Quotes about silver
page 2

Edouard Manet photo

“Get it down quickly, don't worry about the background. Just go for the tonal values. You see? When you look at it, and above all when you see how to render it as you see it, thats is, in such a way that its make the same impression on the viewer as it does on you, you don't look for, you don't see the lines on the paper over there, do you? And then, when you look at the whole thing you don't try to count the scales on the salmon, of course you don't. You see them as little silver pearls against grey and pink – isn't thats right? – look at the pink of the salmon, with the bone appearing white in the centre and then grays, like the shades of mother of pearl. And the grapes, now do you count each? No, of course not. What strikes you is their clear, amber colour and the bloom which models the form by softening it. What you have to decide with the cloth is where the highlights come and then the planes which are not in the direct light. Halftones are for the magasin pittoresque engravers. The folds will come by themselves if you put them in the proper place. Ah! M. Ingres, there's the man! We're all just children. There's the one who knew how to paint materials! Ask Bracquemond [Paris' artist and print-maker]. Above all, keep your colours fresh. [instructing his new protegee, the Spanish young woman-painter Eva Gonzales, circa 1869]”

Edouard Manet (1832–1883) French painter

Manet, recorded by Philippe Burty, as cited in Manet by Himself, ed. Juliet Wilson-Bareau, Little Brown 2000, London; p. 52
1850 - 1875

Yehuda Ashlag photo
Adam Smith photo
Alfred Noyes photo
Varadaraja V. Raman photo
E.E. Cummings photo
Mason Weems photo

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

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

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

George Chapman photo
Frithjof Schuon photo
Yury Dombrovsky photo
Marino Marini photo
Edmund Spenser photo

“How oft do they their silver bowers leave
To come to succour us that succour want!”

Canto 8, stanza 2
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book II

Aneurin Bevan photo

“Damn it all, you can't have the crown of thorns and the thirty pieces of silver.”

Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) Welsh politician

On his position in the Labour Party (c. 1956), quoted in Michael Foot, Aneurin Bevan: A Biography, Volume 2 (1973), p. 503
1950s

Bruno Schulz photo

“The moon is a silver pin-head vast,
That holds the heaven's tent-hangings fast.”

William R. Alger (1822–1905) American clergyman and poet

"The Use of the Moon", p. 178.
Poetry of the Orient, 1865 edition

James, son of Zebedee photo
Pricasso photo

“Wearing silver boots and a hat, armbands and a smile, he whipped out his paintbrush, so to speak, and in 20 minutes painted pictures of his customers with a flourish - while a fascinated crowd gathered, some gaping in disbelief.”

Pricasso (1949) Australian painter

[Barbara Cole, Putting fun back into sex, Daily News, South Africa, 8 February 2008, 5, Independent Online]
About

“In the evening I study a fair.... if you could see the pomp and luxury of the merry-go-round and the stands and booths. Everything is decorated in Baroque-style, all gold and silver; there are mirrors, fabrics, and electric lightning. By night the whole thing is fantastic and rowdy. First of all I shall make a small picture and some drawings for illustrations.”

Giacomo Balla (1871–1958) Italian artist

quote c. 1900, in: Giacomo Balla (1871 – 1951), ed. Fagiolo dell'Arco, exh. catalogue, Galleria Nationale d'Arte Moderna, Rome, 1971
Balla studied a fair for his later painting ' Luna park in Paris https://www.wikiart.org/en/giacomo-balla/luna-park-par-s-1900,' he painted in 1900

