Quotes about rock
page 8

“In the case of those solids, whether of earth, or rock, which enclose on all sides and contain crystals, selenites, marcasites, plants and their parts, bones and the shells of animals, and other bodies of this kind which are possessed of a smooth surface, these same bodies had already become hard at the time when the matter of the earth and rock containing them was still fluid. And not only did the earth and rock not produce the bodies contained in them, but they did not even exist as such when those bodies were produced in them.”

Nicolas Steno (1638–1686) Pioneer in anatomy and geology, bishop

The Prodromus of Nicolaus Steno's Dissertation Concerning a Solid https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/54340#/summary : (Page 217)

Time, Animals, Parting

“Step n' move your hips
With a feelin' from side to side
Sit yourself down in your car
And take a ride.And while you're movin'
Rock steady
Rock steady baby.
Let's call this song exactly what it is”

Aretha Franklin (1942–2018) American musician, singer, songwriter, and pianist

What it is -what it is - what it is
"Rock Steady", from Young (1972)
Song lyrics

Cars, Baby

“My early book learning came to me as naturally as the seasons in … the little town in which I grew up. … Quite early I began to find a special charm in an unpeopled world … of lava rock and sagebrush desert. … I was often more purely happy at such times than I think I have ever been since.”

Richard McKenna (1913–1964) American writer

Statement made in 1962, as quoted in the Boise Weekly Vol. 7, No. 39 (8 April 1999) http://www.thesandpebbles.com/mckenna/richard_mckenna.html

Books, World, Nature, Thinking

“Praise be to the Lord, my rock, who trains my fingers for battle and my hands for war.”

Ricardo Sanchez (1953) United States Army Lieutenant General

Reporters and editors luncheon address (2007)

War, Training

“The Pumpkins love rock-and-roll, we absolutely love it, but we also think it's a flatulent, ego-serving kiddie playground. You can have your cake and eat it too.”

Billy Corgan (1967) American musician, songwriter, producer, and author

"Out on a Limb." Details Magazine. October 1996.

Love, Thinking

“Well, I'd say, and this is probably a change from what I would have said when I was younger: Have a very healthy respect for the study of economic history, because that's the raw material out of which any of your conjectures or testings will come. And I think the recent period has illustrated that. The governor of the Bank of England seems to have forgotten or not known that there was no bank insurance in England, so when Northern Rock got a run, he was surprised. Well, he shouldn't have been.
But history doesn't tell its own story. You've got to bring to it all the statistical testings that are possible. And we have a lot more information now than we used to.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

Conor Clarke, An Interview With Paul Samuelson http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/06/an-interview-with-paul-samuelson-part-two/19627/, Part Two (2009) New millennium

History, Thinking, Study, Change

“The stream and the wind roar aloud. I hear not the voice of my love! Why delays my Salgar, why the chief of the hill, his promise? Here is the rock, and here the tree! here is the roaring stream! Thou didst promise with night to be here. Ah! whither is my Salgar gone? With thee I would fly from my father; with thee, from my brother of pride.”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

"The Songs of Selma", p. 209
The Poems of Ossian

Love, Tree, Flying, Night

“The weed crushed and pressed by the heavy rock may slowly and gently grow up anew helped by the fresh air, sunshine, and sympathetic rain. On the other hand, the rock is often broken through exposure to nature and weathering. Life is a strong power to grow in tenderness; this fact may be considered as having a close relation with human life. At the same time tenderness has sometimes stronger power against stiffness or hardening due to extreme strain.”

Kyuzo Mifune book The Canon of Judo

The Canon of Judo (1956, 1960)

Life, Nature, Strong, Time

“You cannot expect any rational thought from a religious man. He is like a rocking log in water.”

Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (1879–1973) Tamil politician and social reformer

Quoted in “Collected works of Periyar E.V.R.” p. 50.
Rationalism

Water

“The hills,
Rock-ribbed, and ancient as the sun.”

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

Source: Thanatopsis (1817–1821), l. 37

Sun

“I am not sure that it is best for us, once safe and secure on the Rock of Ages, to ask ourselves too closely what this and that experience may signify. Is it not better to be thinking of the Rock, not of the feet that stand upon it?”

Elizabeth Prentiss (1818–1878) American musician, hymnwriter

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 538.

Age, Thinking

“Does rocks float on lava?”

Gavin Free (1988) English filmmaker

Rooster Teeth Podcast #256 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4WrYoNduq0. youtube.com. February 4, 2014. Retrieved June 10, 2014.

“Talk of mysteries! — Think of our life in nature, — daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it, — rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

The Maine Woods http://thoreau.eserver.org/mewoods.html, Ktaadn, Pt. 6 (1848)

Life, World, Nature, Thinking

“There was a time when even brave men might look fearfully upon the destiny of the Republic; when our country was involved in a tangled network of contradictions; when vast and irreconcilable social forces fiercely disputed for ascendency and control; when a heavy curse rested upon our very soil, defying alike the wisdom and the virtue of the people to remove it; when our professions were loudly mocked by our practice, and our name was a reproach and a byword to a mocking; when our good ship of state, freighted with the best hopes of the oppressed of all nations, was furiously hurled against the hard and flinty rocks of derision, and every cord, bolt, beam and bend in her body quivered beneath the shock, there was some apology for doubt and despair. But that day has happily passed away. The storm has been weathered, and the portents are nearly all in our favor.”

