Quotes about palm (181 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“All the loving acts that two human beings are capable of, the simple act of holding hands can often become the most intimate. Why is this so? Basically, because the nature of the hands and feet is such that the energy system finds expression in these two parts of the body in a very singular way. Two palms coming together have far more intimacy than the contact between any other parts of the body. You can try this with yourself. You don’t even need a partner. When you put your hands together, the two energy dimensions within you (right-left, masculine-feminine, solar-lunar, yin-yang, etc.) are linked in a certain way, and you begin to experience a sense of unity within yourself. This is the logic of the traditional Indian namaskar. It is a means of harmonizing the system. So, the simplest way to experience a state of union is to try this simple namaskar yoga. Put your hands together, and pay loving attention to any object you use or consume, or any form of life that you encounter. When you bring this sense of awareness into every simple act, your experience of life will never be the same again. There is even a possibility that if you put your hands together, you could unite the world!”

Sadhguru book Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Love , Life , World , Way

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.”

William Blake Auguries of Innocence

Variant: To see a World in a grain of sand,
And a Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.
Source: 1800s, Auguries of Innocence (1803), Line 1

Peaceful , World , Flowers

“Great love stories are created by two people who are bonded through deep love. A love so intense, your palms become moist and your heart flutters when you think of them.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1979

Love , Making love , Heart , People

“A map says to you.
Read me carefully, follow me closely, doubt me not…
I am the earth in the palm of your hand.”

Beryl Markham (1902–1986) British writer, aviator, adventurer, racehorse trainer

Reading

“My valour is certainly going! — it is sneaking off! I feel it oozing out, as it were, at the palm of my hands!”

Richard Brinsley Sheridan The Rivals

Act V, sc. iii.
The Rivals (1775)

Feeling

“One of my favorite album covers is On the Beach. Of course that was the name of a movie and I stole it for my record, but that doesn't matter. The idea for that cover came like a bolt from the blue. Gary and I traveled around getting all the pieces to put it together. We went to a junkyard in Santa Ana to get the tail fin and fender from a 1959 Cadillac, complete with taillights, and watched them cut it off a Cadillac for us, then we went to a patio supply place to get the umbrella and table. We picke up the bad polyester yellow jacket and white pants at a sleazy men's shop, where we watched a shoplifter getting caught red-handed and busted. Gary and I were stoned on some dynamite weed and stood there dumbfounded watching the bust unfold. This girl was screaming and kicking! Finally we grabbed a local LA paper to use as a prop. It had this amazing headline: Sen. Buckley Calls For Nixon to Resign. Next we took the palm tree I had taken around the world on the Tonight's the Night tour. We then placed all of these pieces carefully in the sand at Santa Monica beach. Then we shot it. Bob Seidemann was the photographer, the same one who took the famous Blind Faith cover shot of the naked young girl holding the airplane. We used the crazy pattern from the umbrella insides for the inside of the sleeve that held the vinyl recording. That was the creative process at work. We lived for that, Gary and I, and we still do.”

Neil Young book Waging Heavy Peace: A Hippie Dream

Source: Waging Heavy Peace: A Hippie Dream

Men , World , Faith , Travel

“A pine tree standeth lonely
In the North on an upland bare;
It standeth whitely shrouded
With snow, and sleepeth there.

It dreameth of a Palm tree
Which far in the East alone,
In the mournful silence standeth
On its ridge of burning stone.”

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

Tree , Silence

“These palms are driving me crazy; the motifs are extremely difficult to seize, to put on canvas; it's so bushy everywhere, although delightful to the eye... I would like to do orange and lemon trees silhouetted against the blue sea, but cannot find them as I would like.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

in a letter from Bordighera to friends in Paris, Jan. 1884; as cited in: Joslyn Art Museum, ‎Holliday T. Day, ‎Hollister Sturges (1987), Joslyn Art Museum: Paintings and Sculpture from the European and American Collections, p. 100
1870 - 1890

Tree , Sea

“I saw ahead the rainbow flaming above the tepee of the Six Grandfathers, built and roofed with cloud and sewed with thongs of lightning; and underneath it were all the wings of the air and under them the animals and men. All these were rejoicing, and thunder was like happy laughter.
As I rode in through the rainbow door, there were cheering voices from all over the universe, and I saw the Six Grandfathers sitting in a row, with their arms held toward me and their hands, palms out; and behind them in the cloud were faces thronging, without number, of the people yet to be.”