Marcel Duchamp photo

“Now, if you [his sister, Suzanne Duchamp ] have been up to my place, you will have seen, in the studio, [his former studio in France, probably in Paris] a 'Bicycle Wheel' and a 'Bottle Rack'. [both art-works became later famous ready-mades of Duchamp] – I bought this as a ready-made sculpture [sculpture tout faite]. And I h have a plan concerning this so-called bottle rack. Listen to this. Here in N. Y., I have bought various objects in the same taste and I treat them as 'ready-mades'. You know enough English to understand the meaning of 'ready-made' [tour fait] that I give these objects. – I sign them and think of an inscription for them in English. I'll give you a few examples. I have, for example, a large snow shovel on which I have inscribed at the bottom: In advance of the broken arm, French translation: 'En avance dus bras cassé' – (Don't tear your hair out) trying to understand this in the Romantic or impressionist or Cubist sense – it has nothing to do with all that. Another 'readymade' is called: Emergency in favour of twice possible French translation: Danger \Crise \en favour de 2 fois. This long preamble just to say: Take this bottle rack for yourself. I'm making it a 'readymade' remotely. You are to inscribe it at the bottom and on the inside of the bottom circle, in small letters painted with a brush in oil, silver white colour, with an inscription which I will give you herewith, and then sign it, in the same handwriting, as follows: [after] Marcel Duchamp.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

long quote from Duchamp's letter to his sister Suzanne Duchamp, New York, c. 15 Jan. 1916; as quoted in The Duchamp Book, ed. Gavin Parkinson, Tate Publishing, London 2008 pp. 157-158
1915 - 1925

Mahmud of Ghazni photo

“He now attacked the fort of Bhim, where was a temple of the Hindus. He was victorious, and obtained much wealth, including about a hundred idols of gold and silver. One of the golden images, which weighed a million mishkals, the Sultan appropriated to the decoration of the Mosque of Ghazni, so that the ornaments of the doors were of gold instead of iron.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

Nagarkot Kangra (Himachal Pradesh) . Hamdu’llah bin ‘Abu Bakr bin Hamd bin Nasr Mustaufi : Tarikh-i-Guzida, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. III : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. p. 65
Quotes from The History of India as told by its own Historians

Cassandra Clare photo
John Marston photo
Henry David Thoreau photo
Khaled Hosseini photo
Adam Smith photo

“The importation of gold and silver is not the principal, much less the sole benefit which a nation derives from its foreign trade.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter I, p. 479.

Taliesin photo
David Bowie photo
Walter de la Mare photo
Robert Boyle photo
Elton John photo
Alan Greenspan photo
Rumi photo
Robert E. Howard photo
Nader Shah photo

“When the Shah departed towards the close of the day, a false rumour was spread through the town that he had been severely wounded by a shot from a matchlock, and thus were sown the seeds from which murder and rapine were to spring. The bad characters within the town collected in great bodies, and, without distinction, commenced the work of plunder and destruction…. On the morning of the 11th an order went forth from the Persian Emperor for the slaughter of the inhabitants. The result may be imagined; one moment seemed to have sufficed for universal destruction. The Chandni chauk, the fruit market, the Daribah bazaar, and the buildings around the Masjid-i Jama’ were set fire to and reduced to ashes. The inhabitants, one and all, were slaughtered. Here and there some opposition was offered, but in most places people were butchered unresistingly. The Persians laid violent hands on everything and everybody; cloth, jewels, dishes of gold and silver, were acceptable spoil…. But to return to the miserable inhabitants. The massacre lasted half the day, when the Persian Emperor ordered Haji Fulad Khan, the kotwal, to proceed through the streets accompanied by a body of Persian nasakchis, and proclaim an order for the soldiers to resist from carnage. By degrees the violence of the flames subsided, but the bloodshed, the devastation, and the ruin of families were irreparable. For a long time the streets remained strewn with corpses, as the walks of a garden with dead flowers and leaves. The town was reduced to ashes, and had the appearance of a plain consumed with fire. All the regal jewels and property and the contents of the treasury were seized by the Persian conqueror in the citadel. He thus became possessed of treasure to the amount of sixty lacs of rupees and several thousand ashrafis… plate of gold to the value of one kror of rupees, and the jewels, many of which were unrivalled in beauty by any in the world, were valued at about fifty krors. The peacock throne alone, constructed at great pains in the reign of Shah Jahan, had cost one kror of rupees. Elephants, horses, and precious stuffs, whatever pleased. the conqueror’s eye, more indeed than can be enumerated, became his spoil. In short, the accumulated wealth of 348 years changed masters in a moment.”