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

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Wisdom, Men, People, Hope

“Stock markets are never better performing than during a hyperinflation. Interest rates are rock bottom, but only through artificial means. Gross Private Domestic Investment is still falling off a cliff, having already completely erased ten years of investment from the record of history. Here is a fundamental factor that suggests that terrible things are still to come our way. And I guess I'll have to put this in italics because the point seems to be lost in the shuffle: unemployment is still rising, even soaring straight to double digits!
The sociology of this intrigues me to no end. Unemployment is one of the human elements that journalists are supposed to glom onto. Oh, look at poor Bob and Jane and how they lost their jobs and have nowhere to go, etc., etc. Talk about human interest! Where are the weepy stories about the plight of people wandering around with no work? Instead, we get happy clappy stories about how things are not nearly as bad as they might be had the great and powerful Obama of Oz not appeared to save the day. There is also the remarkable spin that things are getting worse, yes, but at a slower pace than before – an observation that might be most commonly heard in Hell.”

Lew Rockwell (1944) American libertarian author and editor

6 August 2009 "Obama and the Economy" http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/obama-economy125.html 2000s

People, Way, History, Hell

“The reason I threw a rock at Billy Walker’s stupid face was I had a crush on him. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been thirty years since my last confession. I threw a rock at Billy Walker’s beautiful face. How many times? At what velocity? The priest does not ask if I intended to mar the face. One of the things I love about the church is that motive is assumed: Because I am human. What alone interests the confessor is the form of humanity I wish to confess. Confession is constructed as we are constructed. The confessional box prefigures the American I. I am the sinner, irreducible. My soul is irreducible. Not my red hand.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

Love, Stupidity, Beauty, Soul

“Dicko: Yeah, I agree. Exactly what this competition is about. Um, growing, moving out of your comfort zone. That was absolutely terrific. Mark, in the last audition said that you dressed too old, a little cruise ship. I think you've listen to what he's said and come back and you look fantastic tonight. Every inch the rock star. And, um, I think I've heard that really good fireworks come out of Canberra so you're going to go off like a rocket.”

Hayley Jensen (1983) Australian singer

Australian Idol, Final Performances, Final 12

Star, Thinking

“The habits of study acquired at Universities are of the highest importance in after-life. At the season when you are in young years the whole mind is, as it were, fluid, and is capable of forming itself into any shape that the owner of the mind pleases to order it to form itself into. The mind is in a fluid state, but it hardens up gradually to the consistency of rock or iron, and you cannot alter the habits of an old man, but as he has begun he will proceed and go on to the last.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1860s, On The Choice Of Books (1866)

Life, Study, Universe, Season

“Now I know your mama she don't like me 'cause I play in a rock and roll band.
And I know your daddy he don't dig me but he never did understand.
Papa lowered the boom, he locked you in your room;
I'm comin' to lend a hand.
I'm comin' to liberate you, confiscate you, I want to be your man.
Someday we'll look back on this and it will all seem funny.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)"
Song lyrics, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle (1973)

Understanding

“Looking at this insolent earth,
you hear the first battle cry of our species-
trap it under a rock
and together, screaming, attack
and destroy it, as if killing a mammoth.”

Nâzım Hikmet (1902–1963) Turkish poet

From Human Landscapes from My Country, Book Two, Section VII

Cry

“To all the young women here tonight, and all across the country, let me say those words again: Black girls rock! We rock! We rock! No matter who you are, no matter where you come from, you are beautiful, you are powerful, you are brilliant, you are funny! Let me tell you, I'm so proud of you. My husband, your president, is so proud of you. And we have such big hopes and dreams for every single one of you.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

Speech at BET's 2015 Black Girls Rock! event (28 March 2015) http://uk.eonline.com/news/640752/michelle-obama-offers-inspirational-words-at-2015-black-girls-rock-find-out-what-she-said 2010s

Women, Beauty, Dreams, Hope

“Have you never seen human beings acting in a mob-frenzy? Have you never seen a religious rite that tipped people over the edge? Did you not see footage of the rock-and-roll music concerts they have in America?”

Adam Roberts book Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea

Source: Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea (2014), Chapter 14, “Confinement” (p. 131)

People, Music

“Adieu, the city's ceaseless hum,
The haunts of sensual life, adieu!
Green fields, and silent glens we come,
To spend this bright spring-day with you.Whether the hills and vales shall gleam
With beauty, is for us to choose;
For leaf and blossom, rock and stream,
Are coloured with the spirit's hues.Here, to the seeking soul, is brought
A nobler view of human fate,
And higher feeling, higher thought,
And glimpses of a higher state.Through change of time, on sea and shore,
Serenely nature smiles away;
Yon infinite blue sky bends o'er
Our world, as at the primal day.The self-renewing earth is moved
With youthful life each circling year;
And flowers that Ceres' daughter loved
At Enna, now are blooming here.Glad nature will this truth reveal,
That God is ours and we are His.
O friends, my friends! what joy to feel
That He our loving Father is!”