Black Elk (1863–1950) Oglala Lakota leader

Black Elk Speaks (1961)

Men , People , Laughter , Universe

“The glories, trumpets, palms… and low reliefs,… all that makes a monument.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Les gloires, les trompettes, les palmes... et les bas-reliefs,... tout cela fait un monument.
Picasso (1952). Quoted in: Michael D. Garval (2004), "A Dream of Stone": Fame, Vision, and Monumentality in Nineteenth-century French Literary Culture. p. 226.
Picasso commented on the matter of the monument destruction in Paris.
Quotes, 1950's

“God can do anything. He has all power in the palm of His Hand. My Body, like all other bodies, is a temporary habitation; but, My Power is eternal, all-pervasive, ever-dominant.”

Sathya Sai Baba (1926–2011) Indian guru

Christmas Day Discourse, Bombay 1970. page 136, US ed. of Kasturi's Sathyam Sivam Sundaram Vol 3.

God

“Mao is a strange man whose personality is like the Tao, sometimes In sometime Young; he has a soft-as-cotton outer layer, but at the same time has sharp needles hiding inside… I do not think he could achieve anything, at the end he will be crushed inside my palm.”

Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1975) Chinese politician and military leader

Diary entry

Thinking , Time , Personality

“The rosy mountain peaks laughed like high lustrous thoughts,
and Helen, speechless, raised her pale hands toward the sun
and joyed to feel its warm rays falling on her frozen palms.”

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) Greek writer

Book IV, line 1361
The Odyssey : A Modern Sequel (1938)

Feeling , Mountain , Sun , Joy

“The conception of the necessary unit of all that is resolves itself into the poverty of the imagination, and a freer logic emancipates us from the straitwaistcoated benevolent institution which idealism palms off as the totality of being.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1910s, Our Knowledge of the External World (1914), p. 9

Imagination

“In this winter night, long and ample for bitter memories, many a widow who lost her husband in the war and is now left alone will press her palms to her ageing face; and in the nocturnal darkness the burning tears, as bitter as wormwood, will scorch her fingers.”

Mikhail Sholokhov (1905–1984) Soviet writer

From A Word on Our Country.
One Man's Destiny (1967)

War , Age , Tear , Memory

“All life will press palms together in prayerful adoration
of those who refuse to slaughter or savour meat.”

Thiruvalluvar book Tirukkuṛaḷ

Verse 260.
Tirukkural

Life

“About astrology and palmistry: They are good because they make people feel vivid and full of possibilities. They are communism at its best. Everybody has a birthday and almost everybody has a palm.”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

Bennington College address (1970)

People , Feeling , Communication , Birthday

“I truly miss my youth but embrace the more mature man I've become. Living in Palm Springs, I am a spring chicken! So it's all relative.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Spring , Youth

“Nothing ever fits the palm so perfectly, or feels so right, or inspires so much protective instinct as the hand of a child”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

Feeling

“You're alive," I whisper, pressing my palms against my cheeks, feeling the smile that's so wide it must look like a grimace. Peeta's alive.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Smile , Feeling

“As far as we know, everyone’s right—
Strigoi don’t want to hang out in Palm Springs.”
Eddie became about one percent less tense.”

Richelle Mead Bloodlines

Source: Bloodlines

Spring

“We don't fit in, you and me," he said. "We're both oddities no one knows what to do with. But we fit together." He took her hand, pressed her palm to his, then laced their fingers through each other's. "We fit.”

Jennifer Ashley (1974) American author

Source: The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie

“You know, if you have certain frustrations," Ascanio said, "I would be happy to help you work them out."
Derek looked at me, pointed at Ascanio, and punched his left palm with his right fist a few times. I shook my head.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Breaks

Time , Help , Happiness

“Such a small, pure object a poem could be, made of nothing but air a tiny string of letters, maybe small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. But it could blow everybody's head off.”

Mary Karr (1955) American writer

Source: Lit

“Sadie, I can't intervene." He turned up his palms in frustration. "I told you when we first met, this isn't an actual physical body."
"Shame," I mumbled.
"What?"
"Nothing. Go on.”

Rick Riordan book The Throne of Fire

Source: The Throne of Fire

“That word is 'willing.' It's an attitude and spirit of cooperation that should permeate our conversations. It's like a palm tree by the ocean that endures the greatest winds because it knows how to gracefully bend.”

Stephen Kendrick book The Love Dare

Source: The Love Dare

Tree

“I have a terrible wanderthirst; the very sight of a map makes me want to put on my hat and take an umbrella and start. I
shall see before I die the palms and temples of the South.”