Nader Shah (1688–1747) ruled as Shah of Iran

About Shah’s sack of Delhi, Tazrikha by Anand Ram Mukhlis. A history of Nâdir Shah’s invasion of India. In The History of India as Told by its own Historians. The Posthumous Papers of the Late Sir H. M. Elliot. John Dowson, ed. 1st ed. 1867. 2nd ed., Calcutta: Susil Gupta, 1956, vol. 22, pp. 74-98. https://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/h_es/h_es_tazrikha_frameset.htm

Alan Keyes photo
Harry V. Jaffa photo
Tracey Ullman photo

“Why does everyone think the future is space helmets, silver foil, and talking like computers, like a bad episode of Star Trek?”

Tracey Ullman (1959) English-born actress, comedian, singer, dancer, screenwriter, producer, director, author and businesswoman

"Tracking Tracey" http://www.dareland.com/emulsionalproblems/ullman.htm (Interview, January 1989)

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Willa Cather photo
Harry Chapin photo
Ben Harper photo
Bryan Adams photo
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot photo
Jack McDevitt photo
Jack Vance photo
L. Frank Baum photo
James Carville photo

“Mr. Richardson’s endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic.”

James Carville (1944) political writer, consultant and United States Marine

Referring to New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson's endorsement of Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton on GoodFriday).

Orson Scott Card photo
Thomas Brooks photo
Esaias Tegnér photo
David Brin photo
Euripidés photo

“Silver and gold are not the only coin; virtue too passes current all over the world.”

Euripidés (-480–-406 BC) ancient Athenian playwright

Œdipus, Frag. 546

Miguel de Cervantes photo

“Every man was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part II (1615), Book IV, Ch. 73.

Leonard Cohen photo
Robert Seymour Bridges photo

“Awake, my heart, to be loved, awake, awake!
The darkness silvers away, the morn doth break,
It leaps in the sky.”

Robert Seymour Bridges (1844–1930) British writer

Awake, My Heart, to Be Loved http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=6639&poem=27759, l. 1-3.
Poetry

Lope De Vega photo

“In ancient days they said truth had fled to heaven: attacked on every side, it's not been heard of since. We live in different ages, non-Spaniards and ourselves: they in the age of silver, we in the age of brass.”

Dijeron que antiguamente
se fue la verdad al cielo;
tal la pusieron los hombres,
que desde entonces no ha vuelto.
En dos edades vivimos
los propios y los ajenos:
la de plata los estraños,
y la de cobre los nuestros.
Act I, sc. iv. Translation from Alan S. Trueblood and Edwin Honig (ed. and trans.) La Dorotea (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1985) p. 23.
La Dorotea (1632)

Alauddin Khalji photo
John Ogilby photo

“Now fields are green, and trees bear silver buds.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

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

Luis de Góngora photo

“Let merchants traverse seas and lands,
For silver mines and golden sands;
Whilst I beside some shadowy rill,
Just where its bubbling fountain swells,
Do sit and gather stones and shells,
And hear the tale the blackbird tells.”

Luis de Góngora (1561–1627) Spanish Baroque lyric poet

Busque muy en hora buena
el mercader nuevos soles;
yo conchas y caracoles
entre la menuda arena,
escuchando a Filomena
sobre el chopo de la fuente.
Letrillas, "Andeme yo caliente", line 24, cited from Robert Jammes (ed.) Letrillas (Madrid: Castalia, 1980) p. 116. Translation from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Poets and Poetry of Europe (New York: C. S. Francis, 1855) p. 695

Richard Le Gallienne photo

“Dear Sister, You dream like mad, you love like tinder, you aspire like a star-struck moth - for what? That you may hive little lyrics, and sell to a publisher for thirty pieces of silver.”