James Aldrich (1810–1856) American editor and minor poet

A Spring-Day Walk.

Love, Life, God, Fate

“But as the wave expended its force and the waters withdrew, the bleak rocks remained; there was no arguing with fate; neither his despair nor Lyra’s had moved them a single inch.”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

Source: His Dark Materials, The Amber Spyglass (2000), Ch. 37 : The Dunes

Fate, Water, Despair

“He found the harem filled with rocking maids
Surrendered to the orgies of the sob.”

Nathalia Crane (1913–1998) American writer

"Tadmore"
Venus Invisible and Other Poems (1928)

“Skirting the rocks at the forest edge
With a running flame from ledge to ledge,
Or swaying deeper in shadowy glooms,
A smoldering fire in her dusky blooms;
Bronzed and molded by wind and sun,
Maddening, gladdening every one
With a gypsy beauty full and fine,—
A health to the crimson columbine!”

Elaine Goodale Eastman (1863–1953) American novelist, poet

Columbine; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 124.

Health, Beauty, Sun

“And the fact of the matter is that everyone should play music because it's such a beautiful gift. It's my religion. But maybe not everyone should play it in front of me. It's okay to play music in your rocking chair or whatever.”

Josh Homme (1973) American musician

Reported in Jay Babcock, " JOSHUA HOMME: People say &#91;record&#93; labels are evil. No, they’re just lame. http://www.arthurmag.com/2007/12/04/josh-homme-people-say-labels-are-evil-no-theyre-just-lame/", Arthur Magazine (December 4, 2007).

Religion, Beauty, Music

“Hail, hail rock and roll; deliver me from the days of old.
Long live rock and roll; the beat of the drums, loud and bold.
Rock, rock, rock and roll; the feelin' is there, body and soul.”

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

"School Days" (1957), Pop Chronicles Show 6 - Hail, Hail, Rock 'n' Roll: The rock revolution gets underway. Part 2 http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc19752/m1/ Song lyrics

Soul

“But I was confused. Here we were scrambling around looking under rocks for great long-term investments, and every other hedge fund, or so it seemed, was doing some funny hedge of cheap yen money and T-bills. That's investing?”

Andy Kessler (1958) American writer

Part IV, Intellectual Property, The Yen-Scary Trade, p. 165.
Running Money (2004) First Edition

Money

“My song is of the straits first navigated by the mighty sons of gods, of the prophetic ship that dared to seek the shores of Scythian Phasis, that burst unswerving through the clashing rocks, to slink at length to rest in the starry firmament.”
Prima deum magnis canimus freta pervia natis fatidicamque ratem, Scythici quae Phasidis oras ausa sequi mediosque inter iuga concita cursus rumpere flammifero tandem consedit Olympo.

Gaius Valerius Flaccus book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica, Book I, Lines 1–4

God

“Dull headed I am, you are the very progenitor of cupid
Forgiving my countless sins please save me…
I am the sinner and you remove the sins on me
Anger, vanity, arrogance I am filled with these
Make me fearless removing my worries
False shadowy forms engross me
You are the redeemer to those who seek refuge
Worst criminal I am you remove hurdle rocks that huge
Bewildered I am you save me as you foresee
Charlatan I am and you are without vanity
Unlucky I am you are lord of wealth divine
Can I comprehend past or future of mine?
Oh Purandara Vittala Raya my father
Perpetually you save me without bother.”

Purandara Dasa (1484–1564) Music composer

In this song Dasa’s reference to ‘cupid’ is to a mythological episode in which Shiva destroys Manmatha the demi god for hindering his penance. However, he is rescued by Parvati, Shiva’s consort and adopted as their own son Pradyumna in a rebirth in the subsequent era of Lord Krishna. This is considered as a noble act. The translated version is here.[Narayan, M.K.V., Lyrical Musings on Indic Culture: A Sociology Study of Songs of Sant Purandara Dasa, http://books.google.com/books?id=-r7AxJp6NOYC&pg=PA79, 1 January 2010, Readworthy, 978-93-80009-31-5, 89]

Forgiveness, Past, Future, Falseness

“In the big factory of perfecting human souls, the Earth was a kind of tumbler. The same as the kind people use to polish rocks. All souls come here to rub the sharp edges off each other. All of us, we're meant to be worn smooth by conflict and pain of every kind. To be polished. There was nothing bad about this. This wasn't suffering. It was erosion. It was just another, a basic, an important step in the refining process.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Haunted

Source: Haunted (2005), Chapter 6

Pain, People, Soul, Suffering

“I know the God hypothesis has its partisans, but, oh, what a boring idea. Where did the universe come from? He did it. How do we account for rivers and rocks and ring-tailed lemurs? He made them. Ho-hum.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), Chapter 5 (p. 108)

God, Idea, Universe

“Because he attempted to tell [in his painting 'The Jewish Cemetery' painted by Ruisdael, ] that which is outside the reach of art…. there are ruins to indicate old age, a stream to signify the course of life, and rocks and precipices to shadow forth its dangers. But how are we to discover all this?”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Quoted in Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams, Constable (Tate Gallery Publications, London, 1993), p. 304
posthumous, undated

Life, Age, Art, Painting

“You've got your ball,
You've got your chain.
Tied to me tight, tie me up again.
Who's got their claws
In you my friend?
Into your heart, I'll beat again.
Sweet like candy to my soul,
Sweet you rock
And sweet you roll.
Lost for you, I'm so lost for you.”