Jean Webster book Daddy-Long-Legs

Source: Daddy-Long-Legs

“Adrian's new research partner stepped through the door, and I knew the uneasy peace we'd just established in Palm Springs was about to shatter.

Dimitri Belikov had arrived.”

Richelle Mead Bloodlines

Source: Bloodlines

Peace , Spring

“He folded his fear into a perfect rose. He held it out in the palm of his hand. She took it from him and put it in her hair.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

Fear , Perfection

“Mickey Cray had been out of work ever since a dead iguana fell from a palm tree and hit him on the head.”

Carl Hiaasen book Chomp

Source: Chomp

Tree , Dead

“I looked around, counting the competition. Sixteen. To win, all I had to do was incapacitate each one, place my hand over their hearts and turn my palm into a flame. Easy.
Yeah right.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Alice in Zombieland

Heart

“It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.”

Maya Angelou book Phenomenal Woman: Four Poems Celebrating Women

Source: Phenomenal Woman: Four Poems Celebrating Women

“Jesus has given me eternal life in Him. Let them take my life here, but God holds me in the palm of His hand and no one can take Him from me.”

Francine Rivers book An Echo in the Darkness

Source: An Echo in the Darkness

Life , God

“Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass,
Be not afraid of my body.”

Walt Whitman book Fulles d'herba

Source: Leaves of Grass

“I live in a world where two truths coexist: where both hell and hope lie in the palm of my hand”

Alice Sebold book Lucky

Source: Lucky

Truth , Lie , World , Hope

“And what, if you don’t mind me asking, is really important?”

Valkyrie holds her hand palm upwards, and it starts to glow from within. She smiles at him.

“Magic,” she says.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: The Dying of the Light

Smile

“Uncontradicting solitude
Supports me on its giant palm;
And like a sea-anemone
Or simple snail, there cautiously
Unfolds, emerges, what I am.”

Philip Larkin (1922–1985) English poet, novelist, jazz critic and librarian

Source: Collected Poems

Support , Solitude , Sea

“Blood is thicker than water, my mother had always said when I was growing up, a sentiment I’d often disputed. But it turned out that it didn’t matter whether she was right or wrong. They both flowed out of my cupped palms.”

Cheryl Strayed book Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Source: Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Water

“Excuse me?" I said, palms down on the Formica tabletop. "Coffee? I thought we came here for pie." "I don't eat the kind of pie they serve here." I felt a flash of heat go through my stomach. I knew firsthand the kind of pie Ranger liked.”

Janet Evanovich book To the Nines

Source: To the Nines

Coffee

“I had never realized a woman could have to struggle to keep her hands off a man, but here I was, digging my nails into my palms, staring at the inside of my eyelids as though I could maybe see through them if I peered hard enough.”

Charlaine Harris book Dead to the World

Source: Dead to the World

“The first rule of hurricane coverage is that every broadcast must begin with palm trees bending in the wind.”

Carl Hiaasen (1953) journalist, columnist and novelist from the United States

Tree

“He caught her by the wrist, brought her hand to his bare chest. Splayed her fingers over his heart. It beat against her palm, like a fist punching its way through his sternum. 'Break my heart,' he said. 'Break it in pieces. I give you permission.”

Cassandra Clare book Lord of Shadows

Source: Lord of Shadows

Way , Heart

“Clary saw him take Mark's hand; he pressed his witchlight into the boy's palm, where it flickered, and then resumed its steady glow. 'Take this with you,' said Jace, 'for it can be dark in the land under the hill, and the years very long.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Boy

“In my dream, the angel shrugged and said, if we fail this time, it will be a failure of imagination

and then she placed the world gently in the palm of my hand.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

World , Dreams , Angels , Imagination

“Odd to think that the piece of you I know best is already dead. The cells on the surface of your skin are thin and flat without the blood vessels or nerve endings. Dead cells, thickest on the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Written on the Body

Thinking , Dead

“Truth is as free as the air and we all have the right to breathe as deeply of it as we wish. It cannot be held back in the palm of any one man.”

Mary E. Pearson (1955) young-adult fiction writer

Source: The Beauty of Darkness

Truth

“If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Quoted in A Lifetime of Peace : Essential Writings by and About Thich Nhat Hanh (2003) edited by Jennifer Schwamm Willis, p. 141

For Parents , People , Parent

“She (Daisy) dug her nails into her palms and told herself she had no choice. "I, Theodosia…" She gulped for air. "… take thee Alexander…" She gulped again. "… to be my awful wedded husband…”

Susan Elizabeth Phillips (1948) American writer

Source: Kiss an Angel

Wedding

“Put your soul in the palm of my hand for me to look at, like a crystal jewel. I'll sketch it in words…”

Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972) Japanese author, Nobel Prize winner

Soul

“So, what, you got cigarette burns, too?" Gitanes said.

