1915), lines 1-12, from Moments of Vision (1917); the title is derived from lines of Jeremiah 51:20: "Thou art my battle ax and weapons of war: for with thee will I break in pieces the nations." Context: p>Only a man harrowing clods In a slow silent walk With an old horse that stumbles and nods Half asleep as they stalk.Only thin smoke without flame From the heaps of couch-grass; Yet this will go onward the same Though Dynasties pass.Yonder a maid and her wight Come whispering by: War's annals will cloud into night Ere their story die.</p

Horse

“A woman who can't forgive should never have more than a nodding acquaintance with a man. ”

Эдгар Хоу (1853–1937)

Forgiveness