Dave Matthews (1967) American singer-songwriter, musician and actor

Crash into Me
Crash (1996)

Soul, Heart

“McDonald's is a place to rock / It is a restaurant where they buy food to eat / It is a good place to listen to the music / People flock here to get down to the rock music.”

Wesley Willis (1963–2003) American singer-songwriter

Rock 'N Roll McDonald's
Lyrics, Solo

People, Food, Music

“Ussher’s intense and obsessive project seems very odd to the eyes of a modern scientist. After all he had deduced the age of the Earth without looking at a scrap of physical evidence—not a single rock.”

Stephen Baxter (1957) author

Source: Ages in Chaos (2003), Chapter 2, “The first day of the creation is deduced” (p. 17)

Age

“I play in a rock and roll band called The Rock Bottom Remainders. It's other authors. It's Stephen King and Amy Tan and Dave Barry and a bunch of others of us. We play to raise money for charities, because we're kind of a freak show, but we're not bad. I play a guitar and a mandocello… And since you don't know what a mandocello sounds like or how it should be played, you can say with some authority I'm the most interesting mandocello player you've ever heard. Anyhow, we're in this hotel and this maid comes in and she keeps looking at me and she smiled and she said, "I know who you are." And I said, "No you don't. Who am I?" And said, "You're Kenny Rogers." And I of course said, "No, no, no." And she said, "If you were Kenny Rogers you wouldn't say you were Kenny Rogers would you? So you must be Kenny Rogers." … So that evening I'm walking along with my guitars going to the elevator and she went up like a skyrocket, "See! I knew you were Kenny Rogers!"”

Robert Fulghum (1937) American writer

So I signed her card, "Love and kisses, Kenny Rogers."
Robert Fulghum : Philosopher King

Love, Money, Smile, Kiss

“But when you get to the other side of the Sierra Nevada, you don't see the green of the Sacramento Valley, you see the desolation of the Pit River Valley. You see rocks and stunted growth, and mountain deserts. It's just, it's just a pain, it's a shock, it's a hit in the head, it hurts your heart to see what still lies ahead. And you haven't gone a short cut. What you've done is you've gone north, and you're at what's called Goose Lake. So instead of going west, you've gone north-northwest. Now you've got to go south.”

J. S. Holliday (1924–2006) American historian

About the route to California
The West (1996)

Pain, Mountain, Heart, Hurt

“Sober alkies are often asked: “When did you hit rock bottom?” but a more informed question might be: “How many times did you hit rock bottom?”

Craig Ferguson book American on Purpose

American on Purpose (2009)

Question, Time

“(In reference to the Pamela Anderson/Kid Rock divorce) It was announced this week that these will no longer be bouncing on that.”

Amy Poehler (1971) American actress

SNL 12/6/2006.
Weekend Update samples

“Moved by the god of song, I set out to commemorate the heroes of old who sailed the good ship Argo up the Straits into the Black Sea and between the Cyanean Rocks in quest of the Golden Fleece.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Opening lines
Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book I. Preparation and Departure

God, Sea

“New Zealand interviewer: What's it like for you guys, has it been "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll", that stuff?
Josh: Six drugs? There's been more than that!
[All laugh]
Josh: I need to hear that question again, I'm sorry.
Dave Grohl: Why? That was the best answer you could possibly have given!
[Laughter continues]
Josh: I wake up in the middle of stuff, sometimes. 'Cause of my condition, y'know.
New Zealand interviewer: Which is?
Josh: I'm a badass.”

Josh Homme (1973) American musician

Them Crooked Vultures interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zjxJ6MYR1Q, New Zealand (2010)

Sex, Guy, Question, Laughter

“I'm back at my cliff
still throwing things off
I listen to the sounds they make
on their way down
I follow with my eyes 'til they crash
imagine what my body would sound like slamming against those rocks
and when it lands
will my eyes
be closed or open?”

Björk (1965) Icelandic singer-songwriter

"Hyper-Ballad", from Post (1995)
Songs

Way, Imagination

“"Rock" [music]… is the expression of elemental passions, and at rock festivals it assumes a cultic character, a form of worship, in fact, in opposition to Christian worship. People are, so to speak, released from themselves by the experience of being part of a crowd and by the emotional shock of rhythm, noise, and special lighting effects. However, in the ecstasy of having all their defenses torn down, the participants sink, as it were, beneath the elemental force of the universe.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

2000, The Spirit of the Liturgy (2000)

People, Music, Light, Universe

“I will follow my instincts, be myself for good or ill, and see what will be the upshot. As long as I live, I'll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I'll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche. I'll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can.”