Chip showed his palm, "It's nothing."

"Self-inflicted. You pathetic American."

"Different kind of prison" Chip said.”

Jonathan Franzen book The Corrections

Source: The Corrections

“What am I supposed to do with a wool coat? Especially here in Palm Springs?”

“Sleep with it,” he suggested. “Think of me.”

Richelle Mead book The Indigo Spell

Source: The Indigo Spell

Spring , Thinking , Sleep

“Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.”

Chinua Achebe book Things Fall Apart

Source: Things Fall Apart

Art

“The professors of zoology gather in the meadows
With the palms of their hands they turn back the rainbows
the great magician sets the tomatoes on his forehead
Again thou hauntest castle and grounds
The roebuck whistles the stallion bounds
(And this is how the world is this is all that's ahead of us)”

Richard Huelsenbeck (1892–1974) German poet

End of the World, Ende der Welt', 1919

World

“She kissed me, author of The Little Dog Laughed. Then she took my wrist with her two hands. She pressed her lips into the palm of my hand. She placed my hand upon her bosom between her breasts. She turned her lips toward my face and waited. And Arturo Bandini, the great author dipped deep into his colorful imagination, romantic Arturo Bandini, just chock-full of clever phrases, and he said, weakly, kittenishly, "Hello."”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Dogs , Color , Imagination , Kiss

“Time has laid his hand
Upon my heart, gently, not smiting it,
But as a harper lays his open palm
Upon his harp, to deaden its vibrations.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

The Golden Legend http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10490/10490-h/10490-h.htm, Pt. IV, The Cloisters (1872).

Time , Heart

“Protocols:
supplementary budget, and all this ends up in accordance with the sum of the total addition, the annual departure from the normal reaches up as much as 50 percent in a year, and so the annual budget is trebled in ten years….
Every kind of loan proves infirmity in the State and a want of understanding of the rights of the State. Loans hang like a sword of Damocles over the heads of rulers, who, instead of taking from their subects by a temporary tax, come begging with outstretched palm of our bankers…the Goy states go on in persisting in putting more on to themselves to that they must inevitably perish, drained by voluntary blood-letting.
Graves: Their interest calculations are the same to support the financial dangers of loans!”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), p.84

Departure , Understanding , Support

“Come, blessed Darkness, come and bring thy balm
For eyes grown weary of the garish day!
Come with thy soft, slow steps, thy garments gray,
Thy veiling shadows, bearing in thy palm
The poppy-seeds of slumber, deep and calm.”

Julia Caroline Dorr (1825–1913) American writer

Darkness, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“But fair the exil'd Palm-tree grew
Midst foliage of no kindred hue;
Through the laburnum’s dropping gold
Rose the light shaft of Orient mould,
And Europe’s violets, faintly sweet,
Purpled the mossbeds at its feet.”

Felicia Hemans (1793–1835) English poet

The Palm Tree http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/hemans/records/tree.html, st. 2.

Tree , Light

“.. [that] the overturning of the old world of arts will be etched across your 'palms”

Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) Russian and Soviet artist of polish descent

recto
admonition from the cover of Malevich's 'novykh sistemakh v iskusstve' (Vitebsk: Unovis, 1919); the cover is reproduced in Malevich: Suprematism and Revolution in Russian Art, Larissa A. Zhadova, (trans. Alexander Lieven); London: Thames and Hudson, 1982
the notice on the verso reads: 'Work and edition by the workshop [artef] of artistic labor at the Vitebsk Svomas'
1910 - 1920

World , Art

“The decision to drop the atomic bomb - that wasn't Truman, but sweepstakes winner Penny Holkum of Palm Beach. And for that she received a case of Lucky Strikes and a lifetime supply of sadness.”

John Hodgman book The Areas of My Expertise

April 25, 2006
The Areas of My Expertise (2005), Appearances on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Sadness , Decision

“Now you play the loving woman;
I'll play the faithful man.
But just don't look too close into the palm of my hand.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Brilliant Disguise"
Song lyrics, Tunnel Of Love (1987)

Love , Faith

“It was evening when we came to the river
With a low moon over the desert
that we had lost in the mountains, forgotten,
what with the cold and the sweating
and the ranges barring the sky.
And when we found it again,
In the dry hills down by the river,
half withered, we had
the hot winds against us. There were two palms by the landing;
The yuccas were flowering; there was
a light on the far shore, and tamarisks.
We waited a long time, in silence.
Then we heard the oars creaking
and afterwards, I remember,
the boatman called us.
We did not look back at the mountains.”

Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) American theoretical physicist and professor of physics

"Crossing" describing memories of New Mexico in Hound and Horn (June 1928)

Mountain , Flowers , Light , Silence

“Neil Cavuto: …your campaign has received a $500 campaign donation from a white supremacist in West Palm Beach. And your campaign had indicated you have no intention to return it. What are you going to do with that?
Ron Paul: It is probably already spent. Why give it back to him and use it for bad purposes?
Neil Cavuto: …this Don Black who made the donation, and who ran a site called "Stormfront, White Pride Worldwide," now that you know it, now that you're familiar after the fact, you still would not return it?
Ron Paul: Well, if I spent his money and I took the money that maybe you might have sent to me and donate it back to him, that does not make any sense to me. Why should I give him money to promote his cause?
Neil Cavuto: …Hillary Clinton has had to do this, a number of other candidates have had to do this. Do you think that just is a bad practice?
Ron Paul: I think it is pandering. I think it is playing the political correctness… What about the people who get donations, want to get special interests from the military industrial complex? They put in — they raise, bundle their money, and send millions of dollars in there. And they want to rob the taxpayers. That is the real evil … that buys influence in government. And this is, to me, the corruption that should be corrected… you are missing the whole boat — the whole boat, because it is the immorality of government, it's the special interests in government, it's fighting illegal wars…
Neil Cavuto: All right.
Ron Paul: …and financing, and taxing the people, destroying the people through inflation, and undermining this prosperity of the country.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Your World with Neil Cavuto, FOX News, December 19, 2007 http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,317536,00.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrRtZaG63o8
2000s, 2006-2009

Money , War , People , Thinking

“Not content to have the audience in the palm of his hand; he goes one further and clinches his fist.”

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

On singer Frankie Laine
Curtains (1961)

“It was as though the lifeline on her palm
had fallen between the cracks
of the impossible and the arbitrary.”

Sheri-D Wilson (1958) Canadian Spoken Word Poet

"In Search of a Metaphysical Rock Star"
Goddess Gone Fishing for a Map of the Universe (2012)

“Behind the top hats, a little lady wearing lila-coloured tights was balancing on a tightrope in the middle of all that blue-grey tobacco-laden air. I sauntered in among the standing clientele. I was on the lookout for an attractive girl. Yes – that one wasn’t bad. When she became aware of my gaze her facial expression changed to that of a frozen mask and she stared emptily into space. I found a stair – and collapsed into it – tired and listless. Everyone clapped. The Lila-clad tightrope-walker curtsied, smiled and disappeared. A group of Romanian singers took her place. There was love and hate – and longing and reunion – and lovely dreams – and that soft music melting together with the colours. The melted notes became green palm trees and steely blue water floating in the blue haze of the room. An artwork is a crystal. A crystal has a soul and a mind, and the artwork must also have these.”

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) Norwegian painter and printmaker

a note of Munch, written in Ekely, 1929; Munch Museum
1896 - 1930

Love , Hate , Smile , Dreams

“I went up to my room, up the dusty stairs of Bunker Hill, past the soot-covered frame buildings along that dark street, sand and oil and grease choking the futile palm trees standing like dying prisoners, chained to a little plot of ground with black pavement hiding their feet. Dust and old buildings and old people sitting at windows, old people tottering out of doors, old people moving painfully along the dark street. The old folk from Indiana and Iowa and Illinois, from Boston and Kansas City and Des Moines, they sold their homes and their stores, and they came here by train and by automobile to the land of sunshine, to die in the sun, with just enough money to live until the sun killed them, tore themselves out by the roots in their last days, deserted the smug prosperity of Kansas City and Chicago and Peoria to find a place in the sun. And when they got here they found that other and greater thieves had already taken possession, that even the sun belonged to the others; Smith and Jones and Parker, druggist, banker, baker, dust of Chicago and Cincinnati and Cleveland on their shoes, doomed to die in the sun, a few dollars in the bank, enough to subscribe to the Los Angeles Times, enough to keep alive the illusion that this was paradise, that their little papier-mâché homes were castles. The uprooted ones, the empty sad folks, the old and the young folks, the folks from back home. These were my countrymen, these were the new Californians. With their bright polo shirts and sunglasses, they were in paradise, they belonged.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Money , People , Sadness , Angels

“When rowan leaves are dank and rusting
And rowan berries red as blood,
When in my palm the hangman's thrusting
The final nail with bony thud,
When, over the foul flooding river,
Upon the wet grey height, I toss
Before my land's grim looks, and shiver
As I swing here upon the cross,
Then, through the blood and weeping, stretches
My dying sight to space remote;
I see upon the river’s reaches
Christ sailing to me in a boat.”