Richard Le Gallienne (1866–1947) British writer

Opening Lines from Epistle Dedicatory, to his sister, Sissie Le Gallienne English Poems Copland & Day 1895 kindle ebook.

Sinclair Lewis photo
Paula Modersohn-Becker photo
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey photo
Sidney Lanier photo
John Keats photo

“The silver snarling trumpets 'gan to chide.”

Stanza 4
Poems (1820), The Eve of St. Agnes

Vincent Van Gogh photo
Morarji Desai photo
Constantine P. Cavafy photo
Joseph Heller photo
Thomas Jefferson photo

“His golden locks time hath to silver turned;
O time too swift! O swiftness never ceasing!
His youth ’gainst time and age hath ever spurned,
But spurned in vain; youth waneth by encreasing.”

George Peele (1556–1596) English translator and poet

Polyhymnia (1590), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“But so far as the Hindus are concerned, this period was a prolonged spell of darkness which ended only when the Marathas and the Jats and the Sikhs broke the back of Islamic imperialism in the middle of the 18th century. The situation of the Hindus under Muslim rule is summed up by the author of Tãrîkh-i-Wassãf in the following words: “The vein of the zeal of religion beat high for the subjection of infidelity and destruction of idols… The Mohammadan forces began to kill and slaughter, on the right and the left unmercifully, throughout the impure land, for the sake of Islãm, and blood flowed in torrents. They plundered gold and silver to an extent greater than can be conceived, and an immense number of precious stones as well as a great variety of cloths… They took captive a great number of handsome and elegant maidens and children of both sexes, more than pen can enumerate… In short, the Mohammadan army brought the country to utter ruin and destroyed the lives of the inhabitants and plundered the cities, and captured their off-springs, so that many temples were deserted and the idols were broken and trodden under foot, the largest of which was Somnãt. The fragments were conveyed to Dehlî and the entrance of the Jãmi‘ Masjid was paved with them so that people might remember and talk of this brilliant victory… Praise be to Allah the lord of the worlds.””

The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India (1994)

“There's a silver lining
Through the dark clouds shining.
Turn the dark cloud inside out
Till the boys come home.”

Lena Guilbert Ford (1870–1918) American lyricist, poet

Song Keep the Home Fires Burning (1914)

Robert E. Howard photo
Noel Gallagher photo

“Gold and silver and sunshine is rising up”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

Bag it Up
Dig Out Your Soul (2008)

Helen Keller photo
Ruth Deech photo

“I'm now a committed silver surfer.”

Ruth Deech (1943) British academic, lawyer and bioethicist

Interview in the Guardian http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/profile/story/0,11109,1092253,00.html

Mike Oldfield photo
Elizabeth Barrett Browning photo
Halldór Laxness photo

“Gold is precious because it resembles the sun. Silver has the light of the moon.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

the blind man at the Ölfus River
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part I: Iceland's Bell

James Branch Cabell photo

“Now, the redemption which we as yet await (continued Imlac), will be that of Kalki, who will come as a Silver Stallion: all evils and every sort of folly will perish at the coming of this Kalki: true righteousness will be restored, and the minds of men will be made as clear as crystal.”

James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) American author

Epigraph, based upon the style of Samuel Johnson in The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759), using a fictional reference to Imlac the philosopher in Johnson's tale.
The Silver Stallion (1926)

Francis Turner Palgrave photo

“In the hollow
Silver voices ripple and cry
Follow, O follow!”