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

attributed to a Muir "autobiographical notebook" in Linnie Marsh Wolfe, Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir (1945), page 144
1870s

World, Bird, Learning, Singing

“The nights are no longer warm,
The green tomatoes are cold to their cores,
The sparrows rock empty feeders with fright,
The doves linger forlornly in the low junipers,
The lights of the city thicken the November night.”

Mirkka Rekola (1931–2014) Finnish writer

Mirkka Rekola. " Stanzas," translated in: Eamonn Wall (2008), A Tour of Your Country. p. 12

Light, Night

“Do not quibble or quarrel over trivialities but stand firm as the rock of Gibraltar on matters of principle. That is, do not argue vociferously over a referee’s decision or a difference in the size of dessert but stand solid and unflinching when it is a question of absolute honesty, truthfulness, kindliness, compassion, (or) thoughtfulness.”

Nile Kinnick (1918–1943) College football player

Letter to his younger brother George (July 18, 1938)

Truth, Question, Decision

“Things started to go downhill. Instead of singing about taking tea with Mary Jane and boppin' your dingus on ol' Sweet Slit Annie it was Help me God I don't know the meaning of life or I believe that love is gonna cure the world of psoriasis and cancer both and I'm gonna tell the people all about it 285 different ways whether you like it or not. And Why is there war well go ask the children they know everything we need to know, and Gee I sure like black folks even if my own folks don't and endless vinyl floods of drivel in similar veins. At that point I started to pack in and resort back to my good old ' 66 goof squat rock. I got out records like 96 Tears by Question Mark and the Mysterians, who were mysterious indeed, and re-whooped to jungle juju cackles like "Wooly Bully," which is indescribable and was recorded by a bunch of guys who drove around in a hearse wearing turbans.”

Lester Bangs (1948–1982) American music critic and journalist

"Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: A Tales of These Times" (June 1971), p. 9
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (1988)

Love, Life, God, War

“So after Humpfest 06, it was time to play our rock show.”

Ben Kowalewicz (1975) musician

From "The Diary of Billy Talent":

Time

“I think it's called Arte Povera. But it doesn't mean 'poor art'. It means the art which you would do out there if you were nobody at all. Aspects of this are street art and so forth. Earthworks interest me to the single extent that it means a great extension of the possibilities of materials. Dirt is a wonderful material to make things out of. And mud and rocks and things like this…”

Carl Andre (1935) American artist

Source: Artists talks 1969 – 1977, p. 26

Art, Thinking

“It was like the game that young girls play beside a sandy beach, when they roll their skirts up to their waists on either side and toss a ball round to one another, throwing it high in the air so that it never touches the ground. Thus, though the water swirled and seethed around them, these sea-nymphs kept Argo from the Rocks.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book IV. Homeward Bound, Lines 948–955

Girl, Game, Water, Sea

“Yosemite Park is a place of rest, a refuge from the roar and dust and weary, nervous, wasting work of the lowlands, in which one gains the advantages of both solitude and society. Nowhere will you find more company of a soothing peace-be-still kind. Your animal fellow beings, so seldom regarded in civilization, and every rock-brow and mountain, stream, and lake, and every plant soon come to be regarded as brothers; even one learns to like the storms and clouds and tireless winds. This one noble park is big enough and rich enough for a whole life of study and aesthetic enjoyment. It is good for everybody, no matter how benumbed with care, encrusted with a mail of business habits like a tree with bark. None can escape its charms. Its natural beauty cleans and warms like a fire, and you will be willing to stay forever in one place like a tree.”

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

1895, page 350
John of the Mountains, 1938

Life, Peace, Beauty, Mountain

“I think my chances of getting into the Rock 'N' Roll Hall Of Fame are about as good as Milli Vanilli's.”

"Weird Al" Yankovic (1959) American singer-songwriter, music producer, accordionist, actor, comedian, writer, satirist, and parodist

Ask Al Archives: August 2003 http://www.weirdal.com/aaarchive.htm#081503.

Thinking, Chance

“Call us not weeds, we are flowers of the Sea,
For lovely and bright and gay tinted are we,
And quite independent of sun's fire or showers-
Then call us not weeds! We are ocean's bright flowers,
Not nursed like the plants of a summer parterre,
Where gales are but sighs of an evening air,
Our exquisite, fragile and delicate forms
Are nursed by the Ocean and rocked by the Storms.”

Petar Beron

Historia naturalis bulgarica 4: 10 - 15.

Love, Flowers, Sun, Summer

“As you know I have been preaching along with El Duce and Sickie Wifebeater for many years against homosexuality in rock and it's time to take revenge on people that try to stop rock. The real rock, hetero rock. There for Bowie is going on trial within Rock Kourt.”