Alexander Blok (1880–1921) poet

"Autumn Love" (1907); translation from C. M. Bowra (ed.) A Book of Russian Verse (London: Macmillan, 1943) p. 99.

Christ

“Milo Venus was a beautiful lass,
She had the world in the palm of her hand.
But she lost both her arms in a wrestling match,
To get a brown eyed handsome man.”

Chuck Berry (1926–2017) American rock-and-roll musician

"Brown Eyed Handsome Man" (1958), Pop Chronicles Show 5 - Hail, Hail, Rock 'n' Roll: The rock revolution gets underway. Part 1 http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc19751/m1/.
Song lyrics

World , Beauty

“He reached his hand toward me. “You don’t mind my asking, do you?” “Of course not,” I say calmly as I reverse the lit end of the cigarette so that the flame is cupped in the palm. I reach for his handshake. He screams like a woman in distress with her skirt held high. I puff my meanness as he licks at the burn and whimpers, “You sonofagun. You’ve burned the dickens out of my hand.” “I know.” “But why? I didn’t do anything. I don’t even know you.” “I guess it’s my Samoan blood.” Sal rushes to my defense. He points his finger at the fag. “Out!” “But I didn’t do anything.” “Out, out!””

Oscar Zeta Acosta book Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo

he shouts, his hands stiffly on the bar. The old fag picks himself up and begins to drag himself out.
Source: Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972), p. 68.

“And the music came back with the carnival, the music you've heard as far back as you can remember, ever since you were little, that's always playing somewhere, in some corner of the city, in little country towns, wherever poor people go and sit at the end of the week to figure out what's become of them, sometimes here, sometimes there, from season to season, it tinkles and grinds out the tunes that rich people danced to the year before. It's the mechanical music that floats down from the wooden horses, from the cars that aren't cars anymore, from the railways that aren't at all scenic, from the platform under the wrestler who hasn't any muscles and doesn't come from Marseille, from the beardless lady, the magician who's a butter-fingered jerk, the organ that's not made of gold, the shooting gallery with the empty eggs. It's the carnival made to delude the weekend crowd. We go in and drink the beer with no head on it. But under the cardboard trees the stink of the waiter's breath is real. And the change he gives you has several peculiar coins in it, so peculiar that you go on examining them for weeks and weeks and finally, with considerable difficulty, palm them off on some beggar. What do you expect at the carnival? Gotta have what fun you can between hunger and jail, and take things as they come. No sense complaining, we're sitting down aren't we? Which ain't to be sneezed at. I saw the same old Gallery of the Nations, the one Lola caught sight of years and years ago on that avenue in the park of Saint-Cloud. You always see things again at carnivals, they revive the joy of past carnivals. Over the years the crowds must have come back time and again to stroll on the main avenue of the park of Saint-Cloud…taking it easy. The war had been over long ago. And say I wonder if that shooting gallery still belonged to the same owner? Had he come back alive from the war? I take an interest in everything. Those are the same targets, but in addition, they're shooting at airplanes now. Novelty. Progress. Fashion. The wedding was still there, the soldier too, and the town hall with its flag. Plus a few more things to shoot at than before.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

27
Journey to the End of the Night (1932)

Hunger , War , People , Music

“She drew back; he was calm
"It is this that had the power,"
And he lashed his open palm
With the tender-headed flower.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

" The Subverted Flower http://www.andrews.edu/~spangles/life/poet/x.htm"
1940s

Flowers

“The global pulp & paper industry is estimated to be worth $1 trillion while the palm oil business is worth $400 to $500 billion a year. The challenge is to build the business to a large scale.”

Sukanto Tanoto (1949) Indonesian businessman

Globe Asia Interview, Sep, 2015. http://www.inside-rge.com/Sukanto-Tanoto-Resource-King-GlobeAsia
2015

Business

“God of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far-flung battle line,
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!”