Francis Turner Palgrave (1824–1897) English poet and critic

The Golden Land

Edwin Arnold photo
G. K. Chesterton photo

“Treasure maps; Czarist bonds; a case of stuffed dodos; Scarlett O'Hara's birth certificate; two flattened and deformed silver bullet heads in an old matchbox; Baedeker's guide to Atlantis (seventeenth edition, 1902); the autograph score of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, with Das Ende written neatly at the foot of the last page; three boxes of moon rocks; a dumpy, heavy statuette of a bird covered in dull black paint, which reminded him of something but he couldn't remember what; a Norwich Union life policy in the name of Vlad Dracul; a cigar box full of oddly shaped teeth, with CAUTION: DO NOT DROP painted on the lid in hysterical capitals; five or six doll's-house-sized books with titles like Lilliput On $2 A Day; a small slab of green crystal that glowed when he opened the envelope; a thick bundle of love letters bound in blue ribbon, all signed Margaret Roberts; a left-luggage token from North Central railway terminus, Ruritania; Bartholomew's Road Atlas of Oz (one page, with a yellow line smack down the middle); a brown paper bag of solid gold jelly babies; several contracts for the sale and purchase of souls; a fat brown envelope inscribed To Be Opened On My Death: E. A. Presley, unopened; Oxford and Cambridge Board O-level papers in Elvish language and literature, 1969-85; a very old drum in a worm-eaten sea-chest marked F. Drake, Plymouth, in with a load of minute-books and annual accounts of the Winchester Round Table; half a dozen incredibly ugly portraits of major Hollywood film stars; Unicorn-Calling, For Pleasure & Profit by J. R. Hartley; a huge collection of betting slips, on races to be held in the year 2019; all water, as far as Paul was concerned, off a duck's {back]”

Tom Holt (1961) British writer

The Portable Door (2003)

David Graeber photo
Septimius Severus photo

“You see by what has happened that we are superior to you in intelligence, in size of army, and in number of supporters. Surely you were easily trapped, captured without a struggle. It is in my power to do with you what I wish when I wish. Helpless and prostrate, you lie before us now, victims of our might. But if one looks for a punishment equal to the crimes you have committed, it is impossible to find a suitable one. You murdered your revered and benevolent old emperor, the man whom it was your sworn duty to protect. The empire of the Roman people, eternally respected, which our forefathers obtained by their valiant courage or inherited because of their noble birth, this empire you shamefully and disgracefully sold for silver as if it were your personal property. But you were unable to defend the man whom you yourselves had chosen as emperor. No, you betrayed him like the cowards you are. For these monstrous acts and crimes you deserve a thousand deaths, if one wished to do to you what you have earned. You see clearly what it is right you should suffer. But I will be merciful. I will not butcher you. My hands shall not do what your hands did. But I say that it is in no way fit or proper for you to continue to serve as the emperor's bodyguard, you who have violated your oath and stained your hands with the blood of your emperor and fellow Roman, betraying the trust placed in you and the security offered by your protection. Still, compassion leads me to spare your lives and your persons. But I order the soldiers who have you surrounded to cashier you, to strip off any military uniform or equipment you are wearing, and drive you off naked. 9. And I order you to get yourselves as far from the city of Rome as is humanly possible, and I promise you and I swear it on solemn oath and I proclaim it publicly that if any one of you is found within a hundred miles of Rome, he shall pay for it with his head.”

Septimius Severus (145–211) Emperor of Ancient Rome

Herodian, Book II.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir photo

“What I like so much about Corot is that he can say everything with a bit of tree; and it was Corot himself that I found [back] in the museum of Naples – in the simplicity of the work of Pompeii and the Egyptians. These priestesses in their silver-grey tunics are just like Corot's nymphs.”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French painter and sculptor

Source: 1880's, Renoir – his life and work, 1975, p. 164 : quote from Renoir's letter to Durand-Ruell, 1882, referring to a small painting with trees of the landscape-painter Corot

Waylon Jennings photo

“They oughtta give me the Wurlitzer Prize
For all the silver I let slide down the slot.
Playin' those songs sung blue
That help me remember you.
I don't wanna get over you.”

Waylon Jennings (1937–2002) American country music singer, songwriter, and musician

The Wurlitzer Prize (I Don't Want to Get Over You) (1977).
Song lyrics

George William Russell photo