Steve Broy (1958) American musician

Mentors Heathen Scum Rock Kourt http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWg1EuUPmrk by Dr. Heathen Scum at Dr. Heathen Scum's channel http://www.youtube.com/user/sbroy at YouTube

People, Revenge, Time

“In that privileged place, reality and the sublime dimension almost come together. My mystical paradise begins in the plains of the Empordà, is surrounded by the Alberes hills, and reaches plenitude in the bay of Cadaqués. This land is my permanent inspiration. The only place in the world, too, where I feel loved. When I painted that rock that I entitled 'The Great Masturbator', I did nothing more than render homage to one of the promontories of my kingdom, and my painting was a hymn to one of the jewels of my crown.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Quote from Wikipedia: The Great Masturbator
Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1941 - 1950

Love, World, Feeling, Reality

“Hears the music under the rock
One of these days he'll stop
Don't stop when the music stops.”

Ysabella Brave (1979) American singer

"Such a Quiet Man (original song!)" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HA6bri22Tk, the first original song she posted to YouTube, about which she wrote: "I got bored so I wrote this song tonight. The music, instruments, the lyrics, backup vocals, everything was me. And yes it is TOTALLY WEIRD!!!!!!" (13 May 2007)

Music

“Rimbaud gave up poetry when it failed to change the world. Orwell at the end must have had his doubts about language, too, or he wouldn't have dreamed up Newspeak. Neither is remembered for his hard work at identity-making. Instead, the poet's name is worn by freaks, geeks and videodrones as if it were a logo on a T-shirt or a jet-propelled sneaker, and the novelist is propped up on a horse like the dead El Cid to frighten the Moorish hordes. They have both been turned into the standard-issue celebrity flacks of this empty, buzzing time, selling something other than themselves, unattached to honor, glory, kingship, sainthood or genius. They join a talk-show parade of the power-mad, the filthy rich and the serial killers, the softboiled fifteen-minute Warhol eggs, the rock musicians addled on cobra venom, the war criminals whose mothers never loved them and the starlets babbling on about their substance abuse, their child molestations, their anorexia and their liposuction. "I have never belonged to this race," said Rimbaud.”

John Leonard (1939–2008) American critic, writer, and commentator

"On Shooting at Elephants" http://www.thenation.com/doc/20001211/leonard, The Nation (27 November 2000)

Love, War, World, Dreams

“I have a desire to be part of the defence of our sovereignty against the aggression we face every day from our 'friendly neighbour' and those here on the Rock who do not understand the simple words "No Surrender". No surrender of our right to open government, no surrendering of our duties to care for our people, no surrender to the concept that Gibraltarians should find dignified jobs, no surrender of our hopes and dreams for Gibraltar and certainly no surrender of our sovereignty on land or sea.”

Fabian Picardo (1972) Gibraltarian politician and barrister

Address after being elected leader of the GSLP in April 2011
2011

People, Dreams, Hope, Understanding

“I hit rock bottom, but thank God my bottom wasn't death.”

Stevie Ray Vaughan (1954–1990) American guitarist, songwriter and recording artist

As quoted in Guitar World, September 1988

Death, God

“When I was a younger man,
Got lucky with a rock 'n' roll band,
Struck gold in Hollywood,
All the time I knew I would
Get back to the country,
Back where it all began.
Get back to the country,
Back in the barn again.”

Neil Young (1945) Canadian singer-songwriter

Get Back To The Country
Song lyrics, Old Ways (1985)

Time, Country

“O Saviour pour upon me thy Spirit of meekness & love:
Annihilate the Selfhood in me, be thou all my life!
Guide thou my hand which trembles exceedingly upon the rock of ages”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Source: 1800s, Jerusalem The Emanation of The Giant Albion (c. 1803–1820), Ch. 1, plate 5, lines 21-23 The Words of Blake

Love, Life, Age

“I'm the innocent bystander
Somehow I got stuck
Between the rock and the hard place
And I'm down on my luck”

Warren Zevon (1947–2003) American singer-songwriter

"Lawyers, Guns And Money"
Excitable Boy (1978)

“People in 1900 didn’t think that radium could hurt you, just carrying a chip of it in your pocket like a lucky rock, and then one day their legs fell off and they died of cancer. Not believing something is no help if you turn out to be wrong.”

Tim Powers book Expiration Date

Source: Expiration Date (1995), Chapter 4 (p. 28)

People, Thinking, Help, Hurt

“They made a porn movie about Sarah Palin, and the same actress, Lisa Ann, played me in the porn version of 30 Rock. Weirdly, of the three of us, Lisa Ann knows the most about foreign policy.”

Tina Fey (1970) American comedian, writer, producer and actress

"Ask Tina" segment from NBC's 30 Rock website

“The first day I was in a daze thinking, ‘What am I doing? What’s my role?’ and then slowly we started writing with each other, and it was great. It took me way back to my high school days when I was playing in a rock band.”

A. R. Rahman (1966) Indian singer and composer

During the recording of music “SuperHeavy” quoted in "What Is Superheavy?"

School, Way, Thinking

“The term "chorus form" is often used to denote a type of performance - typically in jazz or rhythm 'n' blues, but also sometimes in country music and rock 'n' roll - where a given structural unit is repeated an indefinite number of times. The unit itself may be sectionally elaborate, as in the case of most Tin Pan Alley ballads. It may be twelve-bar blues, or something similar, as in the case of many R&B and rock 'n' roll numbers: here, a three-line AAB lyric, set to a three-phrase melody, is underpinned by a single gestural sweep in the harmony. Occasionally - as in some funk, dub reggae, and hip-hop, for example - it may approach the status of open-ended process.”