Rudyard Kipling Recessional

Stanza 1.
Departmental Ditties and other Verses (1886), Recessional

God , Forgetting

“Do you think astrologists, palm readers and the like can really tell everything about you? That your personality can be read from your birth date, your hand or from sensing vibrations? Very possible.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)

Birth , Thinking , Sense , Reading

“"You don't understand," he said, "who I am or what I am. I'll show you. By Heaven! I'll show you." Then he put his open palm over his face and withdrew it. The centre of his face became a black cavity. "Here," he said. He stepped forward and handed Mrs. Hall something which she, staring at his metamorphosed face, accepted automatically. Then, when she saw what it was, she screamed loudly, dropped it, and staggered back. The nose—it was the stranger's nose! pink and shining—rolled on the floor.Then he removed his spectacles, and everyone in the bar gasped. He took off his hat, and with a violent gesture tore at his whiskers and bandages. For a moment they resisted him. A flash of horrible anticipation passed through the bar. "Oh, my Gard!" said some one. Then off they came.It was worse than anything. Mrs. Hall, standing open-mouthed and horror-struck, shrieked at what she saw, and made for the door of the house. Everyone began to move. They were prepared for scars, disfigurements, tangible horrors, but nothing! The bandages and false hair flew across the passage into the bar, making a hobbledehoy jump to avoid them. Everyone tumbled on everyone else down the steps. For the man who stood there shouting some incoherent explanation, was a solid gesticulating figure up to the coat-collar of him, and then—nothingness, no visible thing at all!”

H. G. Wells book The Invisible Man

Source: The Invisible Man (1897), Chapter 7: The Unveiling of the Stranger

Understanding , Housing , Falseness

“All my life I was very deprived, I ain't had a woman in years, and my palms are too hairy to hide”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

Whoops!
"My Name Is" (Track 2).
1990s, The Slim Shady LP (1999)

Life

“"This moment in time,"
(She said.)
It doesn't belong to you,"
(She said,)
It belongs to me,
And your little boy and your little girl,
And the one hand clapping:
Where on your palm is my little line,
When you're written in mine
As an old memory?”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Hounds of Love (1985), The Ninth Wave

Girl , Boy , Memory , Time

“Sadly I see
the light fade on my palm:
a firefly.”

Mukai Kyorai (1651–1704) poet

Japanese Death Poems. Compiled by Yoel Hoffmann. ISBN 978-0-8048-3179-6. According to Hoffman after his sister's, Chine's, death.

Light

“Devin had never trusted the priests of Eanna in his whole life. They were too shrewd, by far the most subtle of the clergy, by far the most apt to steer events to their own ends, which might lie out of sight, generations away. Servants of a goddess, he supposed, might find it easier to take the longer view of things. But everyone knew that all across the peninsula the clergy of the Triad had their own triple understanding with the Tyrants from abroad: their collective silence, their tacit complicity, bought in exchange for being allowed to preserve the rites that mattered more to them, it seemed, than freedom in the Palm.”

Guy Gavriel Kay book Tigana

Source: Tigana (1990), Chapter 15 (p. 461)

Life , Lie , Understanding , Freedom

“As for the name Rehnquist, I am quite uncertain as to its origin. Under the Swedish patronymic system of naming, my grandfather and his brothers would have been named Anderson, since Anders was the name of their father. "Quist" in Swedish means branch, I am told. For example, "Lindquist" means lime branch or linden branch, and Palmquist means palm branch. The best I can come up with is that the "rehn" in my name refers to a small village near the farm on which my grandfather grew up.”

William H. Rehnquist (1924–2005) Chief Justice of the United States

Address at a Swedish Colonial Society luncheon in Philadelphia (9 April 2001).
Books, articles, and speeches

“And in the ghostly palm-trees the sleepy tune
Of the quiet voice calling me, the long low croon
Of the steady Trade Winds blowing.”

John Masefield (1878–1967) English poet and writer

Salt-Water Ballads (1902), "Trade Winds"

Tree

“I never felt magic crazy as this,
Never saw moons, knew the meaning of the sea,
I never held emotion in the palm of my hand,
Or felt sweet breezes in the top of a tree,
But now you're here.
Brighten my northern sky.”

Nick Drake (1948–1974) British singer-songwriter

Northern Sky
Song lyrics, Bryter Later (1970)

Tree , Sea

“No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.”