Richard Middleton British musicologist

[Key Terms in Popular Music and Culture, ISBN 0631212639, Middleton, Richard, 1999]

Music, Time, Country

“We figure to ourselves
The thing we like; and then we build it up,
As chance will have it, on the rock or sand,—
For thought is tired of wandering o’er the world,
And homebound Fancy runs her bark ashore.”

Henry Taylor (1800–1886) English playwright and poet

Act I, sc. 5.
Philip van Artevelde (1834)

World, Chance

“The competition between chunks of capital is getting fiercer, there is the same old same old desperate need to keep wages down, desperate need to substitute machines for labour (but that costs trillions of investment) and no matter how hard you exploit workers, you still need to sell stuff to them, and if their wages are low, they can't buy the stuff. You can force the poorly paid into borrowing money (credit cards, wonga etc) but there comes a point when that causes a credit crisis: someone somewhere says they want some dosh and a bank somewhere says they haven't got the dosh (Northern Rock, last time). Let's remember, none of this is caused by migrants or left social democrats. This is a crisis entirely born from a system that is locked into competition for markets. So, these fervid rows between squadrons of extremely unpleasant individuals are rows between people who deep down know that they can't control this system of running the making and distribution of the things we need. They are just coming up with fantasies on how to stay in power while the next phase veers from crisis to crisis. It is terrible for millions of people in awful insecure, low paid jobs and/or in insecure, lousy housing, or if they are disabled, or for millions trying to migrate their way out of poverty and despair. We should be alarmed when members of the ruling class start pleading with us to take sides with them against the 'elite': one section of the elite calling for us to oppose the elite.”

Michael Rosen (1946) British children's writer

'Neither Brussels or the City - for the many not the few'. http://michaelrosenblog.blogspot.com/2018/07/neither-brussels-or-city-for-many-not.html (6 July 2018)

Money, People, Way, Time

“Whoso walketh in solitude,
And inhabiteth the wood,
Choosing light, wave, rock, and bird,
Before the money-loving herd,
Into that forester shall pass
From these companions power and grace.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Woodnotes II http://www.emersoncentral.com/poems/wood_notes_ii.htm, st. 4 1840s, Poems (1847)

Love, Money, Bird, Solitude

“We can assume that in a relatively short time — perhaps within 100 million years — the one celled organism evolved into a colony of cells. With the further passage of time, groups of cells within those colonies assumed specialized functions of food-gathering, digestion, the structural features of an outer skin, and so on; thus began the stage of evolution leading to the complex, many-celled creatures which dominate life today.
The fossil record contains no trace of these preliminary stages in the development of many-celled organisms. The first clues to the existence of relatively advanced forms of life consist of a few barely discernible tracks, presumably made in the primeval slime by soft, wriggling wormlike animals. These are found in rocks about one billion years old. These meager remains are the earliest traces of many-celled animal life on the planet.”

Robert Jastrow (1925–2008) American astronomer

Red Giants and White Dwarfs : Man's Descent from the Stars (1971), p. 249.

Life, Food, Time, Animals

“; You must shatter the vase to spread its perfume, and smite the rock to get the spark.”

José Rizal book El Filibusterismo

El Filibusterismo

“I got tired of the Ramones around the time I quit and I really got into rap. I thought it was the new punk rock.”

Dee Dee Ramone (1951–2002) German-American songwriter and musician

QuoteHD, Rap Quotes (2001) http://www.quotehd.com/quotes/words/Rap

Time

“A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal (1799).
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

Fear, Feeling, Tree

“My cousin came over to my house one day just to fool around and we said — he said, some day we should start a rock n' roll group. We could all get together. And I said, I know I guy named Al Jardine who plays bass and could probably sing good. You know. So we went from there.”

Brian Wilson (1942) American musician, singer, songwriter and record producer

CNN interview (2004)

Fools, Guy, Singing, Housing

“The second factor, equally important, is that of good continuation and good shape. The things which we see have a better shape, are bounded by better contours, than the holes which we might see but do not. Therefore, when in exceptional circumstances these conditions are reversed, we see the hole and not the things, as the shape of a gap between two projecting rocks with sharp profiles, which may look like a face, an animal, or some other object, while the shape of the rock disappears.”

Kurt Koffka (1886–1941) German psychologist

Source: Principles of Gestalt Psychology, 1935, p. 209

Animals

“Ascending to the next group of rocks, we find the traces of life become more abundant, the number of species extended, and important additions made”

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) book Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation

Source: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), p. 61
Context: Ascending to the next group of rocks, we find the traces of life become more abundant, the number of species extended, and important additions made in certain vestiges of fuci, or sea plants, and of fishes. This group of rocks has been called by English geologists, the Silurian System, because largely developed at the surface of a district of western England, formerly occupied by a people whom the Roman historians call Silures.

Life

“He is firm in constitution, as in resolution; industrious, indefatigable, determined and persevering; fixed in opinion, and unbiased in judgment; not over accessible, but studious to reward merit. He is a rock against which the waves of calumny and malice, moved by the gusts of passion natural to envy, have dashed; have washed its sides: he is still immovable on his base. He is in some degree susceptible of adulation, as is every man who has an honest thirst for military fame. He endures fatigue and hardship with fortitude uncommon for a man of his years. I have seen him, in the most severe night of the winter of 1794, sleep on the ground, like his fellow-soldiers, and walk around the camp at four in the morning, with the vigilance of a sentinel.”

Anthony Wayne (1745–1796) Continental Army general

Major William Eaton, commander of the US Marines at Derna, 1806 ("...the Shores of Tripoli..."), of Wayne

Nature, Sleep, Passion, Winter

“Jim Dandy waves his stick over and around about the rock in a meaningless-meaningful way.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Jim Dandy : Fat Man in a Famine (1947)

Way

“Click. The spare camera was now focussed and working. The lead mare—Barb Nose's—saw the drop. She cut her stride and wheeled and ran along the dangerous edge. Barb Nose ran in the vanguard, protecting the rear, driving the foals ahead of him. Blaze Face had long since cut and run, taking his beaten stallion flesh off to be nursed, to wait for another day, another elder to challenge. The other mares expertly and instinctively followed the leader as she rimmed the mesa, heading for the foothills of the El Gatos. One foal, too, made the cut, on stick-like legs, frightened but blindly following. The second foal had truly been blinded by panic. He strode to the drop-off and never stopped. He was a wild horse, and he had to run, and now he would run free forever. Plunging headlong over the drop, body whirling, his legs still flailing, as he fell through the desert air and past the serrated rock walls of the mesa, he knew nothing of time. He knew nothing of the eons that had gone before him, building this mesa of bluff and sandstone and archean rock. He fell through layers of time, to timelessness, a living thing for so little time. Once a living work of art, now a broken artifact. One foal. Dead. Murdered by man. Murdered by time. The drumbeat of the earth was lessened by one horse's tiny hooves. And all of us were lessened by this new silence. Click.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

From Running Wild, pp. 14-15
Other Topics

Art, Silence, Time, Waiting

“This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Ash-Wednesday (1930)
Context: And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth
This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Dreams, Birth, Solitude, Time

“There is (so to speak) "a mighty stream of tendency" to good in the human mind, upon which all objects float and are imperceptibly borne along; and though in the voyage of life we meet with strong rebuffs, with rocks and quicksands, yet there is a "a tide in the affairs of men," a heaving and a restless aspiration of the soul, by means of which, "with sails and tackle torn," the wreck and scattered fragments of our entire being drift into the port and haven of our desires!”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"Why Distant Objects Please" Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

Life, Men, Soul, Strong

“Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and switfly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider's web would have to stop a fallen rock.”

Jonathan Edwards book Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (1741)

God, Hell

“I'm the first to admit that there's something unnatural… something unseemly… about rock stars mounting the pulpit and preaching at presidents, and then disappearing to their villas in the South of France. Talk about a fish out of water. It was weird enough when Jesse Helms showed up at a U2 concert… but this is really weird, isn't it?”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

National Prayer Breakfast (2006)

Star, Fish, Water

“I think when something's over, events have a way of conspiring to make you realise that it's over. As cryptic as that sounds, it's true. Things would happen and I'd be like, Am I going to have to deal with this for the rest of my life? And it was a very, very emotional band. It's in the music. The relationship between me and Morrissey was very emotional. It wasn't volatile in that we would row or anything like that, but it was so intense that if rocked slightly it would be a big deal. Was the lack of a manager important? Massively, I think. I was nursemaiding people when I needed nursemaiding myself. And I couldn't see where we were going to go in the near future musically without repeating ourselves and not being as good.”

Johnny Marr (1963) musician

from "Trouble at Mill" by John Harris, Mojo (April 2001).

Life, People, Music, Way

“At one point the driver said, "For God's sakes, you're rocking the boat back there." Actually we were; the car was swaying as Dean and I both swayed to the rhythm and the IT of our final excited joy in talking and living to the blank tranced end of all innumerable riotous angelic particulars that had been lurking in our souls all our lives.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Part Three, Ch. 5
On the Road (1957)

God, Angels, Cars, Soul

“There is a grand fearlessness in faith. He who in his heart of hearts reverences the good, the true, the holy — that is, reverences God — does not tremble at the apparent success of attacks upon the outworks of faith. They may shake those who rest on those outworks — they do not move him whose soul reposes on the truth itself. He needs no prop or crutches to support his faith. Founded on a Rock, Faith can afford to gaze undismayed at the approaches of Infidelity.”

Frederick William Robertson (1816–1853) British writer and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 221.

God, Truth, Faith, Soul

“No one of the rocks seems to call me now, nor any of the distant mountains. Surely this Merced and Tuolumne chapter of my life is done.”

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

letter to Mrs. Ezra S. Carr, from Yosemite Valley (September 1874); published in William Federic Badè, The Life and Letters of John Muir http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/life/life_and_letters/default.aspx (1924), chapter 11: On Widening Currents 1870s

Life, Mountain, Distant