William Penn book No Cross, No Crown

No Cross, No Crown (1682)

Pain

“There, up on deck, standing in the very entrance to his cabin and silhouetted dimly against the snow, was the figure of a man with shaven head and bare feet, wrapped in a large cape made of crimson felt. The figure knelt down and bowed to Jia Zheng, who did not recognize the features and hurried out on deck, intending to raise him up and ask him his name. The man bowed four times, and now stood upright, pressing his palms together in monkish greeting. Jia Zheng was about to reciprocate with a respectful bow of the head when he looked into the man's eyes and with a sudden shock recognized him as Bao-yu.
'Are you not my son?' he asked.
The man was silent and an expression that seemed to contain both joy and sorrow played on his face. Jia Zheng asked again:
'If you are Bao-yu, why are you dressed like this? And what brings you to this place?'
Before Bao-yu could reply two other men appeared on the deck, a Buddhist monk and a Taoist, and holding him between them they said:
'Come, your earthly karma is complete. Tarry no longer.'
The three of them mounted the bank and strode off into the snow. Jia Zheng went chasing after them along the slippery track, but although he could spy them ahead of him, somehow they always remained just out of reach.”

John Minford (1946) New Zealand sinologist

Source: Translations, The Story of the Stone, Vol. 5: 'The Dreamer Wakes' (1986), Chapter 120

Men , Appearance , Time , Joy

“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

“By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' eastward to the sea,
There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me;
For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say:
“Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!””

Rudyard Kipling book Barrack-Room Ballads

Mandalay, Stanza 1.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892, 1896)

Girl , Thinking , Tree , Sea

“Here is this mass of jelly - three pound mass of jelly - that you can hold in the palm of your hand, and it can contemplate the vastness of interstellar space, it can contemplate the meaning of infinity, and it can contemplate itself contemplating the meaning of infinity.”

V.S. Ramachandran (1951) Neuroscientist

A journey to the center of your mind, TED talks.

“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

“Hand took a breath and opened his palms, as if accepting the gift of rain. "YOU SHALL KNOW OUR VELOCITY!" he bellowed into the cold exhausted city.”

Dave Eggers (1970) memoirist, novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher

You Shall Know Our Velocity! (2002)

“I was not blinded by faith, but the encounter was indeed astonishing at several levels. In our private talk, Sai Baba uttered insights about my family and myself that he could not possibly have known…. He waved his hand in the air and opened his palm. In it nestled a gold ring with nine embedded stones, a navratan. He slipped it on my finger, remarking, "See how well it fits. Even a goldsmith would have needed to measure your finger."”

Shashi Tharoor (1956) Indian politician, diplomat, author

The Hindu, "Reality - Spiritual and Virtual", Nov 10, 2002 Available Online http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/mag/2002/11/10/stories/2002111000620300.htm.
2000s

Family , Faith

“I am an an honest man
From where the palm tree grows,
And I want, before I die,
to cast these verses from my soul.”

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

Yo soy un hombre sincero
De donde crece la palma
Y antes de morirme quiero
Echar mis versos del alma.
I (Yo soy un hombre sincero) as translated by Esther Allen in José Martí : Selected Writings (2002), p. 273, ISBN 0142437042
Variant translations:
A sincere man am I
From the land where palm trees grow,
And I want before I die
My soul's verses to bestow.
"A Sincere Man Am I" http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/46409-Jose-Marti-A-Sincere-Man-Am-I---Verse-I-, as translated by Manuel A. Tellechea, in Versos Sencillos: Simple Verses (1997) ISBN 1558852042
I am a sincere man
from where the palm tree grows,
and before I die I wish
to pour forth the verses from my soul.
Simple Verses (1891)

Soul , Tree

“The wandering one, the inquisitive dreamer of dreams,
The eternal asker of answers, stands in the street,
And lifts his palms for the first cold ghost of rain.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Dreams

“Actually, it was in Paris in 1914 that I did my first collages, for an occultist friend. They were mysterious portico's which were supposed to replace mural paintings and which evoked the structure of palm branches or fish-bones. [remark on the first collages Arp made, in different materials]”

Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist

Source: 1960s, Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs (1966), p. 430

Fish , Painting

“She would go right through a stop signal if no cars were around, and when anyone got in her way she would smash her palm on the squealing horn and hold it there. The sound rose like a cry of help through the canyons of buildings. She kept doing this, no matter whether she needed it or not.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Cars , Way , Help , Cry

“No hammers fell, no ponderous axes rung;
Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung.
Majestic silence!”

Reginald Heber Palestine

"Palestine"; this was altered in later editions to: "No workman’s steel, no ponderous axes rung, Like some tall palm the noiseless fabric sprung".
need further publication dates
Variant: No hammers fell, no ponderous axes rung;
Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung.
Majestic silence!

Silence